Tea tasting: Tea Forte's Lemon Sorbetti Green Tea

What a nice, fun tea!  Tea Forte's Lemon Sorbetti green tea has a lovely light and sweet tone.  It's definitely lemony, without being the awful, sickly artificial lemon flavor of bottled iced tea.  The name is apt; this tea is very close to a lemon sherbet/sorbet in use of lemon flavor.  I let the tea steep a little longer than is recommended for green teas (entirely by accident), but it didn't go bitter.  The underlying green tea seems to be more on the floral end of greens than the grassy end, and it works well with other flavor elements.

 The website says the sweetness comes from honey, but I don't see any honey in the ingredient list.  I can't imagine wanting this tea to be sweeter than it is.  However, if you only like sweet tea, I definitely recommend using a wildflower or clover honey.

Tea tasting: Lavender Cranberry Herbal

On my last trip to Canada, I picked up two teas from the Seafoam Lavender Farm: one traditional lavender herbal, the other a lavender-cranberry tisane. (It's under the heading "Lavender Tea" on the website.  Teas are in the "Culinary" section.)

Since I am in a tea-tasting mood today, I brewed up some of the lavender-cranberry.  The aroma is primarily lavender, with the sharp tart bite of cranberry as an undertone.  The cranberry comes out much more strongly in the flavor.

I made iced tea with half of what I brewed and left the other half for drinking hot.  In iced tea form, it tastes primarily like a gentle cranberry brew, and then the lavender sneaks up on you in the after taste.  Some cranberry teas have the same bitterness as cranberry juice (which I happen to love), but this is a kinder and gentler cranberry.  It's almost mellow -- I think that's the influence of the lavender.  Some people might need sweetener for it nonetheless.  It's a refreshing, palate-cleaning iced tea.

In hot tea form, the cranberry element is noticeably tarter but still not bitter.  The lavender is even more subdued.  I think the hot brew would benefit from some light sweetener.  Overall, I like the iced tea qualities better.

The only down side from this tea is that I now *really* want some lavender shortbread.  :-)

Raspberry Sugar from The Spice and Tea Exchange

+Wendy Marques brought me some raspberry-flavored sugar (sugar and raspberry puree) from The Spice and Tea Exchange some time ago, but I had forgotten about it.   Today, I decided to try it in some Assam.

I don't usually like sweetened tea.  I like tea to taste like tea.  However, one-half teaspoon of the raspberry sugar in 12 oz. of strong Assam managed to invigorate the flavor without being overly sweet.  It didn't have the artificial teeth-smarting sweetness that makes sweet tea so unpleasant to me.  Yes, it was sweet, but almost daintily so.  It tasted more like I'd crushed a raspberry into the brew than like I'd added too much sugar.

The Spice and Tea Exchange website has a number of other flavored sugars for sale.  Next time I have some free cash to spend on tea-related things, I'm going to order some more for taste-testing.

Ooh, they also carry teas.  Definitely an excellent find.

Alys's Tea Party Swag

For those people who love both tea and books, I now have a Zazzle store featuring the quote at the header of this blog:

http://www.zazzle.com/alyss_tea_party_t_shirt-235293320666494500

http://www.zazzle.com/alyss_tea_party_cup_mug-168857033398440745

Tea tasting: Twinings' Prince of Wales

The weather has finally cooled off to the point where a cup of hot tea no longer sounds like a form of self-torture.  Huzzah!

I was in the mood for a black tea, something slightly different than my usual Assams.  And lo, on the shelf at Shop Rite was Twinings' Prince of Wales, billed as a lighter black tea.

According to Twinings, "This tea was specifically created by Twinings for HRH The Prince of Wales in 1921, who later became King Edward VIII. This special blend combines teas carefully selected from the Jiangxi, Anhui and Yunnan provinces in China where their high altitude and mountain mists help protect the tea bush from excessive sunlight, forming conditions ideal for tea leaf and bud development. Joined together with tea from the Hunan province, these teas create an aromatic blend that is brownish-red in color and has a light, mild taste and slightly woody characteristic."

Edward VII, for those of you playing along at home, was the one who abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson.  Don't hold that against the tea.  Interestingly, though, Wikipedia says "Twinings of London . . . has largely withdrawn its Prince of Wales tea from the United Kingdom market although it is still marketed abroad."

Prince of Wales is, as billed, a lighter black tea.  It lacks the intensity of a good, solid Assam or English Breakfast.  It has character, though, which is what matters, and a far superior taste to the standard orange pekoe.   There are flavor notes within the brew, although I'd go with grassy rather than woody to describe them.  It is not nearly as grassy as a green tea, but I would definitely recommend this brew to people who favor green teas.  It would also appeal to someone who likes black Darjeelings but finds them a little too easy to over-brew.   Prince of Wales is a sipping tea, not an "oh my God is it morning give me the caffeine now" tea, but a nice tea nonetheless.

Boozy tea: Queen of Teaba

I played around recently with some vintage 1920s cocktails, including one called a Queen of Sheba:

50 ml / 2 fl oz Sloe gin
50 ml / 2 fl oz Passionfruit juice
2.5 TSP Grenadine
2.5 TSP Lime juice
Champagne or Ginger Ale (because I forgot to buy champagne)

Pour gin, juices, grenadine and ice into cocktail shaker.  Shake and pour into chilled glass.  Top off with champagne or ginger ale for the bubbles.

This cocktail does quite well when mixed half-and-half with a berry-based tea.  We used Twinings' Wild Berries herbal, which is tasty without adding sweetness (a Queen of Sheba really doesn't need *more* sweetness).    I suspect Celestial Seasonings' Wild Berry Zinger would do well, although slightly sweeter.

Awful Coconut-Tea-Water-Thing

Well, that was vile.

ONE has started selling coconut water with tea.   As I tend to like tropical flavors in tea, I thought this sounded interesting and worth a try.   So I picked up the Tropical Colada flavor.

I drink bad tea-related products, so you don't have to.   :-)

Apparently, this stuff is made of coconut water, pineapple juice, passionfruit juice and tea.  I suspect that the mixture of juices was at some point shown a low-rent diner tea bag.  Or perhaps the original fruits were shown the tea bag.   There is no discernable tea or tea-related flavor in this substance.  There is, however, a sort of slimy back-taste that makes me want to scrape the back of my tongue and throat.

I tried mixing the coconut-tea-water stuff with strong black iced tea.   It didn't help.  

I tried mixing it with  a strong tropical green tea.   Nope.  That slimy back-taste just won't quit.

I'm dumping the rest of this stuff down the sink now, hoping that it won't destroy the septic system.