California Sunshine

Tea type
Fruit Green Blend
Ingredients
Grapefruit Slices, Green Tea, Lemon Pieces, Lime, Natural Flavours, Orange Pieces
Flavors
Grapefruit, Lemon, Lime, Orange
Sold in
Loose Leaf
Caffeine
Low
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Shae
Average preparation
Not available

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From 52teas

Tea of the Week for January 25, 2016!

Even though I currently live in the Pacific Northwest (and I love it here and really don’t want to live anywhere else) there’s a part of me that will always be a California girl. I was born there and I lived there for a number of years in my adulthood. The best part about California? That sunshine! And while I’d never want to live there again, there are times – like now when it’s wet and rainy and cold here – that I miss California and that sunshine just a little bit.

So I created a tea to remind me of what I like best about California – the sun and the yummy citrus fruit that the sunshine provides.

For the base of this tea, I used a very special Thyolo OP1 green tea from the Satemwa estate in Malawi. These leaves are huge and gorgeous! They also have a natural citrus-y tone to them so I decided that grapefruit was an obvious choice to use as a flavoring for this tea. But as I was creating what was going to be a straightforward grapefruit-y tea, I decided that wasn’t good enough so I got out some of the other citrus-y flavors in my “palette” – I grabbed orange, lime, lemon and blended those flavors with grapefruit to create a bright, tangy, citrus-y tea. YUM!

It’s like laying out on a California beach but without the worry of getting skin cancer.

ingredients: single estate OP1 green tea, grapefruit segments, orange segments, lime segments, lemon segments and all-natural flavors

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Yeah, I know that the tea doesn’t look like a green tea. Quite a few times during the blending and packaging process, I found myself questioning whether this was a green tea or a black tea because the leaves look like an OP1 Black tea. But this IS a single garden OP1 green tea from the Satemwa estate in Malawi. When I first sampled this tea in it’s pure form (unflavored), I noticed a distinct citrus-y note to the leaves and that’s why I thought that it seemed a natural fit to use it to create this California Sunshine tea which highlights the citrus flavors of grapefruit, orange, lime and lemon.

The flavor is BRIGHT and beautifully citrus-y. It reminds me of sunny Southern California where I was born and it’s the perfect tea to sip on days like this – it’s cold and wet here in the Pacific Northwest and I could use just a little bit of California sunshine but since I don’t really like the traffic, the smog, the crime and the crowds of sunny SoCal, I think that it’s a much better idea to just sip on this tea!

To brew: these leaves are so big and wiry and difficult to measure using a teaspoon or bamboo scoop, so I eyeballed the measurement to something that looked something like a bamboo scoop’s worth of tea. Into the basket of the Kati it goes and then I add 12 ounces of water heated to 180°F and steeped it for 2 minutes. The resteep is really nice with this blend too – these leaves are slow to unfurl!

About 52teas View company

At 52teas.com, you will find unique, hand-blended artisan loose leaf teas: a new limited edition creation every week of the year. We pride ourselves on offering truly unique, one-of-a-kind tea blends that you won’t find anywhere else.

2 Tasting Notes

84
4252 tasting notes

This one actually DOES taste like sunshine! Super citrus on a dark green tea base. Citrus and nutritious…. and delicious. :D It actually tastes healthy to me. I love seeing those citrus wedges in the infuser. Green tea always tastes nice with citrus, not like I can tell what the base tastes like under all this citrus! This will be a go-to tea for me in winter. I need all the brightness I can get.

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308 tasting notes

I had really high hopes after opening the bag and sniffing the blend. It did not disappoint. I love all the different citrus flavors and the fact that they are all detectable on my palate. I imagine it’d be even better with a touch of sweetener, but I’m so happy that I am enjoying it unsweetened. I’ve only tried it iced and it is delicious. Another winner from 52Teas, a company that is quickly winning me over.

Flavors: Grapefruit, Lemon, Lime, Orange

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