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My stomach has been giving me grief for a week now and I have been on a road trip AND I just started a new semester at school AND I’m stressed about having everything together to do my first show in June…. it has all left me with little time for tea and an even smaller amount of time to write about tea. I’m using stolen time here.

This tea has really grown on me and I have even longed for it’s strange flavor combo at times. I have been double bagging the Republic teas lately and it works out well for a stronger flavor. A little soy creamer to round it out and this is making for a nice evening cup. I’m still not convinced that this is one I need to buy again (especially since I am curious about other flavors in the Cocoa line), but I’m going to enjoy it down to the last bag.

Hmmmm, this is nice. The flavors could be a little stronger. I can pick out creamy coconut over other fruity flavors. I think I taste the pineapple. No bitterness from the tea base. It’s nice with a little sugar too, seems to make the fruit a little richer and bolder. I like it, but I don’t think it’s a must have once this pack is over.

Oh man, cookie to save the day, warm me up and settle me down into a nice cup of comfort. A little cream and sugar make this tea a delicious treat with a little malt. It never fails to deliver and surprise even after I have forgotten about for a while and find it again buried in my cupboard.

I’m not yet sure how I feel about this tea. I didn’t like it when I first tried it, but now that another ginger tea has grown on me, I feel this one is a little too. I’m not a big fan of oolongs finding them to have a sort of flat cardboard like taste, yet I keep trying them as if it’s going to somehow change. The ginger isn’t a bold fresh ginger taste, but more of a dried and powdered spice ginger taste, muted and earthy.

I’ll likely give this tea one more try and then call it quits if I’m not won over by then. La Route Du Temps by Marriage Freres is my preference of the two.

I’ve had this before and I remember liking it, but it’s just tasting super flat this time. I can pick out the vanilla, but there is also this cardboard/rooibos taste that takes over. Maybe it’s old? Maybe it’s better with cream and sugar? No clue, but it gets worse as it cools.

Oh rooibos, you ruin damn near everything for me. All I get is that woodsy rooibos flavor. I can tell that there are supposed to be other flavors, but the rooibos drowns them out. They never had a chance.

I have been drinking a ton of tea lately, but haven’t posted any notes! Classes started so I’m usually brewing two thermoses worth of tea to get me through the day and drinking them while I’m out. I do sometimes find it hard to get through a whole thermos of one tea when I’m used to switching it up every cup if I get the urge. I found out today that if I can add one more class to my schedule this semester, then I only need an art history class to fulfill the requirements for my degree! It’s so close I can taste it! Unlike this tea at the moment. :/

I have had a bunch of chest congestion lately that seems to be migrating to my sinuses which makes tea drinking a sad and frustrating event. I can taste a little malt, but that is about it.

Sipdown. I have enjoyed having this as a decaf option in my cupboard and may reunite with it again in the future. The cherry is a little tart and there have been many evenings where I have had this with a little milk and sugar and settled in for a little tv watching. Funny the associations you get with flavors or scents over the years. I guess this is my cozy late night tea!

The green part of this tea is nice and smooth. Mellow with a touch of hay on the end. The jasmine is present in the scent, but just barely there in the taste. I don’t get that soapy taste that I have found in some jasmine teas, but I’m not getting much jasmine either. I like my jasmine bold, not shy. Kind of a bummer cause if they upped the jasmine it would be excellent.

I was excited to see a local tea vendor on a trip to a farmer’s market near my parents house while visiting California. This market by the way is one of the few places you can now find my all time favorite muffin that I used to eat all the time… the raspberry poppyseed cheesecake by Rebecca’s Mighty Muffins. She used to have a bakery in Santa Cruz where I lived and distributed to a ton of bay area health food stores, but then she decided to close down shop, travel the world and settled down into a much smaller operation when she got back, which leaves a HUGE muffin sized hole in my heart. But I have digressed quite far now… I see tea at the market, they had a cough drop tea and my family was coughing so I decided to give it a try. I believe this was a mistake. I should have stuck with the muffins.

When I steep the tea, I get a piney scent like Pinesol floor cleaner. When I sip it, the first two seconds are fine, but then I’m hit with a Pinesol taste like my mouth has just been disinfected from a weeks worth of dirty footprints. In the last part of the sip a bitter wave crashes through my mouth. I hate bitter. Maybe that is why they suggest adding honey. I was trying to work on the computer while sipping this, but it was just so shocking and distracting that I had to write a review and tell you all about it. It gets a little more palatable as I go on, but not by much. Maybe it’s because all my taste buds have now been killed by pine. I think my cough has slowed down a bit, so that is a plus. I wonder if I can put the remaining tea bags in some alcohol with honey and make a cough syrup type thing that would go down easier and carry a buzz to get me through the taste.

There HAS to be a way to make a tea that soothes a cough and doesn’t taste like you are chewing on a bunch of pine needles. This is unacceptable. I’m going to take a closer look at David’s cold line for an alternative.