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Autumn Harvest! Spice night! This was a free sampler from the San Francisco Tea Festival. Normally the teas from Kikoko are cannabis-infused (this particular one normally contains 20mg CBD and 3mg THC) but the samplers were not infused so they could be given away at the festival (otherwise I would not have been able to bring it back to Idaho, heh). I have an intolerance to THC, anyway (tried it once for migraines and had a very nasty body rejection that ended in a most unpleasant cleaning of my bathroom… ugh). Sort of wish they offered CBD-only versions of their teas, as I would be sort of interested in trying something like that, but I digress…

Since derk described this one as a spice bomb and I’m a bit of a spice wuss, I made this as a coconut milk latte (I’ve always enjoyed how turm pairs with coconut milk as a flavor combo). This gives the spice blend a nice golden milk flavor, though it does have a little added depth. The turmeric is the dominant note, with that slightly earthy citrusy flavor. It somehow tastes a bit like a cross between orange zest and lemongrass for the citrus, but it’s very pleasant. The ginger is leaving a dull heat in the back of my throat, and I can taste a much more muted licorice root flavor there as well, and I imagine it would be much stronger and unpleasant to my personal tastes if I wasn’t using the sweet and creamy coconut milk to balance out the spice. The ginger, turm, orange peel, and licorice root is what is leaving the most impression; I’m not sure if I’m just not picking out the other spices, or if they are just being dulled since I went latte. In any event, this is a pleasant cup for my personal tastes, putting the spices into the zone that is giving me a bit of heat but not burning my mouth, and balancing the turm nicely with the sweet coconut, so I’m quite happy. It’s very soothing as a caffeine-free chai before bed.

Autumn Harvest! Decided to go with another nutty offering this morning. I got this tea from a Boise Farmer’s Market, and it is a black/green blend with roasted almonds and almond flavoring. The smell of the leaf at the booth had me sold! It reminds me a bit of amaretto, with those sweet honey and cherry notes, and has a sweet marzipan dessertiness to the aroma, but it has a bit more toasty and nutty depth to the scent than many almond teas I’ve found.

Since the tea is a blend of leaf that normally get such different brewing parameters, steeping took a bit of experimentation to get it the way I liked it. I use 190F water, the best happy medium I can get to not turn the green tea bitter while extracting as much flavor as possible from the black tea, and steep for 2-3 minutes depending on how dark I want my tea that morning — no longer, or the tea gets too astringent for my tastes.

The tea brews a very toasty brown color, and despite the leaf having the strongly sweet marzipan smell, it isn’t a syrupy-sweet cup. It actually has a more roasty nutty flavor, with a bit of a sweet or dessert-like finish that is slightly honey-like that surfaces right at the finish of the sip. The base of the tea has a very subtle earthy/vegetal quality that compliments the nuttiness really nicely, and the mouthfeel comes off somewhat thick or rich. I like the transition of the deep nuttiness to the sweet marzipan finish. It reminds me a bit of TeaSource’s Roasted Chestnut tea, as both are quite good in getting a nice savory almond nut quality to their flavor, except Roasted Chestnut has a more roasty profile overall to its nuttiness, and this one has a sweeter, more honeyed quality.

Yum!

Autumn Harvest! So this is my other blend that includes lapsang souchong in it, and I only have it because it was a free teabag that was included with one of my orders (so both of the blends that I ended up with were freebies or promos, heh). This is technically one of their Easter seasonals, which may make it seem an odd choice for autumn, but the cinnamon, apple, orange, and cranberry are all flavors I very much associate with the fall season, myself.

I’m hoping this one might be even more subtle on the smokiness than the Bonfire tea; it is also a rooibos/black blend, but in addition to rooibos and the lapsang souchong, it also has some Ceylon tea in there, which I’m hoping may cut back on the smoke note a bit? The dry leaf still smells a little intimidating, though… I do like that I can make out some vanilla creaminess in the scent which should pair nicely with the strong orange I also get in the aroma, but there is obvious smoky notes there, too. It makes me think of the burning pine wood smell from winter time, actually. Hopefully the fruitiness and sweetness will dominate in the cup.

