Angrboda

Of course I got some of this with my order. And of course it was a double quantity compared to all the others. Of course. Not doing that would have been like… not breathing.

The aroma is quite mild. Mostly it has a wood-y note, and I’m not noticing too much of the cocoa and grain that I otherwise associate with Fujian, but it seems to be there in very small amounts. It’s like I can sense it more than I can smell it. Or perhaps I’m just so tuned into it having to be there that I’m making it up? I don’t think so, though. I think there are trace amounts of it there.

Anyway, the important thing is the taste. Yes, aroma is very important, but it’s still only 30% of the experience. If the aroma was lacking the grain and cocoa notes, then the flavour has them in spades. Especially cocoa. It’s the primary note here, and all the wood and grain is going on underneath the cocoa.

I’m quite pleased with this. It’s my favourite ever type of tea, so it’s bound to score high on that alone (see the first paragraph of this post), but I really think that this one can rub shoulders with some of the best tan yangs out there. It lacks just a bit more body to push it towards the full 100 points, but we’re very close.

Om nom nom nom Fujian black!

I like lapsang souchong! I like it on its own and I like it in blends. What we have here is a blend with LS, Ceylon and Assam. It’s been ages since I had one of these!

The aroma is lovely smoky, but not as prickly as it usually is in a pure LS. It’s smoothed out by the other two ingredients, one of which adds a thick almost milky note to it. I suspect it’s probably a hearty malty Assam at play there.

A pure LS is, for me, a case of balance between smoke and fruity sweetness. Of course there should be some body to it as well, but it’s not the most important thing. With this sort of blend, however? This is all about the body. Here the smoke becomes just a detail. And so far, in the aroma, this tea has that down just right.

Flavour is primarily Assam. Again, the smoke is just a detail. An afterthought. This is almost more an Assam blend than it’s an LS blend. It’s Assam that I get in the flavour. Malty and hearty indeed and as I suspected responsible for that milky note in the aroma. It’s there in the flavour as well, telling me that this is one of the very few teas that I wouldn’t mind it if it was served with a little milk, because it almost tastes like it’s already there.

Then, to accentuate it all, there’s the smoke from the lapsang, but it really is quite discreet. Along with the smoke, I get the Ceylon addition to the blend. It tastes high-grown with a floral-y, grassy sort of note to it. Again, it’s just a detail.

All in all, I find this a very well-balanced blend and highly enjoyable.

You are a caramel tea. WHY will you not be nommy?

frustrated Ang is frustrated

I love a good Keemun and I try to always keep one around. I’ve found my perfect favourite Keemun not too long ago, but I’m not so married to it that I’m going out of my way to make sure it’s that particular Keemun that is always in the cupboard. Any Keemun is fine really. I’m loosening up in the same way with other types, I’ve noticed. I have my favourites, my most beloved, and I make sure I won’t forget where it came from when I find Perfection, but it’s only my various flavoured favourites, where I’m truly brand loyal. But the flavoured tea is a completely different beast as well.

Sil shared this particular Keemun with me, and it’s from a company that I’ve previously had some very good teas from. I remember fondly the Heritage Aijiao Oolong. Wombatgirl once sent me a whole pouch of that one as a gift. (I miss her. I wish she was still around.) I wrote a (bad) ode to that one, for crying out loud! I believe I must have a tried one or two others from that company as well. So Red Blossom is a company that immediately raises my expectations of the tea I’m about to drink.

Very pleasant aroma on this one. Lightly smoky and with grainy notes underneath. Just how I like’em. There’s a smidge of something floral to it as well, but it smells like it’s in balance with the note of smoke. I prefer that. I’ve long believed that the smoky note in some Keemuns and the floral note in others are actually the same aspect, but coming across in different ways. Seems to me that this depends on the leaf grade. Higher leaf grades are usually more floral than smoky, where lower grades are more smoky than floral. I tend to prefer sort of the lower end of the middle here.

The flavour is quite strong, and it has an initial prickly feeling of smoke with a floral character. After that it’s just completely smooth. The note of grain seems to be a tad thin though. That initial flavour is just so big, it’s like the grain can’t quite keep up with it.

As it cools a little further, however, this is adjusted as the grainy note seems to expand more, becoming thicker and smoother.

There is also quite a nutty flavour to this one, which is a new note to me. Strangely though it doesn’t feel like it’s anything new in that this tea doesn’t strike me as hugely different from other teas of its kind. It’s just that this nutty note is like something that was always there but which I’ve only just become aware of. Slightly toasted hazelnuts. It’s a very small note in all this, which is probably why I’ve never really identified it before even though I feel like I’ve been aware of it being there. Does any of this even make sense?

Anyway, as it cools a little further, I’m nearing the end of the cup here, that nutty note mellows out again and all but disappears. That supports my suspicion that it’s a note that was there in Keemuns all along, but difficult to identify. Apparently you only get a small window of ideal temperature to do it in.

Many Keemuns seem to have the ability to develop caramel-y notes, but I haven’t really found any of that in this one. Mind you I’ve never had a Keemun that went all out on the caramel yet either but I’ve had several that tasted like they could have. This one is really just the smoky/floral start, the grainy middle and the briefly nutty finish. I wouldn’t have minded a smidge of caramel in there as well.

So far I have to say this is my favourite of the Jeniers I’ve tried so far. Although, I’m willing to admit that I may be slightly biased what with the vanilla and all. I luuuurve vanilla flavouring in tea, and it seems like it’s a love affair that is only growing. Vanilla on its own, vanilla with fruit, it’s all good. I have a tea from AC Perchs with vanilla and cranberry which I’m ever so slightly addicted to. This one both smells great and it tastes great and I can clearly taste both vanilla and fruit. I’ll make a more in depth post about it later, I think.

Tell me, though, Steepsterites. When I searched for this in the database, and awful lot of Monk’s Blends came up. Is this actually one or just similar? I was under the impression that Monk’s Blend was more floral.

