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Bought this one after the holidays last year during the Boxng Day sales. Have enjoyed it a couple of times throughout the year, and today’s review is also my sipdown. Santa’s Secret is a pleasant black tea with peppermint, vanilla and candy accents. There’s a nice creaminess and sweetness that makes it quite enjoyable without the need to add anything further to it. The little candy canes mixed in with the black tea and peppermint leaves are perfectly adorable.

Received a small sample of this tea at last year’s Tea Festival in Vancouver which I finally got to today (sadly I’m failing miserably at my goal of consuming tea within 12 months of purchase for most of my cupboard stock). The appearance of the leaves are quite pretty with both greenish and brown hues. Oollo describes the appearance of their blend as “five colour dancing leaves”. Some of the leaves almost have a twig-like appearance with their rust colouring. Brewed up, there is a lovely earthy aroma that has a crisp and clean woodsy flavour. I didn’t detect the apricot, peach, orchid, muscat grape or apple flavours that Oollo notes but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Maybe those accents have faded with time or weren’t as prominent in my sample. I’m really enjoying all of the oolongs I’ve tried from Oollo so far.

I’ll review this as best I can but keep in mind my taste buds and ability to smell are impaired by my current cold. I’m not sure why it happens but most holidays seem to end with a cold for me. I mean I guess I understand to some degree. Holidays are accompanied by travel and travel means exposure to lots of different bugs and germs in airplanes, buses and other venues. I guess I should be thankful that it has hit me at the last few days of my 17 day holiday rather than earlier.

I was saving the two sample packs of DAVIDs Cold 911 tea for when it would be useful and today is the day. This tea is like a liquid vicks for me. Could feel my sinuses slightly clearer with each sip and the lovely mint, eucalyptus and menthol flavours give it a rather medicinal feel. This was followed with a hot eucalyptus bath and I think I’m on my way to recovery. Highly recommend this tea when a cold’s got you down. It tastes worlds better than Buckley’s.

Well it’s getting to be that time of year. Children are back in school, the mornings are a bit darker and cooler. For some, this is cause for mourning. The end of summer. For me, it’s always a welcome time. I quite like autumn. The cooler weather, the changing of the leaves, the time of harvest. I’ve had this tea for a year now, bought it last September from Murchie’s. It’s been a nice autumn touchpoint when I needed it throughout the year. There’s a lovely spiced aroma to it with a prominent pumpkin flourish. Yet, I don’t find this tea as artificial tasting as so many of the pumpkin spice offerings out there. It’s not too sweet and actually does make quite a lovely breakfast tea. Autumn is just around the corner, and I’m welcoming it in, sip by sip by this morning.

I find this tea is a very finicky one that demands a lot for me to sufficiently enjoy it. I use about half as much of the dried tea as I normally would for any other tea, steep it shorter, 2 to 2.5 minutes and drink it before it cools. If I accommodate all of these elements, it’s a more positive drinking experience but I’ve discovered this only through several batches I could barely finish. I found my high hopes for a lovely Earl Grey that could be enjoyed any time of day rather disappointed. I’m generally quite comfortable and prefer drinking Earl Greys without cream or sugar. I feel like this Earl Grey rooibos is really astringent and bitter by itself though. I think I’ll stick to my Earl Grey black teas in the morning if this is the closest I can come to a non-caffeinated version.

I bought this in March when it was re-released for Easter. I never tried it the first go round, but it intrigued me enough to order 100 grams. I really like jelly beans and there’s a nice candy-fruity aroma that blends nicely with the rooibos in the package. It’s quite pretty in the package actually with violet petals mixed in with the occasional colourful jellybean and rooibos needles. It’s also quite the ingredient list with pineapple, strawberry, coconut, calendula petals, blue cornflowers, sunflower petals as well as peach concentrates, banana puree, kiwi juice concentrate, mango puree and juice concentrate. I’m guessing the puree and juice concentrates are for the jelly beans themselves. Brewed up it has a nicely rich rooibos flavour with some mildly fruity and tropical accents. I can’t pick out any particular fruit flavour but it was still a rather enjoyable blend overall.

This was part of a Christmas pack I got that I’m just getting to now. I found this tea generally underwhelming. Brewed up there’s a really nice buttery and nutty aroma that really does evoke baked goods. I wish it tasted like it smells though. I didn’t get a lot of flavours besides the banana. There’s a very artificial tasting sweetness to it and although I like a lot of dessert teas, the sweetness in this one didn’t particularly agree with me both initially and with the lingering aftertaste. I’m glad I only have a small tin of it.

Had a sample packet of this from DAVIDs. It has a nice grassy aroma. Once brewed, the creamy flavour of the milk oolong and milk flavouring mixes with the white tea and jasmine accents. There’s a small amount of bitterness to it especially as it cools, but it’s not unpleasant.

I received another sample of this and am reviewing it a second time as I think I was overly harsh with it the first time around. I think I let it steep too long and cool too much when I wrote the bulk of the review last time. Accounting for both elements this time around have cause me to rethink the 15/100 I gave it previously in favour of the new 45/100 rating. Sure I still wouldn’t purchase or recommend this one, but I’ve softened the outrage of my initial review. I didn’t dump it down the sink this time around but decided not to chance a second steep. I prefer less temperamental teas – in minutes as it cooled, I went from feeling this tea had a delicate balance to being plain awful. Still, the fleeting moment of delicate balance was enough for me to rethink my review. Maybe there’s a lesson about mindfulness somewhere in there?

I’m shocked to find a tea containing hibiscus that I don’t immeidatley dislike! This is a first for me folks. In the past, I’ve enjoyed the tantalizing aromas of other teas with ingredients in addition to hibiscus, only to find the flavour completely ruined by the hibiscus for me. In general, I’ve avoided any teas with hibiscus listed as an ingredient because of this. Suffice to say, I have a bit of a hibiscus bias.

I got this as a sample from a recent DAVIDs order and when looking through the ingredients had that disheartening quickening seeing the dreaded “H word”. It smells amazing though so I decided I’d give it a chance.

It has a decadent dessert aroma. When I took my first sip there was the sweet and creamy flavours of cream, vanilla, chocolate which is nicely balanced with the tartness of raspberries. It’s very pleasant. Maybe there’s less hibiscus in it, or maybe it’s just nicely hidden behind the raspberries. I enjoyed every sip.