Tea Information:
Leaf Type: You Choose
Where to Buy: Design a Tea
Tea Description:
It’s time to order the best tea you’ve ever tasted. Why? Because you choose the flavors! The concept is simple, choose a base and one or two flavors to blend your own unique tasting tea. Top it off with a personalized name and brag to your friends about your gourmet style or give it away as a gift. Not sure what flavors to mix? Try our samples!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Have you ever craved a tea before so badly that you searched and searched for hours determined that this tea had to exist and that you would find it? That has been my mission as of late. To find a flavored green tea that was flavored with. . . banana. Yep. I have been craving a green banana flavored tea. Or really any banana flavored tea that wasn’t black or red roobios based. But that’s harder to find than you think. The majority of banana flavored teas also have chocolate in them and I’m not a huge fan of chocolate teas. I just don’t think I’ve found the right ones yet.
A couple years ago, I discovered Design A Tea. They have a great promotion where you can customize a few different blends pretty inexpensively and try out some of your creations before committing to a larger size, which is a fantastic option. So after the hours of searching it dawns on me, I should create myself a green banana tea and that is how my Morning Sunrise blend was born. The blending process is very simple. You choose your tea base. You can pick black, green, oolong, or rooibos. (There is a separate page that you can customize and design your own earl grey teas, whites, Darjeelings, and a slew of other teas.) Pick up to 2 flavors and pick one herb. There are a ton of different options for flavors. Pretty much the sky is the limit on what you can create. Adding the herb is a nice touch for the tea. Finish picking out your packaging options, name your tea, and viola . . .Your creation is born!
With this particular order, I went banana crazy and made three different banana teas. And I have to say, they are amazing! The bases that they use at Design A Tea are fantastic! I created a banana-orange green tea with chamomile and it tastes just like that! The orange flavor is stronger than the banana (which seems to be a common occurrence with this company. One flavor profile outweighs the other) but I am a happy camper. It reminds me of a yogurt that I loved when I was a kid. Sweet and citrusy all at the same time. The green tea mixes in nicely and gives the tea almost a weightless property. It feels like a tea you would drink in the springtime or on a summer day, maybe iced. After the third infusion, the flavors were still going strong and I was very impressed.
I haven’t had a chance to try them all yet, but I am enjoying the Banana Caramel Oolong with Cinnamon (it tastes very similar to Banana Fosters. . . .yum) as I am typing this review up. This tea is a desert within itself. Another home run. I am incredibly impressed with this company and my brain is already concocting different ideas for future teas. . . . .
Wedding Tea Blend from Harney & Sons
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: Harney & Sons
Tea Description:
This elegant tea is a special tea for that special event. Mutan White tea with a touch of lemon-vanilla to taste, nicely offset with pink rose petals.
Learn more about this blend here.
Taster’s Review:
A really nice blend from Harney & Sons. The delicate white tea is flavored with just a hint of lemon and vanilla and rose, creating a soft, sweet, and brightly flavored cup.
The white tea is a sweet and smooth tasting tea and these characteristics are enhanced by the addition of vanilla. The light touch of vanilla makes the tea taste just a little sweeter, a little smoother and a little softer. It adds a pleasant creaminess to the cup.
And I like the way the creaminess plays with the notes of lemon. The lemon is bright and tart, but not pucker-y tart. The sweetness of the vanilla curbs the lemon so that it doesn’t come off as sour. Instead, it tastes a little bit like someone may have dissolved a little bit of lemon curd into my tea! YUM!
To brew this, I used a lower temperature (as is usually the case when it comes to white teas. I almost always go with a temperature that is 170°F or lower, this time, I used the 170°F) and steeped the sachet for 3 1/2 minutes.
Something else that’s kind of neat about this blend is that because it is the “Wedding Blend,” it can also serve as a wedding favor! You can even special order it with the name of the bride and groom and the wedding date imprinted on the lid of the little “tagalong tins” (these tins really are adorable). How awesome is that? Can you think of a cooler wedding favor to give to your guests on your special day?
