Adham

I’m approaching this one just a bit skeptically, as it isn’t labelled as anything other than a generic “green tea”. With so many varieties out there, that seems to be selling it a little bit short. The aroma of the dry leaf is fine, fresh but not very nuanced.

I set it up for two minutes at 190, and got a nice green color out of the liquor, just a bit cloudy. The aroma was understated, as was the flavor. There are hints at vegetal, a little astringency, perhaps a couple other notes but they’re so far in the background that it hardly seems like I should count them. Nothing offensive about it, but I’m not finding a compelling reason to keep drinking this one when there are so many other excellent green teas out there.

Very nice aroma on opening the packet: Darjeeling moments, but also a deeper woody sweetness and some floral notes too. Mmmm!

After four minutes it’s a medium-dark brown, and smells good. I’ve got some maltiness, that sweet wood thing going on and just a bit of spiciness. The taste continues in this vein – it’s not enamel-scrapingly strong, which is good, and manages to put forward an incense-like tone that I find very pleasant and not surprisingly reminiscent of Nepal. I’m not putting sugar and milk in this one, but I bet it would make a superlative chai with that and some spices.

As it cools the honey and wood flavors heighten their profile, and there’s just enough astringency for it to be a good afternoon choice for my taste. I’d definitely be interested in getting more of this and playing around with different permutations of steeping and blending.

Yay, back home and back to sampling real teas!

I pulled this one out to start with something that has the potential to show how a gentle white tea can be married up with a flavor that could easily overpower it. I opened up the packet and got a strong whiff of licorice/anise, which though I’m not crazy about it, I do like it enough to find appealing. Also a little worried though, because I know how strong licorice can get (for some reason I got addicted to the really salty licorice they have in Sweden on a trip there last year, and kept popping the little lozenges all day).

I think they’ve done a good job of balancing the flavors here. I taste the white tea, and I taste the licorice, and they are amicably shaking hands. Neither is shoving the other out of the way to grab the spotlight. The licorice does a better job of leaving an aftertaste, but it’s not overpowering at all, just a light and lingering sweetness. Nice one.

Tried it at 3 minutes and got the slightest hint of vegetal flavors, and just a bit of roastiness in the aroma. Kept the bag in there and at 5 minutes there was a little more astringency but remarkably just as little real flavor as before. I went all the way to 7 minutes in an effort to wring a shred of character out of this tea – an unheard of effort on my part with regards to a green tea. Sadly, it was all for nought.

Farewell English Garden teas!

Well, if nothing else this week away from my regular posse of tea-homeys has made me more aware of how much I like teas which are bold and in your face with flavor. None of the English Garden varieties I’ve tried this week have been terrible, but they’ve really been wallflowers in terms of personality. Perhaps this company is trying to cater to the lowest common denominator tastes of the hotel trade – that’s how their website and packaging makes it look. Unfortunately, by trying hard not to offend anyone they’ve ended up being more than a wee bit unexciting. Take this Lemon Tea for example – they say it’s “bursting with a fresh and zesty citrus tang”, but all I’m getting is some lemon essence combined with an unremarkable black tea.

One more to try at tomorrow’s breakfast, and then it’s back home to a tea cupboard full of old friends and new.

Not one of my favorites so far from the variety of English Garden teas I’ve been sampling. The telltale muscatel is there, but there’s a strange redolence of “burned” in the flavor. Not like Lapsang Souchong smokiness, which I really like, but like something went wrong in the processing of this tea. I might have to try this one again this week to see if perhaps it was just a bad bag.

I’m not very familiar with Assam teas, so I’m not sure how exemplary this would have been of the variety. The company’s description says it’s malty, and I’d agree that there is a hint of that in the flavor that particularly comes out with the addition of a little milk and sugar. I also got a bit of a peppery scent/flavor at first, before I added anything. Overall fairly weakly flavored and not a very exciting tea, but it does remind me that I need to try some more Assams soon – starting with the TeaFrog Banaspaty Organic, which I have waiting for me back home.

I know that bergamot flavor originates with a citrus fruit, but for me Earl Grey has always been more about a “perfume” scent rather than a citrus scent. In this tea though the citrus characteristics of Earl Grey really come to the fore – the perfume aspect is definitely there, but I’m really tasting a citrus fruit. If you asked me which one, I’d be hard pressed to do so, but would just describe the tartness and freshness which are hallmarks of this type of fruit. I’ll give this one marks for making me think of Earl Grey in a fresh way!