The steeped tea is an interesting deep amber color, not quite as red as I was expecting for such a rooibos heavy blend, so the black tea does seem to at least have quite a bit of influence on the brew color. The aroma does have a bit of the pine wood smell, but it actually smells far more like creamsicle than I was getting from the dry leaf. The flavor is… interesting. It doesn’t particularly taste smoky, which I appreciate, but I am getting an overwhelming pine flavor, which surprises me; the only other time I’ve had that flavor was in some very citrusy white teas. I tend to not mind this flavor unless there is a lot of artificial lemony notes, because paired with those then I just taste cleaner, so it doesn’t bother me, but I do find it a little odd in a blend that is supposed to be mimicking a baked bread. I would’ve expected something more malty, creating a more bready taste in the base? It just seems strange and I’m uncertain what it is doing here. I do get that creamy vanilla/orange flavor mid-sip, but I’m not really pulling out any of the other fruits, like the apple and cranberry, which seem utterly lost. The cinnamon is also really subtle; I sometimes pick up just a hint of it in my mouth after a sip, but rarely while I’m drinking.

I feel like the elements didn’t quite all pull together as they should… what I’m getting is a creamsicle tea with some lingering slightly smoky pine notes, and for what it is, it’s actually really nice, but that is just not Hot Cross Buns to me. The base needed to be maltier and fruitier to live up to the namesake. I like what I’m tasting, but it isn’t what I was expecting, so I find this one a bit average.

Autumn Harvest! This is another Adagio sampler I had tucked away. It was a freebie with some promotion at some point or another, but I was never really excited about it because it contained lapsang souchong, one of the few teas I don’t like. The first time I ever tried lapsang souchong (the typical, smoked variety), my friend and I found it like trying to enjoy a nice cup of black tea while sitting by a campfire, but the wind keeps blowing the campfire smoke right in your face, completely ruining the experience. And since smoke is one of my migraine triggers, the strong aroma alone was enough to give me a migraine that day. So I swore off the stuff ever since that tasting.

This tea is blended with honeybush, apple, rose hips, orange peel, and spices, so I was sure the lapsang would be toned down a bit. I was willing to give it a try… if for no other reason to test if maybe I could handle it in blends. I still had my trepidations because it was a known migraine trigger, but jasmine used lightly doesn’t bother me, while heavily-scented “perfumey” jasmine does. So it was worth a try.

I found the leaf quite attractive looking, I’ll admit, and it didn’t smell too bad either; it had a strong peppery cinnamon spicy orange scent, with some sweet and smoky tones. Steeped up, the smokiness was more apparent, and making me a little more wary, but I could also smell a good deal of warm cinnamon. The tea itself was not as bad as I was expecting… but I wouldn’t say that blending the lapsang souchong was a taste-changing revolation for me, either. The tea tastes like a slightly sweeter cinnamon spice black with some rich orange notes and a smoky finish. It reminded me a lot of Hobee’s house tea, which is a Cinnamon Orange black tea, only with more subtle spice notes and a lingering charcoal-smoked flavor left on the tongue.

It was okay. Since I’ve had other orange spice teas without the smoky notes, and I’m not particular a fan of smoky flavors, this just really didn’t do much for me. But it also wasn’t enough lapsang to give me a headache, so it does seem I need a pretty strong smoky hit to trigger the headache effect. I can see the appeal of this as an autumnal blend, with the mix of orange, spice, and smoky flavor notes, and am sure this would probably hit the spot for many. It just isn’t particularly the right fit for me.

I have one other blend with lapsang in my collection, so maybe I’ll finish that one off today and do a comparison.

Autumn Harvest! Decided to go with some carrot for my autumn harvest flavor today, so I’m trying this one from 52Teas. Opening the packet, it smells very mapley sweet (aaaaaah!) and I’m getting lots of spices. Smells a lot like a more maple-forward version of a pumpkin spice chai, and I can totally get behind that.

The steeped tea smells great! There is a slightly savory, squashy quality to it, but mostly it smells like warm maple syrup and sweet spices. The base of this tea is very rounded, it is a bit naturally sweet and tastes like it has some honeyed and raisiny notes coming through from the blend… maybe even just a touch of stonefruit. The flavor does have a spiced carrot cake taste, there is a subtle note of carrot but a lot of sweet spice, leaving a lingering sweetness of allspice and nutmeg on the tongue. I’m also getting an overall maple sweetness throughout the tea, which is very nice and sets this apart from other carrot cake teas I’ve tried in the past (which also seem to always be rooibos… I think this is my first on a black base).

