Bar Harbor Tea Company: Mango Green

Ohmygod. Smell this. Go on, just stare at the screen as hard as you can and imagine smelling the best thing in the world. Imagine smelling the air right after a magical mango fairy flies by. Imagine smelling Zeus, as he's lounging back on Mount Olympus and sipping mango nectar. Mmmm, Zeus.




I am rashly prepared to award this tea five leaves without even having brewed any, because it smells so amazing. If the infusion tastes even a quarter of how delightful it smells in the tin, I'll be thrilled. Even if it sucks, I'm going to buy more just to smell.

So, I acquired this at a tiny, brightly-lit and sparkling new shop in Bar Harbor, Maine. The shop has only been there for a matter of weeks, but all of the blends I smelled were truly delightful and I carefully carried home a sack of the most unique ones I could find, mostly fall-themed, with which I will entertain you in the following weeks. On to the mango!

As you can sort of see in the picture, there are flowers in the mix (although what type of flowers they might be eludes me, they're orange) and the little delicious mango nuggets are rather moist, very fresh. Did I mention it smells like the angel of mangos? The brewed liquor (which I made an entire pot of, in anticipation) is darker than most greens, beautifully clear, and retains a strong fruity aroma.

First sip: oh. Oh my. Even without the mango, the green tea flavor in this is awesome, deep, complex, grassy in a good way. You can really taste the mango but it's not so overwhelming that the tea flavors fall away into the background. Absolutely beautiful blend - unfortunately, it's fairly unusual to find one that's balanced this well, many fruit teas either go overboard or underboard on the fruit flavor. This is perfect.

Bar Harbor Tea Company is a very new shop, and thus they are still developing their web presence. Their webpage, which is currently just a splash page, is here. The owner told me that they expect to have online retail available in a month or so. I highly encourage you to patronize them as the first company to produce a tea with an aroma that made me caper around my apartment in glee, and I'll be reviewing several of their autumn blends in the coming weeks.

Rating:
Notes: Probably the best fruit tea I've ever tried, high-quality, affordable and delicious. I can't wait until the online store goes up, and you'll see a notification on the blog when that happens.

Numi Dry Desert Lime: Lime Herbal Teasan

Apologies for the two week silence - I was having surgery. The recovery period gave me lots of time to amass more things to drink for you, though.

Today I'm going to be trying a Numi teabag that I received as a free sample at a hippie/environmental conference I attended some time ago - it's called Dry Desert Lime: Lime Herbal Teasan. Lime is one of my favourite flavors, and I love Numi's blends but have never tried one of their tisanes (or "teasans" as they spell it) before. However, tisane might be too strong a term for this one - being it's a TEABAG FULL OF DRIED LIME. That's right, when I flipped it over to check out the ingredients it's only got one. "Ingredients: Dried Lime." I suppose it's then fitting that they used the word "Lime" twice in the name of the tea. I sneezed when I smelled the teabag, but since we here at The Teaist welcome all sorts of wacky things that can be steeped in hot water, I say bring it on!


The flowery back-of-the-wrapper brewing directions instruct me to "Carry fresh water back from the oasis." As I live in Washington, DC, which at this time of year is a hateful blast furnace with no oasis anywhere, my PUR filter will have to do. It's very hot outside, so after steeping I will try the brew both hot and iced.

Weirdly, after putting the water in, it turns the color of brewed oolong. A cautious sip and I make a face like I've just taken a bite of raw warthog. It's so sour I can't unscrew my lips. I never put anything in my teas, but the back of the bag recommends adding a touch of sugar, so I give in and the combination of ice and sugar renders it drinkable.

It has an odd smoky flavor which doesn't really taste like lime, but which is not altogether unpleasant. The first taste is woody and this rapidly develops into an all-encompassing sourness that quickly evaporates, leaving just a wisp of lime flavor in your mouth. It's not bad cold and has a very bracing, astringent quality that I can see being good on hot, slow mornings. It is, however, desperately sour and this is coming from someone who actually eats limes. I drank an entire cup of it iced and I did feel refreshed when I was finished (although possibly thirstier than when I started, due to the astringency). However, this is not going to be one that I reach for on a regular basis. I like the idea of brewing crushed dried lime, but a tisane should stand on its own without me dumping sugar into it.

