Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White & Green Teas & Rooibos
Where to Buy: Georgia Tea Company
Tea Description:
Our signature blend, designed to boost the immune system and helps fight cancer. Boosts interferon production to help the body fight off infection while going through chemotherapy. Contains high concentrations of Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). Made with only the best white, green and rooibos teas.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This Lavender Cander Fighting Tea has a lot going on: it’s a white tea, a green tea, a rooibos and an herbal. So to brew it, I decided on a fairly low temperature (I went with 175°F) and steeped it for 3 minutes. I’m happy with the results!
This is tasty! It has a really lovely flavor! The lavender is strong enough to be a lingering presence throughout the sip, but it isn’t overpowering. Lavender is one of those flowers that when overdone, it imparts a soapy or perfume-y flavor to the tea. That didn’t happen here. The lavender is sweet and quite wonderful here, and I love the way it melds with the blueberry flavor. This is not a flavor combination I would have thought much about before trying this tea, but the fruit and the flower are quite compatible.
The tea has been nicely crafted, because I can taste each of the components and the way it has been blended, it would seem that the best of each ingredient is captured. It tastes quite nice. I get a sweet, nutty flavor from the rooibos without that sometimes funky, sour-wood kind of flavor. I taste a light freshness and lightly brothy texture from the green and white teas. I’m getting a lovely note of lavender and the blueberry is sweet and juicy. The currant adds just a hint of tartness to bring some balance to the cup.
The way the green and white tea come through with the floral notes of lavender and whispers of rose evokes thoughts of walking through a garden – the taste of the air as a gentle breeze carries the essences of the flowers and surrounds the garden with it’s soft perfume. It’s quite enjoyable.
This tea has been crafted to be help prevent cancer. Now, I’m not a doctor nor do I pretend to be or claim to have all the answers when it comes to tea’s health benefits and how it helps to fight cancer/prevent cancer. I don’t really even know if it does. I’ve heard that it does. I don’t drink tea because it’s a healthy drink, I drink it because I enjoy it. But, if these ingredients also offer me some health benefits, then why not drink something that is both tasty and healthy?
Earl Grey Lavender Black Tea Blend from ArtfulTea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: ArtfulTea orArtfulTea on Etsy
Tea Description:
The classic cup of Earl Grey tea gets a makeover in Provence. The addition of lavender blossoms adds a soothing floral note to the traditional flavor of Earl Grey’s main ingredient – oil of bergamot. Very aromatic!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Yay! It’s time for a cup of Earl Grey!
There really are very few teas that I prefer over a cup of delicious Earl Grey. Generally, I do prefer the classic, straightforward Earl Grey: black tea with the essence of bergamot. But I do also appreciate some of those cool “twists” to the traditional Earl Grey, like this Earl Grey Lavender from ArtfulTea.
And this is a REALLY good Earl Grey tea with Lavender! The black tea is a smooth, robust black tea that supports the strong bergamot flavor well. It’s smooth from start to finish with a tangy astringency toward the tail. The bergamot is strong without tasting perfume-ish, and that’s especially important when it comes to a blend like this because the lavender can often come off as too soapy. It’s crucial to keep the right balance of bergamot and lavender flavors so that the tea tastes like tea and not like a cup of body bath liquid.
But this tea has been carefully blended to offer a powerful bergamot note and enough lavender for a sweet, floral presence without creating a tea that tastes like it belongs at the cosmetics counter at the department store.
This tea is sweet, tangy, floral and invigorating to sip. It makes a nice afternoon cuppa. This is the kind of tea that evokes thoughts of sipping tea in a garden on a breezy summer afternoon.
This cuppa represents the last of the samples I received when I ordered the ArtfulTea Sampler, I guess I’m going to have to order more from them soon because my experiences with this company have been nothing but positive! I recommend them highly!
Summer Garden Citrus Mint Blend from Verdant Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green & Oolong Teas
Where to Buy: Verdant Tea
Tea Description:
Summer calls for a blend that’s crisp, sweet, and tangy enough to be a showstopping iced tea. We wanted to do something a little different to celebrate the season, so we sourced a beautiful Wenshan Baozhong Taiwanese oolong tea as the base of our recipe. Wenshan Baozhong is an extremely green oolong, full of grassy notes, but with floral and creamy aftertastes. Mixed with a dash of Yunnan Jingshan Green to round out the body, we think this makes the perfect green base for summer.
To bring out the fruity and floral notes naturally present in Wenshan Baozhong, we picked out creamy and sweet orange peel, rich lemongrass and a juicy bergamot. We use roasted dandelion root and licorice root to draw out the sweetness and help you make a satisfying iced tea- no sugar necessary! Finally, we make it crisp and refreshing with a dash of lavender and spearmint. Enjoy!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Wow! This tea really is the perfect summer refreshment. This summer has been so hot and uncomfortably muggy that there have been times when I couldn’t bear to brew a pot of hot tea because even though I know that hot tea tends to be more cooling than a cold drink, I couldn’t bring myself to brewing something hot to drink. Thank goodness I had a pitcher of iced tea in the fridge for times like that.