I thought I would start with this one today, since it has a name like ‘Good Morning.’ I thought it was pretty obvious.

I’ve seen a bunch of grapefruit flavoured teas about on Steepster but I’ve never had one myself before. Wait, I tell a lie! I’ve had some which was flavoured with grapefruit AND other things, but never one that was grapefruit on its own before.

The aroma is strong and citrus-y. Unlike the tea from Jenier I had yesterday, which was quite mild all-round, this one is very strong. It’s a creamy and very grapefruit-y beast we have here. It has safflower petals in it, which I believe is one of those flowers that haven’t got much in the way of flavour, but provides this sort of creamyness. It rather reminds me a bit of Girlie Grey from Jeeves and Jericho.

The same notes are also strongly present in the flavour. The base, just like the one I had yesterday, is once again a relatively astringent Ceylon. This is definitely a grapefruit tea, but it feels like quite a basic one.

I’m beginning to suspect that this company might be a little Adagio-y. Great selection, excellent place to start for beginners, but people with more experience and a more well-developed idea of what they like would probably want to explore a bit more in order to find their perfect versions. But yeah, seems like an excellent spring-board into the wider world of tea, if you know what I mean.

First time I’ve ever shopped with this company. I want to talk about them for a bit, because it’s not a name I’ve seen on Steepster before that I can recall, although they have a fairly large number of teas in the database. I know some of my other European Steepsterites are like me when it comes to looking up unfamiliar companies. There are SO many of them that are based in the US and therefore out of our reach due to shipping fees and/or customs fees or perhaps they don’t even ship outside the US at all. As a consequence we often don’t even bother checking and we are undoubtedly missing out on a bunch of interesting shops. Jenier Teas is based in Scotland and the shopping basket on their website calculates shipping costs automatically for you as you put things in in your own currency(!!!), making it a piece of cake to keep an eye on.

I ordered mostly samples (or mini-packs, as I believe they were listed as on the site), but it didn’t say anywhere that I could see what the quantity of a sample was.

I can now tell you that Jenier’s samples weigh a whopping 25 grams.

Fortunately, they come in ziplocked pouches, except one, which I’ve tinned.

I also received in my order a small handwritten, personalised card in an envelope with my name on it. I’ve commented on this sort of thing before. I believe it was the first time I ordered something from Verdant. It makes me feel a closer connection to the vendor, like I really am a cherished customer, and not just another face in the crowd of people throwing money at them.

So anyway, I bought a load of samples and one tea in a larger quantity. Had I known this would be the size of the samples, I might have shown a little more moderation, but I was not to know this. (On the other hand, knowing that I can buy a fairly significant amount without having to buy a LOT is another thing that will definitely make me want to shop there again.)

Unfortunately it seems that none of the teas that I bought, not one, are in the database already.

I’m feeling quite exhausted so I thought I’d have something that sounded like it might be sweet. When I saw cherries and almonds, I thought it would be some sort of dessert-y marcipan-y concoction, but it isn’t. Not even remotely.

For one thing, it’s quite discreetly flavoured. I can’t really find much in the way of cherries here, and the almonds aren’t marcipan-y at all. They’re more like eating almonds as a nut if you understand what I mean here. Both aspects are definitely almond, but they taste entirely different. It’s very nice, but not at all what I was expecting.

I wonder what the base black is here. It’s a bit tannic and harsh in the background there, so I’m guessing a rougher-end Ceylon or Ceylon-heavy blend. This seems to be a very common tea to use as a base for flavoureds. Checking the information from the shop, it turns out the Ceylon is correctly identified.

So yeah, I’m not wowed by this by any means, but I’m also not discouraged by it. Had it been horrible I’d have been concerned about the rest of my order, you see. I may try to beef the cherry aspect up a bit with another cherry flavoured black that I’ve got.

Can I just start with a small rant here? Twinings’ listing of teas in the database is a mess. A mess! There seem to be so many duplicates and at least one instance of the product description actually having a paragraph about the tea in question NOT being a duplicate of another variety with the same name. So I couldn’t find a proper entry for the particular one that I’m having now, but I did find this. A variety pack entry? I’m sorry, but isn’t that just kinda lazy? Shouldn’t the five different varieties all have their own entry in the database? Why would you enter it as a variety pack where nobody can see what it is you are actually drinking? I don’t get it.

But then, I’m finding myself with a fairly low amount of ‘get’ today and also not too much in the way of patience, really. We just got back from England around midnight last night (family occasion, and not one of the happy ones), and we’ve been half staff at work today. Add to that being extremely tired from aforementioned travelling and little sleep and the scratchy throat that I seem to have picked up somewhere between England and Denmark.

Aforementioned family occasion, which I don’t think we need to go further into, was an out of town sort of affair, so we stayed overnight at a bed and breakfast and this is where we come to the relevant to Steepster bit.

In our room, I had three kinds of tea bags. PG Tips (Pretty dire. The Lipton of the UK. But at least it was a black tea), some sort of cheap green in a bag and a chamomile and spicy apple sort of concoction. Or, as I put it to Husband, “I have one choice and two others.”

The latter, however, was so bizarre sounding that I nicked the bag and brought it home with me, and it’s THAT ONE out of this variety pack that
I’m having now. Medicinal purposes even. See ‘scratchy throat.’

I just could not imagine this combination at all, but as it turns out it’s not really as weird as all that. Chamomile and apple are both kind of sour-sweet flavours so they match each other well, neither of them taking over and turning the cup into a mugfull of acidic bleurgh-ness. It’s actually a pretty clever combination. It is, however, still chamomile. And it’s also the least spicy spicy apple I’ve ever met. I had to actually go and look at the bag again just to assure myself that it really did say ‘spicy apple’ on it. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be spiced with, but whatever it is, it’s not working.

