My beautiful, foolish husband let me into a Harney & Sons store in upstate New York. I placed a few carefully chosen items into my basket, and moved toward the checkout.
“Is that all?” the doofus queried.
“I can have more?” I asked.
“That doesn’t seem like much stuff,” he said.
I tripled the amount in my basket.
One of my picks was this flower-fruit-coconut concoction that’s basically a bar in the tropics, distilled down into one alcohol-free mug. I felt like I was swimming up to a swim-up bar (I’ve never done this) with a big flower in my hair (I’ve never done this) in the background of Lilo and Stitch (I’ve never done this).
When it comes right down to it, I’m more of a forest/lake/inland kind of girl than a beach girl. I like how trees smell. I don’t like sand between my toes. But this tea, man, this tea almost makes me reconsider my stance. Almost.
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Harney and Sons
Description
Delicious, refreshing tea with a charitable twist. Named for GMHC’s slogan and logo, our Love Life tea is a refreshing blend of Japanese Bancha green tea with fresh flavors of strawberry, coconut, rich vanilla, and puffed rice for a light, fruity brew. 50% of the sales from this tea benefits GMHC, an organization devoted to fighting for an end to the AIDS epidemic and uplifting the lives of those affected.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Sweet Tea O’Mine from the Goat Tea . . . .
It is always a thrill to find a new favorite fall tea. With so many sweet caramel pumpkin teas or apple-pie-spiced blends, Sweet Tea O’Mine from The Goat Tea was a wonderful new take on the pumpkin spice tea.
This is a honeybush and rooibos based tea, which makes it naturally caffeine free and perfect for late night brewing. Along with the herbal leaves, there is puffed rice like a traditionally green genmaicha tea. I have a soft spot for the starchy, almost savory genmaicha teas with puffed rice, so I was thrilled to find a new tea with this ingredient. The honeybush and puffed rice compliment each other’s nuttiness, making for a rich and warming flavor combination.
Meanwhile the familiar autumn spices are still there, nutmeg and mace to name the key players. This makes the tea have plenty of that pumpkin spice taste, but with a pleasant woodsy undertone from the herbal leaves. I also appreciate that the blend isn’t too sweet or artificial. There is a medium sweetness with lingering flavors like brown sugar or molasses.
With its roasted wheat and toasted rice flavors this tea captures all the best parts of corn mazes and hay bales and gets me suitable excited for the upcoming 2019 fall season.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: herbal
Where to Buy: The Goat Tea
Description:
Who says Pumpkin can only be for one season? Enjoy a cup of this sweet tea, swirling with the taste of pumpkin, caramel, and cinnamon. It is like fall in your mouth.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Popcorn Tea from Teapigs
Who can resist the idea of Popcorn Tea, especially when the label has little film reels on it for your next movie showing? Teapigs isn’t the first tea company to package genmaicha under the pretense of popcorn, but they have some of the cutest packaging.
Genmaicha is a type of green tea blended with puffed rice. This makes it so that the dry leaf and the brewed tea has a distinct toasty popcorn smell. It is a unique tea, sometimes slightly savory, but always supremely cozy. I highly recommend trying green tea with puffed rice at least once and see how it goes. Teapigs Popcorn Tea is a great place to start.
The overtones of the tea are warm bready notes, the roasted grain flavors of the puffed rice leading the way in scent in taste. Beneath that first burst of popcorn, the green tea comes through with slightly more vegetal notes like gentle celery or bok choy. Alongside the puffed rice, the tea pleasantly reminds me of sauteeing green vegetables in sesame oil.
I love drinking this tea in the late afternoon (or maybe even before a movie in the evening!). With lower caffeine than black tea, Popcorn Tea makes for a warming and soothing pick-me-up on a busy day. Even if you can’t snuggle in under a quilt with a bowl of popcorn, this tea can help you imagine you’re there.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Genmaicha
Where to Buy: Teapigs
Description:
This tea has flourished from humble beginnings – Japanese peasants used to mix green tea with toasted rice to make it go further. It is now celebrated in its own right as Genmaicha tea, or Popcorn tea. “Sugar Puffs in a cup” – a truly unique blend with an almost nutty undertone.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
52Teas’ the 12 Teas of Christmas – Day 2-Spoilers!
Day 2!
I am a big fan of 52Teas’ genmaicha flavors. They blend them with a bit of marshmallow root to take the slightly savory toasted flavors right over to marshmallow treat territory. I haven’t met a 52Teas genmaicha I didn’t like, so I was so excited to see today’s tea was Candy Cane Marshmallow Treat Genmaicha.
