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This was the free sample I received with my gigantic box of samples from SerendipiTea.

Normally, a peach tea wouldn’t be something that would pique my interest. But, SerendipiTea is always very good with their flavors and blends, so this is definitely worth a shot.

Steeped, this tea smells exactly like those little peach ring candies. The ones you could buy as a kid in the big giant bulk bins in the supermarket. Or at the Sweet Factory (not sure if those still exist or not… haven’t seen one in a LONG time!).

The taste is good, the peach comes across as flavorful but not overpowering, and there’s still plenty of room for the very smooth black tea base to come through. There doesn’t seem to be any astringency to speak of… which just adds to the remarkable smoothness of this tea. If I were to offer dating advice, I would offer this tea (guaranteed to make all pick up lines come across 200% more smoothly).

It should be noted that I’m thinking about buying more of this tea. Not that my silly self doesn’t buy enough tea… just that this tea is good enough to make me change my thought on whether I should keep a peach tea around. This is quite good.

Finally getting around to rating this one. I think this is the third time I’ve had it now, and I’m just getting around to reviewing it. Just poor timing on my part, methinks.

The scent of this brewing is heavenly, but it’s a more warming scent than an overpowering one. Mint, you walk into a room and go ‘Wow, it smells minty in here!’ This, you walk in, give a soft sigh, and think ’wow, it sure does smell pleasant in here". I have no idea whether that distinction makes any sense whatsoever.

Then you take a drink, and this sweet, ginger elixir just glides over your tongue. Its a soft, sweet ginger flavor, as opposed to a spicier, peppery ginger. It has very little bite to it, which I think compliments the sweetness of the bai mu dan. After the initial sweetness, the bergamot flavor begins to sort of… blossom, for lack of a better term. I definitely taste the ginger and the white tea first. But by the end of the sip, the bergamot feels much stronger than at first. It rounds off the sweetness very well. This is just an extremely pleasant cup of tea, it is so darned tasty.

This really makes me wonder why I don’t see any ginger flavored Earl Grey’s around. The combination is so perfect in this tea.

I got lucky here too. I almost missed out on this tea, and if it wasn’t for Frank having the free white tea sale, I would have. This was kind of a throw-away. I wasn’t expecting to like it… and it’s so, so good. He was nice enough to put a double package back up on the website for me to buy more, as well. I figure I’m probably going to end up buying one of these a paycheck until he runs out.

Maybe I should lower the rating until I can buy it all… hrmm…

I’m not sure what to write about this one, so I’m just going to transcribe the discussion between Missy, myself, and our daughter:

Dylan: “It is kind of weird that the flavor is so passive on this”
Missy: “Right? It’s fairly tame, with just a little blackberry at the end”
Dylan: “You can’t even really taste the Rooibos”
Missy: “Yeah, where’d the honeybush go?”

It truly is light enough that we weren’t sure whether it was honeybush or rooibos (the bag says rooibos). At this point, Missy called our daughter in, who we’ve been trying to get to be a little more discerning on how she likes different teas and tisanes.

Missy: “Here, taste this”
Dodge: “It tastes okay. Not like bad okay, but pretty good okay. I would drink this”
Dylan: “I just think its weird that there isn’t that much flavor”
Dodge: “Dude, what are you talking about, there’s tons of flavor!”

Just proves the point that people don’t taste things the same.

Ho hum. I don’t know if I’m a green tea fan, really. Or maybe I’m just not an unflavored green tea fan.

I don’t quite feel fair giving this one a number (thought really, I’d probably put it in the mid-60s, and that’s higher than its average at the moment).

Mainly, my experience with green teas that aren’t flavored or uber sweetened is minimal. I like having… mint, vanilla, jasmine, something in there with the green tea, and that really seems to tie up the package nicely for me.

This? It’s very vegetal, with some sweetness to it. The smell is truly reminiscent of dinner vegetables, and I’d place the flavor somewhere near cabbage. But tasty cabbage. An earthy, mealy, wholesome kind of vegetable flavor. It’s not bad, it’s just not desirable, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Oh man, but don’t let it get cold. Blech.

And it could very easily be that I’ve been ruined by my love of genmaicha. I taste this, and I feel myself thinking “Hey, you know what would spruce this up some? Toasted Rice!”.

