Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Pipers Loose Leaf Tea
Tea Description:
Black tea infused with black pepper, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom and vanilla and orange flavor. Add milk and your preferred sweetener or sweetened condensed milk for a rich, spicy chai.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This Pipers Chai from Pipers Loose Leaf Tea is the first tea from this new-to-me company that I’ve tried. I was in the mood for something satisfying and warming from the inside out and this tea certainly fits the bill.
I brewed this chai in my Kati tumbler, using 1 1/2 bamboo scoops of tea and 12 ounces of boiling water. I steeped it for three minutes, and it produced a really strong, warming cup of tea! Nice!
The black tea is a robust black tea. The description doesn’t tell me what type of tea is used here, but I think – based upon the richness of the tea – it’s an Assam. There are also some faint notes of bitterness which hint further at the Assam.
The spices are bold. There’s a lot of clove in there though. I find myself tasting more clove than any other spice. The cinnamon and cardamom are warm and the ginger and pepper add some kick to it. I think it would be better if the clove were not quite as strong so that the other spices could shine through better, it might make for a more balanced spicy note.
The vanilla is the best part of this blend. It adds a nice creaminess to this and accentuates the malt notes of the black tea base. It softens some of the edges to the tea and it gives a slight ‘latte’ taste to the cup without going latte with a dairy addition. It also adds a pleasant sweetness so you don’t have to add too much in the way of sweetener to this (I suggest tasting before you sweeten so you don’t add too much and overwhelm the tea.)
The orange is a nice flavor here too, however, I think it could be even better without it. I don’t mind the orange, it tastes good with the orange notes, but I think that it detracts a little bit from the spice and I find myself wanting to focus more on the spice and a little less on the citrus.
Overall, I enjoyed this chai.
Hazelnut Pear Green Tea from Petali Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
This tea is available from Amoda Tea.
Tea Description:
“Gunpowder” green is a smooth, full-bodied tea that’s perfect for winter. Blended with a surprising ingredient list, we hope you’re curious to try this out! The vanilla cream is a perfect complement to the smoky gunpowder green & its natural nuttiness is accentuated with hazelnuts. “Peared” up with fruit and cinnamon, this is a really tasty blend.
Learn more about subscribing to Amoda Tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Mmm! This Hazelnut Pear Green Tea from Petali Teas is really good. Then again, I have found that I can count on Amoda to choose some pretty tasty teas for me in their monthly subscription box. Occasionally, I might find myself a wee bit disappointed with something, but for the most part, the Amoda boxes are a big WIN for me.
I was very intrigued with this tea right from the start. The idea of pear and hazelnut together sparked my interest. It sounds yummy and very Pacific Northwest-ish. It sounds like a great big cup of yum.
And that’s what it is. The base of this tea is a Gunpowder green tea and it’s a nice choice for this blend. The green tea is earthy, a little nutty and has a hint of smokiness to it. It’s not really a vegetative tasting tea although there’s a certain ‘freshness’ to the flavor that plays well to the flavor of the pear. It has a soft texture and it’s not an overly astringent tea. It’s really quite nice.
And it melds well with every aspect of this tea: the nutty flavors and the hint of smoke enhance the hazelnut flavor. The earthiness melds with the earthy notes of the spices, which are warm but do not overpower this blend. Instead, they add an accent to the main flavors of hazelnut and pear.
I don’t taste a lot of ‘apple’ in this, I suspect the reason for the apple pieces in this blend is to look ‘pear-like’ because dried pear is a bit more difficult to come by than dried apple. I also don’t taste a lot from the orange, but it does add a hint of brightness to the cup. There is no real obvious note of orange, but you can tell that it’s there, perking up the flavors.
A really nice tea. I’ve enjoyed the teas that I’ve tasted from Petali Teas in the various Amoda Boxes that they’ve been featured in – I’m glad that this is a company that Amoda Tea has chosen to feature regularly!
Lady Grey® Black Tea from Twinings of London
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Twinings of London
Tea Description:
Lady Grey® is offered exclusively from Twinings. This light black tea is perfectly balanced with the citrus fruit flavours of bergamot, orange and lemon to deliver a delightful tea with a refreshing taste and uplifting aroma.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
After my less than exciting experience with Earl Grey tea from Twinings of London, I found myself skeptical about this Lady Grey® Black Tea from Twinings of London. So, my hopes and expectations were not high when I brewed this tea. I guess it’s a good place for me to start with a tea because it’d be difficult to be disappointed by it, right?
And fortunately, with low expectations, I’m finding this much more tolerable than I found the Earl Grey tea. I guess when I say “Earl Grey” I get excited because I love me some bergamot and so my expectations are immediately set pretty high and that tea really let me down. This one doesn’t disappoint me and I’m not sure if that’s because it’s a tasty tea or because I wasn’t expecting all that much from it.
I like the combination of lemon, orange and bergamot. I like the way the other citrus flavors bring out the flavors of the bergamot. That said, the black tea is still kind of blah. It tastes stale. It tastes boring.
