Special Leaf started in 2018 after years of hard work and was inspired when running a culinary programming session at an olive farm. When they reached out to me to try their Olive Leaf Tea, I was beyond excited. I have a couple of teas from Isreal but never know if I am fully tasting them correctly. Here are my thoughts:

Stated Benefits:

Getting into the Tea:

Pomberry: I chose this tea to drink first because it was the most vibrant and sounded absolutely delicious, looking back it might have been good to drink the Keep it Simple first to establish a baseline. The first thing I noticed about the taste of this tea was the sweetness. Since I am not normally drinking sweet teas or adding sugar, I had to put aside the sugar taste and focus on what I was sensing beyond that. But even with the sugar, this tea was really delicious. There was a note in it that reminded me a lot of a wine that I have had recently, but frustratingly I could not identify what exactly what the wine was or what exactly I was tasting. I started adjusting to the sugar after a few sips and was able to taste some fruitiness, seemingly enhanced by a lemon aspect to it. The entire tea is extremely smooth, easy to drink, and refreshing. I have never had Olive Leaf tea blended for me before (a friend brought some back from Isreal for me, but I have to use the tea bags to blend it for myself).
Ingredients: Filtered Water, Palm Sugar, Olive Leaf, Lemon Juice, Pomegranate Powder, Dried Blueberry

Keep it Simple: The coloring of this tea is a light yellow color with golden tinges. I am not able to determine an aroma of the tea after pouring it out, but in the bottle was the aroma of honey granules and almost a grayish/grape vine aroma. 
When tasting it, I instantly recognized the sweeter taste of honey. It was not overwhelming but seemed to be the prominent taste of the drink. I think personally to me, the taste of olive leaf tea reminds me a bit of grapes. But also slightly comparable to a green tea. Personally, I am not a huge normal olive fan. But for this, I will taste a few and try to compare or see any similarities. The character of the tea was quite smooth and mellow. Very relaxing to drink and quite refreshing as well. Honestly, being slightly sweetened with honey makes this such a wonderful combination. 

When Life Gives Your Lemons: Out of all of these teas, this one was probably my least favorite just because it seemed very sweet to me. When things are too sweet, I struggle to really taste much else from the sugars. There was a bit of drying astringency in my mouth after a few sips and the sweetness of the tea and the herby lemon did not mix as well as I wanted it to. After a while, this tea tasted a lot like sugary black tea with lemon. The lemon definitely had more of a herby essence to it, but that herby note might have also been due to the olive leaf. After all of these teas, I can now determine what olive leaf tastes like but describing it is quite difficult. It seems indescribable.
Ingredients: Filtered Water, Palm Sugar, Olive Leaf, Lemon Juice, Lemon Verbena

Price: For a 6 pack of this tea online, it is $13.50. For a specialty drink, this price is pretty in line with others. But for an everyday drink, this would definitely be a bit more on the expensive side.

Packaging: Glass bottles are my favorite form of packaging for loose leaf tea and for premade tea. I am already planning on keeping these bottles and reusing them for making teas or for storage purposes.

Sourcing: I could not find a clear source of where they are getting their olive leaves. But one thing to note is that they are part of Chefs Cooperative, which gives back to the farms and are comprised of chefs who endorse the farm-to-table atmosphere.

What did you think? Have you tried olive leaf tea before? What did you think? Let me know in the comments! Happy Brewing!

-Danielle