Really enjoying this with my breakfast this morning!

Autumn Harvest! This is one of my oldest teas, that I bought way back when I was first getting into tea tasting and collecting, back at the end of 2016 (can you believe I’ve amassed this much in pretty much just two years? So sad…) I got it at the tea shop Steepers in Campbell, California. Wasn’t too hard to hunt down the wholesale source of the blend, which is Metropolitan Tea Company (of course, you’ll find this same blend under a multitude of independant tea shops in Steepster’s listings as a result since this is such a widely used wholesale source and teas are rarely cataloged under the wholesaler).

Since it’s one of my oldest, I want to sip it down (pretty much anything I got right at the tail end of 2016 when I first started this hobby I’m trying to quickly sip down due to its age!) So I’ll probably be working on this one as my nightly herbal for a bit. Like my Creme au Caramel Rooibos which I also got there at the same time (and which also took me a bit to sip down!) I’m expecting this tea to have lost some flavor, but it shouldn’t be undrinkable.

The leaf still has a nice fruity pear aroma, and the tea steeps up a nice vibrant red rooibos color. The flavor of the tea does, as I expected from the aforementioned tea I bought at the same time, show a bit of its age, though, as it does taste a little weaker than I remember when it was fresh, but it certainly doesn’t taste off-putting and won’t effect sipping it down (while I don’t usually add sweeteners to my tea on principal, I may add a little honey to this one just to help give the fruitiness some extra sweetness/definition to make up for the flavor being a little weaker than when the leaf was fresher). There is a noticable pear flavor to the tea, but it isn’t the nicest pear I’ve ever tasted in tea; something about it is reminding me more of the flavor of Juicy Fruit gum, and it might just be because it is paired with the honey-sweet rooibos base. The rooibos is quite distinct here as well, with a slightly woody note beneath the fruity pear flavor.

It’s nice enough, as a simple pear-flavored rooibos. While the pear does taste nice with the honeyed taste of the red rooibos, personally I think it would’ve paired better against the soft vegetal flavor of green rooibos.

Autumn Harvest! Pomegranates and lemongrass happen to both be on my autumn harvest list, though I’m sure neither are particularly thought of as “fall foods”. Tonight, I was definitely in the mood for a pommy tea, though (pomegranates, not pomeranians, I’m not a monster!) and I’ve had this sampler named “Exotic Pomegranate White/Green Tea” by Fusion Teas for ages. It was pretty easy to find the wholesale source of this tea — there are pretty much four major blend wholesalers I always check first, and I happened to check Dethlefsen & Balk second and got an exact ingredient match for their “Pomegranate Dragonfruit Green/White Tea.” Ding ding ding! Every other review for this will probably be listed under “Exotic Pomegranate” with Fusion Teas, but I prefer listing under the direct source, so there you have it.

The brewed tea is a buttery yellow color, has a light punchy fruit scent, and a very mellow floral note, as well. Oddly enough, I am getting a slight pineapple aroma, too. Which is only a good thing to my olfactory senses, as far as I’m concerned. Despite smelling quite punchy, it really is quite delicate, with a light, silky mouthfeel. I do taste pomegranate, but it is a gentle touch, not strong and overwhelming like so many fruit teas, with the base playing a much stronger role, and I’m surprised how many notes I’m getting here… a touch of a floral rose note, a soft butteriness (perhaps coming from the sencha added to the blend?), and a very sweet berry note that comes out toward the finish that reminds me of strawberry candy (it’s likely the kiwi or the dragonfruit, but since I don’t eat either, my palate is likely reading it as strawberry?)

I really like it! I think my next batch is going to be as a cold brew, but this was very gentle and relaxing before bed. I tend to only have herbals in the evening, but forget that white teas are so light on caffeine that it should be fine to have a cuppa of them in the evenings once in a while, too. I should add more whites into my evening drinking repetoire.

