The Earl's Garden

It’s being held hostage in my travel mug. I can’t get the top to open and I can’t get it to ACTUALLY open either. Cries. I managed a sweet few sips out of it because it leaks…time to find a new mug.

Anyone got any good options that DEFINITELY don’t leak if you follow directions? Followed the directions on this one to vacuum seal it and instead it locked up the entire mechanism. So one that is leak proof and doesn’t do that is all I want in life right now.

OKAY so I just finally got the mug open…with a hammer. Saved the tea of course, it was still somewhat hot! But somehow a lot of tea went through the infuser so it was not very tasty. I figured I’d add some coconut milk creamer, so I gave it a quick whirl in the microwave to make up for the heat loss and I am sipping happy.

It’s a bit stronger than I normally drink it, to the point it’s hard to get any berry notes. Thanks to the time it took to finally drink it, the bergamot is a lot stronger and the black tea is probably slightly oversteeped. No problems though. I think for the time being I’ll switch back to the smaller travel mug I got from Teavana until I find something I like better again.

Love this one in the hot weather. Juicy berries, citrus, and a good, strong tea base to keep your energy from flagging. I give it a shortish, slightly cooler than boiling steep to keep the bitterness at bay, and add sugar on my first steep. What I like about this one is that you can get a great second steep, then drink cool, fruity, lightly tea flavored steeps all day!

This one has to be good iced!

Made this one as a cold brew. Brewed for about 8 hours.

I think I prefer this one as a hot brew vs a cold brew. There is more strawberry, raspberry taste as a cold brew. However, the artificial tasting bergamot when it is hot is quite amplified when cold. I feel like it is leaving an oily residue on the top of my mouth. I am done my sample of this. I most likely won’t purchase again, but if I do have it, I think I will have it hot.

To be fair, my stash of this is getting on in age (1 year? 1.5?)but today’s cuppa was just not great. There was no bergamot, and only a light hint of fruit to mask the black tea that went bitter despite only being steeped 2.5-3 minutes. I am thinking that a slightly lower temperature or a bit less leaf than the recommended 1 tsp. might help things, but I’m disappointed that it needs help at all. I am guessing that my evaluation of this today reflects the changes that my tea tastes have undergone over the past year and a half or so. I went through my tea shelves yesterday and am trying to use up some of my older teas, many of which just aren’t my favourites anymore.

I had this as a tea to go when I stopped in at dT this afternoon. I should also report that I looked at the glass nordic mug, and the glass was disappointingly thin. Similar to the glass used for the perfect glass mug (which I own), I’m scared of breaking it because it just feels so thin and delicate.

Anyway, this tea. All I can say is that what i tasted was a generic earl grey and a muddled fruit pudddle where all the flavours jumbled into one rather unremarkable mess. I have a feeling that it could have been better, but I don’t think I’ll be revisitting it anytime soon. Not with teas like the tea merchant’s french earl grey and Paris in my collection.

Whee more iPad fun times! I take back everything negative I ever said about them being oversized glorified iPods.

The Earl’s Garden is a surprise, and a not bad one at that. If I didn’t read the description, I would have only guessed that there were strawberries in here. Maybe some raspberries, but black currants? No dice.

The berries complement the bergamot very nicely. Actually, it tastes more like lemon creme than bergamot, especially when I added some coconut almond milk. I’d imagine that this would make a decent cold brew.

The base are belong to astringency though.

holy crap strawberry!
the smell is almost too too sweet!
i bet this will be an amazing summer tea. which is not really what i was expecting at all, but i sure am kinda thrilled by it.
but more importantly…. LOOK!!!
http://instagram.com/p/WurPoDIc1x/

and bonus! the samples Davids sent me are Copabanana, Pom Tango, and Coconut Oolong! yay the exact new samples i need :) i will try all the teaz!

Backlog:

I was excited to try this variation of Earl Grey (as I am to try any variation of Earl Grey! I love me some Bergamot!) This is truly a unique combination … bergamot with strawberry and black currant! Yummy!

The black tea is fairly mild with this tea, which in most cases, I prefer it to be a little more aggressive in taste but, with so much going on here – bergamot, strawberry, black currant – I really wanted to taste each of these notes too, so I didn’t mind the softer approach by the black tea.

The flavoring is interesting, there is almost a ‘wine-like’ quality to it, and I found this to be very intriguing. A really nice Earl Grey twist!

This is another tea that DaisyChubb sent my way! Thanks so much!

This smells neat…gentle fruit! I actually started my day with this one so it’s sort of a back-log…I had 2 cups…the first one with cooler water…warm not hot. The cooler of the two attempts I could taste the fruit more and not as much EG. It was juicy and pleasing. The 2nd Cup I did the RIGHT WAY with HOT water! The EG was strong and teh bergamot and various berry fruits were neat! This was a nice surprise twist on Earl Grey!

This is another tea from my swap with DaisyChubb! Be prepared to see a bunch of notes on teas from that swap, heh.

I wanted to try this one because of the Earl Grey + red fruits (basically) flavoring, which would be similar to the bergamot, red fruits and jasmine tea I brought back from Argentina (minus the jasmine, of course). I read some reviews so I’m not expecting much bergamot flavor, but I did get a bright hit of it in the scent of the dried leaf along with a decent amount of berries. Right after brewing the tea smelled like black tea, berries and bergamot in that order, but after cooling a bit the berries take over. A lot of strawberry, a hint of raspberry and black currant.

The first sip on this was incredibly bitter! So disappointing. Remember that I’m very sensative to bitterness in teas, and someone else had problems with bitterness, so I should have known better than to brew it at boiling, I guess. Beyond the bitterness I can taste that it is very, powerfully fruity. Even without the bitterness this doesn’t seem like quite the right flavoring for me. The black tea base also errs on that side of whatever black that I really don’t like the taste of (and often that’s where the bitterness is coming from).