Numi: Dry Desert Lime, Lime Herbal Teasan

Rating:

Notes: It's full of Vitamin C, which is good, but it's just too sour to really be pleasant and it's not one of Numi's finer moments. Although this tisane was somewhat refreshing and I enjoyed the initial woody notes, it felt so astringent that my mouth was dry when it was all over. You almost need to add sugar just to drink it. I recommend this if you're one of those people who enjoys the feeling of their sour taste buds writhing around.

Adagio Sour Apple Tisane

Yes. I just got a big box of Adagio samples, so we're doing a second Adagio in a row.

I was wary of this one. I tried Adagio's Apple Cantata, their only other apple tisane, a few months ago and the entire experience was about as pleasant as jamming cinnamon sticks up my nostrils and then sticking my head into a giant barrel of rotten apples. Undaunted, I decided to have a go at Sour Apple, which is both better-reviewed and just plain prettier, too.

The tea itself is comprised of actual little chunks of dried apple, which is what the white things are in the picture. It smells absolutely fantastic. There's also (!!) whole dried cranberries in there, and hibiscus flowers. The entire thing looks and smells so awesome that I briefly considered eating it outright, like trail mix. In the end, luckily, I reminded myself that I have a tea blog and not a trail mix blog, and contented myself with eating a few of the apple pieces (which, by the way, were delicious).

Brewing: whoa. During the seven minute steep, the hibiscus flowers immediately turned the infusion a bright, clear red color that reminded me of Tazo Passion but smelled about 100% better. It's literally the color of cranberry juice.

On drinking: This has an outright fabulous flavor. It's very brisk, and just astringent enough to give you a little pucker. It lives up to the name Sour Apple, but it's actually very sweet all on its own without adding any sugar. I rarely add sugar to my infusions, but this is going to be an amazing tisane for people who usually like to add sugar to their tea - you really don't even need any here, the fruit gives it all the sweetness you could want.

Overall, the experience of Sour Apple is about as amazing as walking through an apple orchard on a beautiful October day and suddenly winning a large amount of money. It put me in a great mood and I'm really excited to drink it on chilly mornings when fall comes.

Adagio Sour Apple

Rating:

Notes: Excellent tisane. Perfect for those just beginning to experiment with caffeine-free infusions. If you try this one I recommend putting more in than you think you're going to need, because although it has a fabulous flavor, a fruit tisane is never going to have the punch that tea leaves do. Additionally, it has a fairly decent second brewing, so you get more bang for your buck.

Adagio Apricot Green

I chose Apricot Green for the inaugural review because I was extremely enthusiastic about trying it, since I'm a huge fan of both green teas and apricots and a merging of the two is entirely likely to result in my dancing around my apartment humming a little tune. Adagio's flavored blends can be hit or miss (the rum and banana blends were poorly conceived at best, where values of "poorly conceived" equal "vomitous") but I'm excited about this one, and it's their highest-rated green.

As you can see in the photograph, the loose leaf itself is very beautiful: long broad leaves with a nice deep green color and little slivers of dried apricot. Smelling it is extremely interesting, though - the nose is almost entirely apricot, which is a little odd. If I had my eyes closed I wouldn't be sure there was any actual green tea in the tin, and that Adagio had mistakenly sent me a tin of apricots. Damn - now I'm all hungry.

Green tea means a 3-minute brewing time, but even after the full 3 minutes and completely expanded leaves, the infusion is very light and almost looks like a white tea. It also smells very strongly of apricot, and it's a bright, clear, good-quality liquor.

Sipping it, the apricot taste is a lot less overpowering than it seemed in the tin or even in the pot. It's an extremely light taste: both the green tea and apricot flavors are delicate, and the balance is almost perfect, but the lightness of the infusion is a little disappointing - after the awesome nose, I was expecting the liquor to "pop" with apricot. Next time I might try steeping this one for an extra minute or two to see what happens. GREEN TEA FLAVOR, I CANNOT FIND YOU.

I poured the rest of the Apricot Green over some ice. This is where the summery flavor really shines. It's one of the best greens I've tasted so far for icing, and with the hot weather upon us, I'll be picking up a bigger tin of this to keep a pot of it on hand in the fridge.

Adagio Apricot Green

Rating:

Notes: Smells stronger than it tastes. Would be an excellent tea for beginners, experienced drinkers who like a lighter blend, or those who find plain greens unexciting. It's good hot, but it's great iced.