Well, Mr. Ambrya and I went out and tried some teas the other night. I really liked Peets a lot. The salesperson there was very helpful in assisting us in deciding on which teas to try, and then they brewed us up little pots of those teas so that we could sample them before deciding.
I decided to stick with the English Breakfast and got some of Peet's variety to compare to the stuff I'd gotten at Williams-Sonoma...everything else just seemed to smell too strong or just have something about it I found objectionable. The real revelation of that visit to Peet's, however, was their iced tea blend.
Wow. I get it now, the stuff you guys were saying about it actually being possible to make iced tea you don't have to add sugar to. I didn't quite buy it before. While I don't like my iced tea "down-south" sweet, I usually add some sugar and I really couldn't foresee the possibility of a tea tasting so good by itself that I didn't feel the need to do so. But as we were just wrapping things up at Peet's, I saw a tin of their Summer House blend and the salesperson who had been assisting us asked if I wanted a sample and I, of course, accepted. It was just about the most marvelous thing I had ever tasted. So much so that when they told us we get a free brewed beverage (latte, mocha, whatever) with our purchase, I got the iced tea and drank it on the way home, completely unsweetened. Who knew?
So I picked up a tin of the iced tea blend as well, but I am thinking I might go back and see if they offer it in decaf instead, since Mr. Ambrya and I tend to drink iced tea in the evening and oy! was I buzzing that night when we got home. Of course, it might have had something to do with the 4 other kinds of teas we sampled BEFORE I drank the iced tea, but still...
We did make the stop by Teavana just because I wanted to see what they were about, but I wasn't impressed. I felt about Teavana about the same way I tend to feel about places like Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel--nice stuff, if you're into that sort of snooty-wierd thing and have plenty of money to burn, but frankly my tastes are more pedestrian than the kind of stuff they're offering. It was mainly just overpriced and weird. One of their black teas they had out for sampling was so smoky-scented, it smelled like our clothes had when we got back from a weekend camping trip a couple weeks ago. It was pretty rank. I did, however, find a nice chamomile blend there, which I had forgotten to look into at Peet's. It has orange rinds and some other stuff in it that makes a really nice bedtime tea.
So the love affair continues...
Edited, Jul 20th 2006 at 8:13am EDT by Ambrya
