Author: Michelle

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Lemon Lily’s Summer Splash

Summer Splash by Lemon Lily
Herbal Infusion / Flavoured
$9.00 for 50g

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Lemon Lily’s Summer Splash came to me as part of The Sugared Teacup’s July themed subscription box.

First Impressions

Summer Splash came to me in a nice white, resealable bag. I’m a fan of packaging that is useful, so the seal is always appreciated. When I opened the bag, the first thing I smelled was berries and then there was a hint of lemongrass. This tea has some heavy ingredients! I estimate that I could probably get about ~3 teapots worth of tea from this bag (25g). Summer Splash is a special Canada 150 Celebration tea.

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Summer Splash is made up of: organic elderberries, organic hibiscus, organic lemongrass, organic lemon peel, organic orange and orange peel, organic currents and organic raisins. As per their website Lemon Lily is a certified organic tea company (located in Canada!) that uses all 100% certified organic ingredients. I’ve classified this herbal infusion as being ‘flavoured’ as opposed to ‘straight’ because it contains more than one ingredient (which is my usual requirement to be labelled as straight).

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Preparation

Lemon Lily recommends steeping Summer Splash in 200°F (93°C) water for 4-6 minutes. My initial steep of Summer Splash was for 5 minutes.

First Taste

Summer Splash steeps to a bright ruby red, it’s so pretty! The aroma of this tea is primarily berries with some hibiscus in it. When I sipped this tea, the only thing that went through my mind was it was very tart. Quite a bit of mouth puckering going on for me when I sipped this. With the addition of honey, the tartness toned down a lot and I could taste the citrus flavours in it, as well as the berry flavour. I did not really like this tea hot, but Lemon Lily does list Summer Splash under their iced teas, so I poured it out into a bottle to chill in the fridge. Verdict? It’s incredible iced – the level of fruitiness is just where I like it for an iced tea and it has a refreshing quality to it.

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A Second Cup?

I attempted to resteep Summer Splash and found the second steep to be a bit lacking in terms of flavour. It was missing the intensity of hibiscus and citrus that I found in the first steep.

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My Overall Impression

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I liked Lemon Lily’s Summer Splash. I think this herbal infusion is destined to be an iced tea only, and would highly recommend either cold steeping it or chilling it down with some ice cubes. It’s just so much better cold than it is hot (Lemon Lily clearly has the right idea since they list it under their iced teas). I find that the hibiscus can be overwhelmingly tart if you don’t do anything after the infusion is done. I would highly recommend adding some kind of sweetener to help tone down the tartness, it really helps to allow you to realize the other flavours in there. Overall, I think it makes a fantastic iced tea, but it just needs a little help in making it palatable.

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Pluck’s The Canada 150 Blend

The Canada 150 Blend by Pluck
Black Tea / Flavoured
$8.00 for 50g

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Pluck’s The Canada 150 Blend came to me as part of The Sugared Teacup’s July themed subscription box.

First Impressions

I’ve always been a sucker for good packaging, and Pluck does pass the test in that regard. A simple foil-and-plastic bag, it does the trick to keep the tea from getting stale due to exposure to air. The nice thing is that there is some of the tea that is visible on the clear side, so you can see what you’re getting. I really like the themed label – the red and white with the maple leaves just scream Canada to me, so it’s really nice to see.

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The Canada 150 Blend is made up of: black tea, sunflower petals, safflower petals, and natural flavouring. According to the product page on the Pluck website, the ‘natural flavouring’ is “natural caramel cream flavouring”. The smell of the dry leaf is primarily the black tea base. The tea has a sweetened aroma to it, which I’ll chalk up to the added flavouring, while the black tea base reminds me a lot of a straight breakfast tea – it’s generally has a bold, strong aroma to it that has just a hint of malty flavour in the fragrance.

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Preparation

Pluck recommends steeping The Canada 150 Blend in 100°C (212°F) water for 5 to 7 minutes. I honestly thought 7 minutes was a bit much, so my initial steep was for just 5 minutes.

First Taste

The Canada 150 Blend steeps to a really nice golden red, the colour was more intense in my teapot than in my teacup for sure. It has a nice malty aroma to it that was quite inviting. On first sip, I’m really glad that I did not opt to steep for the upper end of the recommended steep time (7 minutes) because I found that the aftertaste of each sip to be on the just a little bit bitter side. This tea could probably stand to be steeped for a shorter amount of time (perhaps 4 minutes?), just to avoid that aftertaste. I would describe this black tea blend as being strong – it has quite a bold, malty flavour to it, with just a hint of astringency in each sip. I would liken it to being very similar to a traditional English Breakfast tea. The one thing that does set it apart is just a touch of creamy sweetness that blends in well with the malty flavour. I think we can thank the caramel flavouring for that.

