Tiesta Tea

Backlog from China. SIPDOWN! Oh yeah…managed two sipdowns while i was there so i’m feeling pretty good…well i will be until i update my cupboard lol 175 going up to…..we’ll see.

Happy to have had this in my Amoda tea box, since it’s a company i wanted to try. Enjoyed this as a minty tea and would likely repurchase in winter :)

omg can i go home now? If i get no more time in china to explore, i’m about done with work lol. I’m tired of being up past 10pm working…tired of trying to do someone else’s job… heh

sorry…long day full of long “politic-ing” have made for a grumpy over tired Sil. Add to the fact that i need to get some work done and i’m having issues with my remote access to work…yeah. tea needs to kick in with it’s happy vibes right about now lol

Soooo after getting all fired up after the MOST USELESS MEETING ON THE PLANET!!!! I’m having a cup of this. Let me tell you, nothing shows the world you’re an idiot like calling a meeting to discuss something that’s already been decided – because you have options to present… uh. ok? never mind that we asked them to clarify 3 times before the meeting on what the meeting was about. Turns out…they should have just told us they needed us to tell them that we’d already gotten sign off about the thing they’re unclear about. Confused yet? yeah. so were we.

Long story short…1 hour meeting to decide that we’re going to go ahead with what we were already doing. yeah. ok then. thanks for coming out morons.

phew! the irate canuck in me is showing. you wouldn’t like me when i’m angry!!!!HULK SMASH! yeah ok… crazy girl needs to curl up with more tea apparently. and then sleep. seriously, having to stay up for that BS just has me all crazy. bah! gah! grrrrrr

good thing this tea is all minty happy dance in my mouth. also…it tastes SUPER awesome if you let a coke bottle melt in your mouth with the tea. yeah. i did that. :)

One of two caffeine free teas I thought to bring to china with me. I’m glad for the variety though I likely could have brought a few more since even though caffeine doesn’t usually affect me, I really don’t want to risk it when I’ve got such long days. Had this tonight while catching up on a few things from work after a day of exploring today. As much as it pains me to say it, actually had my first “north American” thing today in the form of Starbucks. Lol. Tracy had to pee desperately but didn’t
Want to use the public washrooms or eat lunch. So I suggested that if anywhere was going to have clean-er bathrooms it would be starbucks since they have to adhere to NA standards. She thought I was crazy….I was right though :p
Score one for the non native!

Highlights of today?
Tongrentang – chain of Chinese pharmacies…..seriously 4 floors of medicinal goodness
Temple of heaven and surrounding park
Best subway signage: “wheel chair fixer-please open door as necessary, take cord and fix wheelchair” go go gadget corded wheelchair fixer?" :)

Simple things to chuckle at.

Evening tea! So tired from today’s events at work that I figured this might be a nice night cap with my giant bath. Nothing says relaxing time like a giant tub full of hot water and some tea….well wine might disagree but since they had me indulge in the local alcohol tonight, I figured tea was better.

I hope everyone has a lovely family dAy today, for those that have one.

I totally forgot this was caffeine free when i brewed this up this morning. Still a delicious cup though as I’m a fan of the mint and vanilla blend. It went quite well with my black so no complaints here!

This came in the December Amoda Tea box! They’re a Canadian Company so if fellow Canucks are looking for a monthly tea box, this one is great value for your buck and has so far been an enjoyable time for me (this is from my third month). They also ship to the US (and maybe elsewhere?) for my friends down south.

I have been off of minty teas as of late but wanted a few cups tonight of tea that wouldn’t keep me up all night IF the caffeine decided to hit me. I am pretty happy with this blend over all! The minty is just the right kind of minty – that leaves my chest happy when i breath in after drinking some but the chocolate really helps to balance is out and dial back the intensity. I really enjoyed this one tonight!

Thanks Alphakitty!

Sure this is a great VEG! (Victorian Earl Grey)!
I have to say what makes it a bit different is the Rosemary and it’s very nicely done!

Fragrant, Floral, perfumey, Citrusy, EG-y.
YUM!

This was one of my many Black Friday splurge purchases. Tiesta is already pretty reasonably priced, but they had a 50% off deal plus free shipping, so less than 6 bucks for 2 teas. How could I resist?! Well, I’m really glad I did because this tea is seriously already bordering on “cupboard staple.” Yeah, it’s that good.

The smell alone is amazing. Nutty, warm, cinnamon, like a baked good! I think the name is a little misleading though, and the ingredient list is more telling of the actual flavor: almond, apple pieces and cinnamon (along with beet, which adds no flavor but makes your cup hot pink and slightly sweet!). This is like an apple danish in a mug more than an almond cream tea. Rich, creamy, nutty, apple sweet with a perfect amount of cinnamon. It’s not sharp, slightly spicy cinnamon but the warming kind you find in a really good apple loaf. It’s one of the most comforting teas I’ve had, it’s also fantastic and slightly sweet without any sugar which makes it a calorie-free treat. Plus caffeine free! I only have 2 ounces of this and I think it’s going to run out really fast.

