Tazo Tea

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Recent Tasting Notes

90

It’s been several months since I’ve been on here, and it is now the New Year so HAPPY NEW YEAR! Sorry I’ve been away—college got very busy, very quickly. I’m taking graduate courses early, while I’m still in my undergrad, so my classes were a lot harder than usual. That being said, I didn’t have time for a lot of tea drinking, sadly, and/or I didn’t have time for reviewing.

This new year, and also this cold, cold weather we’re experiencing in my area (hello, winter!) will be cause for me to finally clean out the remainder of my tea (my stash is getting low! HELP! SEND ME TEA!) and do some more reviewing.

Anyways, onto the review…

It’s strange to say this about such a simple, bagged Earl Grey but this particular cup was the best cuppa Grey I’ve had in a long while. I think what made it special is that I had no cream, and I added a LOT of honey to it, so there was this wonderful honeyed-Bergamot flavour to it. It was very sweet, with a soft mouthfeel. It was very pleasant and gentle tasting—it had the classic Earl Grey flavour but it didn’t overpower the tastebuds—sometimes that happens.

I think this tea is a classic, so there is no exact “right way” to drink it. It goes best with either milk and sugar, or a little lemon, or lemon and honey, but any of those options make Earl Grey good.

I will say, as I’ve matured in my tea drinking, that any tea, ESPECIALLY Earl Grey, should be steeped in water that is LESS than boiling, so 190 Farhenheit has always been my go to “hot” temperature, or even 200. I feel like a rolling boil damages most teas, so it’s just best to avoid dumping that much hot water on tea. (Also, let’s be honest, boiling water isn’t safe for people, and it takes longer for the tea to be a good drinking temperature, unless you…like burning your tongue?)

This cup was a pleasant afternoon drink and I’m very satisfied with it. :)

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 4 min, 0 sec 12 OZ / 354 ML

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90

I love Earl Grey very much. I’ll try any Earl Grey, and for the most part, I enjoy whatever I try. Tazo is no exception, and I’ve always loved Tazo teas. Me personally, I think they are pretty good quality for a bagged tea, and now they do sell loose leaf, too, so you can have either.

Quality/brand aside, this tea is darn near perfect. It has the lovely flavor Earl Grey is known for, and it is not bitter at all, which is the one problem I encounter with Earl Grey sometimes. This tea, however, doesn’t have any of that. It’s just got a wonderful, smooth taste, a slightly astringent aftertaste (the good kind) and it takes vanilla soy milk well, which is a lovely surprise.

I’m so excited to have this in my stash now! I should add, by the way, that this is the loose leaf sachet kind you can get from Starbucks, not a regular bag or plain loose leaf. IT’S SO GOOD. Careful on the steep time though.

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec
K S

I’ve been enjoying this one iced.

Violet

Iced?? I’ve never even thought to ice Earl Grey. I’ll have to try that sooner than later!

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I’m spending my lunch hour at Starbucks today because I’m just sick of our cafeteria. Anyway, I got this as a latte and they accidentally sweetened it. Starbucks employees today have been a bit off their game. Anyway, it’s a decent black tea that holds up in the latte. I have to admit that I’m spoiled from trying a bunch of different high quality black teas in the last few months, so buying tea at Starbucks has become more of an excuse to take up a table for a while than for the tea itself. So my overall conclusion is that I won’t be buying any of this for myself to steep at home, but I’m perfectly fine buying a cup every now and then to justify hogging tables :)

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80

Every two weeks I meet my friend at Starbuck’s to catch up and chat. Keeping our friendship tuned up. We both order Awake in a vente cup. I let it steep 7 min. add cream and just a hint of sugar. It’s mild with a balance of Ceylon and black teas. It’s much like a English Breakfast and I would say I enjoy it very much.

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Worst Starbucks experience ever
I’m at the St. Louis airport, & I have a routine when I fly of getting a Starbucks soy chai.
So… They’re out of soy milk…
So…can I have a hot black tea?
As I’m walking away with my cup, I catch a whiff & she gave me earl grey.
So…I return the tea, the girl starts saying, “well, you didn’t specify…blah blah”
Are you kidding me?
Turns out they are out of Awake, except as iced tea.
Then another chick who works there starts bitching at me….
They were all glaring at me, like I was wrong.
I hope she didn’t spit in my tea…

MzPriss

Customer “service” :( I’m sorry Terri. Being at the airport sucks badly enough all on it’s own with this Starbuxholes experience. But I’m assuming that you are now happily and safely arrived in Florida and drinking the good tea. What tea did you end up bringing? If I could, I would teleport you a big fat Dark Beauty to make up for your airport experience.

Nightshifter

Sorry that happened to you! Safe travels, though!

Stephanie

Wow ugh!

Cameron B.

People must never order tea there, considering they don’t know the difference between black tea and earl grey… Or they’re just poop faces!

