Today’s review is a selection of flavoured tea blends from Artful Tea.
Artful Tea sells flavoured and unflavored loose leaf teas. The teas I’m trying today are in sampler packaging, which they fill a tea bag filter with around 5-7grams of tea, enough for a large 12oz serving steeped western style.
Artful Tea’s Lychee Purple Leaf Tea
Lychee Purple Leaf Tea is a blend of Kenyan Purple Leaf tea, apple, pineapple, lemon peel, currants and lychee flavour. The dry leaf smells like blueberries and lychee.
I recall Purple Leaf being quite sensitive to temperature, so I used 175F for around 3.5 minutes. The flavour is a tropical mix of creamy lychee, citrus, and sweet pineapple. My brain still wants to fill in blueberries in the taste. The purple leaf tea is subtly floral and the natural tart plum notes combine well with the lychee and sweet pineapple notes.
I only have one shot at Lychee Purple, otherwise, I would have tried this iced or cold brewed, both which I think would brew up tasty and play up the Purple Tea’s strengths and bring out more of the blend’s flavour.
Purple Leaf Teas are certainly worth a try if you are a flavoured green tea drinker – they have that similar level of delicate flavour, but lean more tart and fruity than grassy.
Artful Tea’s Turmeric Mango Green Tea
Turmeric Mango Green Tea is an organic blend of gunpowder green tea, mango, turmeric root, pineapple, ginger, yuzu, and mango & makrut lime oils.
I steeped the Turmeric Mango Green at 175F for 2.5 minutes. The flavour is strongly vegetal and grassy green tea. The added flavours of the blend are balanced well, adding citrus, ginger and turmeric spiced, with soft jasmine smoothing it out. Some sips meet in the strong grass and citrus peel notes to give an intense flavour.
I could also see this being awesome iced. If you are into turmeric teas and want a bit of zesty and caffeine, this blend with green fits the bill.
Artful Tea’s Citrus Sonata Oolong
Citrus Sonata Oolong is a tea blend of Fujian Oolong and natural citrus essential oil. I do prefer oil over various bits added to the tea, as generally, the oils do most of the work.
I steeped the oolong at 190F for 3 minutes. Citrus Sonata Oolong sips in floral and vegetal Tie Guan Yin like with a finish of tart citrus and grapefruit. The aftertaste is a lingering flavour of the bitter grapefruit citrus oil adds a refreshing flavour.
This tea would likely work best for those who add a packet of sugar or drink iced as that’ll tame and compliment the citrus. This again would be another great tea for cold drinking, in particular, cold brewing over iced would I think come out the best.
Overall, the blends from Artful Tea are quite balanced. You can taste the flavour of the tea as well as the added flavourings. I find most flavoured tea vendors lean on one side or the other, not as many have a balance.
