Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Honeybush
Where to Buy: Zoomdweebies
Tea Description:
Organic honeybush is the perfect compliment to this melding of delicious and aromatic organic flavors, including date, orange, brown sugar, cinnamon, butter and pecan. This might seem like a strange thing to flavor an iced tea like, but just wait til you try it!
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn about SBT’s subscriptions here.
Taster’s Review:
I just ate some Spicy Sriracha Cosmos and let me tell you, my mouth is on fire! Acha-cha! Spicy!
So, I needed something cold and refreshing and easy to drink (read: gulp!) to help cool my palate. Since I brewed this Date Nut Bread Iced Honeybush Tea from Southern Boy Teas last night so it could chill in the fridge overnight, I figured it was the perfect thing to help me cool down my mouth.
And not only did it do just that, but I was happy to say that the flavors came through LOUD and CLEAR even though my palate might have been somewhat impaired after eating those spicy nuggets of fluffy goodness. (It’s the very good kind of burn!) After a tall glass of the tea, my mouth was feeling back to normal, but I wanted to wait a while before I finished the review so that my palate was back to a functioning level.
So now that my taste buds are refreshed and ready to taste things again – I’m really amazed at how much this actually tastes like date nut bread! I taste the dates – this is a strong flavor. The nutty flavor comes from a hint of pecan flavoring as well as the natural nutty flavor from the honeybush. I taste notes of a cake-y/bread-y type flavor, as well as notes of brown sugar and butter and just a dash of cinnamon.
There is a bright note to this that didn’t taste immediately like “orange” to me until I got to the aftertaste. The aftertaste has a sunny orange flavor. I like that while I can taste the orange and cinnamon here, these flavors were added carefully and offer more of a gentle note rather than overpower the tea.
It’s a surprisingly refreshing iced tea. Not flavors that I would normally think of when I think “Iced Tea” but it works and works very nicely!
Choco Nut Ambessa Tea from Harney & Sons
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Harney & Sons
Tea Description:
You can taste the velvety undertones of dark chocolate, caramel, and peanuts in this rich, aromatic black tea blend. Time for a sweet teatime indulgence.
Ingredients: Black teas, marigold petals, apricot, natural and artificial flavors. Does not contain nuts.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Yummy! I’ve been wanting to try the new Ambessa tea line from Harney & Sons for a while now (ever since I saw the beautiful tins!) so when they offered their most recent free shipping deal, I decided to finally indulge and try these new teas! This Choco Nut black tea blend is the first of the Ambessa Teas that I’ve tasted, and so far, I’m really liking this new line from Harney & Sons!
This tea delivers what it promises with its name. I taste chocolate: rich, dark, luscious chocolate! I taste a sweet nutty flavor too. There’s even a hint of caramel undertones which is quite delightful. As I continue to sip, I notice a fruity quality to the cup … is that apricot? Then I read the ingredient list, and yep! It’s apricot! What a really lovely addition to this tea.
The black tea base is rich and bold. It’s not an overpowering black tea … but it does have a rich, full-bodied taste that complements the dark chocolate-y notes. This is really quite a smooth, robust cup of tea – perfect for a breakfast tea if you want to be a little bit indulgent first thing in the morning! (And really, who doesn’t want chocolate first thing in the morning? You wouldn’t ever catch THIS chocoholic turning it down!) It has an almost creamy quality to it which might be further accentuated by the addition of a splash of milk. For me, personally, though, I find it to be just delightful served straight up!
A really lovely cuppa!
Nutty Enough Tisane from Naked Teas Galore
Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Fruit/Herbal/Spice Melange (And a lot of nuts!)
Where to Buy: Amoda Tea
Tisane Description:
We taste the brazil nuts upfront and the almond/marzipan near the end. It finishes with apple that is mouthwatering and nicely tart. Similar to opening a can of mixed nuts and snacking, this cup of tea is hard to put down.
Learn more about this tisane here.
Learn how to subscribe to Amoda’s Monthly Tea Tasting Box here.
Taster’s Review:
This is the third tea/tisane from my April Amoda Tea Tasting Box. And as you can see from the above information, Nutty Enough is a tisane from Naked Teas Galore. The dry leaf looks a lot like (and smells a lot like!) what you might experience if you were to open a jar of mixed nuts. Sure, there are some other components to this as well, like dried apple bits and cinnamon and cacao nibs … but it still looks like a bunch of nuts … and it smells like it too.
I taste the brazil nut right off the bat. Then the cinnamon starts to come through as well as notes of apple. I taste a hint of honey. The cacao flavor is a little less distinct and I find that this is better experienced if you slurp the tea, which allows for maximum aeration of the tea and the palate can pick up those subtle notes of cocoa.
