Gwendalina's Baked Apple

Sigh.

This is going to be a bit of a teaplz Manifesto, and a reflection of my tea journey so far, so I apologize in advance for the rambling. Actually, I don’t apologize, since I mainly write these entries for myself.

I feel as if I’m come a long way since my first sip of loose leaf just a few short months ago. I’ve tried lots of different kinds of tea, from several different companies. I’ve become friends with a lot of wonderful people here, who have opened my eyes even further to what tea could be, what tastes good, and what I might actually be interested in. I’ve felt myself evolve already, and start to become more solidly what type of tea drinker I am to become.

That being said, let’s take a look at my TeaGschwendner order. Back just a month or so ago, when I ordered these teas, I was terribly excited in the newness and novelty of it all! Tea that tastes like almond cookies and apple pie and bacon! All sorts of desserts and flavors and exotic items steeping up in a beverage! The sheer expanse of flavor profiles and different odd things was just plain exciting to me. Of COURSE I had to order Chili-Chocolate tea and strawberry tea with pepper flavoring. Bring it on!

But now, the novelty has worn off. Having been exposed to companies like Samovar, Golden Moon, and Rishi, my tastes have changed. The more quality flavored tea and regular plain-old tea I have, the more I crave that more than the way wacky stuff. Almond Cookie by SpecialTeas, by the way, is still an amazing flavored tea. Ranked up there with some of the best I’ve had. But I find myself more and more preferring flavors that … occur naturally. Like jasmine or orange or ginger. Stuff that occurs naturally instead of mimicking other flavors. I want natural flavors. Robust flavors.

But I also want tea. And after all, that’s what brought me here, right? Tea. Sure, there’s a lot of fun in novelty-style tea, but then the shine and newness of it wears off, and then there’s almost a weariness. A battle and toil to finish that sample, to trudge through that cup. I really dislike the feeling, and honestly, it’s weighing me down.

So let’s get to Gwendalina’s Baked Apple. It shares a problem that a lot of TeaGschwendner’s flavored teas I’ve sampled have: amazing smell, and lack of flavor. I can’t speak for some of TG’s more quality offerings, of course. They’re a huge company with a vast variety of teas. For all I know, I’ve just chosen cheap and affordable teas from them that just don’t really suit my taste the way that I thought they would.

This one smells like an apple pie pulled right out of the oven. I can smell completely the crust and the cinnamon and the almonds. The apples smell sweet and freshly cooked, oozing in their syrup. It smells amazing.

So I get out a level teaspoon, and steep this up. TG recommends boiling water, but with green tea mixed with black here, I went for a bit lower than that. The resulting infusion was a nice yellow color, and the smell coming off it was a liquid version of the dry leaf. It almost reminds me of when Snapple had their apple pie flavor. Does anyone remember that?

Unfortunately, the flavors aren’t nearly as potent and exciting as they smell. They’re all there, but they’re very faint and non-descript. I catch hints of apple and almond, mixed with an almost crust-like, bake-y flavor, but none of it combines together in an exciting way. The tea base itself tastes fairly weak and unexciting. It doesn’t have enough body and oomph to support the generally weak flavor. So while it doesn’t taste bad, by any means, it’s severely disappointing when compared to the smell.

Not all crazily-flavored teas fall into this category! Take Almond Cookie, for example. Its smell and its taste are pretty damned close, yet it manages to incorporate a tea-like base as well. It manages to be robust and subtle and entirely sippable. And each sip surprises me with the pastry-like intenseness of cookies. I get none of that here, which really makes me sad.

Yes, I think I’ve moved away from exotic-flavored teas. Give me a regular old flavored tea that isn’t overly ambitious, that just tries to do a flavor well. I actually really enjoy more than anything picking out flavor notes in non-flavored teas. Plain tea. The original. It’s so much more exciting to pull, say, a caramel note out of a keemun, than actually drink down a caramel tea.

So it’s a bit of a jaded teaplz here, with quite a bit of unsatisfying tea. Time to give it away? Time to order stuff that suits my tastes a bit more? We shall see.

