185 Tasting Notes

88

For the right audience, this is probably an inspiring, amazing tea. However, this tea and my expectation of this tea are kind of in two different rooms, not talking to each other.

This is an amazingly deep and flavorful blend. The base teas are very smooth and enjoyable. The most abundant flavor to me is a variety of floral notes. I’m not a fan of floral tea, and my experience with them is relatively small (due in no small part to my general dislike). However, this tea pulls floral off extremely well. The floral is apparent, but not too aggressive. It’s there as part of the tea, not an overpowering perfume above it. Its very well done, and I applaud Sweden (yes, all of Sweden) for this blend actually being a obviously floral blend that I truly, deeply enjoy.

The fruit flavors take a much more subdued backseat with the floral notes. It’s probably a feat of magic to have orange peel in the background of a blend, I can taste it… but somehow it’s an aftertaste. The fruitiness of this tea lingers in your mouth a little while after the floral tastes have departed. I think I taste something more tropical, possibly pineapple, in the blend as well.

Like I said, this tea is very complex and a very enjoyable blend. Overall, the price wasn’t too expensive. I ordered 250g (total) in two cute, decorative tins for approximately $30 (including shipping from Sweden, mind you). However, it doesn’t blow my not-currently-equipped socks off.

I would highly recommend this tea to anyone who enjoys floral teas, it’s just that floral teas aren’t my ‘thing’. I will definitely enjoy this while I have it, but I don’t know that I’ll buy it again.

It will just be some tea blend that I used to drink ;)

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 0 sec
yssah

that last line sounds like it came right out of a song :)

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90
drank Indian Tea by Market Spice
185 tasting notes

This is a fantastic but simple masala chai. In my head, the basics are cinnamon (cassia), cardamom, and a little clove. Ginger is a good addition, but not absolutely necessary. This tea covers the basics, is very flavorful, and holds up to at least one good resteeping. Though, we only tend to brew the first steeping for about two minutes (and by we, I mean Missy).

A few years ago, when working on our new payment system, I got to sit down several times for tea with a man named Amarjit. Brilliant man, excellent system designer, very entertaining conversationalist.

Anyway. Had Chai Tea with him one day. He told me to stop repeating myself.

snicker

He had the good graces to explain to me that Chai is actually the word for Tea, not the spices themselves (masala). It was fairly amusing. Now I feel like I’m in on a joke, when ever I see something/someone/somewhere offering Chai Tea. MarketSpice calls it Indian tea. Two points for not repeating themselves :).

I’ll probably find other teas that might edge out this one, but I’ll probably keep it around for blending. We blend it with Serendipitea’s Colonille (vanilla), and it..is…SUPERB!

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 0 sec
Missy

I believe you, sir, are incorrect when you say you will probably keep it around!

SimpliciTEA

Reading this reminds me something I heard about calling pizza, pizza pie. My understanding is that pizza means something like pie (in Italian?). So saying pizza pie is like saying, ‘pizza pizza’!

I think ‘chai’ is one translation of the pronunciation of the word for tea in Chinese which passed though Mongolia, India, and then to Russia; and the other translation, pronounced something like ‘tae’, from Chinese (either Cantonese or Mandarin) was heard by the Dutch importers in the 1600’s, which eventually made it to England (and the US) whence it became, ‘tea’.

Dylan Oxford

So if you’re Little Caesar, it’s totally okay!

Tea is probably one of those things that has so many names, even within single cultures. From what I’ve read, Pekoe is supposed to be a bastardization of a different Chinese word for tea. It’s like the joke about Eskimos having hundreds of words for snow :).

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98

Ah mint, such a glorious thing. Anyone have a favorite mint tea?

In all honesty I can’t give this a proper tasting note right now. I’m still fighting this darn cold, and mint is one of the few things that hasn’t shapeshifted into some unholy flavor combination from the dark bad place.

I’ve drank this a few times before, and it’s a very solid mint green tea. I’m always very impressed with the flavorings that they use on their teas. This mint tea also holds up to resteeping better than, say, their Orange Sickle (sic).