Now that I’m about halfway through my cup, this tastes a lot like what I’d imagine a cup of apple cider that’s been simmered with a handful of nuts instead of a bunch of spices. The cinnamon is mild, and just enough to really accentuate the apple in a very pleasant way. It’s really quite tasty – different, certainly! – but I like it.
As I am finishing this cup, I look forward to what teas Amoda Tea will be putting in my mailbox this month! Have you subscribed yet? Why not? Click here to learn more.
Spiced Rooibos Blend from Spire Tea
Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Rooibos
Tisane Description:
A warm holiday spice blend of rooibos, coconut, nuts and warm spices. This dessert in a cup is one of our favourites.
Learn more about Spire Tea on their website.
Taster’s Review:
I don’t usually get excited to try a rooibos blend, but, I’ve got to tell you that when I opened the pouch of this Spiced Rooibos Blend from Spire Tea (also known as Mowbray Ridge Rooibos Blend), I got a little excited about it. It smells so good – so deliciously warm and nutty, spicy with just a hint of coconut goodness in there too. My mouth started watering when I smelled the dry leaf! That’s how good it smells!
The brewed tisane smells really delicious too. It smells like warm spices and toasted nuts … it smells like the holidays!
My first sip, my initial reaction is: this tastes like something called a Sin Dawg. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have a bread company called Dave’s Killer Bread Company. Imagine the love child of a cinnamon roll and a delicious, whole grain bread that is loaded with seeds and nuts. That’s a Sin Dawg. They are so good that there simply are not words adequate enough to explain how unbelievably delicious they are. It takes a great deal of willpower not to buy one every time I’m at the grocery store!
And that’s what I tasted with my first sip of this tea. I tasted the sweet, nutty flavor, the cinnamon, and … the coconut … isn’t really screaming out “coconut” … it’s more like a sweet, creamy flavor that goes together so well with the rest of the Sin Dawg … err… tisane. At least, the coconut wasn’t screaming out coconut in those first two or three sips. Now that I’m about one third of the way through the cup, I’m noticing more coconut flavor. It’s still not a strong, dominate flavor of the cup, but, it’s more distinguished than it was at the start.
The rooibos is also distinguishable here, usually that’s something I consider a bad thing as I usually prefer the flavors to overwhelm the rooibos taste … but the nutty, sweet flavor of the rooibos really works well with these flavors. It just ties in really well.
This is just a really well conceived cup of rooibos! I really like this one a lot!
Macadamia Praline Matcha from Red Leaf Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Red Leaf Tea
Tea Description:
Macadamia praline Matcha is incomparable to many other treats because it can be taken with other refreshments or as a standalone treats depending on the scenario. It is excellent for young children because of the health benefits that both macadamia and Matcha rewards their many takers. It bright colored appeal also draws many takers towards the sweet depths enclosed. This great Matcha treat adds its well rounded charm to many main meals during the day.
Learn more about this flavored matcha here.
Taster’s Review:
I love Red Leaf Tea’s flavored Matcha as everyone is probably pretty aware by now … and there is such a vast array of flavors available! This Macadamia Praline flavored Matcha was very appealing to me: I love Matcha, I love Macadamia Nuts and I love nuts that have been caramelized with a crunchy Praline coating. I figured this one would be a tough flavor to beat!
And while I am enjoying this flavored Matcha, I can’t say it’s my favorite. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but, I’m just not getting a whole lot of the caramelized praline flavor that I had hoped for. I taste the sweet, creamy Matcha, and I taste the macadamia nut flavor, but not a lot of caramelized flavor here. I get a hint of the sweet, caramel notes here and there, but, not enough to where I feel like I can proclaim this as a favorite.
But that’s alright … they can’t all be my favorite. And I am enjoying this. I prepared this Matcha using mostly hot water, but I withheld about 2 tablespoons of the hot water that I would normally use, and replaced that with a bit of warmed milk to make a latte of sorts. The result is a deliciously creamy treat.
The macadamia nut flavor is strong here, and I taste the Matcha, and these two components really work well together. It is sweet, slightly vegetative, nutty, and not the least bit bitter. I do taste a slight (very slight) artificial note to the overall bowl of Matcha, just a bit of chemical-y kind of flavor. It doesn’t disrupt my enjoyment of the Matcha but I would really rather it not be there.
Overall, I enjoyed this Matcha, and I found that the last few sips of the Matcha were even more enjoyable than the first few … the chemical note seems to tone down as I continue to sip, and whether this is because the other flavors have built up on my palate or because the bowl has cooled down, I don’t know … but I do know that I like it much better. Perhaps the way to have this is as a chilled latte then? Yummy!