On the road this week, so I don’t have access to my usual selection of teas – good excuse to try something new! The place where I’m staying is featuring the teas of a British company I’ve never heard of before, called English Garden. Starting off with their peppermint, which I always find soothing after a long journey, then I’ll move on to their other teas over the course of the week.
The peppermint is strongly flavored; one tea bag can handle a good size (I’d say about 24 oz) tea pot. It gave a medium-dark green brown liquor with enough minty aroma to really clear the sinuses. I left the bag in the pot over the course of 15 minutes or more, and had the first cup after about 5 minutes. At that stage the taste was light but clear, and as the steeping time increased the flavor stayed pleasant until the last cup, which was finally showing a little bitterness. They’ve got my interest now, so I’ll see how their black teas stack up next.

My sample from Chicago Tea Garden just arrived – now I get to try the tea that so many have raved about here.

The smell of the dry leaves is really vegetal and fresh, which is a good start.
1st steep: 180 degrees, 60 seconds. A prominent vegetable/seaweed aroma. Now for the first taste: Wow, this is possibly the best oolong tea I’ve ever had. It’s got some amazing flavors in there, so it’s going to be hard for me to describe it adequately. And what a sweet aftertaste. Okay, I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say rice pudding. It’s creamy, silky, rich, and sweet. I want more!
2nd steep: 180 degrees, 90 seconds. Oh, the anticipation while it’s steeping – will it deliver on the promise of the first cup? More of a floral note in the aroma this time, reminiscent of jasmine. The flavor is still sweet and now juicy too – I’m really reminded of apple juice. Amazing.
3rd steep: 180 degrees, 90 seconds. I’ve never made a habit of more than two steeps but what the heck, I’m throwing caution to the wind today. Now the aroma is new-mown grass. The flavor is mellower now, but still rich. The rice is back, but more savory this time. I’m reminded of the cartoon where Wile E. Coyote pulls down a chart of the roadrunner and explains how each part of the bird has a different, delicious flavor – this tea has so many flavors it’s unbelievable.
Must. Have. More.

I like Darjeeling teas – the natural sweetness, the dried fruit notes. However ever since I heard the word “muscatel” applied to the flavor of these teas, it’s hard for me not to think of dried currants and raisins whenever I smell or drink this tea. That’s not a bad thing, because I like those, but it does feel a little like I may be limiting my ability to tease out other flavors.

In any case, the smell when I opened the packet was the typical Darjeeling, so no surprises there. A handsome looking tea too, light and curly twists of leaves, darker and lighter brown. Four minutes at just under boiling – I often have my Darjeelings spend five minutes in the bath, but we’ll be easy on this newcomer to see how it stands up.

It’s a tasty and typical tea of this variety. The notes are in all the right places, including the aforementioned muscatel. No standout, exceptional surprises here; I’d drink it again but wouldn’t seek it out above others. With cream and sugar it’s also very drinkable.

Ah, a nice strong black tea to start the week. The dry leaves smell surprisingly fresh and fruity, almost like a rich plum jam with hints of spice. I’ll steep it for five minutes as I’m in the mood for strong flavors right now.

Great aroma! Bready, fruity, jammy, and spicy. Wow! Lots going on there. The taste is strong – good stuff – but not overpowered by any one note. The tannins are there, but they wrap themselves easily around the other flavors. I’m getting the flavor of cinnamon rolls with this…wish I had one right now to go with it.

I’ll try the second half of my serving with cream and sugar. Whew, still a strong cuppa, but I like it. This could definitely serve as a great Monday morning wake-up tea for me.

Another of my TeaFrog samplers that I’m excited to try. It’s hard for me to tell the aroma of the dry leaf because I had the previously opened bag of “Chocolate and Ginger Spice” next to this bag, and now all I can smell is chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. The leaves are flat and dark olive green, somewhat similar in shape to sencha, but darker.

1st steep: 180 degrees, 2 minutes. The liquor is a beautiful golden color and has a mix of light nutty and vegetal scents. The taste also has a gentle hint of nuttiness, a pleasing amount of astringency, and also an unusual and tasty piquancy – which sometimes comes across as a very light tartness or fruitiness. Very enjoyable tea at this stage.

2nd steep: 180 degrees, 1 minute. Much lighter liquor this time, straw-colored, and now the aroma has lost nuttiness in favor of vegetal. The flavor is light but very nice; astringency is down but nuttiness and vegetable goodness are still both there.

