Loose Leaf Tea Tin

As an avid tea drinker, I have tried so many different tea brands and flavors. Not all teas are created equal. I find with many fruit flavored green teas, they can come across very artificial tasting. I haven't had one tea that I found, that I just had to repurchase. Until now! The blackberry Bellini green tea from Tiesta is the most delicious, fragrant tea I have had. The quality is genuinely unmatched. Zero artificial taste. You can taste the blackberry, and citrus shine through in every sip. The same day I got this, I stopped at a specialty tea store, and purchased multiple different flavored teas. Unfortunately for them, not a one compares to this tea, as I had planned to go back and be a regular customer. But this tea, is one I will be stuck on for a while. I will be ordering another flavor asap. Excited to try them all! Also, you cannot beat the resealable container. I love that little touch because it really attributes to the longevity of the tea freshness. Honestly, you need to try this tea.

First I ordered this tea a year ago and it promptly got pushed to the back of a very dark cabinet where it was forgotten until today. The only good thing about this, the tea was stored in a cool dark place. The packaging is EXCELLENT. Opening this bag for the first time, the hit from the jasmine & tea fragrance was strong. If the tea did deteriorate significantly during storage it must have started out as one of the strongest jasmine teas I've ever purchased in this price range. Also, the long storage period would encourage bugs to appear if any eggs had been trapped along with the tea. No sign of bugs. Whew! Obviously they cleaned the tea properly. Second the flavor of the brewed tea is everything I'd hoped for. I prefer green teas and this had it. The jasmine was intense. There was also just of hint of bite from the tea which tells me this tea is minimally processed. What do I mean by minimally processed? Some teas are pre-washed. You can do this at home by tossing tea leaves into a bowl of cold water, swishing rapidly and tossing the water. You want to do this because there might be dirt or insects if the stuff has come straight from the fields. Normally I am happy if the manufacturer pre-washes the tea. Finding bugs in my tea is disconcerting even if I do know how to clean up the tea. Some manufacturers also pre-brew their tea. You pre-brew tea by pouring hot water over the leaves for a very short period of time (about 5-20 seconds) and then tossing the hot water. Pre-brewing is a quick and dirty way to lower the caffeine content of tea. The caffeine extracts faster than the rest of the tea. But pre-brewing does affect the flavor of the tea. It will extract the compound in the tea that makes your throat scratchy and which gives the tea a bitter "bite". This smooths out the flavor of your tea. It will also extract some but not all of the bright green flavor of the tea making it taste flatter and washed out. If you choose to pre-brew, you can partially overcome the impact on the flavor by using more tea leaves. If you purchase the cheapest supermarket tea and it doesn't have any bite then by golly the manufacturer has pre-brewed your tea. I can't stand teas that have been pre-brewed by someone else. I am perfectly capable of doing this myself. The tea may be much smoother but no matter how much tea you use, you can never recover the full flavor profile of the tea. Since my memory for taste seems quite good, no matter how long I drink the pre-brewed tea I never get used to the missing flavors. Why do manufacturers pre-brew tea? They are trying to fake the flavor of extremely high end teas. High end teas are naturally much smoother than cheap teas. The difference is phenomenal. High end teas are also intensely flavored. You can brew the tea leaves 3-5 times and still have a flavorful cup. But such teas cost $200 a pound or more. By faking the smoothest of high end teas, manufacturers can take really cheap, harsh teas and raise the price significantly. The give away is the tea is smooth but tastes oddly flat. Since smoothing out the flavor of your tea is a piece of cake and under my control if I choose to pre-brew, I infinitely prefer minimally processed (aka, traditionally processed) teas over some chi-chi brand that's taking the cheapest tea they can find, pre-brewing, jacking up the price and trying to pass themselves off as purveyors of fine teas. How can you detect these fakes? Just grab any really cheap harsh tea and trying some aggressive pre-brewing. This works best with the cheapest, harshest and strongest teas because this kind of tea survives the pre-brewing best. It might still have some flavor left. I used to do this with Lipton but it won't work now because they are pre-brewing their tea. Once you learn the difference between authentic flavor and pre-brewed flavors, you should be able to spot pre-brewed teas blind. If you try this with extremely high end teas, there isn't much harshness to start with and you end up stripping flavor away from your extremely expensive tea. What is the point? If you need a point of reference for high end teas then I suggest you find your local high-end tea purveyor which offers tastings. The other way to easily detect how tea changes as you brew is to switch to the Asian method of brewing tea. Start with a lot of tea about 3-4x more than the Western method. Brew the tea fast about 20-60 sec. Repeat for as many times as the leaves still have flavor (anywhere from 2x-5x depending on the tea). Taste the difference in flavors between the different brews. This will train you to detect subtle differences between the brews. [The western method uses less tea and you steep longer closer to 2-3 minutes]. Of course once you train your palate to this level of discrimination, it is really hard to go back and you might end up as fussy about tea as me. But you'll be able to spot pre-brewed tea in a heartbeat. BTW, the Tiesta tea survives this about 2-3x before it washes out (I prefer punchy flavors so 2x). On the global scale of all teas I've ever tasted it don't rank well but for the price, it's exactly what I'd expect. Overall the flavor of this tea is authentic green tea & jasmine, it's a good value for the price, it is bitter and has some bite to it but not the worst I've ever experienced. Your throat will get a bit scratchy if you drink more than 2 strong cups of it at a time. But now you know how to deal with that. Or just use less tea to start and brew normally.

Strawberry Pineapple Green is my all time favorite tea. If you like natural, light fruity flavors this is a great tea. For health reasons if you want to add lemon, do it after the steep. Adding before will ruin the steep. I've bought this tea for years and never had an issue. Both bag and tin. I use the tea in combo with the oxo brew twisting ball tea infuser because I am lazy and all I have to do is twist it and toss the leaves.

It has a good taste.

Great flavor, good quality, balance aroma and reasonable priced.

really good as an iced green tea. the citrus adds a little something and for me it doesn't need any sugar or anything. got a bit of caffeine but not a lot which I like.

Excellent price and quality!

Not sure what to say about this. I'm a huge fan of peach green tea but this is more of a fruit tea as it contains way more than peaches. I'm also confused what the beetroot is for, besides staining my teeth and everything it touches? I don't know, it seems there is so much fruit that the green tea flavor is masked completely. Also the canister looks deceptively large, but doesn't contain much inside. After the tea steeps, it leaves behind lots of residue inside the tea as well. Probably wouldn't purchase again.

Tasty!

Best green tea... Great flavour and quality. Keep buying over and over.

I love all tiesta teas but especially this one. I recently tried another well known brand of loose leaf tea and every flavour had the same taste. Not veering from tiesta again!

Delicious and great aroma.

Very flavorful tea. Would recommend. Subtle but distinctive flavoring