Savoy Tea Co

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Picked this one up on a whim, not sure why but the idea of a white chai just intrigues me. I’ve actually had a couple before, but they never quite lived up to my expectations.

This one is pleasant enough. Nice, large bai mudan leaves. Supposedly it has cardamom, but I didn’t see any pods or seeds in my sample. Taste is light but well-balanced, a mix of the earthy dried ginger with spice flavoring – cinnamon and clove being most prominent.

Enjoyed sipping through the sample. I’m not sure I would order it again, just because in general I prefer my chai to have actual spices and not spice flavoring. I may have to try mixing my own white chai one of these days… :)

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The name… LOL! Who can resist a good pun?

Unfortunately, not loving this one. The lime is somewhere between Jello and a cleaning product. Something is tasting slightly minty to me, and it’s making the lime taste even a bit stranger I think. I don’t notice any passion fruit at all. And the base… meh. I’m not sure I’ll enjoy any of the green teas I got from Savoy, since they’ll all use the same base tea.

Anyway, at least the name gave me a giggle! :P

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So this one smelled amazing in the bag. I happen to love lemon cake, so was excited to try it!

However, I don’t get much lemon here. It certainly does taste buttery and cakey, like a pound cake. The flavoring isn’t super duper strong, but it’s noticeable. I can taste a hint of lemon, sort of a sweet lemon drop note. But I find myself wanting much more of that lemony goodness, especially since lemon pound cake often has a delicious lemony glaze on top.

So it’s a pleasant enough tea, but doesn’t quite fulfill the promise of the name to me. I will say, the earthy base doesn’t bother me nearly as much with this tea as it did with Caramel Buttercup for some reason.

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Chose this one because the name appealed to me, as for some reason Savoy neglects to mention anything about the flavor profile in the tea’s description…

As I suspected, it’s a berry-flavored black tea. Forest fruits make sense for a tea called “enchanted forest”. It has a vague dark berry flavor to it, maybe blueberry with black currant? The flavoring is very mild, a bit too mild IMO. It has a syrupy quality to it, but doesn’t become cloying like the pomegranate black tea I had earlier today.

Would be a tasty tea, if only there were a bit more of the berry going on. As-is, it’s a generic and somewhat earthy/woody black base with a subtle note of dark berry. Serviceable, but nothing I would purchase again. I am thankful it doesn’t taste like chalk to me though.

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I haven’t historically been the biggest fan of fruit tisanes, but I had one that I really liked from Trader Nicks recently, and that’s sort of made me consider them again. Plus this has such a cute name that I couldn’t help myself LOL.

It’s quite delicious. Sort of tastes like Pixy Stix, but in a good way. Great balance of sweet and tart, without a lot of hibiscus going on. Mostly I taste pineapple and apple, with a bit of creamy coconut poking its head out every once in a while. Very nice tarter pineapple aftertaste that reminds me of the real thing.

Not sure I would go out of my way to reorder this, but I could see picking some up if I was planning to make a Savoy order. Really pleasant pineapply fruit tisane that I’m sure would be delicious iced as well.

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More Savoy sample fun!

I’m a bit conflicted on this one. I think the caramel flavoring here is excellent. I don’t often enjoy caramel-flavored things, because so often they taste incredibly artificial and cloying to me. But this tea has a nice balance of buttery-caramel-sauce sort of notes mixed with caramelized-sugar-crème-brûlée-topping sort of notes.

However, the base tea is very woody/earthy, and to me it’s a bit of a mismatch with the more desserty flavoring. I think this flavor profile would’ve perhaps made a bit more sense on an Assam base, with those nice malty notes. As-is, it seems a bit… cacophonous? To me?

Anyway, happy to have tried it! And really, an excellent caramel flavoring.

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Got my Savoy order, which was mostly full of samples. Also grabbed a tin of Squash Buckling Chai, because it was sold out when I wanted to buy it last year, and I want it for fall!

Anyway, this one wasn’t for me. The berry has that chalky taste to it that I sometimes find in berry flavoring. Overall it just tastes a bit vague and generic, and the Chinese sencha base isn’t helping things either.

So sort of tastes like lemon and berry Tums-flavored dry grass.

This one is in your face cinnamon with maybe some orange in the background (think photo bomb) I do like cinnamon and the base was just ok, I’d add it to an order but I wouldn’t seek it out. A good fall or winter tea.

Because of the citrus notes, I anticipated Here Be Dragons to be smashing on as a cold bevvy. Having just tried my first pint, I think I’ll back that off from a smash to a good, rousing pillow fight. Since my luck with cold-steeping green teas is so-so, I prepared it according to package parameters, then chilled it all day. The citrus which is so prominent when it’s hot is less so now. Still, it’s a tasty flavored green and is doing an adequate job of helping me chill.

It’s a rare and wonderful thing to be truly fond of your workmates, and I am. One of them knows I had an especially challenging workweek last week, and ended it Friday by leaving a bag with two lovely tins of Savoy on my desk. The problem is that the stinker chose to remain anonymous, so I don’t know whom to properly thank!

My sweet whomever made a couple of selections I normally wouldn’t have on my own, and here be one of ‘em. If it’s a dragon, it’s a tame one like Puff. (Or Piff. We love him.) The mallow flowers soften any vegetal sharpness in the green tea and the flavoring—mango, I believe—is juicy, not tangy, not fake. A perfect arrival at the outset of summer—this is going to be delicious on ice.

