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!
Green Passion Fruit from Tea & All It’s Splendor
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Tea & All It’s Splendor
Tea Description:
If there could be one fruit that best represents a bright summer day it would be passionfruit! So naturally this green tea and passionfruit blend was the perfect fit for this edition.
The light grassy green tea is perfect for carrying the sweet and sour passionfruit floral flavours in a cup. If you’re the type that needs a sweetened cuppa, we recommend a drizzle of agave in this one. The agave flavour is gentle and pairs well with this tea.
Learn more about subscribing to Postal Teas here.
Taster’s Review:
Green Passion Fruit from Tea & All It’s Splendor is the third and final tea that I received as part of edition 11 from Postal Teas. And it’s a good one!
The tea leaves appeared to me to be a Chinese Sencha – long, dark green spears that looked almost like blades of grass – and there were some yellow flower petals in the blend. Probably marigold petals. I didn’t see any dried passion fruit pieces but I could definitely smell the passion fruit!
I brewed this in my Breville One-Touch. I measured 2 bamboo scoops of tea into the basket of the tea maker and added 500ml of freshly filtered water to the jug. Then I set the parameters: 180°F for 2 minutes.
The tea is sweet and fruity. The Passion Fruit flavor is well-defined without hitting me over the head. I like the way the flavor is represented here. It’s a strong, distinct flavor of passion fruit but the green tea flavor is the star of the show. I am enjoying a nice balance between sweet, slightly vegetative green tea and juicy passion fruit flavors. Delicious!
I also like that this is a very tropical tasting tea without tasting like every other tropical tea out there. It’s got that tropical flair without tasting like a muddled recipe of mixed fruit.
The tea tasted great served hot but I liked it even better as it cooled – this would be a great refresher for the summer months ahead! If you’re a fan of passion fruit, try this tea!
Serene Herbal Tisane from The Honest Leaf
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Herbal Tisane
This tea is available from Amoda Tea.
Tea Description:
This tea does exactly what its name promises – brings serenity to your day. Ingredients like chamomile, jasmine and lavender really do have that affect. We taste the apple-like flavours of chamomile, a perfect lemon squeeze and smooth mint. There’s tart and sweet florals playing off one another and hints of relaxing lavender that come out mid-sip.
Learn more about subscribing to Amoda Tea here.
Taster’s Review:
After my first few sips of this Serene Herbal Tisane from The Honest Leaf, I found myself contemplating whether or not I actually liked it. I didn’t dislike it but I wasn’t too sure whether or not I was enjoying what I was tasting.
That is to say, it’s quite unlike other teas I’ve tried.
Now that I’m about halfway through the cup, I can say that yes, I do like this. It’s different, it’s tasty and I like it.
The flavor starts out quite subtle. I notice a soft lemon-y note from the lemon peel and flavoring. This flavor develops over the course of the sip – starting off with a delicate whisper of lemon. The finish is bright with lemon notes and the aftertaste is quite lemon-y, as if I had just taken a sip of lemonade. The aftertaste lingers a while.
After the subtle introduction of lemon, I pick up on flowery notes of jasmine, lavender and passion flower just before mid-sip. These floral notes are also quite subdued. They don’t develop the way the lemon does, but I do pick up on a few more floral notes mingling with the lemon notes in the aftertaste.
Just after mid-sip, I notice the crisp peppermint. I like that the peppermint follows the example set by the flowers and lemon and is understated. The cool peppermint is a nice contrast to the lemon-y flavor, but the mint doesn’t slap you in the mouth with it’s minty presence. It’s just a slight ‘peppy’ sort of flavor that perks up the flavors of the tea without tasting like someone spilled a little bit of mouthwash in my teacup.
I didn’t really notice the chamomile until I reached mid-cup. The chamomile is more of an undertone, offering a indistinct apple note and hint of honey. I can smell more chamomile in this than I can taste. After the mid-cup point, the chamomile notes develop somewhat, but they never become a strong, prominent profile to the cup.
Happily, I notice no hibiscus in this, unless the hibiscus acts as a ‘tart’ agent to help amplify the tartness of the lemon, because the aftertaste does have a tartness to it. Not too puckery, though, but as I said, I do get a lemonade-y sort of experience in the aftertaste.
