Apple Oolong sent to Tea Escapade!

Just wanted to post a link to the Apple Oolong review on Tea Escapade -- I loved Tea Logic's Apple Oolong and passed it onto Nikki from Tea Escapade, who posted her review.

For a recap, here's my review: Tea Logic Apple Oolong (5/6)

And here's Tea Escapade's review: Apple Oolong (5/16)

Enjoy! Visit Tea Logic at mytealogic.com!

Inko's White Tea: Honeysuckle (Unsweetened)

Description (from inkos.com): Zero sugar, zero calories...but PLENTY of taste! Inko's Unsweetened Honeysuckle features the fragrant, floral aroma of blooming honeysuckle and an elegant taste that is unlike anything you've ever wrapped your lips around.

Review: I don't normally review bottled beverages, but more and more companies are taking quality teas and turning them into cold, bottled refreshments, so the first contributing company is Inko's White Tea. They sent about 6 different kinds of their white tea, including an energy drink, and the Honeysuckle looked the most appealing and unique. As expected, it is absolutely delicious.

The honeysuckle flavor is surprisingly strong, probably because the white tea is so delicate and light. The tea tastes very light and flowery, and without sugar, the flavors come through even more strongly, with flowery, honeysuckle flavor stepping in where sugar would normally be. This would probably be my regular cold tea if I lived near a place I could buy it in bulk. It's delicious, and flowery, and refreshing. I can't promise to love the fruit-flavored teas quite as much, but this is unique, light and refreshing. It's excellent.

The Good: great flowery, naturally sweet flavor, refreshing tea
The Bad: none
More Information/Buy: Inko's Honeysuckle White Tea

The Tea Table Le Marche Spice Rooibos

Description (from theTeaTable.com): Lots of cinnamon gives this Le Marche Spice Rooibos a wonderful spicy hot character - terrific served hot and sensational served iced - try it as a rooibos latte for super taste. Rooibos with cinnamon, rosehips, dried apple, almond pieces and hibiscus. Caffeine-free.

Review: This blend is excellent. You taste mostly the apple and cinnamon, but you are overwhelmed with cinnamon smells when you open the bag. I would think that the hibiscus would make this tea unattractive to me, but it gives it a light, tart flavor and the apple, cinnamon and rosehips dull down the sour hibiscus enough that this blend is perfectly balanced and pleasant.

I don't know that this makes an incredible dessert tea, and the cinnamon is not spicy, but it's present. On a side note, if you want spicy cinnamon tea, the #1 most incredible spicy cinnamon tea is Harney & Son Hot Cinnamon Spice. That said, the pairing of the fruit, rooibos and cinnamon are great in this tea. Not too strong, not too tart -- incredible balance, combining fruit, spice and tea.

The Good: great apple-cinnamon flavor
The Bad: none, but tea could use more cinnamon if spiciness was desired.
More Information/Buy: The Tea Table Le Marche Spice Rooibos

The Tea Table Belgian Chocolate Rooibos

Description (from theTeaTable.com): Rooibos just got even better with the addition of cocoa bean pieces and calendula petals. Velvety smooth with a nice, rich chocolate flavor. Caffeine-free.

Review: This is delicious. I am not a huge chocolate fan, and so little is needed to make this tea taste chocolatey. It's very smooth, with a nice, mild, chocolate flavor. I taste some mint in this tea, but do not see any mint leaves. It may be an artificial flavor, or I may just be imagining things.

The chocolate is very fresh, and I think this blend is a pretty strong show of the many things you can do with rooibos -- in fact, this is one of the best tasting chocolate teas I've had thus far. It's light and refreshing -- chocolate lovers should not expect something syrupy and strong -- but it has plenty of chocolate flavor and would make a great dessert tea, or a food ingredient.

This kind of blend for a chocolate lover would make a great gift, and these rooibos blends from The Tea Table are pretty well-priced. I'm enthralled currently by Dragonwater's Rooibos Creamy Caramel, but this might make a good next purchase!

The Good: delicious smooth yet zesty chocolate flavor
The Bad: none!
More Information/Buy: The Tea Table Belgian Chocolate Rooibos

Teavana Dao Ren Mao Feng Green

Description (from Teavana.com): This exceptionally high quality green tea is from the famous "Dao Ren Peak" in Zhejiang Province of China, and is ideal for the novice as well as the seasoned tea connoisseur.

Dao Ren is named for the Dao (Taoist) priests who meditated upon the mountain in ancient times and cultivated the tea garden with the most careful and loving practices. The Dao Ren monastery cultivated these prized leaves for their own use, but now share their rare famous tea with the world. This tea yields a naturally sweet infusion with fruity and nutty notes.

Review: I am not sure what this means, but when you steep these leaves, you get this foamy, frothy stuff on the surface of the water, which is kind of strange...or bad...or, I don't know. It may mean nothing. I've never seen tea froth before, so I can't really pass judgment.

First, I think that Teavana's point that this tea is good for novice or connoisseur is surprisingly precise. This tea has that pungent China green smell that I detest (opposed to the fishy Gyokuro smell that I also can't stand), but this tea tastes infinitely better than it smells, and it's rare to find a tea that only has the pungency in smell and not in taste.

This tea tastes grassy, with light woodiness and some of that wet taste often found in lower grown teas. The taste is not incredibly strong, but this is a tea that will absolutely turn bitter if you oversteep, albeit not as painfully bitter as sencha. You could probably still drink this if you oversteeped -- the leaves are wiry and thin, hard, like many mountain teas. There are 0 fruit notes in this tea, but I will agree with the nuttiness. It has a touch of Zhejiang smokiness, too.

Overall, not excellent, but certainly not bad: Dao Ren is a good green tea. This is a great choice for a beginner, someone who is getting into green tea. It's fairly complex, not overwhelming, and it's difficult to screw up too badly when you steep, and it's a good step middle point, where the next transition would be sencha, Gyokuro, or high grown China mountain tea.

Pros: good flavors, good in-between tea that isn't too strong but not too mild
Cons: pungent odor
More Info/To Purchase: Dao Ren Mao Feng Green