I’ve been mostly finishing up the opened teas in my stash, but I have been trying some new teas. They’re mostly samples so I don’t have enough thoughts about them to make a full post for each tea, instead, here are some quick reviews:

Mosa Tea’s No. 18 Ruby Red Tea

This one is interesting because it’s not actually for sale yet! Cher got this from a Taiwanese farmer who’s thinking of going into the consumer market. I really liked the leaffree No. 18 that I got from a previous exchange so I was really excited for this – unfortunately, this one didn’t have any oomph. I wonder if it’s because it’s in teabags? The teabags are pyramidal which probably give the most room for the leaves to unfurl out of all the other teabag designs, but perhaps that’s still not enough.

Twinings Digest

I actually bought these for my friends but there were a few leftover. This wasn’t as fruity as I expected – I think the minty taste (sensation? Is minty even a taste?) was the predominant note in this tea. There was some apple, but mostly the sweetness.

Twinings Sleep

Another one of the teas I originally bought for my friends, the description of the tea didn’t instill me with much confidence. It’s a bit much in terms of ingredients (for me, anyway). Luckily, the vanilla was mostly in the fragrance and the actual tea liquor tasted mostly like camomile. I can’t say if it helped my sleep but I definitely preferred the Digest tea.

Mosa Tea’s Oriental Champagne

Another Mosa tea! I liked this one a lot better than the No 18 Ruby Red – it was actually fairly sweet and pleasant to drink. I would really like to get more of these teas so that I can sit down and have a proper tea session – I feel like they could be really good, but tea bags are definitely not the best way to assess that!

Kindred Teas’ Rooibos Orange

This was one of the samples from the STF VIP bag! This is a pretty nice tisane – the orange notes were strong and clear. The flavours of the rooibos weren’t as strong in comparison but it wasn’t too lopsided. I can see this working really well as a cold-brew tea and it’s something to keep in mind if I need to buy a tisane for friends (or myself).

I actually have a lot more samples from the STF VIP bag that I haven’t opened or tried, so I’ll probably be jotting down my thoughts as I slowly try them and will finish another quick tea review post in a month or two. One mistake I made was to write down my thoughts on the notes app, which is okay for tracking the reviews but makes the scrolling through and uploading pictures a pain – I’m definitely just going to upload, write, and save as draft as I try each sample for the next post.