So I managed to somehow spill most of my little sample bag all over the kitchen floor. I don’t seem to be having all that great of luck today. I guess I shouldn’t say that though because I did end up with enough tea left to make a good-sized cup so it could have been worse!

This brews up surprisingly dark. It looks like spiced cider but smells like apple cobbler without the crust and strong on the cinnamon. Very apple. Very baked apple. Definitely not fresh apple.

I got distracted while I let it cool so oops on that but still, taste-wise, it’s pretty much what it sets out to be. Apple and cinnamon and tea. I’m totally missing the almond it says is in here though. Perhaps that was added to give it a crust-ish flavor? I’m pretty much missing out on anything-crust related but I do get baked apple. It says it is baked apple, I believe it. Now, if it said Baked Apple Pie, I would have said it was fibbing, but it didn’t so I won’t. It’s not quite sweet enough to be the innards of an apple cobbler, but with a little sprinkle of sugar it might match almost exactly.

I shared some with the husband – at first sniff he asked me if this was a Celestial Seasonings blend because it smelled like it had fruit in it. And when he sipped he said it tasted like a cinnamon apple fruit mix. So yeah, pretty cinnamon apple!

Overall though, I can’t really get behind this. It seems sorta… boring. I mean, sure it’s accurately flavored (the most accurate of the TeaGermanname teas I’ve had so far). But it’s just a bit too mild and the flavor doesn’t really develop from start of sip to finish so it just seems a little… boring. No nuances (that I can pick out – maybe it’s just me) or flavors layered upon flavors. The flavors don’t dance or twirl or flitter around each other. All the little flavors are just crammed together in a box, sitting cross-legged and pouting. And personally, I’d rather the tea be given a little room to dance.

3.5g/8oz

I’m surprised people do not like this tea, it’s been really great tea for me. It’s good as straight, good as milk tea. It has very sweet scent of apple pie. Although I must say it can be tricky to brew it right. I went through couple of trials to bring the full taste out.

Got this as a sample. I couldn’t taste much apple, almonds, or even cinnamon, extremely weak. teaplz pretty much sums it up, all smell, no flavor! Though the blend of green and black was nice, it supposes to taste like a baked apple? It doesn’t, not even close to it.

Wow, surprised no one cares for this tea. Yes, it smells amazing-could be a potpourri of apple and cinnamon. I tasted the apple, cinnamon, and tea all pretty well and they seemed nicely balanced and flavorful. Better with a teaspoon of sugar, but tried not to do that too often. I liked to use this as an after dinner dessert tea in the fall-goes great with a graham cracker dipped in it (the missing crust!). When spring comes around it feels a little heavy and tastes out of place-so don’t overbuy.

Advent day 19. Who is Gwendalina and what’s up with her baked apple? There is another tea company that has a tea under the same name. Huh. I feel like I may have steeped this at too high of a temp. The apple was subtle for most of the cup and came out more as the cup cooled. It was an okay cup.

This is a wonderful dessert or afternoon tea. If you’re looking to cut back on sweets and desserts, this should be your go-to tea. It’s tastes like apple pie, but on the sweeter end. I don’t need any sugar or milk, it is very nice without anything added. I find that it cannot be over-steeped as well. I’ll need to go back to my local shop and pick up more before they sell out!

Bought this at the tea festival in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago because it smelled amazing. The taste is pretty good too. It’s like I’m drinking a baked apple tart. I can taste the apple. I can taste the cinnamon. The only thing I would say is the flavoring is so strong I can’t taste the green and black teas in the background. This is excellent. So far Tea Gschwender is two for two. I bought two teas from them and they were excellent. Makes me want to put in an order. I don’t know where they ship from.

I steeped this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 185 degree water for 3 minutes.

Still good! My office-supply is running low, but I have more at home – and a good thing, that, as it’s only available in winter…

This tea is pretty good (thanks carol who for the sample!)~

I think I might prefer the Roasted Apple from Della Terra, but this is still quite nice. I love the smell of it when brewing. It is very warm and smells purely of apple with a little bread and spice at the end. If apple pie (the tart, refreshing kind) were a tea, this would be it!