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This is our featured reblend tea for June. I cold-brewed this overnight last night to sip today – and it is fabulous!

For this blend, rather than utilize my usual black tea blend for the base, I used the OP1 Ceylon from the single estate (Petagalia) – and it’s just perfect for this flavor as it allows the gentle flavor of cotton candy to shine through without being overwhelmed. There’s a good balance between tea and flavor going on here.

(Note: you may notice that this one isn’t yet available to buy on the website. It will be added July 7)

This is the final “tea of the week” for June – although this month we did have two ‘bonus’ teas – one featured reblend (which will be announced later this coming week) and one special anniversary tea that will be announced later in July (this tea will be exclusive to subscribers for the first 30 days).

So, this is the tea of the week for June 24. It is inspired by the upcoming live action Lion King movie – and the flavor combinations are inspired by the recipe for a “Hakuna Matata” cocktail that I found some time ago that is made of peach vodka, amaretto, orange juice & mango.

This is the tea in my cold-brew jar today. I steeped it overnight and truth be told, I probably steeped it a bit longer than that because my sleep cycle is pretty messed up. But, it’s still quite delicious and doesn’t taste bitter despite the long steep time. It’s sweet, nicely fruity with a lovely almond note: kinda nutty, fruity & light. It makes a really refreshing iced tea.

I first tested this as a hot tea, I found that the amaretto notes seemed to emerge stronger as a hot tea – as an iced tea, the amaretto is more balanced with the fruit. The fruit tastes more like a medley of fruit rather than distinctly orange, mango & peach, but if I focus on it, I can pick out the mango and the peach. Not so much so on the orange, which seems to be more of just a bright note there amongst the other flavors. As an iced tea, I taste more peach and almond – followed by the mango. The orange is still more like an accent than anything else.

This is our Tea of the Week for June 17 – and it’s what’s in my cold-brewed pitcher at the moment. I like this one as an iced tea – but I think this one is better served hot. Served hot, I taste more of the cinnamon which is still a rather subtle flavor when hot – but when iced, it’s much softer.

The star of this tea is the nutty flavor and it ties in well with the natural nutty tones of the honeybush. The banana comes through as an undertone. The cinnamon is just enough to cut through some of the sweeter nutty flavors. It works well together and it does make a refreshingly different iced tea.

My cold-brewed iced tea for today is our tea of the week for June 10: Plum Zabaglione Assamica. For this blend, I started with a wild, Yunnan grown Assamica and added plums, zabaglione essence & nutmeg (along with some flower petals for some pretty). This one is wonderful hot (I wrote my blog feature on this tea about my experience with the hot cup – you can read that here: https://www.52teas.com/blog/tea-of-the-week-for-june-10-2019-plum-zabaglione-assamica-black-tea/ ) but I think I like it even better cold-brewed.

The Assamica used has a natural stone-fruit flavor to it – which is why I chose it for this blend. When I sampled it, I knew it would work beautifully for this blend (that I have been wanting to blend for a while now but was waiting for the right base).

Anyway, I don’t want to go all wordy on you here – I just finished my third glass of this. It’s amazingly good. The plum comes through clearly, the creamy zabaglione adds a nice sweetness/creaminess to it, and I can even taste that hint of wine from the zabaglione. The nutmeg is subtle but adds a nice, warm contrast to the other flavors. It all works together very well.

This is the first tea of the week for June – which is on the website now (available in limited quantities at the moment, more will probably be added to the website later this week.) This tea is inspired by my youngest daughter Lilith who just graduated from High School (in the top 5% of her class, no less! I’m a very proud mama!) – her favorite flavor combination is orange and vanilla.

I cold-brewed this overnight last night in a big mason jar – and she and I both love this tea! It’s a good balance of orange and vanilla. It smells amazing too.

The sencha is a good base because it has a natural ‘creaminess’ to it that works well with the vanilla. It’s not to acidic from the orange, it’s not too sweet from the vanilla. It’s light, refreshing and definitely one I’ll want to keep around for the summertime!

Overnight last night, I cold-brewed a quart of this to enjoy throughout the day today and it has been wonderful. This tea is one that definitely tastes best iced. I shared some with our houseguest (she’s my youngest daughter’s best friend and has been staying with us for a few months because her family moved away due to job demands and she didn’t want to move in the middle of the school year since it was her last year, so we offered to let her stay with us until the end of the school year) – anyway – I shared some with her as both a hot beverage (a couple of weeks ago) and now as a cold-brewed iced tea and she came in and declared her love of it. She drank it as a hot tea – and she finished the cup. She didn’t hate it but she didn’t love it either. When she loves a tea that I make for her, she comes in raving about it … which is exactly what she did for the glass of iced tea this evening.

