Cup and Kettle

I once picked up a bagged icewine tea on a road trip in Victoria, Canada from a corner gift shop in Chinatown. It was amazing! Grapey and delicious. I was so happy to see an icewine tea in a little tea shop in Leavenworth, WA while on my honeymoon! How exciting! Since I had just one sachet of that original icewine tea tucked away, and my new hubby had given me a budget of four teas (I have a habit of spending money freely, ESPECIALLY when it comes to tea, ESPECIALLY when I’m in a physical shop where I can SMELL everything), I totally snagged an ounce. You can order online, so I figured if I fell in love, I can order more. ;)

I have fallen in love with this tea! I didn’t realize when I bought it that it’s a black and white blend. How interesting! I read the ingredients before brewing, so I brewed it like a white tea. Measuring the leaves into my Cha He, there isn’t a lot of white tea leaves, so I think it would be safe to brew this at a black tea temperature.

It tastes so amazing! It has a very floral flavor that I think comes from that ambiguous “natural flavors” on the ingredient list. A little pinker than jasmine… for a non-synesthetic person I think you could say… (insert a couple more sips here) It’s more perfumey, but not musky… like you would smell on a lily or tulip. Tulip! That’s it. It tastes like I’m drinking grapes and smelling a tulip garden. Talk about amazing! Oh, there’s also an aftertaste like lavender. Perplexing…

The tea also has a fruity smell to it, like grapes and sweet pea flowers. It’s just a whole roller coaster of floral smells and tastes that I really wasn’t expecting, but that I’m totally loving right now.

I could end each day with a cup of this…

Second steep loses some of the tulip, gains some lavender, and the grape is less bitey and more smooth and… relaxed?

Yeah, I’m ready for bed now. :)

Decent quality black tea with “natural chestnut flavor” that isn’t overpowering. It has a maple smell and flavor to it, though. I’m very adverse to maple, so I will be drinking this sparingly; however, I do recommend it to those who love the idea of roasted chestnut with maple. The fact that I still enjoy it with the maple taste says a lot. :)

Yum Yum! I really have enjoyed this tea. Only have enough for one more cup which means I may have to order some as I know I won’t get up to Leavenworth for quite some time. It smells Devine and the flavors of chocolate and strawberry are wonderful while not overpowering the black tea base. Love tea #7 from Davids Tea is a close match for this flavor duo but I am out of that so can’t do a real taste match at the moment. Little chocolate chips are in this tea and it can be steeped a second time but definitely not as good as the first steep.

I got a sample of this tea from DianaK. Ya, I’m going through them all right now! Thanks! This tea doesn’t appear on their website, but it looks like it’s a new tea based on their Facebook page. The dry leaf has little chocolate chips in it. It tastes almost like a chocolate dipped strawberry, but the chocolate flavor is milder than I would like. Overall, it’s a creamy strawberry black tea. Pretty nice!

They no longer carry this tea.

Found this on a day trip to Leavenworth, WA. I have chronic migraines – and with them, nausea. I have found that ginger helps with the nausea most of the time, so when I found the tea, I thought, “Hey! Why not try this?” It is way gross by itself, but if I mix in a bit with any other tea I’m making, it’s tolerable.

This tea is great if you enjoy sweeter teas! It is a black tea, with vanilla, pineapple bits, and cherry bits. Tastes almost cake like!

I like it, but it’s not my favorite. I haven’t tried it with milk and sugar yet. It smells amazing, but the quality of the black tea isn’t as amazing.

This tea is pretty hard to explain for me. There some complex flavors in it I may not have encountered before. I do enjoy it and would like to keep it stocked.
I notice strawberry first. Immediately after I identified strawberry, I found a tartness I can not relate to in any other of my experiences. It may be the strawberry bits. There is a spice taste that is reminiscent of cinnamon. I don’t think it is cinnamon though. There is crisp flavor I lack the vocabulary to describe.
I may not have encountered it before. There is a pleasant after taste of strawberry lip gloss.
I find this tea light, fruity and very mysterious. I should rename it pixie or fairy tea.

This came to me from a coworker who found it cleaning out her kitchen. She wasn’t entirely sure when she got it, but she found it in her kitchen and figured I’d use it before she would. However, there’s very little information about this blend… the bag doesn’t list contents (other than a note that it contains stevia), and this specific combination doesn’t appear on Cup & Kettle’s website.

I decided this was going to be an adventure!

Opening the little foil 2 oz bag, I was immediately greeted by the scent of the strawberries, this blend’s most apparent aroma. I shook it around in the bag to admire the contents, and could definitely pick out the lemongrass and chamomile, but nothing else was registering to either my nose or my eyes.

The lemongrass and chamomile made me conclude that this was going to be a close relative to Missy’s favorite nighttime tisane, a lemongrass/chamomile/mint blend. Which, we’ll probably blend the two at some point. So tonight, as we’re getting ready to wind down and hop in bed, she brewed this sample.

All I can say is wow. This is a really well done blend. The tartness of the strawberry mellows with the lemongrass, with the sweetness of the stevia, and the more floral tones of the chamomile. Plus, there seems to be another flavor or two in the background that I can’t place my finger on. It almost has a cinnamon like spice to it, but it asuredly isn’t cinnamon (cassia). It would have to be the most mellow cinnamon ever shaved off a tree.

I have two negative things to say about this tea.

1) There’s a weird, almost waxy aftertaste. I don’t know if this is from the stevia, which I’m not used to using as a sweetener, or maybe part of the strawberry flavoring that I assume they use (because I don’t think the strawberries by themselves would be quite this aromatic). But yeah, a little waxy. Almost strawberry lip-gloss. Nowhere near strong enough to stop me from drinking it, or buying it again. Maybe just strong enough to make me look for it’s less waxy cousin from a different retailer.

2) cupandkettle.com makes my eyes bleed. You can’t order anything from the website anyway, you have to call them to set up an order… but dear lord. It really makes me feel like I accidentally switched my desktop settings to “high contrast” mode.

I need more of this tea. I don’t know how much it costs, because I was given a free sample. Given that the tea shop exists in Leavenworth, a total tourist trap of a town, I’m imagining it’s pretty pricey.