I am always up for trying a new lapsang souchong. I’m one of those people who greatly enjoys the smoked flavour and almost can’t get enough of it. Well, I say almost because I do have a certain ideal balance between the smoke note and the other notes. Many lapsangs are actually very sweet and fruity underneath the smoke, and it’s that note that I want to come out clearly as well. I want that and the smoke more or less in equal measures. That’s my Perfect LS. So of course I would choose lapsang souchong for one of my free samples with my recent order.

The first time I ever noticed that fruity sweet aspect it drove me nearly nuts for months trying to get the brewing conditions right to replicate it. I’ve got that down now. I’ve learned how to make a black tea in exactly the way that suits me best, but the first time I really thought something must have been tampering with my leaf.

Anyway, this particular lapsang smells like it has a very strong note of that fruity sweetness. There isn’t even all that much smoke in the aroma. It seems very mild. I have read that this fruity note is supposed to be reminiscent of longan fruit, but I have no idea what those are, so I couldn’t tell if I agree with that or not. To me, it’s leaning more towards stone fruits and lychee.

The flavour is indeed quite mild on the smoke. At first I almost thought it wasn’t there, but then it showed up and lingered on the aftertaste. The fruity sweetness is there as well, but at this moment the tea is still too hot for me to be able to taste anything properly

After cooling a little bit, the smoke comes forth a little more, but it’s still a very mild LS this. The fruity note is strong in this one and quite sweet. The smoke is mostly there in the aftertaste for me, but it lingers for a long time.

If you are looking to try lapsang souchong for the first time and don’t know if you will care for the smoke or not, I would definitely recommend this one as an introduction because it’s so mild. It won’t overwhelm you with smoke, so even if you find you don’t much care for the smoke, I should think you would still find this at least drinkable.

In completely other news, I’ve noticed that I tend to capitalise tea names. Like writing Keemun instead of keemun and Lapsang Souchong and so on. I’ve made an effort not to do it in this post, but am I actually supposed to do that? What do you guys do?

17°C, phone weather app? Really? I highly doubt it as that must surely be the warmest 17°C ever measured. It was definitely more like somewhere between 20 and 25! I absolutely refuse to believe otherwise.

Anyway, this warm, summery weather has put me in the mood of something green, and therefore I turn towards a tea that Autumn Hearth shared with me an embarrassingly long time ago. She sent me a whole little green tea education that time, but I never managed to make it through all of the things she sent me, as I must have misplaced this and two others. Obviously my old system for storing samples doesn’t work, and my newer system of keeping everything untried in a box on my desk seems to be working much better.

This one smells very fruity. I’m thinking something along a sweet apple sort or possible some sort of stone fruit. Yeah, mostly the latter, actually.

It tastes very sweet too, and it has that fruity note in the flavour as well as the aroma. There’s also a fairly strong mineral note and something that reminds me of some kind of green vegetable. A leafy sort of flavour. I’m not sure what it is. I’m getting thoughts of spinach here, but it doesn’t really taste like spinach at all. That’s just because whenever someone says ‘leafy greens’ to me, spinach is the first thing that comes to mind.

This is quite pleasant. I’m not one to drink an awful lot of green tea. It’s something that I have to be in a very specific mood for these days, but when I do, I’ve noticed that I tend to favour Japanese over Chinese. They generally strike me as having a clearer, crisper flavour profile, where Chinese green tea often strikes me as more sort of thick and murky.

Huh! Looks like I’m the odd duck. I quite enjoyed this and mine is ancient.

Hello Steepsterites! Remember I did Project Ceylon earlier this year, in which I tried a bunch of different Ceylon teas and tried to work out if there was a pattern to which ones I liked and which ones I liked less? That was fun. Let’s do it again!

I spent some time pondering whether to do Project Africa or Project Assam. Both sounded interesting to me. African teas have interested me for a while, but I’ve never done much about learning the area, and I’ve been in a bit of an Assam-y mood recently. In the end I decided Project Africa sounded more interesting. We are seeing more and more single estate loose leaf out there, and from more and more different countries it seems. Kenya still heavily in the lead, but others are definitely getting out there as well. It’s a shame I didn’t decide to do this yesterday, since I just discovered Jenier Teas yesterday and accidentally AHEM WELL, moving right along! At any rate, they had a LOT of different Kenyan teas and a few from other African countries as well, so samples shouldn’t be too difficult to find.

I already had this one that Sil very generously shared with me. And it was generous because it was actually a sample that had been shared with her by Terri HarpLady, so I had told her to only send me some if there really was enough to share. Lucky for me, there was.

This tea comes from the Kaproret estate, which was highly difficult to find on the map. All I got when searching for Kaproret were two different primary schools that weren’t even that close together, and I couldn’t see anything on the sattelite photo that looked like tea fields. That was a great help during Project Ceylon, because tea fields are pretty easy to recognise from the air. Turns out that they aren’t so easily recognisable in Kenya, because they have a layout which is much in straight lines on square fields, making them look like any other kind of green field. Further Google investigation then revealed that it’s part of the Kericho tea districts, where I found a name tag that just said ‘Tea Gardens’, but no further explanations of which gardens were there and what they were called. So I put the marker there. Seemed to be the right area and as good a place as any. And nowhere near those other two primary schools. While searching I did find a different and name-tagged tea estate, so I put a pin in it, just in case I need to find it again later.

The aroma is quite grainy and malty and it has a sort of Assam feel to it somehow. It’s like it just has a something that tells me Assam. Seriously, you could totally fool me with this. If I’d been given this without knowing what it was, Assam would be my first guess. Makes me wonder if I should do Project Assam hot on the heels of Project Africa… The grain is stronger than in most Assams though, so it does stand out. A little bit. Not enough that I’d notice if I didn’t know better, but there is a small difference there. It smells like it can really pack a good punch.

