Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Tealicious Tea Company
Tea Description:
A blend of high grade green Sencha tea, rose petals, beautiful blue cornflowers and brightly colored yellow sunflowers. This offers a refreshing and smooth flavor that awakens your taste buds.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Spring is here! Signs of spring are all around me, from the beautiful pink plumage of the trees that line the streets in my neighborhood, to the promenade of the proud robins hopping around the lawns, to the bright yellow daffodils that pop up in random patches along the roadsides.
This tea seems a perfect choice to sip when contemplating the magic of spring. It is a gorgeous tea, not only to the eye with its colorful petals and lush, green tea leaves; but it is also lovely to the nose and the palate as well. The aroma is so incredibly beautiful, with hints of fresh grass and the air that sweeps over rose blossoms in the spring. That divine fragrance filled the kitchen as this tea brewed, and the brewed tea – while its bouquet is quite a bit softer than the dry leaf – it still holds on to hints of that flowery, fresh scent.
The tea tastes very much the way the aroma led me to believe: it tastes fresh and lively, with delightful floral touches. It isn’t an overwhelmingly flowery tasting tea, though. The rose is the strongest of the floral tones, and it is more like a whisper of rose flavor rather than a powerful rose taste that you might experience from a rose scented tea (a rose congou, for example). Here, the floral notes are much more delicate, but I like the way they enhance the overall cup.
The green tea is a very bright, refreshing tea with floral notes of its own, which are highlighted by the presence of the flower petals in this blend. There are vegetal notes and a buttery undertone. There is some astringency to this, but not much. It’s more like a slightly dry feel to the tongue in the aftertaste, followed by a lingering floral note.
A lovely tea to enjoy these early days of spring … or any time of year for that matter!
Eight Oasis Blend from Praise Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green, White & Pu-erh Teas
Where to Buy: Praise Tea
Tea Description:
Our combination of Sencha, Gunpowder, Mini Tuo, Chun Mee, Pai Mu Tan, Lung Ching, Snow Bud, Pi Lo Chun, candied pineapple and strawberry takes you to an oasis of delight. Delectable both hot and cold. Try some with white crystal sugar. Indulge your taste buds.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
After a quick glance at this tea’s ingredient list, I thought that this tea may just have a little too much going on. It smelled intriguing, though, with its delicious notes of strawberry and pineapple, so I decided to give it a try.
And somehow, this massive list of ingredients works together very well! While it is next to impossible to pick out each individual tea’s characteristics, I can taste the fresh, vegetative flavor of green tea, a light earthy quality from the tuocha, and I can even taste notes that are very much like white tea – notes of hay and that crisp, airy quality that is often noted in white tea.
The strawberry and pineapple notes are less distinctive than the flavors of the tea, but, that’s alright. In fact, I find it to be quite refreshing to have the tea as the center focus in this cup, and have the fruit flavors to serve as accent notes to enliven the overall flavor. The place where the fruit really stands out is in the aftertaste, where I can taste the flavors of both the pineapple and the strawberry.
This tea does have a natural sweetness to it, so I would recommend tasting before you sweeten. I did end up adding just a pinch of sugar which helped to enhance the fruit notes more than sweeten the cup. Without the sugar, the fruit notes fall a little flat … they’re still present, but, just not as lively as with a pinch of sugar.
This one makes a nice iced tea too. I recommend steeping it at least twice, as it is even tastier with the second infusion.
Pink Grapefruit Sencha from Zhi Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Zhi Tea
Tea Description:
We took our tip-top grade organic sencha we get from Japan (which would not normally be a blending base, the second grade is used for that), added organic grapefruit extract and organic pink grapefruit peel.
The result: a delightful top note that sits delicately over the rich grassiness of the sencha. Perfect, subtle, intoxicating aromatics. Very addicting.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is a wonderful grapefruit flavored green tea. As I may have mentioned here before, I have been on a sort of ‘quest’ to find a spectacular grapefruit flavored green tea, and this one comes as close as any other that I’ve tried up until now.