This! This tea would make a perfect iced tea. I’m drinking it hot right now, and even served hot, it’s incredibly refreshing. The base of Yunnan Jinshan Green and Wenshan Baozhong Oolong makes for a wonderful sweet and light flavor with a lovely creamy texture. It’s lightly vegetal with just the right buttery note.
The lemon grass, orange peel and touch of bergamot adds a bright citrus note. The bergamot does not give this an Earl Grey-ish sort of flavor, but instead just enhances the sunny citrus flavors with it’s zesty character. I don’t know that I necessarily taste the dandelion root, although I do taste a toasty, nutty flavor which may be the presence of the roasted dandelion root. I also don’t taste a lot of licorice. But I do get a nice sweetness here – it’s pleasantly sweet without the addition of sweetener.
But the real star of this cup is the spearmint. It adds just the right touch of crisp, cool minty flavor without getting too aggressive. It doesn’t overpower … everything tastes very harmonious. This tea is named perfectly: Summer Garden Citrus Mint Blend. I taste fresh leafy notes, citrus, mint. It’s a beautifully smooth and enjoyable cup.
I can’t wait to be drinking this one chilled tomorrow! YUM!
White Lavender Tea from Tea of Life
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Learn more about Tea of Life and Amazon Teas here.
Taster’s Review:
When I smelled the silky pouch filled with tea, I could smell the delightful notes of lavender. Lavender is one of my favorite flowers when it comes to tea, so I was very interested in trying this tea.
The brewed liquid has a softer note of lavender than I experienced with the dry leaf, but that was expected (usually, the brewed tea does smell softer than the dry leaf). I can smell more of the white tea notes now that the tea is brewed than I noticed when I smelled the dry leaf. With the dry leaf, I could smell lavender, and not much else.
Hmm … I’m not really loving this. The lavender tastes artificial in this. It doesn’t have that natural, sweet note that I love. Instead, it tastes like someone added a drop or two of lavender perfume to my teacup and I don’t really like that.
The white tea has a delicate, sweet taste to it, and I think I’d be enjoying this a lot more if the lavender wasn’t there. The lavender just ruins it, and that’s something that I don’t often say about a lavender tea. As I mentioned above, lavender is one of my favorite flowers when it comes to tea … so this not tasting the way I would like it to … is very disappointing.
Most of the teas that I’ve tried from Tea of Life I’ve actually quite enjoyed, but this one – unfortunately – gets a sad thumbs down from me.
Princess Grey Tea from MarketSpice
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: MarketSpice
Product Description:
An original blend of our Earl Grey Tea with Rose Petals and Lavender flowers. An excellent after dinner tea!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I know, I know … I’ve said it at least a hundred times before, and I’ll probably say it another hundred (or more) times. I love Earl Grey teas. Well, most of them, anyway. I have actually come across a few – maybe a handful or more – of Earl Grey teas that weren’t worthy of the praise I usually lavish on the bergamot tea. And I also adore most of the variations on the Earl Grey concept: bergamot teas that are just a little different from the classic Earl Grey.
This is another twist on that classic favorite: Princess Grey Tea from MarketSpice. This tea took the bergamot black tea and added rose petals and lavender buds.
I like it! This Princess Grey offers a softer bergamot flavor, reminding me just a bit of the softer flavor you might experience with an Earl Grey creme but without the vanilla overtones. The bergamot here isn’t edgy or bold or in your face, it’s a gentle citrus-y presence that mingles well with a subtle lavender undertone and hints of rose in the distance.
Normally, I prefer a stronger bergamot flavor, but, I like this softer presentation. I think that a softer bergamot flavor works best with teas where there is a lavender or other assertive floral flavor (the blue cornflowers are not included in this statement as these are added primarily for a touch of color to the blend, not because they offer a strong flavor profile to the cup).
I believe that a stronger bergamot note might have made this come off as perfume-ish and nobody (at least, nobody that I know of!) wants to drink a cup full of perfume! This tea offers a nice balance between bergamot and floral notes: there is contrast between the flavors without too much competition.
As it is, the floral notes are pleasant and accent the bergamot well. The black tea is a what I’d call a moderately mild tea, it doesn’t become too assertive in this blend, but it is strong enough to stand up and be tasted behind the flavors of citrus and flower.
A really enjoyable cuppa – I’m glad I had this opportunity to try yet another Earl Grey variation! It’s one of the joys of this “job” … and one I can’t imagine of which I’ll ever tire!