The flavour is surprisingly fruity sweet right at first. Reminds me a little of plums or apricot, although that still feels a bit like a stretch. Then the grain and malt comes into play and it is indeed a quite strong tea. It’s no wonder ctc-ed Kenyan is often used to beef up the blends in certain inferior teabags that we could mention. It’s strong and it lays down a heavy bottom.

Underneath the flavour there is a mild to moderate degree of astringency, which once again reminds me of Assam. That and the strength are really the only things about the flavour that reminds me of Assam, unlike what I noticed in the aroma. It’s not so much, though, that it feels like drinking ashes and it’s fairly well balanced with the strength of the flavour.

As it cools down a little more, it changes character completely. It loses the fruit-y sweet aspect I noticed right at first and instead takes on a strong Yunnan-like note of hay. The very note that makes me less interested in golden Yunnans. Where did that come from?

This is a different beast entirely from my usual Chinese blacks. I’m quite enjoying how strong it is, but I think I could have lived without the Yunnan-y aspect. This is one that I preferred while it was still piping hot.

Reference map: https://www.google.com/maps/ms?msid=211803378882467968316.0004dd9c2591ff5d7d6bf&msa=0&ll=-0.394539,35.252938&spn=0.014741,0.021651 (This is what I get when I check the ‘short URL’ box. Deal with it…)

(Edited to add in a forgotten word, the absense of which totally changed the meaning of the sentence)

Once upon a time when I had only just discovered flavoured pu-erh someone told me that sweet flavours tends to go very well with that type of tea. It was the first time I had my orange flavoured pu-erh and I can’t remember who it was, but I definitely remember thinking at the time that they were somebody who ought to know what they were talking about.

Since then a long time has passed and the number of flavoured pu-erhs that I have seen have been very limited indeed. And I’ve never seen one of these sweet flavoured ones.

Not until Sil asked me, “what would you like to try?” and I saw this in her cupboard. I’m afraid my reaction might have been ever so slightly undignified. It involved gasping and flailing. I may even have begged a little bit. So yeah, I’ve been looking forward to this one a lot and I’m ever so glad that Sil was willing to share with me.

The aroma of the leaf reminds me of that toffee flavoured black from Le Palais des Thes. It’s obviously not the same base at all, but they both have that smell that reminds me of fudge. I’m not really picking up any notes of the base tea in this one at all. Just fudge. (Actually, that’s quite inspiring. I’d like to try and make my own. How hard can it be? I’d like to try and make my own caramel sweeties as well. We did that in school once, and it was totally easy)

After steeping the pu-erh comes through and mixes well with the toffee notes. I can see already now that whoever it was told me that about pu-erhs and sweet flavours really did know their business. These notes mix so well, it doesn’t feel like it’s added flavouring at all. A bit too much on the sweet side to be entirely natural, of course, but it smells like it could have been if it had wanted to.

If this stuff tastes as awesome as it smells, I’m going to be in deep trouble because I know of no way to source some for myself. I’m suddenly faced with the possibility of my perfect caramel/toffee flavoured tea not being a regular black at all. I mean I thought I’d already found my perfect one. Now I’m concerned that I’m in for a bit of a shock. O.o

So I took a couple of sips and have suddenly found myself at a loss for words. I don’t know how to continue. This has never happened to me before.

Either I’ve actually discovered a new perfect caramel-y/toffee tea, or it has an enormous flaw in order to be a candidate for perfection. And I don’t know which of these statements is true.

This is my very first impression of this tea. Complete ambivalence. How the plock am I supposed to even begin to determine the score??? O.o

I’m going to try and describe my experience of it here. Perhaps that’s going to help me.

I’m getting a lot of pu-erh flavour here. It’s a wood-y, kind of dry flavour without much in the way of earthy notes. It’s not the smoothest tea in the world at all and it feels a bit rough around the edges. I’m even getting something which, under other circumstances, I would describe as borderline pseudo-smoky.

Then the toffee flavour gradually takes over, and we are talking about a very seamless transition here. I really couldn’t say where one notes stops and the other begins. It’s vanilla-y and cocoa-y and it really suits the base flavour. It sort of feels like they’re the same ‘family’ of flavours, if you know what I mean. A bit like how various citrus fruits have very different flavours, but they are still all taste citrus-y.

The flavouring in this one is fantastic, but I’m not completely sold on the base. I would have liked a smoother base, I think, and that is at the root of my ambivalence. I should dearly love to see this exact flavouring on a super-smooth Chinese base, or a friendly Assam, perhaps.

So here I am. Wondering what to do about something I could rate at an absolute top score and feel I had scored it honestly, or I could rate it at 60 and still feel that I been honest. What to do? I’m going to go straight for the middle of the two with a bias towards the higher end because the flavouring is so extremely well done.

Conundrum in a cup.

“You know that tea…?” Husband asked me last night.

EEK! Well, that was a good fifteen minutes steep, I think. And I didn’t even know what the base was at that point. Turns out to be a blend of Chinese and Ceylon, and as we know Chinese blacks can take a lot of abuse while Ceylon can really go either way. No adverse effects then.

This is a tea that Cteresa shared with me and I have to admit that I found it difficult to concentrate on it last night for some reason. It simply just failed to hold my attention for very long, so I’m writing this on a flimsy memory.

The base held up to the mishap very well, without a single bit of bitterness or astringency. The fruit flavouring was… well, fruity, obviously, but I couldn’t pick out each individual fruit. This may have something to do with my lack of concentration, but my immediate thought was that it was somewhat generic red fruit-y.

It’s a fairly classic flavouring, this, so I’ve had it and enjoyed it before from other vendors. Then, I definitely remember being able to ‘find’ each of the four red fruits in the flavour. Knowing what to look for obviously. I doubt I’d have been able to do so without knowing what they were in advance. I couldn’t do that with this one (at least not at that particular level of attention) and I’m not sure if that’s really a bad thing or a good thing.