Not horrible, just boring and blah. I can’t help but feel like the flavors would be much better suited for a better tea leaf. Or perhaps a tea company that actually cared about its product to not mince it to dust and stick it in a tea bag.
Ahh … I feel the tea snobbery steeping into my soul!
California Sweet Peach Herbal Tea from M&K’s Tea Company
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Fruit/Herbal Tisane
Where to Buy: M&K’s Tea Company on Etsy
Tea Description:
Sweet orange peel roasted in honey, real grade-A Madagascar vanilla beans, actual peaches! California Sweet Peach is our signature herbal infusion. We are proud to roast our own orange peel in local honey and use peaches straight from California! Our natural peach flavor is supplied by Silver Cloud Estates and is a blend of different natural extracts and oils, enabling us to boost the taste of peaches. This blend is part of the Original 20 M&K’s Blends. Note: California Sweet Peach contains no tea, as it is an herbal infusion. We chose to include the term “herbal tea” in the title due to its categorical popularity.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This California Sweet Peach Herbal Tea from M&K’s Tea Company is an interesting tisane. As I sit here, sipping it, I’m trying to determine whether or not I like it. I can’t say that immediately upon taking my first few sips that I was blown away by it. At the same time, I can’t say that immediately upon taking my first few sips that I wasn’t intrigued. I felt the need to keep on sipping. It’s interesting enough to keep me sipping but there’s something about it that hasn’t yet ‘won me over’ – at least not yet.
I like that the hibiscus is not a strong presence in this cup. Normally, when I am about to taste a tea or tisane with hibiscus, my thought is “why?” Why hibiscus? But, after drinking about half a cup now, I can see why the hibiscus is in this blend. It adds a little bit of body to the cup (but I wouldn’t recommend steeping it longer than 6 minutes or so to avoid having a thick or syrupy body) and the little bit of tartness that it brings to the cup adds balance to the warm notes of the licorice and the sweetness of the peach, honey and vanilla notes.
The star of this cup is – obviously – the peach. I like the flavor of the peach here and I think that’s what’s keeping my interest. The peach is a genuine peach-y note. It doesn’t taste chemical or artificial. It tastes true to the fruit. I also like the orange in this. The orange adds a touch of bright flavor to the sweet peach notes.
Now that I’ve finished the cup I can say that I enjoyed this. It had a strong peach flavor but there was enough other stuff going on in this that it didn’t end up being all about the peach. I liked the different flavors going on. And even though this does have hibiscus in it – like so many other fruit/herbal tisanes to – this is not your ordinary tisane.
Just as an aside: it’s something when I finish the tea before I finish the review. Take that for what it’s worth, but it doesn’t happen often. I must have enjoyed what I was drinking!
Yeah. I’d drink this again. I enjoyed it. This one has earned my approval. Even if it does have hibiscus in it!
Pomteani from Lemon Lily
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Lemon Lily
Tea Description:
Organic Ingredients: Black Tea, Pomegranate, Safflower, Orange Peel, Lemon Peel.
Learn more about subscribing to Postal Teas here.
Taster’s Review:
For this review, I felt a little bit at a disadvantage. This Pomteani from Lemon Lily was another of the three teas that I received in the most recent edition from Postal Teas’ subscription service, but because Postal Teas hasn’t updated their blog in a long while and because I was unable to find this tea anywhere on the Lemon Lily website, I couldn’t find any information about the tea – not even a photo of the loose leaf tea. (And my camera battery, of course, needs to be recharged.)
So, I’ll just wing this review without a description from either company and without photos. Hey, I can do this, I’m a professional. (No wisecracks!) Well, maybe I’m not a professional reviewer – but I pretend to be one on the internet.
First of all, I need to say that I don’t know how accurate the ingredient list is. I see the bits of lemon and orange peel, I see the bits of safflower petal and the black tea leaves. I don’t see any pomegranate arils, but what I do see is a powdery substance that reminds me a bit of the beet powder that I found in the Beauty & The Beet blend only this powdery substance wasn’t hot pink. It’s more like a pale blonde color. Is this the pomegranate the ingredient list speaks of? I’ve never seen pomegranate look like that before. But either this is, in fact, the pomegranate, or there’s another ingredient that the list above doesn’t include.
To brew this, I used my Breville One Touch. I added 500ml of freshly filtered water into the jug and 2 bamboo scoops of tea into the basket of the tea maker and set the parameters for 2 1/2 minutes at 212°F.
And I definitely taste the pomegranate. I also taste notes of citrus. The black tea is medium bodied tea with an even tone and texture, I suspect it’s a Ceylon. It has some astringency to it and it’s an astringency that seems to build, as I found the second half of my cup to be more astringent than the first half.
It’s a flavorful cuppa, and would make a nice afternoon tea. I guess it would also make a nice cocktail – or at least a very attractive one to serve for today: Valentine’s Day.
Overall, this tea is just alright. I didn’t enjoy this as much as I’ve enjoyed the other offerings that I’ve tried from Lemon Lily.