Pineapple Orange Cooler - Steeped Tea - herbal

It's no secret that I love fruit teas, and this one is no exception.  Like most fruit teas, this is best iced, with a bit of sugar to bring out the flavors.  It's citrusy without being too tart.  In fact, it tastes like a classy sangria that I would expect to be served at a party.  This is also a great tea for kids.  It tastes like fruit juice, but even if you add a bit of sugar, it'll still have a lot less sugar than juices and Kool-Aid.

If you like fruity, refreshing drinks, this one is for you!


Rating:
4/5 stars

Buy this tea here:
Pineapple Orange Cooler

Price:  $8.00/1.76 oz 

Maple Baked Pears Honeybush - 52Teas - herbal (honeybush)

This is the first of my reviews of 52Teas' teas of the week.  This is a great little tea site that has all kinds of interesting tea blends and also features a tea of the week.  They offer a subscription plan in which you can get the four teas of the week for the month at the beginning of the month.  Since I'm all about trying and rating teas, I subscribed!

This week's tea is a honeybush tea.  I don't know a whole lot about honeybush except that it is similar to rooibos and native to South Africa.  Like rooibos, it's naturally caffeine free, and has a bit of a sweet flavor to it.  Some would say that honeybush is a little sweeter than rooibos.

I was excited to try this tea, because I like pears a lot, but I'm not the biggest fan of maple.  I was hoping that the pear flavor would be the predominant flavor.  Unfortunately, I was wrong.  As I opened the package, I only got a slight sniff of pear, but it was sickly sweet with the maple aroma.  As I brewed it, the maple scent only got stronger.  When I drank it, it tasted like I had just heated water and stirred maple syrup into it.

If you like maple, you will probably love this.  I just didn't like it at all, though.


Rating:
1/5 stars

Buy this tea here:
Maple Baked Pears Honeybush

Price:  $4.00/.5 oz taster

Passion - Tazo - herbal/tisane

My first introduction to this tea was the Passion Tea Lemonade that Starbucks used to serve in the days prior to the company acquiring Teavana.  I remember the drink being just the right amount of tart, and refreshing.  So when I saw the Tazo Passion tea in the store, I decided to buy it to try on it's own.

Big mistake.

First of all, it's supposed to have a passionfruit flavor.  I don't taste it at all.  All I taste is tart hibiscus, and if that wasn't enough, there's added citric acid to make it even more tart.  It's so tart that I doubled my usual amount of sugar, and it was still too tart.  So I added more sugar...still not drinkable.  I might keep it around to try to blend with other teas, but I honestly think that I can find much better teas to blend with more subtle teas.

Just...gross.

Rating:
1/5 stars

Buy this tea here:
Passion

Price:  $2.98/box of 20 bags

Price:  $2.98/20 bags

Dragonfruit Devotion - Teavana - herbal/tisane

On my most recent trip to Teavana, this particular tea caught my eye.  I love dragonfruit, though it is a subtly flavored fruit, and I wondered how it would work in a tea.  The aroma of the dried leaves from the can was sweet and tropical.  I smelled notes of mango and lemongrass along with the dragonfruit.

I decided to brew this up strong for a pitcher of it iced.  At first, I didn't like it.  The tartness of the hibiscus was all I could taste, but after a few more sips, it grew on me and I could taste more of the dragonfruit flavor.  I don't love it, but I no longer hate it like I did at first.


Rating:
2/5 stars

Buy this tea here:
Dragonfruit Devotion

Price:  $7.98/2 oz

Berry Mania - Steeped Tea - herbal/tisane

I am one of those people that loves the flavor of elderberries.  I was excited to sample this tea, which consists mostly of elderberries and grapes (raisins) and manages to have a fresh, fall berry taste.  I usually prefer to drink berry flavored herbal teas cold, but I sampled this one hot and it was lovely.

If you're looking for a berry herbal tea but are tired of the usual strawberry or cranberry heavy teas, this is definitely one to try.  In my opinion,it's also more of a fall berry flavor, rather than the usual spring and summer berries.

Rating:
4/5 stars

Buy this tea here:
Berry Mania

Price:  $8.00/1.76 oz

Perfect Peach - Bigelow - herbal/tisane

This is another one of those grocery store herbal teas that I actually really like.  It has a strong peachy flavor, but unfortunately some of that flavor is artificial.  Also, like a lot of cheaper fruit teas tend to do, they use hibiscus to add a tangy flavor.  Aside from all of that, it's peachy and refreshing.  This tea is great blended with a non-flavored green tea for the flavor punch while getting the health benefits from green tea.

Rating:
3/5 stars

Buy this tea here:
Perfect Peach

Price:  $17.75/6 box case, 20 teabags per box

Winter Sangria - Steeped Tea - herbal/tisane

It actually got chilly the other night (only briefly, it's back in the 90s again today), so I thought that would be the perfect time to try the Winter Sangria herbal tea from Steeped.  All I can say is WOW!  I love this stuff.  It's like the best of all winter drinks combined...hot apple cider, wassail, holiday punch...all of it.  

The predominant flavors are apple and cinnamon, but there are also hints of tropical and citrus fruits, and a nuttiness from the almonds.  This tea is great hot or cold, and makes a great mulled wine type drink by steeping it in wine.  I will be sharing this drink with all of my friends this holiday season.  Fantastic!

Rating:
5/5 stars

Buy this tea here:
Winter Sangria

Price:  $9.50/1.76 oz.