Overall, I found this to be a relaxing, enjoyable cup. It’s certainly different than the typical ‘nighttime’ type of tisanes, and different is good!
Petal Passion Oolong Tea Blend from ArtfulTea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: ArtfulTea orArtfulTea on Etsy
Tea Description:
This lovely, flavored oolong combines the taste of passion fruit with an intensely tropical fragrance that immediately enchants. Aronia berries, mango cubes and rose petals enhance the exotic flavor of this half-fermented tea. Refreshing hot or iced.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I have very much enjoyed the teas that I’ve tried from ArtfulTea this far, and this Petal Passion Oolong Tea Blend is quite lovely.
The dark Oolong tea leaves look a lot like either an Oriental Beauty or a Formosa Oolong. There are chunks of fruit and pretty pink rose petals tossed in with the tea leaves. It’s a visually appealing blend, and it’s beautifully aromatic with notes of tropical fruit.
And the taste is YUM! The Oolong base is smooth. It has an almost buttery texture to it – not so much of a buttery taste as a texture, but some of this texture seems to translate a little bit to the flavor. I don’t taste a heavy “buttery” quality to it. There are some woodsy notes to the cup.
But mostly what I’m tasting is the lovely tropical fruit notes of this tea. Passion Fruit and mango! It’s sweet and there’s almost a nectar-like flavor to this, as if someone had added freshly pureed fruit to my cup of Oolong! I like that these flavors taste authentic, they don’t have the fake or chemical-ish type of flavor that sometimes accompanies flavored teas. This tea just has a very pleasant tropical flavor to go along with the naturally woodsy, smooth flavors of the Oolong tea.
There are some aronia berries in this tea and they do give the cup a slight astringency. Don’t let that frighten you though, I’m finding the astringency to be rather mild, and I’m experiencing more of a tingly berry tartness than I am a pucker-y astringency. I find this to be an enjoyable contrast to the sweetness of the passion fruit and mango flavors.
Another really lovely blend from ArtfulTea, and I feel like I’m trying it right at the right time – we’ve been experiencing some monsoon-ish weather here in the Pacific Northwest lately, and it’s been uncomfortably hot and humid! Ugh! This tea takes me away – at least, mentally – on a tropical vacation. Unfortunately, my vacation only lasts as long as the cup of tea – but fortunately, this is an Oolong and can be resteeped! Revisiting my tropical island is as easy as resteeping my tea leaves!
Paradise Tea Tisane from Eden Grove
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black & Green Teas
Where to Buy: Amazon Trading
Ingredients:
Black Tea, Green Tea, Passion Fruit, Pineapple, & Natural Flavors of Passion Fruit & Pineapple.
Learn more about Amazon Trading here.
Taster’s Review:
This Paradise Tea Tisane is an enjoyable blend of black and green teas flavored with passion fruit and pineapple. I brewed the silky sachet for 3 minutes in 185°F water. The result is a yummy cuppa!
As I’ve said in the past, when it comes to blends like this – where there is more than one type of tea, in this case, there is both black and green tea leaves – I usually opt to infuse the tea at the lowest temperature requirement for the tea to avoid scorching the green tea. This would result in a bitter tasting tea. So, I went with a lower temperature and steeped it for 3 minutes. This seemed to be the perfect setting for this tea, because the flavor is really nice.
The black tea isn’t particularly robust or even brisk. It’s more like a smooth, mild black tea flavor, lightened by the soft, silky taste and texture of the lightly vegetal green tea notes. It doesn’t taste like “black tea” or even “green tea” … it tastes like something totally different, but with similarities to both of these tea types.
And then there is the luscious tropical fruit notes of passion fruit and pineapple! These two flavors add a sweet, juicy taste to the cup without overwhelming the tea base.
The way I would describe this tea is that some mad scientist (a scienTEAist?) brewed a cup of black tea and a cup of green tea and added equal parts of each to a new cup, and then added the nectar of passion fruit and pineapple. I can almost taste the sweet pulp of the fruits! It’s really quite refreshing and tasty. Not too fruity though, I think a nice balance has been achieved. (Insert mad scienTEAist laugh here)
Really tasty served hot, but even better when it cools!