It’s a shame when one can’t pick out the flavours, and one feels like the whole things is just a big muddle with a generic taste. On the other hand, when each flavour clearly stands out on their own, the tea can end up tasting a little bit unfinished. Smoothness is lost, and it’s just a cup full of edges and corners that don’t quite join up.

Pros and cons, really. The smoothness of this one rather suited me last night, though. I think precisely because I couldn’t concentrate on it. Edges and corners would have thrown me off completely, I think.

Here is another one that Sil shared with me. When asked what I would like to try, one of my requests was for some Assam or other. It’s a funny region for me. I really want to adore them, but I’m just not quite there. Nine times out of ten I’ll go for a Chinese but every once in a blue moon the Assam just strikes me as the most desirable tea on the planet.

And then I usually haven’t got any.

Lately I’ve been having some small Assam-y thoughts again, though, so it was a fairly obvious request. (Project Assam…? ponder ponder ponder )

I’m making this in the big pot to share with Husband, who opted to not have it milked. When it’s any other tea, I usually just serve it as it is, but sometimes I get confused about what he would prefer. He always drinks it without additives at home, but as soon as he sets foot on English soil he reverts to preferring his tea milked. I don’t know… maybe it’s a geography thing. (I hope he doesn’t think it’s because I won’t let him milk it… O.o )

Now, let me see. I’ve been carefully timing this, because one of the things that stops me from being all over Assam is how finicky they are. You can pretty much abuse a Chinese black from now until Christmas and it’ll still produce a drinkable cup. Sometimes rather stewed, but still drinkable. An Assam however will not put up with that sort of treatment. It will turn around and bite you back.

The aroma is quite malty, but it also has notes of raisins and honey in there. Mostly raisins. Whenever I’ve had an Assam that hasn’t been completely ruined, it seems to have always had a raisin-y aspect to a smaller or larger degree. Less so with honey.

Normally when describing something as malty, I would automatically started searching for a grain-y aspect, but I can’t really find that here. It’s more sort of wood-en for me. (And bright red, my at times weird brain supplies)’

Over it all there is a note of something that smells thick and creamy, almost… like if it had a smidge of vanilla flavouring. I’ve found that Assam generally works great for me as a base for vanilla flavouring, although peculiarly my Perfect vanilla isn’t Assam-y. Now I’m beginning to wonder if that works so well because the flavouring in those cases enhance a note which might already be there, if you know what I mean. It makes a vanilla flavoured Assam taste more natural than really flavoured. If you know what I mean.

But I digress and this tea, for the record, is not actually flavoured with anything at all.

First sip is sweet and honey-y. At the very beginning it was wood-y, but then it turned all sweet. I’m actually dithering a bit on the honey note, wondering if I think it’s more along the lines of toffee or something, but eventually I’ve come to the conclusion that I think it’s most like honey. Second sip starts me considering that question again. It’s almost like it depends on how I’ve sipped. Where on the tongue it hits first, how much I’ve been slurping, how long it takes before swallowing. At the very beginning, I think it’s like honey, but then it turns into something toffee-y and sweetie like. And I’m pretty certain it is actually the same note here. It definitely feels like the same note that changes.

So, apart from that weird sweet aspect that can’t decide what it is, we’ve got some wood-en notes to this like I found in the aroma, and they’re laying down the bottom of the flavour. It’s actually quite discreet, but it adds substance. There’s a hint of mild astringency here too, but nothing too dominating.

Now what about those raisins. peers into cup They’re in there. I know they are, because I can feel them. I just… don’t know where they are. They’re hiding from me, shouting coo-ee every now and then. I suspect the tea needs to develop a bit before I’ll find them.

The tea has cooled off a bit now, and I think we can safely say that this is one of those that only have raisin notes to a smaller degree. They’re out there a little more now all right, but nothing that makes me sit up and say ‘raisin!’. That creamy sort of milky note is very much at the forefront now and I’ve completely lost the honey/toffee/vanilla-y chameleon note. That’s a shame, because I was rather enjoying that. I liked this one best when it was very hot.

All in all, this was a highly enjoyable tea.

When Cteresa and I were planning our small swap, she suggested that I try some of this one. I had never heard about it before so I went and looked it up.

Then I made this face: O.O

And then I’m afraid I resorted to pitiful begging to pretty please with a cherry on top have a sample. Or something like that. Okay, maybe not quite that much, but I definitely wanted to try it.

I mean, caramel, vanilla and red berries? That’s like, three of my favourite things to flavour tea with! It reminds me rather of the St Petersburg blend from Kusmi, only without the bergamot. And you know what, I can totally live without bergamot. Easy. And I’m actually quite fond of St P. So what I’m expecting here is something similar but better. St P got 86 points from me on Steepster. Let’s see if we can’t beat that.

Oh my word, the aroma of this one! It smells like cherries and creamy-sweet vanilla and sugar-y sweet caramel. It’s quite heavy on the caramel too. This is liquid sweets in a cup. The berries here are cherry, strawberry and raspberry, but I can only really find the cherry in the aroma. That herry flavoured number from Fru P that I’ve got is really coming in handy here, because the cherry aroma in that one is exactly the same as in this one. Perhaps there’s a wee bit of strawberry underneath, but I can’t really be certain.

Okay, so the aroma is definitely leaving St P behind in a cloud of smoke. So far so good.

The first sip gives me juicy fruit a-plenty. It reminds me at first of a 4 Red Fruits blend, but extra sweet. Although this is only three red fruits. But who’s counting.

The vanilla and caramel are both quite subtle at this point, but the vanilla comes out more as I sip and lends a creamy note. I’m now reminded more of some kind of red berry ice cream dessert. All we need now is the caramel, but I expect it’ll show up if the cup is allowed to cool off a wee bit more. This seems to often be the nature of caramel flavoured teas. They need to be allowed to develop a little more before the flavour really comes out to play. (And no, as I’ve mentioned before, your various tricks of adding sweeteners of various sort do not work for me. It makes nothing “pop” for me. Adding stuff just breaks the tea for me.)