The cherry and lime are very bright flavors of the drink but the cola is prominent – in both the aroma and the flavor. Sweet, tart & really refreshing.

This is last week’s tea of the week. Let me say this – I love my “job” – creating teas and then getting to do all the tasting that’s required! Plus, I even get a ‘bonus’ pouch of tea if I do my job right!

This one has a lot of both flavors – right now – after sipping about half a cup – I’m tasting a lot of coconut but the first half was more blueberry. It’s really silky to drink. The black tea base is strong enough to be tasted with the flavors. I think I managed a decent balance with this tea.

I’ve been at work most of the day getting the subscriptions ready to ship (shipping out on Tuesday since tomorrow is a holiday) & I decided I needed a little break. And of course, what break is really a break without some tea? Since this is the tea I just finished processing, I decided to go ahead and brew some of it – mostly because it smells so amazing that I was craving it by the time I finished packaging it all up.

Dry – it smells amazing (as I’ve already mentioned). It smells like sweet cola with fruit. Brewed, the smell is still there – but it is a bit softer than the dry leaf.

The flavor of the cola is a bit different with a green tea base than with the black tea base. The natural fruity tones and sometimes malty tones of the black teas seem to match up really well with the cola notes. The green tea is a bit less fruity and a bit more grassy/vegetal, but that’s not to say it tastes ‘bad’ or even “less than” in comparison to the black tea . . . just different. It’s less of a ‘sticky sweet’ cola and more of a light cola, like maybe one you made with club soda and perhaps half a shot of cola syrup. Less sticky sweet, but still sweet and cola-like in flavor – which makes it an ideal choice for hot summer weather (which we haven’t actually gotten much of up here in the Pacific Northwest, I’m happy to say).

The cherry and lime are also a bit more delicate than what you might encounter in a sticky sweet cola – but those flavors are definitely there and I find them to be more noticeable if I add just a teensy bit of sugar (about a half teaspoon?)

I really like this – I did hot brew it this time, but I really prefer it cold-brewed. Perhaps I will brew some overnight tonight to enjoy tomorrow.

I didn’t sleep well last night, and I knew I needed some caffeine to give my brain that gentle shake it needed to clear away the sleepy. So I’m glad that I finally (at least for the moment) have something like this in my cupboard. This is the first tea of the week for May – and it was a blend crafted around a finely chopped CTC English Breakfast that one of my suppliers recently started stocking. I loved it because it is an organic blend – not to mention remarkably hefty – a very bold flavor – with nice malty tones.

I went with brûlée flavors because I worried that for my first attempt with this tea, something fruitier would be overwhelmed by the robust, in your face flavor of this tea. If the flavors of a caramelized vanilla custard are somewhat overwhelmed, I figured that would be OK because it would be more like an “English Breakfast tea crème brûlée” rather than a purely vanilla custard crème brûlée. And that’s exactly how it translates in the teacup for me.

I’m drinking this non-latte at the moment, but for one of my taste testings, I did try it as a latte and it’s phenomenal served like that. It’s also good the way I’m drinking it now, a big, warm mug with a half a teaspoon of sugar (it softens the edge of this tea just enough and brings out the caramelized flavors nicely). I also enjoyed it the first time I prepared it for my taste testing: served straight up with no sweetener at all. I have yet to cold brew this – but I suspect it’s also quite good like that too.

PS: this one has just been added to the website, but the quantity is very limited until I update the inventory next week.

This is our Retro Monday/Featured Reblend for April . . . it’s my tea (a LIberTEAS blend) formerly known as Potpourri – https://steepster.com/teas/liber-teas/6465-potpourri – that I’ve renamed Highgarden green tea because I felt that it would be a perfect tea to represent the Tyrell house!

This tastes every bit as lovely as I remember it. It is also as visually appealing as well as aromatic as I remember it.

The flavor is softly lemon with earthy notes, hints of nutty sweetness, sweet floral tones and an herbaceous undertone. It’s really quite lovely. I love it served hot but I’ve found out that I love this even more as an iced tea! It’s so unique and refreshing.