Nice contrast to the Japanese greens – looking forward to trying more Chinese greens.

This was the free additional sample included with my TeaFrog sampler order. Seeing that the base was chicory, I was a little hesitant about it, as that’s not my favorite flavor. However the chicory is really competing with all the other flavors in this mix: chocolate, red pepper, and ginger are all there in strength. There’s a natural sweetness to the liquor, which steeps up to a cloudy medium brown.

Surprisingly, adding milk and sugar brings out the chicory flavor more, but it also mellows out the peppery accents – it’s tasty this way too. I’m not sure I’d order more of this right away, but it was a nice new tisane to try out.

I’m very pleased with this. I used 2 tsp for about 14 oz of water and it came out just right – the spice flavors are well balanced and naturally sweet. The natural flavor of the rooibos is there in the background too, and plays well with others. I think I’ll end up having some of this on hand as one of my non-caffeine drinks.

I’ve never tried this variety before, so I’m excited to see what it’s like. The smell and appearance are both quite attractive. The leaves are thin, slightly curved, and light green – they remind me of the needles from last year’s Christmas tree that I find when I pull out the box of ornaments again. There’s a sweetness to the scent, and maybe even a fruitiness? I’m not able to put my finger on it.

Let’s see, I didn’t burn out my taste buds at lunch with spicy food…what’s going on here? I can’t really taste much of anything. The mysteriously sweet and fruity aroma is gone, and the very light yellow liquor is perhaps just too subtle for me latch onto. I’m getting a very small bit of astringency, a little more mouth feel than a plain cup of hot water would give me, but that’s about it. Ah well.

Having just had a not-so-nice time with Golden Moon’s gunpowder green, I was a bit hesitant when I saw that this was the base of their Moroccan Mint blend. However I’ve always been a fan of mint, so I thought it was worth a shot to see how the two got along. I went easy on the steeping, to minimize the risk of ending up with a drink that would be unbearably bitter yet breath-freshening.

I’m okay with it. The mint is there, front and center, and the gunpowder thankfully does not leave any acrid traces. I can definitely tell that the blend has been enhanced with mint essence, as it does not have the strong herbal flavor that using freshly dried mint leaves brings to the table. After looking at the tasting notes here from some of the other mint blends, I’ll try those as well, but overall this would be a good fall-back.

Mmm, what a nice full-bodied smokiness when I open the packet. It took me a while to get into Lapsang Souchong, but now I really enjoy it. For me a good one has a balance between the smokiness and the tea flavors, and the smokiness is itself made up of individual sub-components. Let’s see how this one measures up.

I see that they’re recommending 5-7 minutes steeping time, so I’ll go with 6 and assess it there. The brew is a clear dark golden-brown, and it smells really good. I’m getting a malty scent in with the smoke, and more – just an overall savory quality to it, like a well-cured meat (apologies to my vegetarian friends).

Taste: nice! Good balance there between the elements. The smoke is complex enough for my taste, and features the maltiness I smelled before as well as pine. It does not overpower the taste of the tea and doesn’t burn the back of my throat – both of which I’ve experienced with other Lapsang Souchongs.

Am I crazy to try the second half of this with cream and sugar? What the heck, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Wow, surprising how much that tones down the smokiness, and also brings out flavors that remind me of very dark chocolate. The smoke is more an ambience than the main star at this point, and that works well for me. I’d definitely drink this again – it’s versatile and tasty.

Edit: I’m going to bump up the score a little because now at 15 minutes later I’m still getting this incredible smokey chocolate aftertaste. Yum!

I wanted something light this morning, something to stretch my taste buds to their fullest extent in working out the subtle flavors at play in a mild tea. Well, I certainly got light, or perhaps “lite”. The smell of the dry leaves was appealing enough; a pleasing blend of tea-ness and flower. I noticed that there was one flower in my sample pack, and that others have gotten two.

Two minutes at 180 is all I’m giving it – definitely don’t want to overdo this one. I’m getting a pretty light yellowish-green liquor, with a very faint aroma. I think the floral addition is giving me more of a tisane than tea feel with the smell and appearance. The taste is fine…nothing stand-out, nothing offensive. I’m getting a vegetal top, some honey, and a light aftertaste somewhere in the realm of asparagus. Overall, I’d call it a good basic white tea, wouldn’t turn it down if offered but wouldn’t go out of my way to order it again.