Angrboda

Most people aren’t actually aware that EG is flavoured and the leaf is black tea, and since flavoured is default for many anyway, I’m sorry, but I can’t really see how they were supposed to know you didn’t want EG…

K S

Didn’t specify? It’s their job to ask. If it were your regular stop, I’d say complain. Since it is not, let it go and move on. Just found out last week that despite my telling them every week to use Splenda and not to add the syrup to my green tea frap, they have been doing it anyway. When I caught them I was told you can’t make it without the syrup. I said yes you can, just don’t put it in. When she handed me the drink she commented how she thought it was going to break her blender. Good grief, give me a break. All the syrup is, is sugar water anyway. Knuckleheads. Look now you have me wound up. Why should we expect different from coffee people? Oh, wait, because it is their job!

Terri HarpLady

oh well…
The main thing that pissed me off wasn’t the mistake, nobody is perfect.
I was polite when I returned & asked them to redo my tea & explained why.
I couldn’t believe the blatant rudeness & defensiveness I was met with.
When I was in food service, the customer was always right.
Anyway, yes, I AM in FL now.
Priss, I brought way too much tea, LOL! More will be revealed ;)

Cameron B.

Yeah, the rudeness is definitely the problem. Especially considering that redoing a hot tea is nothing, it’s just hot water and a tea bag that costs them basically nothing. It’s a little ridiculous that they got so defensive about it with you…

Terri HarpLady

I know!
That’s for letting me bitch, you guys. I know I’ve been a grumpus lately…

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I met a friend for breakfast this morning, & had a cup of this. All I can say is this is bitter swill.

mrmopar

Are you following me yet? Need to message you.

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Since my taste buds are on the fritz, no point wasting my high end teas.
Mom has a selection of teas here, so I went with a bag of this.
All I taste is bitterness. ;p

MsWhatsit

I only like a few of the Tazo teas. This is not a favorite for me either.

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Sitting at the airport, eating my banana muffins & sipping this. It’ll do. BTW, there’s way to much tea & paraphernalia in my small suitcase. Hopefully the peeps who go through luggage won’t freak out.

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I really should have set aside some tea when I was packing for these few days. I’m missing my teas more than I thought I would. Anyway, I wanted something to drink and a place to study, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and go to Starbucks. I got this black tea lemonade, and it’s not the best, but it’ll do under my current circumstances. Also, this Starbucks was basically built for students, so there are nice big tables with lots of outlets! That alone makes the drink worth it, I think. Counting down the days til I’m reunited with my teas!

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Made this into a London Fog, since I was gifted an entire tin of the loose-leaf tea bags. It’s alright and it’ll satisfy the London Fog cravings I occasionally get, but there are definitely better Earl Greys out there.

Preparation
Boiling 6 min, 0 sec

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This was my 2nd cup of tea at breakfast.
I can’t say I’m a fan, but at least the lavender wasn’t too prominent. I love lavender, the smell of it is wonderful, but I don’t care for it in my tea or in my food.
Gratefully I’m home now, where I have a crazy & wonderful selection of teas that I do love!
BTW…did you know that under the ‘companies’ heading, there are 4 listings each for Stash & for Tazo? This applies to several other company listings as well. If I had more time, I’d go in & consolidate all the multiple listings, just because (look out, here comes a rare left brain moment, someone let Ms Theresa out of the closet) it really irritates me! Maybe a group of us could each agree to take a letter of the alphabet, & clean up that letter, consolidating all the companies & reviews that have multiple listings. Any comments?

Dinosara

Duplicate companies can be merged, but it has to be done by Jason because it is somewhat tricky. A while back they had to fix DavidsTea because there were multiple listings for that company. I think they best thing to do would be to email Jason with an example of the listings that show different company names, and eventually he’ll get to fixing it. It can take longer than merging multiple tea listings, which seems straightforward.

For merging listings of an individual tea, you can email Ricky with both of the listings, and I usually say which one I think is more accurate/whatever for him to use as the primary one, while the second one gets deleted after the tasting notes are moved over. Those he usually gets to pretty quickly, within a day or so.

The problem with trying to do it ourselves is that we can’t move tasting notes! But I send things to Ricky all the time. I feel like I must get annoying but he has thanked me for helping clean up the Steepster database. :)

Terri HarpLady

Thanks Sara!
I was thinking we could go in & edit a Tea, changing the company it was listed under, & all the tasting notes would move with it.
Oh well…I’m not gonna worry about it then.

Dinosara

Yeah I suppose that would work for teas that aren’t double listed under two “different” companies. Of course then the “wrong” company name is still hanging out there in the database and you know somebody will use it again. :P

Kittenna

I cleaned up a bunch of duplicate DavidsTeas recently, as many organic ones were duplicated (people really don’t look before they create a new tea, argh!) But yes, Jason is pretty good at taking care of things/merging duplicates if you find them! It bothers me a lot too.