A couple of years ago, I had tried a grapefruit green tea in Arizona, and I absolutely loved it. And while I have actually found the source of that actual grapefruit tea, somehow, that tea just doesn’t taste the same as I remember. I don’t know what it is. It could be the water tastes different here than in Arizona, or the water temperature used to brew it was different … or maybe it was just the magical quality of Tohono Chul Park that made the tea taste so indescribably good. So, even though I have actually found the source of the tea that I tried in Arizona, and it is NOT this tea, this tea actually reminds me more of the tea I tried in Arizona than the actual tea that is sold in Arizona!
It has a lovely pink grapefruit flavor – tangy but not overtly tart, with a pleasant sweetness that counters the tangy note and keeps it in balance. Sort of like that sprinkling of sweetener on top of a half a grapefruit, this tea manages that flavor without the addition of sugar.
And I think that is because of the tea base. The Japanese Sencha is sweet and just barely vegetal. Not a grassy taste, really, but more like a hint of freshly steamed vegetables in the background. I think that these two components – green tea and grapefruit flavor – have been masterfully paired by Zhi Tea.
It is delicious and refreshing as a hot tea. It needs no sweetener, but, a little sugar wouldn’t hurt it if you want a sweeter grapefruit flavor. And as wonderful as it is hot, I think I shall save the remainder of my sample of this tea to brew for iced tea, because I suspect that this tea is even more incredible iced.
Premium Sencha Zuiko from Den’s Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Den’s Tea
Product Description:
A top-tier Sencha grown at a high elevation. All Zuiko comes from a single tea garden where it is grown under the most meticulous and pampered conditions.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I am occasionally asked what I mean by certain terms that I use when I describe teas. One term that I’m asked about often is “brothy,” and I think I have found the perfect tea to recommend for someone who seeks out what I mean by brothy: Sencha Zuiko from Den’s Tea.
The texture of the tea is quite thick, similar to what you’d experience if you were to sip a cup of vegetable broth. The flavor is not that unlike a vegetable broth either … one that was made with primarily leafy green vegetables. It has a very strong vegetative taste, but it is a savory kind of vegetative taste. Not bitter, and not overtly grassy, although there are grassy notes to this. I consider them to be more of a savory taste than a bitter grass taste or even a sweet grass taste.
This tea possesses the faintest hint of a butter/cream note to this, as well as some sweet undertones to it, but, I really consider this to be more of a savory Sencha than a sweet one. It is a very well-rounded, palatable tea.
An exceptional green tea!
Yuzu Fruit Sencha from Tea Licious
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Tea Licious
Product Description:
Sencha green tea, safflowers and yuzu fruit.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
When I brewed this tea, I did not read the description of it, I just brewed it the way I would any other flavored green tea (low temperature, usually around 170°, steeping for 2 1/2 minutes in my Breville One-Touch). My first few sips were really enjoyable, I could taste the bright, sunny taste of the Yuzu fruit as well as the fresh, slightly vegetative taste of the Sencha.
The Sencha is very light, but with a soft mouthfeel that reminds me of the smooth, creamy sensation of melted butter. Fortunately, the taste isn’t that thick, otherwise, that would be all that was tasted. That might be fine for Paula Deen, but I like green tea to be a little lighter so that I can enjoy the many complex flavors it offers. And, yes, this Sencha is light and complex, not to mention delicious.
There are sweet, fresh notes that remind me of freshly cut grass … but without the bitter grassy aftertaste. It is more like a sweet grassy note. And a creamy taste and texture that is very complimentary to the citrus notes of the Yuzu fruit.
What I think I like best about this particular tea is its balance. It would be hard to determine which flavor is stronger – the tea or the yuzu – because they both seem equally balanced. At times, I think I taste more yuzu than tea… but others, I think the tea is stronger, and it all has to do with which flavor I’m trying to focus on.
A lovely tea. If you’re looking for a flavored tea with a good balance between tea and flavor, this is certainly worth trying.