I’ll give both of those teas a proper tasting note when I have proper taste.

Preparation
170 °F / 76 °C 1 min, 30 sec
dark_light

nice review
are similar to morocco mint tea?
i’m addicted and i really miss it….

Dylan Oxford

This is the only tea I’ve ever had that was called Moroccan Mint, I know that I’ve seen others… but I don’t know how they compare to true mint tea from Morocco. But i can tell you this is good :)

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95

Missy was sleeping, so I had to steep this pot all by myself!

This is easily my favorite tea, roughly ever. It has such an amazing smell, the cinnamon fills the room. Plus the orange taste just makes it perfect. I see so many versions of this Cinnamon-Orange tea labelled as a ‘Christmas’ tea. It doesn’t taste Christmas-y though, it’s definitely a year round flavor.

At the recommendation of Teresa Souza, I ordered a batch of Söderblandning from the Tea Center of Stockholm because of my love of Cinnamon-Orange flavor. I’m not sure if it will be a replacement to MarketSpice, more likely a close cousin companion.

It’s left me with a bunch of silly inter-cultural exchange questions though. Let’s just say that my curiousity about the domestic and international shipping customs of Sweden is a little bit of a surprise. Though I have to say their customer service is a clear winner… had an answer to my email within something like 30 minutes.

So yes. Cinnamon-Orange good. MarketSpice good. Impatience bad. This is all true.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 30 sec

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75

I’m not a particularly sophisticated guy. I like movies with things that blow up. Crude jokes make me laugh. I lounge around in athletic wear on the weekends with no intention to do anything athletic whatsoever.

I either lack the imagination or vocabulary to describe a perfectly innocent, stoic, pure black tea like this one. It has the earthy flavor that I love in black tea, the slight crispness, the lingering taste that reminds you that your mouth hasn’t completely purged itself of your last drink.

But that’s it, it’s just a good staple black tea. It’s like the tea you’d serve if the cops came over. You don’t want to serve bad tea, because you’d look like a schmuck. You don’t want to serve AMAZING tea, because you don’t want to seem like you’re trying to distract them. So you brew middle-of-the-road, English Breakfast. And here we are.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 0 sec
Azzrian

In my tennis shorts thinking of you – not even planning to watch tennis.

Azzrian

LOL i did NOT mean that in a creep way – just read it again and thought hmmm that sounds wrong. :p

Dylan Oxford

Hahaha, yeah, I think I got you, no worries :)

Missy

LOL too funny Azz. :D

Azzrian

ROFL yeah every time I read it again it sounds more and more perverse!! Cracking myself up here. Missy lol thanks for having a great sense of humor lol I was thinking OH *&%! she is going to think I am hitting on her man hahahaha.

Dylan Oxford

Now now girls, lets not have any hostili-tea!

Azzrian

Ha! Punny aren’t ya!

Missy

Heh, I’ve made that same sort of mistake many times in my life. Silly man! See why I like him, he is always a blast to be around.

Azzrian

He was probably hoping for a cat fight over him huh? LOL

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90

The cold that has slowly set upon me has really rallied my tastebuds into a level of noncooperation that I would have previously imagined beyond their grasp. Vanilla tastes like varnish, and pear tastes like soap. Straight tea it is!

I get caught up, sometimes, in how good black tea tastes with different flavors added. I forget that a straight, unblemished black tea all on its own still tastes divine. Call it a little silent blessing that this cold has provided me.

This Texas Iced Tea blend is amazingly rich. There is a depth to this orange pekoe that I haven’t tasted in quite some time, or at least haven’t noticed pushing it’s way past the orange/vanilla/coconut/cinnamon flavors that are in 90% of my tea. It has a layer of almost-spiciness underneath the body of the tea that is quite pleasant.

