Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: The Random Tea Room
Tea Description:
A blend of chamomile, lemon balm, motherwort, peppermint, lavender, and passionflower. Designed to assist the body in alleviating stress and worn nerves. Very relaxing. This is calm in a cup!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
First off, I am not a fan of lavender in teas. I feel that the lavender adds a bite to the tea and creates a overwhelming fragrance to the tea. When I received this tea and noticed that there was lavender in it, I was a bit worried. Lately I have been really trying to get myself to not drink the teas that I know I will like. Like how you encourage a child to try different foods, I’m taking that same plane of thought in my tea drinking. I have been trying some pretty unusual teas and having a fantastic time. I have discovered that I enjoy rose petals in tea. After having this tea, I am ok with lavender now being in tea.
This tea is presented in a marvelous tin. The label on this package is awesome. I love the way The Random Tea Room packages their teas.
I added two scoops of tea into my Breville One Touch and hit the herbal button (212F-5 min). Once the tea was ready, I poured the liquid into two mugs, admiring the coloring of the tea. There was an almost purple color to it.
Jason and I took our first sips and we both looked at each other and smiled. First sip and I’ve fallen in love with another tea. This tea is a perfect herbal tea. Relaxing, soothing, comforting, and cooling. Everything you would want in an herbal tea and more. The chamomile provides a baked dessert background while the peppermint (which is subtle) adds in just a touch of a cooling aesthetic. There is also a touch of a fruity flavor through the sip and the lavender delivers an ever so slight floral note. A lot of flavors in this blend, but they all work together and play nicely in my cuppa. I’m impressed with yet another of The Random Tea Room’s blends.
I was able to get about 4 infusions out of this one session with this tea. Even tried it iced and thought this herbal tea delivered a solid flavor. You can’t ask for a better herbal!
Pocketful of Posies Herbal Tea by Adagio Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: Adagio Teas
Tea Description:
A relaxing, naturally caffeine-free herbal tea blended from blackberry leaves, chamomile, peppermint, hibiscus, lavender flowers, and rose petals.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is an herbal tea from Adagio’s Sunlit Blooms collection. It’s a floral blend, containing whole chamomile flowers, lavender and rose petals. It also contains peppermint, hibiscus, and blackberry leaves. Judging by the dry leaf, the main constituent is blackberry leaves, which are green and fluffy, rather like raspberry leaves. The other ingredients seem rather sparse.
I used 1.5tsp of leaf for my cup, and gave it 4 minutes in boiling water. The resulting liquor is yellow-green, which is doubtless testament to how little hibiscus is actually in this blend. The scent is deeply herbal – predominantly chamomile and lavender as far as I can discern.
To taste, this is a mild, lightly floral blend. Rose is clearly there, and lavender, although both are less pungent than might be expected, and don’t make the cup taste “perfumey” in the way they sometimes can. Half of me appreciates this, as teas with heavy perfume-like flavours can be rather cloying. The other half is wishing for a bit more flavour, as the overall effect is rather thin-tasting. The chamomile emerges a little towards the end of the sip, adding a honey-like sweetness that works well with the floral flavours. It’s a pleasant enough cup, if a little bland and weak. It’s like this tea is lacking in personality.
I’m really not sure what the blackberry leaves are adding to this blend, other than bulk. I appreciate that they have reputed health benefits, but I would have liked to have seen the other ingredients in greater quantity, as they impart the flavour this blend is sadly lacking. This one would make a pleasant pre-bedtime cup, if you’re after a caffeine-free blend with mild, relaxing flavours, but it’s not really one I’d purposefully seek out at other times of the day.
Sweet Nothings White Tea by Adagio
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: Adagio
Tea Description:
Sweet apricots, peach, lavender and white tea entangle themselves for a delicate fruit and floral tryst. Quietly pleasing, like softly whispered confessions of admiration that keep you wanting more.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is a white tea from Adagio’s Love Petals collection. It’s a fruit-floral blend, containing sunflower petals and lavender buds on the floral side, and apricot and peach on the fruit side. The base tea is a white peony, composed mostly of brown-black stalks and leaves, but with a few downy silver buds in evidence. It’s not the best looking white peony I’ve ever seen, but appearances can be deceptive.
I used 1 tsp of leaf for my cup, and gave it 2.5 minutes in water cooled to around 180 degrees. The resulting liquor is a medium golden-yellow, and the scent is mildly fruity. To taste, the fruit is the primary flavour, and the floral ingredients are mostly absent. I was hoping this would be the case, as (with a few rare exceptions) fruit/floral combinations usually strike me as rather odd. The main flavour I can detect is peach, and it’s a reasonably natural tasting approximation – mildly sweet, with that pulpiness that ripe peaches have. The apricot is present a little, but it’s definitely second fiddle here. As peach and apricot are reasonably similar flavours, however, it hardly seems to matter.
Although I can see lavender buds in the dry mix, they actually make no impact on the overall flavour, or at least not that I can discern. I imagine the sunflower petals are being used to carry the fruit flavours, so perhaps that explains their role in this blend. The white base is also strangely absent from the flavour of this blend. I usually find it possible to detect white teas in flavoured blends, particularly white peony as it can be quite thick tasting, with a floral/dusty flavour all its own. Not so here, which is another point in this blend’s flavour. The peach and apricot are allowed to shine, and shine they do!
This makes for a pleasant blend on a warm spring day, and I can imagine it would also work well iced. Adagio did well with this one.