It’s true for this as well. A little patience before sipping further and the caramel is there in the aftertaste.

Oh yeah, this is better than St P all right! I must shop at DF som time.

I just had a small sip of Husband’s mojito. Bleurgh! Not for me at all. I don’t actually like alcohol much and don’t find it refreshing no matter how many ice cubes are involved so, I suppose I could have told myself that it would be a bad idea.

I need something to wash that down with. Sil to the rescue! This one is a green tea with peaches and vanilla and Sil shared a few bags with me. I see that she didn’t much care for it herself, which makes it easier for me to say that I’m sceptical because I don’t actually much care for peach in tea. Peach everything else? Yes. Peach in tea? Not so much. And it appears that the deal-breaker for Sil was a strong floral note, something which I don’t really care for either.

Yeah, I’m beginning to expect something pretty dire here. But hey, at least I discovered that it’s a green base before I poured boiling water on it, so that’s a good sign right? Right!

Besides, it also has vanilla in it, and we all know what I’m like with vanilla, don’t we? Also, it’s been a long time since I actually had a peach flavoured tea, so my tastes might have changed in the meantime. These things do happen, you know. (For example, I used to really like Darjeeling. Now I just don’t care for it at all.)

There is definitely loads of peach in the aroma. It’s like when taking the very first bite of a peach or nectarine, and the fruit aroma comes up through the nose. There’s something green smelling in the aroma as well, sort of along the bottom and the edges and that note has a touch of something floral to it. I can’t immediately find any vanilla in the aroma, but there’s something sweet sort of hovering around the other notes which could be it, but might also simply be a peach fruity-sweet aspect.

Yeah, the flavour definitely has vanilla in it. It’s the first thing I find. A creamy thick sort of sweetness that reminds me a little of melted ice cream. A long with that, the green base comes out in force, and I can see what Sil means about something floral behind the vanilla. That’s exactly the way I’m experiencing it too. This is one of those teas that feel like they’re layered and the floral green tea is the bottom layer with vanilla right on top of that.

The floral aspect is quite obnoxious, but not completely undrinkable I don’t think. Sil shared two satchets with me, and I’m going to try and coldbrew the other one. It’s finally the weather for it too. This is just exactly the sort of tea that I’ve had good experiences with in coldbrew.

The peach flavour is mostly going on in the aftertaste for me here, with some modest overlap between it and the vanilla. This was the note that I was feeling the most sceptical about and it turns out to not actually be so bad. In fact I feel quite ready to dip my toes cautiously into the peach-flavoured tea pool again, so perhaps my tastes in that regard really have changed.

Not awesome, but it could have been much worse. I think it’s saved by there being two notes in here that I actually like. If either the peach or vanilla, and I don’t think it matters which one, had been missing, I wouldn’t have liked this at all, I don’t think. It’s drinkable as it is, and it’s infinitely better than Husband’s alcoholic concoction.

Edited: The cold brew is actually much nicer. The peach is very much at the forefront here, and although it’s still pretty floral, it’s not quite as obnoxious. Unfortunately the vanilla seems to have got slightly lost, though. I really very much prefer it brewed this way, but that doesn’t surprise me. It’s something I’ve noticed before with these sorts of blends.

Real food! Real tea!

This. And a liquid diet. Day 3.

I’m SO hungry! (Doing better so may attempt solid food tonight, depending)

Sil, I hope to get to the post office today. Right now things seem stable so I might brave it. (Don’t worry, it shouldn’t be contagious. Not unless you ate the same thing I shouldn’t have eaten. I washed my hands carefully before packing anyway.)

Cteresa shared this with me in our recent swap and told me to keep an open mind about the bagginess of it. It wasn’t one of the teas we had talked about, but she added it as a bonus because it was vanilla and she knows I like vanilla. Like, a lot.

Okay, so I gave it a shot yesterday, and was surprised to find it quite nice. I was told to expect a very subtle vanilla, but it was actually clearly detectable for me. Especially on the aftertaste. I was reminded of the French Vanilla Assam that 52teas made last year (I think) which I quite enjoyed.

Because it was convenient and because Husband chose a glass of whisky over a cup of tea later in the evening, I steeped the same bag again. Just to see if I could and what would happen.

In my experience Indian black teas generally don’t resteep very well with the way I brew them, so it was a bit of a gamble. Turns out this one was no exception to that rule and it did actually produce a fairly weak tea the second time around. What was NOT weak, however, was the vanilla! There was still plenty of vanilla around and without a strong tea to accompany it, it was a very VERY vanilla-y cup indeed.

In fact, I find I’m not certain which cup was more enjoyable. They were both enjoyable, but in WILDLY different ways.

I think I’ve seen this brand around a few times when grocery shopping. I believe it would be worth it to have a look if this particular variation might be among them. It would be a good candidate to take up to my parents’ house to drink there.

(Last time I ran out up there, my mother thought she was buying a higher end kind of bag when she bought something else than her own usual brand of Pickwick or Twinings, and instead managed to get something maybe slightly better, but it was a green tea and a plain rooibos. The former is… drinkable, I suppose, but far from what I usually prefer (black) and the second is just wrong. I don’t like plain rooibos. She tried one and didn’t like it either, so I’m not sure what we’re going to do with those bags now.)

It is a well established fact that Tan Yang is my favourite ever kind of black tea. So what, you may be wondering, is your second-favourite kind of black tea, Ang? Tough question! It depends, I suppose. Sometimes I’ll say Lapsang Souchong, other times I’ll say Keemun, because those are both teas that I must own in some form or other. It doesn’t even have to be the most perfect LS or Keemun that I’ve ever found, although that would of course be preferable; there just has to be one.