Kittenna

And yeah, if you can change companies to something consistent (i.e. there are no double-listed teas), that’s a perfect way to deal with some of it! Unfortunately, Steepster won’t let you name two teas from the same company the same thing (unless you’re sneaky and put a space at the end of the name ;) )

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75

This is a review for the newer “full leaf” tea sachets that you can find at Starbucks, not a flat tea bag. I got a cup of this at the airport today… Yes, back at the airport. I have seen way too many airports in the past month, even for me.

I immediately put milk and sugar in this mostly because I wanted something comforting and was too tired and annoyed at having to be my the airport to mess with trying this tea on its own. Nevertheless, this is quite clearly a much better quality tea than the tea bag version. The bergamot was nice and strong, but with good flavor too. Maybe sometime I will try this on its own.

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Has this ever happened to you? “You don’t want that tea? Give it to _____! She’ll drink anything!”

Thus, a nearly full box of Earl Grey bags on my desk, minus one suspiciously eyed, hesitantly tested bag.

I will finish the cup, but (apologies to those of you who like this) it tastes like furniture polish.

Correction. Maybe I will finish the cup.

TheKesser

That is totally my life! People are always giving me tea bags, (again, no offense to those who drink tea bagged tea) but I honestly can’t stand tea bags. It doesn’t taste anything like loose leaf.

Mercuryhime

I had the same tea this morning. Was wanting an earl grey and had only this. Bad idea. Milk and sugar made it okay to finish but I didnt enjoy it. I’ve got to get some loose earls…

K S

Hurrah for furniture polish! :) Every time I have had this, but once, it just tasted like tea. Apparently kept in the store way past is expiration date. Oh, the one time it was ok.

gmathis

I guess what makes me chuckle is the notion by non-teaists that there are really no quality distinctions as long as it’s tea.

Em

gmathis, I was just sharing that thought with someone yesterday. I always thought tea was bitter and need sugar and milk. Little did I know that there was a difference until I got into loose leaf.

gmathis

Here’s to broadened horizons!

Ramvling

Its not bad when you have it in latte form with vanilla syrup. So basically not bad when its not tea anymore. :,D

Em

That leaves us with a philosophical question. When is tea no longer tea? :)

Shelyteadrinker79

LOL………..

Chizakura

Totally agree about the furniture polish. I thought you couldn’t have a bad early grey (differing qualities yes, but never bad) until I tried this one. xD

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You know it’s a really freaking hot day when Starbucks is all out of lemonade at 4pm. Thankfully I got the very last of it! The lady behind me looked pretty pissed…

When it’s 95 and not at all breezy, this is the best thing on earth. It’s also really nice to not have to make drinks yourself in this heat!

SimpliciTEA

This totally cracked me up! I’m glad you got some, but that poor lady!

Alphakitty

Starbucks is like a jungle when it comes to drink shortages, you gotta be ruthless XD

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On a hot day when you’re walking back from the post office and realize you haven’t had anything to drink all day and might die of dehydration before you make it back home (okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration) this really hits the spot. Unsweetened black tea + lemonade = thirst-quenching heaven.

Sandy Stith

This is my everyday morning drink! :)

Daisy Chubb

Wow – I did not know this thing existed. It sounds amazing – I think I’ll recreate it at home :D

Alphakitty

It’s really good! Especially since you can get it unsweetened (the lemonade has more than enough sugar for me).

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drank Awake by Tazo Tea
1812 tasting notes

Cold-brewed with a touch of Lindsay’s Bingo Bango Mango

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drank Awake by Tazo Tea
1812 tasting notes

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drank Awake by Tazo Tea
5 tasting notes

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Oh, oh, oh, oh what a mistake I made last night! I was freezing and I had the big one of this right before class at 7:30pm last night. I DID NOT SLEEP A WINK! It was a very delicious, citrusy, lavendery mistake, but a mistake none the less! I am going to get something herbal from now on!

Preparation
5 min, 0 sec
K S

I must be the only one who can’t taste the bergamot in this blend. I have tried it in Starbuck’s and at home. Tasted more like an English Breakfast tea to me. Glad you enjoyed it.

ashmanra

Oy, sorry you didn’t sleep! I couldn’t sleep either, and I thought the pain killers following my surgery would knock me right out! Not so! I slept from 5 am to 8 am! Fortunately, Sandy was on Skype in New Zealand to keep me company all that time (it was civil daytime for her!) and we even planned a virtual tea party for today…which we had and it was delightful!

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Had my lavendery Earl at school tonight! I love that lavender (more than!) touch (it’s really quite lavendery!), and my classroom is so chilly – tea helps :) Again – the walk from the Starbucks to my building brews a perfect cup of tea!!!

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