My go to morning tea. I’ll do this as a latte or do half Créme au Chocolat and half an english breakfast to tame it down a little bit. Great tea by itself, just more my taste with the english added. Highly recommend.

My favorite iced tea. I don’t make any iced tea other than Fireberry now. Very flavorful.

Thank you Nicole Martin for this sample.

I love Mate.
I’m not into Rooibos. The smell turns me off when its hot.
This tea had coconut fruit in it.
The tea was packaged in a nice pouch, looked and smelled good.

I brewed it hot, but couldn’t stand the smell of it, so drinking it over ice.
The Rooibos and coconut were overpowering with a caffeine buzz.
I am going to drink half and spill the rest out.
Sadly, this sample is going into my desk drawer and will be traded via mail or meetup.

After drinking the tea, I checked out the website http://www.tiestatea.com

When I was ordering tea from this company with my groupon, I wasn’t feeling super confident about their blends so I decided to spend part of it on this jasmine green because I thought, hey, at least that should be safe, right?

Apparently not. I knew going in from the photo that pearls these are not. I don’t know why you would have a plain jasmine green and call it “jasmine pearl”, but there you go. If I had looked more closely I would have noticed that the ingredients say green tea and “jasmine flavoring”, which may have been a tip-off. Most jasmine greens are referred to as just jasmine greens since the jasmine is added by drying the tea with jasmine petals, not adding flavoring to the tea once it’s dried. I mean, it could be a nomenclature thing but somehow I doubt it. In the pouch the jasmine smelled artificial and plasticy, and the steeped tea is not much better. Perfumy to the max. The two minute steep was apparently too much because there’s a slightly bitter taste to the whole thing. Perhaps a one minute steep would be better but somehow I doubt it because it’s pretty artificial overall. It’s not undrinkable, but I can’t imagine anyone who likes jasmine teas enjoying it (and those who don’t like them certainly wouldn’t!). Oh well, you live and learn.

I can’t decide about this tea.

I drink mates primarily during what’s known in my house as ‘migraine week’ because they help keep the migraines at bay. I’ve been sticking with Matevana and Mocha Nut Mate but have always wanted a little more variety for those times as mates seem to be variations of the same flavor. Granted, I didn’t expect this one to be terribly different, except that it has coconut and cinnamon.

I just can’t decide. The roasty, toasty mate flavor is there, much like the Mocha nut mate but there’s a sweetness there too and I can’t decide if it’s cloying, wrong in combination with the mate, or totally right. It at times wants to taste vaguely pina colada-y, sometimes rooibosy, and sometimes matey. It’s quite confusing.

I do know I don’t dislike it, but I probably wouldn’t order it again, at least at this time.

I already have a plain chocolate tea that I loooove (The Tea Spot’s Organic Chocolate “O”), not to mention some others kicking around my cupboard, but still this one called out to me to order it when I was trying to use my groupon. This time the ingredients lists match on the website and on my pouch, but they don’t seem to match what is in the bag… a whiff revealed something nutty, scratch that, coconutty, and little white shreds in the mix seem to confirm. I don’t have any problem with it and think it sound (and smells) like a good addition, but coconut haters might not agree. It does make it smell really similar to the sample of Carribean [sic] Flair from Praise Tea that I have. Enough that I would stick this in the coconut-chocolate, mounds-in-a-cup category instead of the plain chocolate category, at least by the aroma of the dry leaf and the steeped tea.

I am honestly not sure why this company directs it’s customers to steep their black teas at 195°F. I mean, I thought it might be because of a slightly bitter base that doesn’t come through when you steep it at a low temp, but I steeped this one boiling and there’s not a hint of bitterness (and it’s way better of a cup of black tea than the Victorian Earl Grey which I steeped at 195°F). In the end the flavor of this blend is like it’s aroma: very similar to the Praise Tea version, and very coconut-chocolatey. What I wish I had from this is some depth from the black tea base; right now it just kind of sits there and doesn’t contribute much to the overall flavor. I may be kind of ruined on chocolate teas by The Tea Spot’s. Still, I won’t have any problems drinking this, but it may take me a while since I probably won’t be craving it either.

The ingredients listed on my pouch of tea are slightly different from those on the website. When I created the listing for this tea I used the ingredients off the website, but here are the ingredients on my pouch: white tea, green tea, lime shreds, coconut shreds, pineapple bits, safflowers. The major differences being that the website lists lime granules, marigold blossoms instead of safflower, and no pineapple.

