Shanti Tea

Ozli was right. There’s little to no maple flavour in this. It’s good, with the slightest touch of sweetness, but compared to 52 Teas Pancake Breakfast, or that other maple tea I just had this might as well be a strong black.

I did steep it for an extra minute – will try it for 3 minutes next time and see if that helps.

The base tea is so very smooth and I love it for that. I’m a wimp when it comes to astringency.

I’m glad I held off on rating this – I’m enjoying this far more this time around. Actually, with all the berry notes, and the ultra-smoooooth base, this is very comparable to Adagio’s TARDIS Blend! Except maybe smoother. And cheaper to buy/ship.

I love the golden amber liquor. This is a pretty tea, and and it tastes as good as it smells. I could see this becoming a regular.

I wonder if the extra 30s brewing helped subdue the bergamot, or if I was just ‘off’ when I tried it before.

Thanks ozli!

I think I’m too sensitive to bergamot right now. This one tastes like perfume a little too. I can smell the raspberry, but I’m only getting a bit in the infusion. Will rate later on.

I was afraid of the hibiscus but it’s not too bad in this one. The Cranberry and Orange paired with the rooibos works well. It’s not as tart as I thought it would be considering the ingredients. I’m not sure if I would have called this one Santa’s Little Helper but then again I don’t know what I would have called it either.

It’s tasty. I think it’s mostly the cran-orange as to why I am digging it. It’s pretty good.

I kind of thought this was a green tea at first. It even sort of tastes like it or at least a cross between a green and oolong. While being still true to the base it has a nice flavor…sweet, gingery, apple, NICE!

It also reminds me of a Scentsy Flavor of Wax Melt I have burning in my house at the present time.

This is delightful!

This is so different but darn tasty!
It has both black tea as well as pu-erh notes to it (enough tho I don’t see pu-erh in the actual ingredient list). It has lovely creamy-vanilla notes but also various spices. The spices aren’t overly spicy tho. There are beautiful orange highlights as well as perfumy floral touches thru-out the sip. It’s also reminiscent of egg nog at times, too!

Super creative!
I like this more than I anticipated.

Oh.My.Gawd!
YUMSVILLE!

The aroma of this is amazing! Juicy-sweet strawberry, Smooth and Sweet Chocolate, Hearty Mocha/Coffee! WOW!

The flavor is wonderful, too! All of the above in addition to semi-smoky Oolong!

It’s sweet, it’s juicy, it’s smooth, it’s slighty smoky, it’s coffee-bean, it’s a DREAM.

This is TOP NOTCH and takes you on a flavorful RIDE! LOVE it!

Sipdown!

Goodbye Winter Wonderland! Maybe I’ll see you next year! That and your creamy spicy vanilla goodness…. Mmmm

Here’s another one from ozli. It was pretty essential to try today due to the eggnog smell.

This is pretty great. It’s slightly creamy, with lots of vanilla notes, and eggnog spices rolling around in each sip. It makes me think of what I imagine warmed eggnog would taste like. I think it might even be better than my DTT Winter Nog, but that’s rooibos so not really comparable.

Another tea that I’m tasting too late … Shanti appears to have discontinued this tea as well.

This is really quite a unique tea. I like the way the flavor of the raisin works with the flavor of the white tea. Delicate, sweet … like that sugary sweet raisin-y sweet, but, it isn’t too much … it’s a very delicate sweetness that is similar to the overall delicate flavor of the tea itself. Notes of flower sort of dance at the tip of my tongue.

A really lovely tea – I really like it for its uniqueness. It’s quite unlike any tea that I’ve tried.

Thank you TeaEqualsBliss for sending me a bit of this chai. I visited the Shanti Tea website and I can’t find it … it must be discontinued already.

This blend has a lot of lemon grass in the blend … something I mention only because I don’t think that my SororiTea Sister, Azzrian, would be happy about that. :)

The aroma of the brewed tea is ANISE-y! Yay! I love anise. I also smell hints of clove and citrus, but the primary scent is anise.

The taste … it’s surprisingly smooth. I guess I expected more tartness or something from this tea called Lemon Chai, but, it is a smoother, sweeter lemony note, with only a slight twinge of tartness arriving on the palate in the finish.

And the anise is strong here! Yippee! I love this blend. Boo hoo! It’s not on the website any longer.

I am glad that I got to try it though. The black tea is smooth yet strong, pleasing notes of anise, clove, and citrus. I don’t get a lot of the elderberry here, perhaps though, it is the elderberry that provides that twinge of tartness, because as I explore that a little more, it does seem to be more of a berry tartness than a lemony one.

Very nice.

Last bit of Winter Wonderland! .___.

I think this is my favourite winter/xmas tea blend. I just love the soft noggy smell (way more than actual egg nog)..

Haven’t logged much tea lately because I haven’t HAD much tea lately! Has been all Timmy’s coffee and colas and gingerbread spice lattes from Starbux :P but I’m enjoying a well-earned break right now. New beds tomorrow means moving all the beds and cleaning everything TODAY. Sigh.