Energize Herbal Tea by Teatoxy
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: Teatoxy
Tea Description:
Teatoxy Energize is a 100% organic blue detox tea blend that is absolutely unqiue and gives you the energy you need to stay fit throughout your day. Our master blenders have created Teatoxy Energize with 3 things in mind: flavour, health and energy. By combining organic Thai lemongrass, Pandan leaves, Moroccan Rose pedals with Bluechai and Lavender you get an amazingly delicious, all natural tea with a vast amount of health benefits.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I was initially attracted to this tea due to its reputed energy-giving properties, and I’ve been drinking it fairly regularly since first receiving it a few months ago. The first thing that stood out about this blend was the quality of the “leaf”. Although this blend is herbal so there’s no actual tea, leaf seems an appropriate term to describe this particular mixture. The pieces of lemongrass are some of the largest I’ve ever seen – minimum 1cm square, with whole rose buds, whole bluechai flowers, and large, curly pandan leaves. The lavender is the only small thing here, with a generous smattering of buds throughout. It’s a really beautiful blend to look at – pink, blue, green, yellow, and purple. A true feast for the eyes.
When brewing a cup, I’ve been following the recommended parameters and using 2 heaped teaspoons of leaf. It would be difficult to measure much less than a heaped teaspoon in any case! This can be left for up to 8 minutes in boiling water, but in this case I went for a more conservative 4.5. I’ve found that this gives the most pleasant flavour (more on that in a moment), and means that the tea hasn’t cooled too much before it’s even finished brewing.
The second thing that stands out about this blend is the colour of the liquor. It’s bright blue. This is due to the inclusion of the bluechai flowers, which give this tea its energising properties. As an added novelty, lemon juice will turn the liquor from blue to purple. Lemon has the added bonus of lifting the flavour a little, making it sharper rather than sweet, and more refreshing, which might be quite welcome depending on your personal taste.
As it is, the flavour of this blend is another fairly unique thing. It’s certainly not like anything I’ve ever tasted before! The main note I can detect is rose, but underlying this is a thick almost-maltiness, reminiscent of some of “sleepytime” style herbal tea blends or hot chocolate. It reminds me a bit of Lush’s Twilight shower gel, as a matter of fact. The lavender obviously plays a part in this, but I suspect the pandan may also play a part. I’ve no previous experience with pandan to draw on, however, so I can’t say this too confidently. The aftertaste has a very natural, almost “green” flavour, which puts me in mind of a summer garden in full bloom; grass, chlorophyll, and the scent of flowers. This isn’t a tea for someone who really dislikes heavily floral flavours, because there’s a lot of that here, although adding lemon juice can minimise this to some extent. It cuts through what can become a very cloying tea, and makes it sharper and more refreshing. Definitely worth a try if you’re finding a full cup of this one a bit too much.
Since I’ve been drinking this one, I have noticed a slight improvement in my energy levels and ability to focus. I’ve taken to drinking a cup just after lunch at work, when I often start to flagg. It’s not a massive boost, but I’ve found it to be a good mild pick-me-up, without the associated problems of a caffeine slump. This is an interesting, unique, and intriguing blend. It’s definitely worth a try if you like herbals, want to try some new and unusual tea ingredients, or are looking for a natural boost. My first experience with Teatoxy was definitely a good one!
Camellia Rose Black Flowering Tea from McQuarrie’s Tea & Coffee Merchants
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black/Flowering
Where to Buy: McQuarrie’s Tea & Coffee Merchants
Tea Description:
An exquisite medium body taste profile. A smooth cup with hints of fruit and soft rose notes.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Picked up a single bloom of this one at McQuarrie’s (my local, privately owned loose leaf store) when I was there earlier in the month. It cost about $1.50 if I remember correctly – $2 tops. It’s been a little while since I had a bloom tea, and when I was skimming the selection they offers this was the only one I noticed with a black base, so I figured I’d give it a shot since blooms with black bases don’t seem to be a super common thing. Like I usually do with bloom/flowering teas, I made it in my 25 oz. mason jar from DT so I could see it clearly. I apologize that the pictures I took are pretty crude; my options were webcam or cell phone, and neither are the highest quality…
Aesthetically speaking this was pretty; the black tea when fully spread out did look a little frayed and tattered, but the flower in the center was really pretty. It’s hard to see in the pictures, but it was a little pinker than they’d lead you to believe. A lot of the lavender ‘woven’ in place also got loose as well and ended up as floaty bits at the top of the mason jar.
This was actually pretty decent as far as bloom teas go though; since a lot of the lavendar broke off and was drank by me early on it didn’t get a chance to get super strong/perfumey and instead just imparted a nice light, but still present flavour. Other strong flavours were malt, stewed fruit and raisin from the black base and then quite a bit of rose from the actual rose in the blend. It tied in together pretty well. If I was a fan of raisins I think I’d have personally liked it a little bit better. There was a nice mix between flavours contributed by the tea itself and the additional floral ingredients. Given most bloom teas are just a pretty aesthetic this had some solid flavour to match.
It was a bit bitter by the end; but given that I drank it during an hour and a half movie and it was essentially steeping the entire duration of the movie I think it held up incredibly well. I know McQuarrie’s sources almost all of their teas from different companies, but this one isn’t listed like they usually do – so maybe it is one of the few teas they carry that are actually their own blends.
If that’s true, than it’d definitely be harder for most people to get a hold of since it’s a local store (with pretty steep shipping prices for delivery outside of Saskatoon) – but I do think it’s worth a try! However, if I had to guess where they probably sourced it from I’d wager Metropolitan Tea Company, since that’s where most of the flowering blends they carry seem to be from.