A faint smoky smell greets me on opening the packet; the dark olive green pearls also have a slightly acrid scent. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a gunpowder, so I’m not too sure what to expect. I’ll do two and a half minutes at 180, as I’m thinking this will be strong enough for my taste.

Whew! Sure is. There’s smoke there, but it’s also really astringent already. The liquor is a somewhat cloudy green-tinged brown. The scent of the liquid is lightly smokey, with green tea pushed to the background. Bitterness too – something I’m not usually turned off about, if it’s in moderation. However this bitterness feels somehow much more penetrating than usual, and lingers at the back of the throat. Maybe I just steeped it too long, though it was right in the middle of their 2-3 minute guideline. Ooof! Don’t think I’ll be able to finish this cup, though I think I’d try it again steeped for maybe half the time to see if it made a difference.

I’m approaching this one warily – dare I say gingerly? It’s such a strong flavor, and to team it up with delicate white tea… Opening the packet there was a pronounced but not overpowering ginger aroma, and when I poured the sample into the hot water there were about 20 or 30 little ginger chunks which immediately sank to the bottom. Well, I like ginger anyway, so I gave it three and a half minutes at 180.

I’m really surprised at how mild this is. I’m getting the mouth feel of the white tea, which is nice, and just the tiniest bit of warmth on the back end from the spice. There’s a pleasing amount of natural sweetness to the flavor, but really not a whole lot else going on for me. It might be worth trying it again brewed up much more strongly and then iced?

All right Golden Moon, you’re going to have a hard time living up to Mariage Freres Vanille des Iles or Black Orchid…let’s see what you’ve got. The aroma is promising, strong natural vanilla flavor, and some sweet background note as well, like malt or cocoa. I see a sliver or two of vanilla bean too, a great sign.

In the pot, it brews up a clear dark brown, and after three minutes I’m getting a woodsy scent in there now too. I like my vanilla tea strong, but I’ll stop at four minutes to see where we are with it. The first sip is…underwhelming. I taste the black tea, which is fine, but where the vanilla is supposed to be is a place holder value that’s not quite what I was expecting. There’s still a pleasant maltiness in the aftertaste. It’s trying really hard but is not yet there. Shucks! Maybe the addition of cream and sugar will bring out more flavors.

Not so much. The warmth of vanilla is there, but again it feels like it’s standing in for the real thing, which is waiting in the wings somewhere but never quite arriving. Overall a pleasant tea, but not enough vanilla flavor for my taste.

I drink most of my tea at work, as a mid-morning or mid-afternoon treat. Am I too far gone if I say that one reason I looked forward to coming back to work today was so that I could try a new Golden Moon sampler?

I chose their Jasmine tea today; this has been one of my favorite flower scents since we had a jasmine vine at the house where I grew up. The smell reminds me of long evenings during summer vacation… I love jasmine pearl teas for their aesthetic qualities, so it’s been a while since I’ve had a straight jasmine tea. When I cut open the sampler packet, the first whiff I got gave me not so much jasmine as bubble gum/Juicy Fruit! Very sweet and fruity aroma. The leaves are quite dark green and it’s really a very generous sample size.

After three minutes, the tea is quite a deep greenish brown color, so I’ll call it quits there. The taste is very fruity, and again I wouldn’t call it a quintessential jasmine flavor or aroma. There’s also quite a pronounced astringency – I think this may have been better at a lower water temperature than the 190 I used this time.

It’s not unpleasant, but I can’t help comparing it to my favorite jasmine pearl teas, which are unmistakably scented with the flower and leave a lingering aftertaste for a long, long time.

After reading some of the rave reviews here for this tea, I was a little initimidated. Kind of like meeting a movie star: would it be as nice in person as I’m imagining? Cutting open the sampler packet, I was immediately hit with the aroma. Not the suntan lotion coconut I’d feared, but rich, creamy and toasted. The leaves are pretty too – they look good. This bodes well!

The taste follows through on the promise of the scent. The coconut flavor is incredibly creamy, and makes me think of a macaroon dipped in milk. There is so much rich, delicious coconut flavor in fact that I’m not getting a whole lot out of the tea other than a background hum. Nothing offensive, but nothing standout either. I’d normally think of pairing coconut flavor with black tea and then putting cream and sugar in it to make a yummy warm drink, so I’ll be on the lookout for that variety next. Still, this is a very tasty tea.