This is a very smooth, sweet black tea offering from Golden Moon. What strikes me most about this tea is the color of the brew. It is a vibrant, VIBRANT ruby red color. The thing shines.

The tea itself is very smooth and malty, with a very honey-like finish. Like it literally tastes as though there is honey in this tea. Obviously, this makes it a little sweeter than most straight black teas. The aftertaste of this one is a little sharp, though. It’s definitely better on the tongue than it is on the memory.

I could definitely see keeping this around for company, it’s just visually striking, and the flavor has a familiarity to it that lends itself well to gatherings. I may keep a tin of this around just for that. I wish I had enough of this sample to try it iced, I bet it is splendid.

After a month of waiting, I finally get the Groupon order with my Golden Moon sample. Sheesh. Less than stellar experience from Groupon. Though, it is a matter of managing expectations. Had, at the very start of this, someone said ‘Hey, you will get $50 off of this tea sampler if you wait a month’, I would have very patiently waited a month.

That being said, the sample itself has a nice assortment of flavors… though I doubt I’d order it if it weren’t for the Groupon sale ($10 for a one ounce sample seems exorbitant). But there was a Groupon sale, and I did order it!

This tea smells for all the world like a snickerdoodle while it’s steeping, and while it’s still warm in the cup. Very, Very sweet smelling. The drink follows this similarly, not quite cookie-ish, but still a very sweet chai. The clove taste is the most prominent flavor, but not overpoweringly clove to where you get that smokey kind of taste. For having clove be dominant, it’s well done. The ginger and cinnamon follow a bit behind… not far enough to be lost, but they definitely aren’t holding their own against captain clove.

The tea base, like a lot of chais, is kind of lost here. Although it does have a bit of astringency, which I’m going to blame on the fact that there’s a green tea in here, and they tell you to boil it to death.

So, this is a good tea. However… it doesn’t have any of the kick that I really want from a chai. There’s no pizzazz. It doesn’t really make my tastebuds stand up and go HEY! DRINK THAT MORE YOU GIT! If you want a very smooth, sweet chai… this would probably be perfect for you. I’m evidently not a very smooth and sweet kind of guy… more bumpy and bitter ;)

Another strong, solid tea from 52teas. As this is brewing, the mint flavor just kind of floats through the house. That’s probably one of my favorite aspects of mint teas that I don’t get from other teas… nothing quite smells as good roaming through your house as freshly steeped mint. Except prime rib. But that wouldn’t make a good tea. Moving on!

The vanilla and mint are very nice on the tongue, definitely reminiscent of Creme de Menthe. The toasted flavor of the mate starts coming out shortly and really rounds out the flavor. It has an almost chocolate like quality to it, I’m not sure what the association is coming from., but it is quite enjoyable. Hrmmm. Kind of makes me want a mint/vanilla genmaicha. I bet that would be killer.

I’m eyeing Frank’s stock of this and wondering how much will still be around for my next payday…

You know, I was all relaxed and calm, enjoying a very mellow tea and just letting my week kind of melt away… and then I tried typing the name of this tea into the search bar. Xocolatl… no… xocalatl… no… xocatl… no… xocotlatl… no… XOCATLATL! I’m pretty sure I could have just rolled my face across the keyboard a few times and come closer. Ugh.

Anyway… so, we bought a huge list of samples from SerendipiTea, taking advantage of their $2.50 samples. Only, they seem to have sent us 1 oz samples. So it’s like we got a bunch of free tea that we weren’t expecting. Well, plus they sent us a package of a free tea that we weren’t expecting. So, double bonus. Overall, really pleased with this order… but it seems too good to be true, so I’m wondering if there’s some sort of mistake either with our order or their website.

So, there’s a lot going on with this tea. The aroma smells mostly of cinnamon and mint, and if there’s anything else hiding between those two, I don’t smell it. Overall quite pleasant.

Drinking this tea, I’m really reminded of the expression ‘Jack of all Trades, Master of None’. The flavors of this tea are all very, very subtle. A little cinnamon, ginger… start tasting the mint and the vanilla… and somewhere after the swallow you get a hint of chocolate, along with the lingering mint flavor and a teensy bit of the ‘woodsy’ kangaroo taste.