Definitely a very satisfying black tea to drink, and despite it’s name, preparing this warm proves to be very enjoyable. Come a little later in the spring, when sweet iced tea is more in season, I have no doubt that this will make a delectable iced tea. But for now, I’m quite happy to have it in a nice steaming brew.

This is currently one of the teas on TropicalTeaCo.com’s $1.00 an ounce sale (plus the March coupon), which makes the price unbeatable. I’ll probably put in another order on this and buy enough tea to last us through the iced tea season. The price really cannot be beat, and the flavor is amazing.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 15 sec

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71

This feels like a bad breakup. “It’s not you, it’s me…”

Second tea for the night, and second time I just kind of cock my head to the side and go “hrmm… this… something not right…”

I think I’m going to stop this review here and assume I need some time to get my house in order, so to speak.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Azzrian

Maybe you and Missy need to discuss – you both logged this around the same time!

Uniquity

I think he and Missy are engaged – unless I’ve way over-analyzed! : )

Missy

That we are Uniquity. He’s just having trouble with his taste buds right now. He’s catching a cold.

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68

I’ve been looking for a good vanilla chai for a while now, partially because the Spicy Seattle chai that I bought from MarketSpice was way too peppery for my dearly beloved next to me (typing her own review at the same time!). When the TropicalTeaCo sale came to my attention, I couldn’t resist. I mean really, at $0.65 an ounce, the tea would have to be really bad to not be worth it.

This tea is a bit of an enigma. The vanilla is aromatic, but almost lost in the taste. It’s there, but subdued. Could be good for some people, but I could be swimming in a vanilla lake and probably want to add more.

Overpoweringly, I taste something floral. Scanning over the list of ingredients, the only thing I think I could attribute it to is the Sunflower Petals. Though, Missy says she doesn’t notice the petals in the tea like the picture shows. But something is there that’s floral, and not the vanilla spiciness that I’m looking for.

Interestingly, the cardamom and nutmeg are the tastes that seem to linger the most. Neither of which are unpleasant flavors.

This tea deserves another shot, because it seems like there’s a lot to love in this blend. It just doesn’t seem to be hitting my tongue right. Maybe a different steeping will be worth it.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Azzrian

Ahhhh NOW it all makes sense lol :)

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95

I often refer to Stash’s Orange Spice tea as my ‘first love’ when it comes to tea. Tea has always been good, but the pairing of the cinnamon and orange with black tea was the first tea that I ever really wanted. Like deep-seeded cravings kind of want. I moved on to the more bitter bergamot flavor of an Earl Grey later on in life, and it has always felt more of a staple than the Orange Spice. Orange Spice isn’t something you drink every day… it’s a treat. It’s special.

Years go by, and here I am getting all excited about loose tea. A coworker mentions something about MarketSpice, and I kind of dismiss it… because I think I knew what she was talking about, and it wasn’t what I was looking for.

I had no idea what she was talking about, and it was exactly what I was looking for. I apologized to her later.

The MarketSpice tea is similar to the Orange Spice tea in it’s flavor combination, but completely different in it’s execution. It’s like everything I love about Orange Spice, but notched up to 11.

The MarketSpice has very powerful flavoring of cinnamon (cassia), and it’s wonderful. The strength of the cinnamon is worth calling out specifically. The potency is such that when I first start drinking a new pot of this tea, my tongue goes a little tingly from the stimulation.

The orange is a much more solid flavor in this tea than most others (sorry, Stash!). It’s so far been consistently sweet as well, without a trace of that rind-y flavor that I’ve had in other teas. Another gold star for MarketSpice.

I’m also very impressed with pricing from MarketSpice the company. Most of their black teas run just above $1/oz, which is very reasonable. It’s an easy store to make a staple.

I absolutely love this tea, and will always have it handy. However, there are a few warnings that I would give others regarding this tea.

1) It is very sweet. Cinnamon and Orange both lend themselves to a dessert-level of sweetness, and the sheer power of these flavors in this blend lead to a very sweet tea.