The leaf of the green and white mix looks pretty decent, and it smells incredibly limey. It’s somewhere between a key lime pie and a margarita. There was some kind of giant, dried white hunk of something in my leaf, but it seems to have disappeared after steeping. I fished another one out of the pouch and took a nibble, and it seems like some kind of freeze dried, concetrated lime dust… likely the “lime granules” listed in the ingredient list from the website.

Steeped it smells way less like a margarita, which is probably a good thing because I am at work. I actually can’t quite pinpoint the aroma right now… the lime is still there, but subdued, and there are some other scents that I just can’t place. The flavors are a little odd in that again they are hard to place, but the tea still adds up to be pretty tasty. It does taste a little like a key lime pie, or at least the filling, which I think is the coconut adding a creaminess to it. I don’t get any distinct pineapple, which apparently may or may not be in there anyway. The green/white tea flavors peek through a bit, which keeps it from being too candy-sweet over-the-top. I realized I have never had a lime-flavored tea, which might be why it seems odd to me, but I still am enjoying my cup.

A long time ago, near the beginning of when I was really getting into tea, I bought a groupon for tea from this company, Tiesta Tea. At the time I pretty much just bought any deal I found for tea from any company. I tend to sit on groupons and not spend them until right before they expire, which is what I did here; this groupon was expiring by the end of this month, even though I bought it probably over a year ago. When I went to order tea from this company, I naturally checked their teas on steepster to see if any of them were rated. I was interested in this one, but I was very dismayed to see what was happening in the ratings of this tea. See, this tea has 16 ratings and 9 tasting notes, each of which are no more than 3 sentances long. Of those 9 tasting notes, 7 of them have ratings of 100, one with a 99, and the last with 98. Almost all of the accounts associated with those ratings only have tasting notes for this tea, a couple have other Tiesta Tea notes, and four of them actually say in the account information that they are employees of Tiesta Tea (one of them is from the founder of the company). This is not the only tea from them with ratings like this, but it is the only one where it’s happened to this extent.

If I had checked this before buying the groupon, I never would have done so. I have no wish to do business from companies that feel a need to try and inflate their ratings by setting up sockpuppet accounts on this website. Most people on this site, and I am one of them, really dislike seeing a tea company rate their own teas. However, I already spent the money so I wasn’t about to lose it. So, with not much confidence, I made my selections. I will say that I don’t plan on doing business with this company again, even if I really enjoy one of the teas. My ratings of these teas are honest and I’m not going to rate them lower to balance out the fake positive reviews, even if it’s really tempting to do so.

Now, the tea. The dried tea has lots of rose petals, lavender buds, and some green, narrow leaves that I suppose are lavender leaves but look a lot like pine needles. There aren’t any pine needles listed on the ingredients, though, so perhaps not. It smells primarily like bergamot, but definitely with that herby lavender under it.

Steeped, the black tea comes to the foreground in a big way, accompanied in large part by the lavender. The bergamot seems to have shrunk off somewhere else. The black tea isn’t very familiar to me, aroma-wise, and I can’t quite place it, but it does remind me a little of some black blends I don’t like.

I steeped this tea according to the instructions on the package, which is to say with 195°F water. I have done this before with blacks that call for it, and since I don’t usually want a super bold black anyway, the lower temp often works well for me. Here, though… the tea seems weak. I want more flavor, I want more black tea. Which is crazy for me, because I rarely want more “black tea” flavor. What’s there is fine… the lavender isn’t overpowering or soapy, the bergamot is faint but bright, citrusy, and not astringent or bitter. I don’t get any rose to speak of from this tea. Obviously, next time I’m planning on steeping this at boiling and seeing what happens.

The photos off of Tiesta Tea’s website never work with the Steepster format, but I just don’t have time right now to shoot a better picture. What you can’t see in this photo is that Blueberry Wild child is a really beautiful tisane. Big dried blueberries, apple pieces, pomegranate arils, bright blue cornflowers… the works. This tisane is a tangy tornado of fruit flavor! It does contain hibiscus that works with the pomegranate to balance the sweetness of the blueberries. It’s not bitter, but if you’re a hibiscus-hater this tea probably isn’t for you.

Check out our video-tasting here – http://blip.tv/the-tea-show/episode-28-tiesta-tea-s-fruity-pebbles-slenderizer-5504958

Check out our video-tasting here – http://blip.tv/the-tea-show/episode-33-tiesta-tea-s-forever-young-gojiberry-superfruit-5611198

Please don’t let this terrible picture from Tiesta’s website fool you. Gojiberry Superfruit is a tasty sencha blend with very natural fruit flavors. This tea is naturally sweet without being overly sweet, and it has a power-packed-punch of antioxidant rich goodness.

This is an enjoyable tea that’s also very refreshing, and it defiantly deserves better photographic representation.