I don’t really taste the black tea in there at all. I might notice if it was gone, but I’m definitely not feeling like it’s there… if that makes any sense. But then, you could probably say that about any one particular flavor within this tea. The various flavors really blend together well, but they blend together in a very subtle, passive way, which Missy thinks may be because she only steeped it for 3 minutes. I just think there are so many flavors, that none of them can be strong. By your powers combined… Xocolat… xocalat.. xocl… nevermind.

Anyway, there’s some sort of weird disconnect between this tea, and the description of this tea on their website. It’s totally different, it’s like you’re talking about two different teas. The website mentions nothing about ginger, cinnamon or clove (but it is a chai, after all). And the bag doesn’t mention that there is kangaroo in it (which is so totally apparent).

I don’t know, it’s all very weird. My understanding is that SerendipiTea is a bit of a small shop though, so it might just be a matter of not keeping up with variations. I’d say it would be something to watch out for… but I like their teas too much to be that put off by it. If I didn’t already have a relationship with their tea though, I’d probably be pretty upset.

Am I objective enough to lower the rating for that… nope, not really. I’ll send them an email though :)

A big thank you to Ashmanra for sharing this one. My first Irish tea! I feel like we need a big tea map in the office somwhere, probably next to the door. The wall behind the computers might work, but it would be a pain to get to. Anyway, a map! A big map where we can put pins for all the little areas where we order or drink tea from! I’d say pins for where the tea is grown, but we’d have like what… two pins? China, India, and maybe a purple colored pin in… Ecuador? Is that where maté is from?

Rambling. Tea!

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. I’ll admit it, I do not like mango. I do not like it in a box, I do not like it with a fox. I’ve missed out on a lot of very tasty looking things because one of my favorite flavors in the world, pineapple, seems to be attached at the tropical-fruit-hip to mango in the most inopportune number of ways. I was totally willing to try it in a tea though, especially with spicy stuff!

Missy brewed this a little low, because the tea was a bit dusty, and we didn’t want to fly straight into Bitter-town, which has happened with some green teas. I can smell fruit in the brew, coming from the cup. It doesn’t give me that old-lady-perfume smell that I associate with mango, which is a definite plus!

Now the taste of this was intriguing. Much like the smell, I get none of what I stereo-typically associate with mango. I taste indistinct-grabbing-at-the-back-of-mind-fruit that I can’t identify, but it’s so there. SO there, I just need to identify it. After that, there’s just a tiny bit of pepper aftertaste that burns in your throat after the swallow. The flavor of the green tea seems non-existent. Whether this owes to the tea, the phantom-fruit, or the lowered steep temp, I have no idea.

But the flavor of the phantom-fruit is good, so I keep drinking. The pepper in the second, much larger drink was more apparent, but still nothing (for me) to be too worried about. The third drink, and it finally clicks in my mind… the phantom-fruit is a dead ringer for soaked in syrup fruit cup pear. This flavor is EXACTLY what I want out of a pear flavored tea, now that I’m thinking about it. I never would have suspected that from a mango tea, and I’m now going to suspiciously eye every mango tea I see, and wonder whether it’s really hiding a pear-flavored treasure trove, or a perfume-flavored bomb…

Thanks again Ashmanra! I feel very privileged to have had a chance to drink this!

Continuing on my 52teas binge…

This tea smells delicious, all the darn time. Fresh out of the bag, brewing in a big old western style pot, cooling slowly in my cup… a very, very good smell. The freshness of the mint, plus the indulgent sweet smell of the chocolate (which I can actually pick up pretty distinctly in the smell). This would also make a good candle, although it would probably be less tasty as a candle.

Tasting this tea, the flavors seem to move along in waves. The first hint is chocolate, then the mint comes forward, and fades away to the smooth, malty black tea before chocolate round two (which tastes like a chocolate liqueur flavor at this point). From what I’ve tasted in other teas, chocolate seems like it might be a bit tough to master in a tea flavor. Frank does it nicely here, and the mint is at a great level where it accents the chocolate, as opposed to overpowering the cup. A long, lingering fresh mint taste stays in the mouth after a swallow.

Overall, another very impressive tea from 52teas. It doesn’t quite instill the mad-squirrel frenzy in me that the Cherry Cheesecake Genmaicha did, but I’m definitely glad it’s in the permanent collection and I don’t have to have palpitations thinking I’m never going to see it again.