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This tea smells almost overpoweringly fruity in the tin. When brewed, it has the taste and smell of a floral green tea – I almost completely lose the cherry taste/smell. This isn’t a bad thing as I quite enjoy this as a green tea. I just think the initial smell is a bit misleading.

Like Jillian said: Oh. My. God. I also tasted this tea at the Urban Tea Merchant in Vancouver. I’ve never had a milky oolong before. The tasting I had in the store was actually a little bitter – I think they added too many leaves…but I could taste its potential, so I shelled out the big bucks to bring some of this home. I just brewed up my first pot. I pulled out my Yixing teapot for this one. The instructions recommend brewing it for 5 minutes, which seems kind of long to me. I usually only brew oolongs for a minute or two, but I went light on the amount of leaves I used and 5 minutes seems to have done the trick. It was YUMMY! It smells like butter and has a wonderful smooth creamy flavour. This may be my new favourite oolong. It is wonderful with some dark chocolate. A pot of this tea….some dark chocolate…..a cat on my lap….what could be better?

This was my first taste of a Yerba Mate. When I bought it, the store offered a ‘plain’ Yerba Mate and a fruity Yerba Mate. I decided to go with the ‘plain’ version to get a better feel of the flavour. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. The Mate I tried was quite green, and had a very pleasant fresh green smell. I meant to brew it for about 10 minutes for my first attempt, but I got distracted by a phone call and it sat for about 15 minutes. I took my first sip rather tentatively, fully expecting not to like it (not sure why…I think because the only thing I had heard about it was about the health benefits and the ‘buzz’), but it was actually really good! I was surprise how much it tasted like green tea…but without any of the bitterness I would have expected from a green tea that had been sitting for 15 minutes. It’s like a green tea for people that are too lazy to time their tea :-) I will definitely have this again, and perhaps I’ll try some other varieties.

It’s a cool, rainy day and I just wanted to curl up with my cats and a warm drink. This is the first time I’ve tried this tea. It smells AMAZING and it’s quite nice to look at, too. There are big chunks of cranberry and apple. You could almost use this as a potpourri. When brewed, the liquid is an attractive pink colour. One of my complaints with fruit tea is that it often SMELLS so good, and then just tastes like water. It is true that the flavour of this herbal infusion is a bit underwhelming in comparison to its smell. However, it is much better than some other fruit teas. The rose hips give it some actual flavour, that when combined with the cranberry and apple aromas make this quite a nice fruit tea. I drank it straight, but it might also be nice with a touch of honey which I find gives fruit tisaines more of the flavour you expect them to have based on their smell.