If you were to ask me such a question, Bailin likely wouldn’t even make it into my thoughts before answering. However, the first time I drank the Bailin from TeaVivre, I found that it was so close in nature to the Tan Yang of Loveliness that I have reached the conclusion that they are interchangable for me. I’m not saying that they taste exactly they same and therefore it doesn’t matter which one I’ve got. What I’m saying is that they fill out the same role for me. If I want a Tan Yang and haven’t got one, I can drink Bailin instead and be happy. And vice versa. It’s the same with caramel flavoured things and toffee flavoured things. They’re not really the same thing, but they do the same thing.

Therefore, I think we must conclude that my second favourite type of black tea is Bailin. (Second favourite type of black tea that can’t be from Fujian would probably still be Keemun, though, fyi)

I’ve had two Bailins before that I can recall. The first one I had was from TeaSpring and it had a remarkable orange-y flavour to it. It was really lovely. The second one was from TeaVivre and that one didn’t seem to have that much in the way of that orange-y note. On the other hand it was a bit wild and exciting, although still a little more well-behaved than my favourite Tan Yang. Now I’m having the TeaVivre one again, choosing wild and exciting over orange-y. (Mind you, the TeaSpring one I had was yeeeeeeears ago, and the current offering might not even have that note)

The aroma is cocoa-y and grainy, and the flavour is as well. Cocoa and grain, caramel-y aftertaste, and something just a little bit sharp and citrus-y around the edges. Yes. This is still filling out the same role as Tan Yang for me, only with a little more sophistication. :)

As I already made an extensive post on this when I had the first time, I’m not really going to bother with doing it again. Just know that I’m as pleased with this now as I was then and that I still agree completely with myself, save perhaps for having noticed that touch of something orange-y, although it is very very tiny indeed and might just be my own imagination.

I got two bags of this from Fleurdelily. Drank one of them myself some months ago and Husband drank the other one recently. I don’t remember if I mentioned it before, but he bought a car recently. His first ever car. Circumstances with where we live and where his job is, this was something he had to do, although he would have preferred it had it not been necessary. Unfortunately there was no way to get from home to job with public transport without having it involve an enormous detour.

Husband hadn’t driven a car for about ten years and he had never ever driven one outside of England before, so although he took a lesson with a local driving instructor, he was still feeling a bit stressed about all the driving. (And buying of really expensive things and then just leaving them on the street and all that)

I swear there’s a point to all this to do with the tea!

All this stress let to him not sleeping very well at night. Waking up all the time and all that sort of thing. Something, and I can’t remember what, reminded me of the calming qualities of chamomile and it made me check if I still had a bag of it or not. I then gave it to him, suggesting that he could try it before bedtime and see if it made him sleep better.

For a man who has eaten corn flakes every single morning for years and can’t seem to get tired of corn flakes, he’s quite willing to try these experiments, so he drank this in the evening.

And it knocked him out cold. He slept like a baby, only without all the waking up and screaming and such.

We have now purchased a box of generic brand chamomile teabags (yeah, with this sort of stuff? I don’t care about all the snobby things. It’s purely for medicinal purposes and the generic brand cost a third, a third! of what whichever established brand it was they had cost) for the purpose of allieviating sleepless nights like those.

If if didn’t have any real effect, it was definitely a very good placebo. And in this house we are perfectly fine with placebo so long as it works. :)

So I’m notching the score up on this one, based this very good result.

Oh dear, I can feel that this is going to be a really long post. I’ll let you all know when I’m going to actually start writing about the tea, so you can skip ahead if you like.

My Teavivre order arrived! I wasn’t even expecting it yet. I’ve ordered stuff from China before, obviously, and I know it usually takes a couple of weeks to get here, but I don’t know why I hadn’t realised that it had actually been that long since I ordered.

Oh well, I’m certainly not complaining! :D I have unpacked my tea and the cats have given the box and the wrappings a very thorough sniffing. I don’t know what they kept the wrapping supplies next to in China, but whatever it is, it’s very interesting to cats.

While the wrapping was undergoing such a detailed inspection, I tried to decide which one to try first. And then I smacked my forehead because DUH! Self, don’t be an eedjit. You obviously start with the Tan Yang.

If you are wondering what’s so obvious about that, you have not been following me for long enough. Fujian produces the majority of all my very favourite black teas, and my most beloved type of all is Tan Yang. This is the type where I have been known to draw little hearts on the label. So yeah. Obvious. :)

The first time I ordered from Teavivre, I believe the company was still very young, but they had marched right into the hearts of many Steepsterites with their high quality and their sample program. For me, it was the Bailin gong fu that finally drew me in and made me place that first order. There was a contact form on the site that you could fill out if you had questions or suggestions, so I asked if they were planning on stocking a Tan Yang in the future. I can’t remember what exactly the reply was, but I think I was told that they would look into it.

Some time passed and eventually Teavivre did indeed offer a Tan Yang. Oh, how I coveted it! But unfortunately circumstances conspired against me and I didn’t feel like the time was right to buy it. We’ve been frugal, you know, what with having our wedding and then a bit later Husband having a stint with unemployedness, and now we want to start saving up so we can eventually buy a house. It’ll probably be at least a year before we’ll even consider talking to the bank, but we still have to start now.

So I sat here and watched other people drink this highly coveted tea, and then I COULD NOT TAKE IT ANY LONGER, flails AAAAAAAAARGH!!!! pant pant

I cracked and ordered. As long as I control myself I can totally save up and buy interesting tea now and then at the same time. Besides, I was getting to that point where every time I saw someone write about it, I felt a little guilty that I hadn’t bought any myself yet. You know, having suggested that they get some in their shop…

Okay, the actual drinking of the tea starts here!

The aroma is quite mild, and it’s has a bit of a honeyed caramel-ish note to it. There’s a little bit of grain underneath too. I suspect this is a more well behaved version than the (Most Highly Beloved of All) Te Ji I get from TeaSpring. But then again, that one is pretty unruly at times, so it wouldn’t be difficult to be better behaved.

