Inside the bag: Stash Pumpkin Spice
Friday, November 30th, 2007
Let me start by saying caffeine gets a bad rap. Now that I got that out of the way, I have a festive decaffeinated tea that I’d like to share with you. It’s a pumpkin spice flavored black tea offered by Stash Tea. I’ll admit it right now, I don’t eat a lot during the main course of Thanksgiving dinner so I can eat a lot of pumpkin pie. I love pumpkin spice flavored desserts. So, the timing is right for me to enjoy this tea. I guess since sleep is important for our well-being, I’ll tone it down a bit and enjoy a few cups of decaffeinated tea this week. First off, the decaf pumpkin spice tea reminds of a lighter version of the Holiday Chai tea I blogged about a few weeks ago from Stash. The pumpkin spice tea is not as flavorful, but it certainly has a pumpkin spice flavor to it as suggested by its name.
The main ingredients: Naturally decaffeinated black tea, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, natural pumpkin spice flavor, and clove.
The scent of the tea in the tea bag does remind me of a a household cleaner. The dried scent is very strong. That said, I took the suggestion on the box and added a bit of sugar and milk to the tea after it brewed in 200 degree water for about 3 minutes. The overall experience of the tea when you combine the brewed scent with the flavor is average for this variety of tea. This tea is far from my favorite, but if you have to watch your caffeine intake, this is a flavorful choice around the holidays. You’ll need to try it for yourself. If you don’t mind the scent, you’ll probably love the tea. This is one of those teas that you’ll either like or dislike.
marTEA
The summer is gone, but I still had to try this ready-to-drink Rooibos (Red Tea) Snapple product. I like mandarin and tangerine flavored beverages, so I thought I’d see how the flavors would mix with Rooibos. As I expected this beverage is very “juice” like. That said, I could pickup the Rooibos flavor. It was faint, but I could detect a hint of Rooibos. There’s no doubt this beverage is very flavorful, but you’re not going to get a heavy dose of Rooibos from this product. Snapple’s Red Tea products are all about fun. They are flavorful and refreshing. Unfortunately, they lose a lot of points for me because they don’t do Rooibos justice. I do recommend trying it for yourself. The 17.5 ounce bottle contains about 7g of sugar.
If you are trying to cut the calories during the holidays, and you like the flavor of chai lattes, here’s a great option for you. The chai tea latte is based off of the same-delicious ingredients as Oregon Chai’s original chai tea latte; however, it is sugar-free. If you look at the nutritional facts on the side of the box, you’ll see all zeros. Now, it still has a very sweet flavor to it. It’s flavored with 
Teavana offers an excellent second flush Darjeeling from the Margaret’s Hope Tea Garden. I’m still looking for an accurate story on how the tea garden was named. I’ve read the tea garden was named after the wife of the founding tea garden owner. In addition, I’ve read it was named in honor of the tea garden owner’s daughter. I’ll keep searching for the answer. If you know, let me know. My great grandmother’s name was Margaret, so I like the name simply because it reminded me of my childhood.
Well, we no sooner wrap-up Halloween and Christmas songs are now playing in department stores. Not that I mind, but I get excited for the holidays. When the music and decorations start this early, I know I have a long time to wait. I don’t mind the “holiday” flavored teas that are available this time of year. Stash offers a holiday tea that I’ve been enjoying for about a week. The first day I tried it, I had 4 cups.