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I really thought this was the Harney & Sons Royal Wedding tea when I bought it, but I guess I didn’t realize at the time that that one is a white tea. Oops. XD

Nonetheless, this tea is quite worth it. I know that this particular shop does get some of their teas from Harney & Sons, but this one had a handwritten label (which really should have tipped me off, lol). This black tea smells a little familiar, but I suppose that’s probably the copious amounts of largely unadultered Assam in there. :) I bought it for the honeymoon, and it turned out to be a wonderful get-a-good-start-to-a-slow-day tea. _

The flowers are subtle, but sugar brings them out satisfactorily. Not a tea I would sing about from a rooftop, but a delicious cuppa nonetheless. Certainly worth $8.50 for four ounces! Eat your heart out, Teavana! XP

My fiancé and I both agree that the loose leaves smell like the Dinosaur Fruit Snacks we used to eat as kids. (For those of you out there who remember those, I dare you to give this tea a try. xD)

Anyway, put simply, this tea tastes like drinking gummy bears. It steeps a rich, dark purple color that is very pleasing. I will be going back to this one again and again. I must say, one of my (rather odd) criteria for fruit teas is that I prefer it to be multi-fruit. If a tea has only one fruit flavor… to me, that’s a little blah, like the tea only has one note to sing. I like teas that sing multi-note chords. I’m certainly not going to say that one-note teas are bad, and I’m definitely not trying to say that people who like fruit teas that have only one fruit flavor have poor taste—if you, dear reader, are one of those people, please understand that I mean you no offense when I make that statement. It’s just my personal preference. Different strokes for different folks, as they say. :)

Anyway, this tea fits that criteria beautifully. It’s pure, unadulterated fruit tea at its best. __ Glad I bought four ounces of it, ’cause I will be craving it in the future.

Two steeps of this and a biscuit for breakfast, and I’m ready to have an awesome day! This tea has been a staple of my cupboard for a while, and far and away my favorite white tea that I own. I love how the flavor is lightly fruity, but there’s no one fruit note that stands out above the rest. I tried it this morning with a little less sugar than usual, and I think it has benefited from it. I taste a more even balance of “tea” flavor with the “fruit” flavor. Now, on with the day!

Hmmm… I seem to have had this tea before. Very chocolatey, hints of cream way down in the flavor, full-bodied… but I couldn’t put my finger on it until my fiancé smelled it. He took one or two whiffs and then said, “Be right back.” He came back with his tin of Teavana’s Copper Knot Hongcha… and we both agreed that they must be either the exact same tea or extremely similar.

So, folks, if you, like my fiancé and I, LOVE Teavana’s Copper Knot Hongcha, you will love this tea. :) It is good for up to about five steeps, and the leaves just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I love how relaxing it is, and I love how there’s not a drop of astringency, even in the first steep. An AWESOME morning tea!

So I decided to give this one a second try, but this time I blended it with Teavana’s Rooibos Peach Bloom. I figured that the peach cobbler-y-ness of Teavana’s tea would go well with the muffin-y-ness of this tea. I mixed them in equal parts, 1 tsp. each.

Well… hmm. How do I say this? Between the smell and the taste, I really didn’t get much of the Rooibos Peach Bloom, so I wouldn’t call it a successful blend… but somehow, the result was all right nonetheless. I’ll be tinkering with these two teas in the future, because I did like the overall outcome.

This tea was… all right. That’s pretty much all it was. I think I may have steeped it too long, or at too high of a temperature… or something, because it was just too bitter, even with two teaspoons of sugar. I don’t drink Darjeeling often, but I wasn’t under the impression that it was supposed to taste like it was oversteeped. So, I added some milk, and it seemed to be all right after that… but again, that’s all it was. Somewhat disappointing, but perhaps worth a second try. I’m pretty easy. ;)

Dragonwell. Always a calming and cleansing experience. :)

I had this with breakfast yesterday. While this tea is perhaps not the most lofty of blacks, it certainly is full-bodied and delicious. Unlike Irish or English Breakfast, this tea, rather than complementing the cream/milk/half n half, seems to merge with it completely. The smell, both of the dry leaf and the brew, is so comforting and enjoyable, I keep going back to it again and again. As I’m searching my tea shelf for what I’m “in the mood for,” this one continues to catch my eye. I wouldn’t change a thing. :)

I bought this tea yesterday as part of a long-awaited tea splurge at my local Teavana. I decided to try it this morning as my morning tea. I surprised myself that I could actually tell the difference between this oolong/pu-erh blend and other flavored oolongs! It had that background warm bitterness that is the heart of pu-erh flavor, which worked sooooo well with all those spices.

I didn’t have long to spend brewing it (running late, again), but I drank it all through first block today… and I have been in a good mood all day, not because the students weren’t crazy… they were… but because of this awesome tea that got me off on the right foot.

The clove and the pepper interacting together are the predominant flavors. Behind them are the vanilla and the cinnamon. I didn’t get the mint at all, but I wasn’t looking for it—maybe next time it’ll be there. Overall, this was a great oolong, and a great contribution to a pretty awesome day. :)