This tea works with their classic marshmallow treat genmaicha base and adds the vanilla mint flavors of a candy cane. This is such an unusual pairing. The roasted puffed rice in genmaicha evokes such a warm and toasty feeling in my mug, and now it is paired with the other end of the spectrum with frosty peppermint.
The mint pairs well with the green tea, and the vanilla candy flavor goes with the marshmallow root. The puffed rice adds a little bit of sweet breakfast cereal notes in the background. Another tasty genmaicha from 52Teas and a fresh take on the holiday candy cane tea.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description:
This is our first NEW tea of our 12 Teas of Christmas box (we reblend 8 teas every year, and create 4 new blends – but this year we did things just a little different . . . more on that on Day 8 of the countdown!) and this new tea is something special! Every year, I like to include at least one minty tea in the Christmas box because mint and the holidays just seem to go together, right? Last year, we didn’t have a minty tea in the Christmas box, and it wasn’t until I started working on the teas of the week for December that I realized that I hadn’t crafted ANY minty teas for the holiday season so I needed to come up with something quick and that’s when I came up with the idea for the candy cane white tea which I loved, particularly because of the candy canes that I used in that blend, an organically crafted, all natural, vegan, gluten free and allergen free candy cane. I simply fell in love with these things so when the holidays approached this year, I ordered some and then came up with the blend for which I’d be using them!
Also, I was a little surprised that this year, none of the Genmaicha blends were outstanding vote catchers in our poll especially considering that last year, we had two stand out Genmaicha vote getters – and since I do have quite a few Genmaicha fans out there, that suggested to me that people needed a new, interesting Genmaicha blend!
And here it is!
I started with organic Genmaicha and added peppermint, vanilla beans, marshmallow root and of course some bits of the aforementioned candy canes. The result: a yummy marshmallow treat-y cuppa with crisp, cool notes of peppermint! It tastes like a holiday marshmallow treat! So good!
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Cauldron Cake Genmaicha from 52Teas
52Teas recently did a whimsical and tasty set of Harry Potter inspired tea flavors. One of these blends is Cauldron Cake Genmaicha. I love the toasty puffed rice and warming green tea of genmaicha and 52Teas is the master of fun genmaicha flavors. Throw in a Wizarding World twist and I couldn’t wait to try this tea.
Cauldron Cake Genmaicha is inspired by a chocolatey, frosted cupcake. Alongside the familiar starchy rice flavors there are smooth cacao nibs, nutty cacao shells, and creamy white chocolate chips. A dash of sprinkles makes the loose leaf look even cuter. This tea looks very festive prior to brewing, with a wide variety of shapes and colors, and smelling like a sweet cake dessert.
This blend reminds me a bit of the honeybush-based blend Rocky Road. Both blends have cacao nibs, cacao shells, and white chocolate chips. However, 52Teas has been able to fit even more vanilla frosting flavors into the Cauldron Cake Genmaicha blend. The extra creaminess comes off as marshmallowy when paired with the puffed rice and roasty green tea.
I tend to drink my genmaicha teas without any milk or sugar, but this might be a fun latte to try in the future. Just be sure to top it off with a little whipped cream and sprinkles for the full effect.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: green genmaicha
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description:
Our fifth and final new tea for Harry Potter Month 2018! When I was going through my ideas for Harry Potter inspired teas, this one was at the top of the list because CAKE! Originally, I had considered doing this one as a black tea, however, I already had two black teas planned for the month so I decided to rethink the blend and create this as a Genmaicha blend instead.
Now, I haven’t ever had a Cauldron Cake, but the Harry Potter Wiki describes them as a mass-produced cake from Qizilbash Quality Confectionery in Pakistan. I confess that I’m not at all familiar with confections from Pakistan either. So when I went about creating this tea, I decided that a cauldron cake is probably a lot like a cupcake – only probably a bit more rounded at the bottom like a cauldron.
So I did my best to go with that kind of inspiration: a chocolate cupcake … err … cauldron cake with a cream filling and perhaps a light coating of chocolate ganache over it and then garnished with colorful sprinkles. And here we have our organic, Matcha infused Genmaicha blended with cake essence, cacao nibs, cacao shells, vanilla bean, white chocolate chips (vegan, of course) and sprinkles (also vegan, nut-free & gluten-free!)
It’s quite yummy and I believe that Honeyduke’s would be happy to serve this tea to their patrons!
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!