Nik select Send Message

Three Wishes is a bright, nutty, harmonious blend. I was going to give it a pass (cos hibiscus), but I’m glad I didn’t. Not a whole lot to say about it, but it smells and tastes great.

The addition of caramel flavour to this blend saves it from being yet another, generic, chai-like thing; it elevates it to a whole new level. The fragrance and flavour are both lovely. Casting Whimsy suggest sweetening it with a bit of ‘nog; I didn’t, but I bet that’d be really good.

I am giving up on trying teas with ingredients I don’t like, no matter how tempting. The lavender in this blend was tempting, but I passed on it ‘cos peppermint. That said, Mum loves mint tea and she really liked this one. So if you like mint tea, don’t hesitate to give this a try.

The last time I thought, “What sorcery is this?” was when I spread Biscoff on toast. Funnily enough, this time it’s about drinking biscuits (cookies), not spreading them on toast. I don’t know how they combined berries and flowers to make cookies, but I’d be a lot slimmer if I could figure that out.

Anyway this is delicious and I super duper recommend it.

This one smells super chocolatey and tastes like chocolate-covered cherries. The long and diverse list of ingredients confuses me, because in the end it still tastes straight-up like chocolate-covered cherries, so I’m not sure what—if anything—all those other ingredients add to the mix.

Be a little careful steeping this one. In my thus far limited experience of Yawn tea, the black tea base they use tends to get bitter pretty quickly. I’d stay close to the three-minute mark and be generous with the cream and/or sweetener, if that’s your kind of thing.

If you like chocolate-covered cherries, I think you’ll like this one. I love them and love this. And while I couldn’t find any info about particular certifications, this is vegan.

You know how sometimes when you’re painting you start out with these lofty aspirations of colour experimentation? I’m just going add a dash of this, and a dash of that, and… And in the end the beautiful hue you were hoping to create resembles something not entirely unlike … mud?

That’s this tea. It is … not good. It seems like it would be lovely, on paper, but no. Sadly, the result is a thing whose fragrance made my nose crinkle and whose taste made my tongue try to mimic my nose. I can’t even describe why it’s so awful, it just is.

I don’t have the heart to rate it, just stashing this note here so I don’t accidentally buy it.

Ach, I’m so far behind on logging my slurps! I’m not saying I bought too many advent calendars this year, because what even is that, but…

Anyway. Yawn is a brand new to me (and apparently to Steepster, so I guess I’ll be adding a bunch of new blends to the database) and now that Christmas has come and gone, I’m cheating by reading the back of their advent calendar box and just selecting whichever tea I feel like trying. Today we start with number 24, the last in the box.

Star anise is an interesting choice here. Black jellybean flavour wouldn’t be my first choice to add to a gingerbread blend, but it works pretty well. What I like most about it is that you get a nice and mild liquorice-y flavour without the usual coating of the tongue and throat that liquorice in tea tends to do. Maybe it’s just me, but liquorice teas always make me scramble for the tongue scraper when I’m done.

What’s a little less nice is that no matter how you shake it, anything liquorice-like doesn’t know how to be subtle; consequently, while the other spices give this blend a nice sort of roundness and depth, it’s still blatantly liquorice-y. Still, it’s quite nice.

I was very happy when I opened this pouch. Just three ingredients (red rooibos, bergamot, and cornflower), and I love both rooibos and bergamot. Both are apparent when you stick your nose in the pouch, although I had to work for the bergamot a bit. After steeping in boilingish water for 10ish minutes, I was surprised to discover that I had to work even harder to taste anything but rooibos. I was able to taste it a bit after the nyum-nyum test, but it’s waaaaay too subtle for me. This is a perfectly lovely rooibos, but I can’t say it’s much more than that. (To be clear, I love rooibos and could drink it all day, but I could also pay a lot less for plain rooibos in bulk than for the artisanal blends created by Casting Whimsy.)

The idea of rooibos and bergamot is lovely (more bergamot and no caffeine yes please) and I feel like I tried an Earl Grey rooibos recently that I liked better than this. I’ll have to check my notes and order more of that. =)

Welp, I goofed. =(

I wanted to make a note of this blend as one that I definitely wouldn’t mind trying again, and trying properly. Despite a thorough rinsing, the peppermint from my last cup of tea lingered and ruined this one for me. It’s very clearly peaches and cream, but it’s pretty subtle. I’ve never had sencha and Chun Mee before (had to look them up!) but I think this could have been a nicely layered cup, had I been able to taste it properly. No rating as that’d be unfair.

This blend had such potential! Black tea, lemongrass, and lemon balm would’ve been amazing. It was ruined by the peppermint, which is all I could smell and taste! Ugh. If you want peppermint, just get peppermint.