Yerba Mate Latte - Republic of Tea - yerba mate/herbal

If you have never had a yerba mate drink, it seems a little closer to coffee in flavor than most other teas.  In fact, it's a good introduction to tea for coffee drinkers, even though it is not a true tea.

This Yerba Mate Latte from Republic of Tea is what I like to drink when I'm craving a coffee drink, but I don't want the heartburn that coffee gives me.  There is a creaminess to this tea, and a subtle chocolate and almond aroma.  With milk or milk substitute, it tastes just like a coffeehouse latte.

This was one of my first introductions to tea, and it's one that I always go to.  Try this if you are a latte fiend looking for something a little different.

Rating:
4/5 stars

Buy this tea here:
Yerba Mate Latte

Price:  $10.75/3.5 oz tin

Raspberry Balsamico - Teavana - herbal/tisane

I have a love/hate relationship with Teavana.  They're very expensive, much like their parent company, Starbucks.  However, they really do have tasty teas and quality products.  I've actually been a Teavana fan since before the Starbucks acquisition, when a friend took me to one of their stores in Nashville.  Even though they are expensive, I've managed to spend a few hundred dollars there in the last couple of years.  

One of my most recent buys from Teavana is the Raspberry Balsamico herbal blend.  They had a blend of this tea and their Limeade Twist herbal tea in their sample station.  Though I'm not a huge fan of lime, I found the blend very good.

I ended up purchasing a few teas and accessories and my purchase entitled me to a free store-made beverage.  I decided to try the Raspberry Balsamico by itself, iced.  WOW.  All I can say is amazing.  SUCH a delicious beverage.  After the first sip, I immediately added a 4 oz bag of the blend to my purchase.

I had heard in the past that some Teavana customers had a hard time replicating the flavor that the store's baristas make when brewing at home, so I read some tips online and gave it a whirl.

I brewed it in 208 degree water and used 1 1/2 teaspoons of tea and 1 teaspoon of rock sugar per cup.  I sipped it hot and freshly brewed, but this tisane's star power comes out when it's iced.  The raspberry name is kind of a misnomer.  Sure there are raspberries in the tea, and the flavor definitely comes out, but it's a perfect berry blend.  Blueberries, grapes, strawberries, currants, elderberries and even juniper berries feature in this blend, and they all marry wonderfully.  I especially love the inclusion of currants...just enough to give that bright currant flavor, but not so much to make it sour.  

As the name implies, there is also a touch of balsamic vinegar in the blend, which is outstanding.  I am one of those people that shops at oil and vinegar stores to get the latest and greatest balsamic and olive oil infusions for my recipes.  I love balsamic vinegar, and the slight addition of it's earthy twang just caps off this near-perfect blend.

If you hadn't realized, this is pretty much my Holy Grail of herbal teas.  So delicious.


Rating:
5/5 stars

Buy this tea here:
Raspberry Balsamico

Price:  $9.98/2 oz

Tangerine Orange Zinger - Celestial Seasonings - herbal/tisane

Oh my gosh, it's a SUPERMARKET TEA!  *gasp!*

To tea snobs...I mean tea aficionados, supermarket tea bags are just not worth drinking.  And in a way, they're right.  Compared to quality, loose-leaf teas from respected tea sourcers, supermarket teas are the bottom of the barrel.  Lipton, Celestial Seasonings, Bigelow and the like are dirty words to tea connoisseurs.  Generally, I'd agree.  These teas are like a McDonald's burger compared to a Kobe steak, or like Boone's Farm compared to Dom Perignon.  But you know what, even though they're poor quality and bad for you, sometimes a Big Mac and a Solo cup of Strawberry Hill just tastes good.

So it is with that, that I say that this tea is a guilty pleasure of mine.  A big iced glass of this stuff is just zippy, tangy, fruity, citrusy heaven.  The ingredients aren't too bad...the typical fare you often see in fruity tisanes, such as hibiscus, rosehips and fruit, but the ingredients do list "other natural flavors", which leads me to believe that this tea has more in common with Kool-Aid than quality looseleaf teas.

No matter, I'm still going to savor this whole glass.  Then maybe another one.


Rating:
4/5 stars

Buy this tea here:
Tangerine Orange Zinger

Price:  $3.39/box of 20 bags

Passionberry - Cameron's Handcrafted Coffee - herbal/tisane

I stumbled upon this tea in my local grocery store's bulk section, and decided to give it a whirl.  I noticed the nice berry aroma, and thought it would be a good tea to try.

Cameron's website states that it has the aroma and taste of passion fruit and raspberry.  I could not find a list of ingredients on Cameron's website, and the bulk tag on my package does not list ingredients, so I could not tell exactly what is in the tea, or if there are any added flavoring agents in it.

I brewed the tea my usual way, approximately 1 teaspoon per 8 oz of water and a teaspoonful of sugar per 8 oz cup.  When I sweeten teas, I usually use raw sugar or rock sugar, never refined sugar.

The tea smelled delightful as I brewed it, bright and fruity.  I took a taste and had to spit out my first sip.  It was incredibly sour, like biting into a lemon.  I highly suspect that there was less passion fruit and raspberry in the tea and more cranberry.  I kept adding sugar and by 4 teaspoons of sugar in my cup, it was still too sour to drink.  I was very disappointed, and disappointed that I had bought a full 5.5 ounces of this stuff.  I might add a bit of it to teas that are flavorless or too sweet tasting.  This one is just not good by itself.

Rating:
1/5 stars

Buy this tea here:
Passionberry Tisane
Price:  $1.29/1 oz