When I first put the water in with this White Pearl tea from Nothing But Tea I was amazed by the beauty of the little pearls unfolding and the little leaves floating around in my teapot. However, it didn’t go well for very long. I put the teapot down and left the tea to brew but after a while I heard a slow drip drip drip drip. I then realised that I hadn’t put my ingenuiTEA teapot down on a properly flat surface. Fail. If you don’t know already, ingenuiTEAs have a valve at the bottom and this is where you empty the tea from but if you don’t put it on a flat surface, something can push the valve open. No matter how much I like tea, my keyboard and laptop are apparently less fond of it… After the less good start, I have to say it was a very very nice tea. It has a mild, slightly grassy, slightly sweet flavour. It’s apparently suitable for multiple infusions, which, having just had a fourth infusion of it, I would very much agree with!
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Snow Dragon tea by Nothing But Tea is a pretty tea. The buds are twisted into little spirals that unravel when steeped in water, leaving you with whole leaves. Its mild flavour is sweet and not at all bitter making it very pleasant to drink. It’s got a slightly grassy taste although it doesn’t have a grassy smell. Once it has brewed the tea is a pale yellowy green colour. I really liked this tea, it’s definitely more of an afternoon tea than a morning tea but I can highly recommend this tea, it really is lovely to drink.
Antlers d’Amour from Nothing But Tea is an unusual tea. Tea normally comes from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant but this actually comes from the stems. It’s apparently Fair Trade (although I wouldn’t know how to check this one). It’s a white tea and it tastes very similar to Ceylon White Silver Tips and it really can be infused multiple times without spoiling the taste (I tried it this afternoon!). Like the Ceylon White Silver Tips, it’s a mild, slightly sweet taste. It’s what I’d consider a relaxing afternoon tea. It’s not got enough caffeine to wake you up, but is very relaxing to drink and has enough caffeine to keep you going. It’s got a slightly grassy taste that I’ve come across with a few (particularly white) teas but without the grassy smell that I don’t particularly like during the peak grass-induced hayfever season!
Green Mate (in this case from Nothing But Tea) is a particularly interesting one. It’s not a tea, it’s a tisane, but it does contain caffeine. Although it only has low levels of caffeine, it does have two other xanthines as well: theobromine and theophylline, so despite being low in caffeine it is high in natural stimulants. It has a weird effect of giving you lots of energy as if you’ve just had a strong coffee but your heart rate doesn’t shoot up like it does with coffee (or at least, this is my experience from drinking this stuff this morning). It wasn’t the nicest thing I’ve ever tasted but it was certainly drinkable and far more pleasant as a natural stimulant (although without the immediate kick I seem to get from coffee).
Nettles? To drink? Isn’t that going to be disgusting? Yup that was pretty much my thought too but nettles are supposed to be high in digestible iron and it has to be better than eating liver, right? So very right! I never expected this to taste remotely good but it really did! This Nettle tisane from Nothing But Tea really surprised me but it did taste really really good. It’s got quite a mild taste too which makes it very easy to drink. This one is definitely well worth a try, especially if you’re anaemic or prone to anaemia, but even if you’re not!
There’s something strange and unexpected about opening your tea (OK, in this case tisane) and finding whole rosebuds. Despite seeing the picture on the website and it saying “rosebuds” I really wasn’t expecting to find whole rosebuds, such tiny little things too, in the packet of organic Rosebuds I bought from Nothing But Tea. There’s something really beautiful about these little rosebuds, sufficiently so that I (quite unusually) gave my teapot and mug (which now looks bright blue instead of brown inside!) a good clean. The taste was very sweet but a little unusual and probably takes a little bit of getting used to. It tastes exactly how roses smell, which possibly shouldn’t have come as a surprise but wasn’t something I was a particular fan of.
This organic Gunpowder tea from Nothing But Tea is a green tea. I hadn’t realised this when I was making it but the pale yellowy green colour along with the lack of any bitterness made me suspect that it probably was and sure enough, when I looked at the website to check, it said it was a green tea.
It has quite a strong flavour (although I did use 1tsp, which is double the recommended quantity for this tea, and then only half filled the mug with water) but it’s a very pleasant and not at all bitter flavour. It is definitely what I’d consider a morning tea (I always prefer slightly stronger tasting teas in the morning).
The dry tea itself is rolled into small pellet type shapes, which is apparently where the name of the tea comes from.
This organic Valerian Root from Nothing But Tea is the first time I’ve come across a it not in tea bags, which is nice if you’re a fan of Valerian Root as you can decide exactly how much you have. The other unusual thing about this is it’s pure Valerian Root, nothing else, you may see this as a good thing or a bad thing. Personally I quite like it.
I didn’t particularly like the taste of it but I didn’t particularly dislike it either. It says it’s “mildly sedative”. I found it more than “mildly” sedative but then again I did use quite a large amount and you could easily just use less of it.
I finally received my tea from Nothing But Tea today, it took a while, which was frustrating because I was really looking forward to the tea, but that was my fault not theirs (tip: it helps if you give them the correct address to post your tea to and correcting the address is done before they tell you they’ve posted it…) but I e-mailed them and they were amazingly helpful so I really can’t fault them. I got 12 teas, all sample sized (cost about £1 each and there was no charge for p&p!) and the samples are all decent sizes. The packaging is good for keeping the tea fresh but I’m not so sure how to reseal it after as they’re not resealable packets so I’m going to try one at a time but I’m very excited about trying them so I’m sure I’ll blog about them all very soon!
This White Peony tea has an almost grassy smell and taste to it, admittedly something I generally like although dislike when my hayfever (to grass) is bad, although that’s probably more of an association thing than a taste thing, as the rest of the year I really love the smell and taste of grassy smelling teas. As you can see from the picture, you can really see whole leaves with this one, which I always really like, not least because people get really curious about teas when they can see whole leaves (if you click on the picture it’ll take you to the tea on the Jing website which gives you more information about the tea). It’s a mild tasting tea that’s very easy to drink. As the name suggests, it’s a white tea. White teas are normally lower in caffeine which this one certainly seems to be (although I have no way of knowing for sure other than a vague idea from drinking it!).
Tea 