Oh hey, this tea has a really nice egg noggy aftertaste, too. :D

When dry, it smells exactly like egg nog! Then mostly cloves/black tea after steeping. Sadness. Yummy though; I like it with a bit of sugar.

I got to try this tea as a prize sample at one of Shanti’s tea tasting seminars (otherwise I’m not sure I could justify spending $40-something on a sample!)

It is delightful! I love this tea, it is soft and delicate with a slight grassy note and a sweet and smooth finish. I tried multiple infusions at only 30 seconds steeping time each. The taste did not vary much, other than become lighter, but I did notice by the third infusion the grassy-ness was gone, all I wast tasting was a sweet and delicate white tea.

I think I could have experimented more with the time, 1 minute for the first infusion is pretty short. I was able to get a very nice taste from that 1 minute infusion. Perhaps I will try again and repost.

I would recommend this tea if you are looking for something truly exquisite and are willing to pay ;)

Yum! The maple smells amazing. I’m not getting a lot of smoked anything, although I do tend to not pick up on a lot of the more subtle aspects of tea. So it’s probably there, I suppose it’s just getting a kick out of playing hide and seek with my tongue. Which is just fine with me, I can play with maple instead. It’s all good. This is very very nice, smooth and a bit sweet. Makes the toes curl and the mouth smile.

Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending me a bit of this tea. I don’t see this tea on the Shanti Tea website any more, I guess it’s been discontinued?

This is pretty good … not my favorite grapefruit tea, but, I like what I’m tasting. It has a pleasantly tart taste with the bitter grapefruit notes to make it taste quite true to the fruit. I like it.

Bold flavors characterize this as a unique green tea which isn’t afraid to be flavorful. Prone to grassy overtones, but with complexity apparent at warmer temperatures. Can stand up well to a second steeping. Darker flavors are reminiscent of the Darjeeling region, but behaves like a green in terms of tannin and delicate flavors. Care should be taken not to oversteep past 3 minutes, and too avoid too much heat.

Thank you LiberTEAS for sending me this tea!

Nothing too elaborate to report on the smell of this dry. Smells exactly how it looks, which could be a good thing.

First steep I did one minute : A nice light color that I enjoyed. It smells and tastes light also, but not light in a bad way. Light in a it’s getting late and I’m enjoying a nice light cup of tea to round out the day. Strange because others described this as “musky” or “strong”. It’s probably because I only steeped it for one minute, but sometimes I actually appreciate a nice light cup. You can taste some of the more subtle aspects of the tea this way. I love the vegetal quality of this tea. It’s very refreshing.

Second steep I did two minutes : Wow. This tastes like an entirely different tea! It’s much stronger this time. No lightness to this cup. It’s slightly “sharp” if that makes any sense, but not to the point that this cup isn’t enjoyable. I’m getting more of the smoky aftertaste with this cup than the last one, but I think I enjoyed the first steep better. This cup certainly isn’t bad, and I won’t have any trouble finishing it, but the first cup was so much more delicate and I appreciated that tonight.

Decided to finish up this sample by making a pitcher of iced tea. Still meh. Again, it’s not bad; it’s just not remarkable in any way. It’s probably marginally better as a hot tea. I’m glad I got this out of my cupboard before the new teas from 52teas and Red Leaf get here. (I really have to stop buying more and start drinking more.)

Meh. I love Rooibos teas, and I generally love vanilla flavoured teas. This just didn’t stand out for me. Don’t get me wrong, this tea is good. The sweetness of the rooibos and the vanilla both come out in the brewed tea. I just feel I’ve had better.

Thank you, TeaEqualsBliss for including this in our trade! This is one of the few green teas I have in my cupboard. I guess I just don’t find them as interesting as other types of teas. But this green tea is GOOD. First of all, I wonder why it is called darjeeling? I thought that was associated with black tea. The flavor of this one is almost like a buttery, nutty oolong. The description calls it simple, but I’d call it complex. Definitely much less simple than a typical green tea! It actually reminds me of my favorite tea that I’ve tried: SpecialTeas Vienna Winter Green. The Vienna blend has a ton of awesome ingredients I thought was enhancing the plain green tea, like roman chamomile and pistachio. BUT it seems like this could be the base for that one. Some of the flavors that I associated with the Vienna ingredients could have just been the green tea by itself! (Meaning the base for the Vienna is much less plainer than I thought.) This is one of the best green teas I’ve tried (though that ain’t many!) Also, I was just looking at some of Shanti’s other teas on Steepster and some of them are interesting… I’m going to have to search for their site right now!

Oooooh, I really hate saying this. I made some Tulsi India Chai yesterday, and I so did not like it. It was more minty than spicy; the mintiness overpowered the earthiness that I found the last time I drank a tulsi tea. This is just a bad mix for me :(