Autumn Harvest! Aww yes, time to dive into my favorite of the harvest staple foods, pumpkin! This was another of the Harry Potter teas from when I did the House Cup… of Tea! last September, a sampler of the Pumpkin Pasties from Malfoy Tea Emporium, an original small batch tea-blender on Etsy.

The scent of the tea leaves is a lot more subtle than I was expecting, especially compared to most pumpkin teas I’ve tried, which tend to have a stronger spicy scent. I’m getting a milder sweet pumpkin smell here, with just a hint of cinnamon.

The steeped tea is a rich brown color like warm molasses, and it had an inviting pumpkin aroma, with hints of cinnamon and a sweet scent that reminded me of maple syrup. The taste of this tea is a bit different than other pumpkin teas I’ve tried, which tend to be quite heavy on the spice; this one had a bit sweeter pumpkin flavor and a hint of a spiciness to the aftertaste, but I wasn’t noticing a heavy spice note mid-sip, so if you aren’t a fan of spicy teas or tend to find pumpkin teas too overwhelming on the spice aspect, this one may be exactly what you are looking for. The black tea base was solid and seemed to adjust easily to different strengths depending on the amount of leaf used, so it was easy to adjust based on taste to a lighter, medium, or darker strength brew. I prefer my blacks as a medium brew and found the flavor was noticable but not overwhelming of the bas prepared this way.

It was a warm and satisfying cup. As a chai fan I do like the spice in my pumpkin spice, but at the same time, I appreciated not having my pumpkin tea just taste like chai like they so often do, and getting to taste something a bit different for a change.

Autumn Harvest! Well, I’m breaking into my Teacrush… * forlorn sigh * I fell in love with this stuff and sent myself exactly one of each flavor home. It isn’t available in my area (it’s only sold in the Bay Area of California) and it isn’t shipped online. No one even sells it on Amazon! It’s an iced tea drink sold in glass bottles that I really love.

This was my favorite of the three flavors (though the Matcha Pineapple Coconut came very close). And I normally can’t stand iced rooibos, which is the base, which I’ve always found to taste like cough syrup when it’s iced, but there are no medicinal notes in this. In fact, it doesn’t really taste much like rooibos at all. The pear juice comes through more strongly as a base flavor, with the ginger and turmeric creating this earthy/spicy flavor note on that fruity base. It isn’t overbearing, though, causing no burning spice sensation. I get a really nice refreshing cooling feeling from the iced tea, but my throat only gets this slight warmth from the spice going through it, which feels really nice on a mild sore throat (great with some throat strain or fighting off a sore throat).

Sooooo good! Just love the flavor combo!

Autumn Harvest! Since nuts are also part of the autumn harvest, I figured I’d break up some of the fruitiness of the month with some nutty teas. While I have no intention of doing business with Adagio in the future due to the CEO’s anti-LGBTQ+ business practices, I do still have a lot of Adagio samplers still in my home I haven’t sampled yet, and there is no reason not to do so; I mean, they were already purchased eons ago, long before I was made aware of said business practices.

So, Almond Oolong. I don’t find oolong blends very often, and do enjoy getting to try them when one that strikes my interest stumbles upon me. This is supposed to be a roasty Taiwanese formosa oolong with added almond marzipan notes, giving it a dessert tea appeal. The dry leaf smells very nice, reminding me of amaretto, like a syrupy sweet liquor with nutty and cherry notes. And I used to love adding amaretto flavored syrup to my mocha coffees back in the day.

Steeped up, the tea was a nice almond brown color and the amaretto aroma was even richer. But the taste of the tea… was just off. Man, this was just bad! There was a marzipan flavor to the tea, but it was horribly overbearing and artificial… actually almost syrupy. It’s practically drowning out the formosa oolong underneath… but I think I know why. All I’m really experiencing beneath the coating of flavor is this odd, slightly earthy, mineral flavor… and it isn’t pleasant at all. It just tastes dirty and metallic. Surely that isn’t how formosa should taste? Is that poor quality leaf, or that metallic note I suspect I get sometimes from certain flavoring agents? UGH UGH UGH. Just nastiness all around! That syrupy sweetness with that mineral dirty roasty base just don’t go together in any way. A big cup of nope.