2) With all that sweetness and flavor, the black tea really doesn’t have much room to shine. It’s there, somewhere, but man is it subtle. For people that prefer their black tea a little more prevalent, I wouldn’t be able to honestly recommend this tea.

But I recommend it to everyone else. I even recommended it to myself for a second steeping in a second pot tonight. Nom nom nom.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 0 sec

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84

I consider myself quite lucky to have this tea. After finishing quite a bit of the the tea from our first foray into Teavana, truly our first trip into a loose tea store, we were looking around on the website.

Lo and behold, things are on sale!

My fiancé and I look at quite a few things, and add a couple to the cart, but we can’t make a decision as to what exactly all we want to try. We were really indecisive at this point, we hadn’t quite reached our ‘MUST BUY EVERYTHING’ tea frenzy. However, compared to most of the other teas on the site, this was really quite cheap (on sale for $10 a tin). So I added two of them to my cart. But I don’t pull the trigger.

The next day, I browse around Teavana, and these are now out of stock. Bummer! But… what’s that… my shopping cart isn’t empty? I quickly hit the checkout button, and pray for the best.

I’m fairly impressed with this tea, for a number of reasons.

For one, the rosettes really are quite cute. My sister, while simultaneously enjoying and mocking my tea collection at work, referred to them as ‘little tarantulas’, and the description has kind of stuck. The variations between the gold and brown needles give an almost alive look to the beasties. That is, if you don’t notice the string around their middles!

The tea itself brews into a dark, smooth tea. The flavor is rich, but very mellow. It’s just a simple, perfect black tea. It’s a very comforting tea that can truly tie a bow around a long day.

It’s an amazing feat of alchemy to drop three tarantulas into a pot of boiling water and pull out a trio of sea anenomies. Another feature I really like about this tea is that it holds up very well to resteeping, which I don’t find to be true with most black teas. The flavor doesn’t change, the color is just as dark, and the brew is as smooth as ever.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the sale price of this tea was the majority factor in my purchase, followed by the instinctual need to hoard something that you may never see again. At $10, I consider this tin of tea to be an amazing purchase. At $20 a tin, it would have made a cute gift, or a novelty to keep around to serve to people new to loose leaf tea. Higher than that though, I can’t say the novelty would have been able to overpower my ancestral money-guilt.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 30 sec
Missy

You crack me up. One day I’m going to go visit my mom and actually bring home a tarantula just for comparison value. :P

Dylan Oxford

I’m fairly certain that real tarantulas produce a distinctly less tasty brew when soaked in water.

TeaBrat

someone would no doubt pay top dollar for a rare spider tea. :-P

Missy

People in central america eat them! I don’t think I could do that unless I was starving. They are low maintenance pets though.

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Bio

My fiancé and I are beginning to enjoy tea infusion, and it’s slowly becoming an interesting hobby that the two of us can share. Maybe not slowly… it’s somewhat amazing how much tea you can buy when everything looks shiny and new.

Tea Rating system:

90 – 100: This is a tea I will always have on hand at work, and at home. I will leave it on altars as offerings of perfection.

80 – 89: This, or one of it’s close cousins, will likely be in my cabinet at home. When this tea runs out, I will buy more. I’ll always wonder if there is something better, but be too afraid to look to stray from home to find it.

70 – 79: Definitely good, but not a clear winner. I enjoy it, I’ll finish it, but I probably won’t buy it again until I’ve exhausted all other versions of this product from any reputable retailer. Though, it may enjoy a resurrection for custom blending.

60 – 69: This tea is okay, but definitely not something I’m going to brew again. I’m going to give what I have left away.

30 – 59: I didn’t finish drinking this tea. I actually poured it out, and went for something else. I’ll still give this tea away, but I’ll do it with a warning and a plead for forgiveness.

0 – 29: This tea is riding securely towards an iceberg at the helm of the failboat. I’ve taken this out of my tea tin, and laid it on a napkin as potpurri. I do not consider it fit for human consumption.

Location

Tacoma, Washington, United States

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