Not a builders brew by any means, don’t brew this when you are in a hurry. But if you wait for it and allow the cup to cool, malty, yeasty chocolate is your reward. I’ve had dragon pearls that were easier to brew and drink, so I don’t know if I need this in my cupboard, but I’d be tempted to add it to an order.

This was from a swap with gmathis, thanks! I did enjoy this frosting with orange and cinnamon flavors from Savoy, but I think they do a caramel flavoring much better than this one. I do think I need to place and order from Savoy as my caramel flavored teas have been sipped down, and I think this needs to be in the order. More is more with this one, its a subtle flavor and could do with more leaf to less water to get the best cup. Sigh, more tea to buy when my cupboard is already overflowing!

This was a swap from Gmathis, thanks! A sad sipdown, I might need more of this in my cupboard soon. Savoy has done a good job with the caramel flavoring with a hint of a peanutbutter cup in the background. This is sweet without being overly sweet; creamy caramel with another interesting nutty note underneath. What a nice cup!

I’ve never been a fan of nutella as I think its too sweet, but this is pretty close. Chocolate up front and nutty goodness on the back. All made from puerh, so a different base than other chocolate teas. I think this could find its way into my shopping cart sometime soon (along with the salted caramel puerh)!

A unique take on a chai, with cardamom and a methol finish. I’m not sure this is spearmint or peppermint flavored, but there is both a spicy and cooling aftertaste to this tea. Its different, but it reminds me of a blend I would concoct on my own, not purchase from a fancy tea store.

I tried this grandpa style with about 5 pearls in a cup. I liked this way of brewing and watching as the leaves unfolded. The brew was malty with notes of brown sugar. Added water several more times and it continued to provide a nice cuppa. I’d add this to an order :)

A refreshing blend of grapefruit and orange without being bitter or ‘mate’ tasting. I am enjoying this change of pace from cinnamon and other winter flavors. It seems to have enough caffeine to jump start me this morning, and I’d certainly give this a go as iced tea. The second steep has more of a sweet grapefruit flavor. I might need some of this in my cupboard!

Yum, this is a smooth and smoky version of whisky, the peated kind without any alcohol. I might need more of this in my cupboard, and Kentucky Bourbon pales in comparison here. I wish I had more than just a sample so I could see if it could get bitter with too much leaf or overbrewing. I would add it to my next Savoy order!

Milk chocolate without any weird aftertaste, and a hint of vanilla. What’s not to like? I might need more of this in my cupboard.

Advent Tea: Day 9 from Michelle
This one smells and tastes similar to the 52Teas Spiced Rum Raisin Cake tea. I got the same sort of grape flavor but it’s supposed to be plum. I haven’t had too many plum-flavored things so that is probably just what plum flavoring makes me think of. It’s a nice spiced grape/plum tea. I enjoyed how the spices didn’t overpower the flavor of the fruit. Thanks, Michelle for including so many fun holiday blends in our advent swap.

Sometimes I forget that there is no reason to hoard the good tea, any more than there is no reason not to wear Aunt Vera’s antique cameo to the office on a weekday. So today I broke out both.

Scooping up the pixie-like curled leaves from the tin is almost my favorite part of experiencing this tea. They’re beautiful. You just want to run your fingers through them. Savoy’s description mentions both cocoa and caramel, and to be honest, neither of those come to mind when I drink this. My previous reviews all borrow from the bread spectrum—crusty, wheaty, toasty. I’ll stand by all three adjectives.

After two solid weeks of coughs and cruds, a couple sub-zero nights, one dead battery, cabin-crazy cats, and one leaking radiator, I am reminded of The Gospel According to Seuss:

…Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?”
“It came without ribbons! It came without tags!”
“It came without packages, boxes or bags!”
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.”
“Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!”

Today, there’s a little joy in this rich, wheaty, cup of curls, in a warm house (in fact, the heater is stuck on “on” and won’t cycle off), brilliant sunshine on the snow, warm socks and peace from knowing these winter woes are momentary. Hope you’re surrounded by joy this weekend, too. Merry Christmas, y’all.

Took the rest of this week off for mental health and a little R&R, and I had been saving the inaugural cup of these adorable little golden curls for a morning when I had a little extra time to enjoy them.

The rye bread scent was delicious from the moment the water first hit the cup. I pulled the steeping basket out of the mug, stepped away from the kitchen for a minute, and before I could get back, the scent had already captured my husband, he sneaked a couple of sips, and had already pronounced it delicious. That’s sayin’ something.

Crusty, wheaty, maybe a little bit of burnt caramel…it’s fine stuff.

Tea MO this week = two sips hot, then ice it down for the rest of the morning. It’s VBS week during a heat advisory, and I’ve been traipsing around after fourth graders in quadruple-digit humidity. (Wouldn’t change a thing. My high school teaching assistant is one of my Sunday kids all grown up, he has a heart for kids, and the 10-year-old boys traipse after him like puppies. My happy bubble is blown up to bursting.)

You’ve all heard me jabber on about this chocolate-grapefruit blend, so this part will be brief. I wouldn’t change a thing about it either, except get a larger tin next time. It makes me want to hunt down more hibiscus-free teas with grapefruit in the flavor profile.