This week's Shop Review is on online shop BlackQuartz Alchemy. Black Quartz Alchemy specializes in unique, orgnaic loose tea blends with quirky titles such as Third Eye, Blue Baron, and Skooma. Being people who drink copious amounts of tea, Aaron and I immediately decided to order a few samples.
BlackQuartz Alchemy offers a sample pack that starts at $1.00 for one 1.5 teaspoon sample and $0.50 for each extra sample. Each sample provides enough tea leaf for about 2 cups of brewed tea. We got 5 samples for $3.00 plus $3.50 for shipping. After we ordered it, it arrived to us within the week which was great. It came to us as a box within a box, a lovely thin cardboard container that held wax paper packets of our samples. A BlackQuartz Alchemy sticker and brewing instructions were also included. I really love the packaging from this shop.
The blends we got were:
New Moon: Nepalese Black Tea-Orange Peel-Clove-Coriander-Lemon Balm-Orange Extract
Night Watch: Ceylon Black Tea-Peppermint-Spearmint
The Hermit: Holy Basil-Lemon Balm-Juniper Berry-Chamomile-Spearmint
Chimera Chai: Nepalese Black Tea-Cinnamon-Cardamom-Clove
-Coriander-Anise-Black Pepper-Carob-Chicory
Dirge: Nepalese Black Tea-Rose Petal-Jasmine Flower
(They even threw in a Second Breakfast sample for us to try!)
Second Breakfast: English Breakfast Tea-Lavender-Cardamom
Now, I'm not going to do a review of every tea that we had. Flavor is very subjective, even between Aaron and I (Aaron prefers his tea scalding hot and I like mine as close to body temperature as I can get, and temperature really effects the taste of tea). I will say that BlackQuartz Alchemy provides very accurate descriptions of the tea in the shop details. It's also important to pay attention to the ingredients of the tea, to make sure that you are familiar with the flavors (and for any allergy information). As a fan of mint, my personal favorites were Night Watch and the Hermit. In any case, we enjoyed most of the teas we got (the exception for me being chai and the exception for Aaron being herbal teas). All ingredients were well proportioned within the tea blends and it was very interesting to see the different plants that go into making tea in these loose leaf blends. I've found that I enjoy loose leaf tea more, the flavor seems to become more robust and I do tea readings after every cup.
All in all, BlackQuartz Alchemy is a great shop for tea drinkers and people who enjoy brewing tea the old fashioned way. Their whimsical names and efficient customer service are an added bonus to having a warm, comforting cup of tea when you need it. Aaron and I are looking forward to ordering a few more samples and maybe a vial or two of our favorite teas.
See you next time!
(Disclaimer: All items in this review were purchased by me and not sponsored by the owner of BlackQuartz Alchemy)
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