Oh, so sweet! So caramel-y! There’s a bit of malt and cocoa as well, but I think it tastes mostly like sugar and caramel. I mentioned yesterday that I don’t like sugar in tea, but what I meant was that I don’t like sugar added to tea. When it is naturally occurring like this, I like it just fine. It has to do with the way added sugar changes the mouthfeel for me. Anyway, first sip gives my sugar-y caramel-y flavouring, and a summerly note of… sip sip grass?

GRASS??? o.O Well, that’s new. It’s not in overwhelming amounts, though, (like what happens with most Darjeelings for me) so it doesn’t become unpleasant.

Underneath that, and especially at the moment just before I swallow is the very important grain-y note. An awesome Fujian would only be half as awesome without that note. There is only one type of tea in which a good strong note of grain is more important, and that’s in Keemuns.

Still, like with all the notes in here, it’s fairly calm and civilized and to my surprise I find I quite enjoy that. I mean, I love that the Te Ji tastes so riotously wild sometimes, but I’m getting older and slower, and sometimes it’s better with a tea that matches.

My cup appears to have become empty… I don’t usually finish drinking before I’m finished writing. I must have needed it.

That’s it. If anybody needs me further today, I’ll be in the kitchen drawing little hearts on this label.

As you may have seen on the discussion boards, I recently missed out on a chance to taste this new-fangled sparkling tea product. Not wine, not cider, not tea, but sort of all things at once, or something. Fru P replied to my comment on the Book of Faces that if they had any left she would save some for me, but of course this was not possible.

I did take the opportunity to stock up on that awesome vanilla that they have (Sil, if you are still interested in trying it, please message me. I have loads now.) and I also bought some of her caramel flavoured black. This is another highly coveted flavour for me in tea. I love it when it occurs naturally and I love it when it’s added artificially. Unlike vanilla, though, I’ve met several caramel flavoured teas that fit my requirements exactly.

Anyway, I had to try this one as well, of course. I don’t even know how I missed it the first time I was in there. It’s not like me to not even look for it.

I had a whiff of the leaves before steeping and both that aroma and the aroma of the cup now steaming under my nose are extremely promising. It’s all sweet and butter-y caramel. There is even a smidge of something nutty to it. A sweet kind of nut, like an almond. All heavy and creamy.

The flavour, at the first sip, struck me as a bit thin and a bit… twig-y, sort of. I don’t know, I just got this image of twigs in my head. It’s not immediately delivering on the promise of the aroma.

Some would say, ‘try adding a little sugar’ or ‘try adding a little milk’, to which say a vehement no. If a tea has to have additives in order to taste right, it’s just not a good tea. Additives, for me, kills the tea. Additives are murder. In other words, I rarely actually like a tea very much after adding stuff to it, especially sugar. I can deal with milk but prefer not to have it. Sugar or other sweeteners, however… I do not understand how some of you can even get it down. So, no. I’m not tampering with the tea and nothing you say can ever convince me otherwise.

Instead I’m going to let it cool down a bit, and there it is. There is a caramel flavour there now, but it’s still not as rich as in the aroma and it’s sort of hovering under a water-y surface.

It helps a bit as it cools and develops a quite nice nutty aftertaste, but it still never gets really caramel-y. I suspect this requires some fiddling with the steeping process. So far, though, I’m not really convinced.

On completely unrelated note, this car (https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/944415_10151616377506122_932531436_n.jpg) is driving around in the town where I live. No, Steepsterites. Your eyes are not decieving you.

This sample has been clean forgotten. I was just looking through my box of things yet to post about and there it was. I see that I need to do some translation work on the description of it. I’ll get to it right away when I’m finished writing this post.

Wild pu-erh. Well, this sample was indeed quite wild. I fumbled a bit, taking the little bag of leaves out of the wrapping and dropped it on the floor. This, apparently, was completely irresistable to a passing and equally wild Charm-kitty, who proceeded to bat it violently across the dining room floor. The bag was sealed though, so no harm done. It looked funny, though.

The aroma is thick and earthy and pu-erh-y. It’s like… default pu-erh. This is what I think of, when someone says pu-erh. There is a kind of sweetish, fruity sort of jam-ish note in there as well, which rather reminds me of strawberry jam without actually smelling like strawberry at all.

If the aroma is default pu-erh, the flavour is a bit of a shock. There’s nothing default about this at all, and to be honest it tastes more like a black tea with a pu-erh-y edge rather than an actual pu-erh (which of course it is). I believe this is what Chaplon also mentions in the description as being less earthy and heavy then most pu-erhs because the trees it’s harvested from are so very old that they aren’t affected as heavily by the aging process. Chaplon calls it a more elegant pu-erh, but personally I wonder if that’s not just some sort of attempt to NOT say that maybe it would have benefitted from seven years more in storage…

That said, however, I find it quite pleasant. I rather like that feels more like drinking a black tea. I don’t know why I don’t drink more pu-erh, really. I do enjoy it quite a lot, but somehow I’m just not as interested in it as I am in black tea. Which is also funny, because you would think that this type would be much more interesting, wouldn’t you?

As for the actual flavour, I’m getting leather and wood at first. That’s a fairly sharp tasting sort of combination, and it makes me immediately search for something rounder such as cocoa and/or grain. No luck, though. Instead there’s just the earthy note of the pu-erh, reminding me of what it actually is I’m drinking and otherwise doing that same sort of rounding out task.

But there must be more to it than this, right? I sip and sip and sip and I find… nothing. Leather, wood, earth. That’s it. Something that tastes decidedly pu-erh-y, but feels black.

Often, as a cup of tea cools a bit, it develops more and other notes come into play, or the previously noticed ones change either in strength or in character. I was hoping that it would be the same with this one, but now that I have waited a while, I can tell you that it doesn’t appear to be the case. It tastes exactly the same. The same notes in the same proportions.

It’s nice and all, but… That’s it really.