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I tried this tea also with some added honey and evaporated milk – the honey helped bring out more of the flavouring out of the caramel, and the milk helped to temper the bitter aftertaste. All in all, I think the tea accepts a bit of help quite easily and it makes for a tastier cup of tea if you accidentally oversteep it.

A Second Cup?

I resteeped The Canada 150 Blend twice (three steeps total). I found the flavouring to be fairly similar to the first steep for the first resteep, but the flavour just fell flat for the second resteep. Overall, I would say that The Canada 150 Blend is good for one more steep.

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My Overall Impression

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I liked Pluck’s The Canada 150 Blend. I love all things Canadiana, so it’s probably not too big of a surprise that I did like this tea. I’m always a fan of solid black teas, and this one has a bit of a twist to it (with the caramel flavouring), but I found that it held up really well to the addition of sweetener and some evaporated milk. I think if you’re a fan of breakfast teas, you’ll probably like this one as well – it has a strong, bold flavour profile. It’d be a good tea to replace your morning cup of coffee with, or to serve with an afternoon tea if you’re looking to change things up from the tea time staple of Earl Grey. This black tea blend smells amazing, and it does taste quite good. I would just recommend watching the steep times (try 4 minutes and go up from there, I think you’d be woefully disappointed if you started at 7 minutes).

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Living Leaf Tea’s Gong Mei White Tea

Gong Mei White Tea by Living Leaf Tea
White Tea / Straight
$14.95USD for 30g

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Living Leaf Tea has provided me with Gong Mei White Tea for the purposes of providing an honest review. I received this product at no charge to me and received no other compensation.

First Impressions

Gong Mei White Tea is possibly one of the most minimally processed teas that I’ve ever had the pleasure of steeping. This tea came to me in a resealable white bag with a simple label. “100% Organic High Mountain Tea” is printed just under the Living Leaf Tea name and I just know it’s going to be good. This Gong Mei White Tea is a straight white tea from Yunnan, China.

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The dry leaf is beautiful. Unlike other teas that I’ve tried in the past, this one has these beautiful unrolled leaves. I can see fuzzy feathering on the leaves, and several pieces are two leaves and a bud – the ideal tea leaves. This tea is hand picked, and I believe it given the care with each piece. The dry leaf has a very mild fragrance to it – it has a natural sweetness to it that reminds me of apples.

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Preparation

There were no steeping instruction in either the packaging or the product page on the Living Leaf Tea website, so I opted to follow the steeping guidelines for white teas from the Tea Association of Canada. I steeped this beautiful straight white tea in 80°C (185°F) for an initial steep of 2 minutes.

First Taste

After a short two minute steep, Gong Mei White Tea looks like a barely tinted water. The colouring is so pale that I almost thought I forgot to actually steep leaves! Luckily, what it lacked in colour was greatly made up for in taste. This white tea has a light sweetness to it, and a fruity flavour. It reminds me greatly of apples still, which is lovely because I do like apples. The tea itself is very light and has a very clean taste to it. I found there was no bitterness, no astringency, just a sweet and light liquor.

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A Second Cup?

I resteeped Gong Mei White Tea fourteen times (so fifteen steeps total). The tea gets consistently darker and more golden until about the eighth steep, after that it starts getting paler. The tea has a lovely sweetness to the apple flavour that holds well until the fifteenth steep. The tea develops a thickened mouthfeel to it by the sixth steep, which paired well with the honey sweetness of the apple flavours in this straight white tea. Near the end, I was pouring excess tea from my teapot into a pitcher to put into the fridge for iced tea (spoiler alert: it makes an excellent iced tea).

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My Overall Impression

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I loved Living Leaf Tea’s Gong Mei White Tea. It’s rare that I come across a tea that is such high quality and holds up so well to many resteeps, let alone a total of 15 steeps of the same leaves. This tea was a joy to have over a morning (and an afternoon). For the price of the tea, I do think that you get much more value than what you pay for. The flavour of Gong Mei White Tea is lovely, the colouring is beautiful. I really like teas that can be steeped and resteeped again, especially when the texture and flavours subtly change – and this tea really delivers on that. While I really enjoyed Gong Mei White Tea as a hot tea, it also did very well iced, so if you’re finding that you don’t want to (or are just unable to…) have more than a dozen steeps of this tea in a day, you can always steep some to save for later.

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