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2nd Steep: Still good. Tastes a bit used but it’s okay.

3rd Steep: Weaker. Definitely. It’s all light yellow now, sort of like a white tea that has been allowed to stand still and develop a bit. It’s drinkable still, but if this was the first contact you had with it, you so wouldn’t come back for seconds. Not sure a 4th steep is worth the effort, but I’ll attempt it anyway.

4th Steep. Yeah. Coloured water. Useless.

Apparently two steeps is the ideal. Three only if you’re desperate. Four if… well, never four actually.

I never thought I’d ever actually drink this tea. I mean just read the description. It’s sanctified! It’s speshul! It’s… It’s… It’s… !!!

It’s enormously expensive, is what it is. 9 grams = $5.10 The 108 g box = $ 55.60

But how could I not get a packet? Sanctified tea! Speshul! I might never get the chance to own something unique like this again.

I’m not sure what possessed me to make it today. Maybe it should have been saved for a special occasion like a good bottle of champagne? Thing is though, I know from experience that if you save a really expensive bottle of champagne for a special occasion then you’ll never get around to tasting it because you never know if there might be an occasion that was even more special. And when you finally DO open the champagne, it’s gone dull. This happened to my parents with the bottle of Dom Perignon they bought at the winery when we were on holiday in France. Talk about a disappointment. (Yes, it’s possible it wasn’t stored correctly. But still.) I wasn’t old enough to like wine yet when I was that age, so I at least was spared.

Anyway, I didn’t want to not have this special tea anymore, but I didn’t want aforementioned fate to befall it either. That would have been worse, so I’ve made a small pot of it now, using half the leaves, and I’m going to wring as many steeps out of it as I can.

The dry leaves are large and very dark brown, almost black. They don’t seem to have all that much aroma to speak of, but it is there. Delicate and I seem to be picking up a note of something chocolatey. When steeped the chocolate note is less pronounced but it’s still there, underneath some more sweetly floral notes. It smells very nice!

The flavour is also a delicate one. I pretty much agree with Teaspring’s description of flowery sweetness. Possibly more flowery than sweet, but it’s close enough. Not much in the way of aftertaste initially, but again, I find myself agreeing with Teaspring’s description. It sort of builds up as you drink.

I find I’m liking this a lot. I could most definitely see myself stocking up on this tea, although I would probably go for an ordinary Da Hong Pao and not this sanctified stuff that costs an ungodly amount of money.

But it is still kinda fun to own it. :)

I fought long and hard against this tea. I’d just had the raspberry oolong and I knew that one more pot of tea so quickly after would result in over-active kidneys. But you can’t stop inspiration, can you?

This tea was given to me as a gift along with two other teas from this estate. They’re organically grown and bought (I think) directly from the estate and then sent to me from India. Which of course meant I had to pay blood in taxes and customs and fees and what not (and let’s not even get started on the problem with the courier company and the half package number!!!)

The white leaves are big and gorgeous to look at. If you were to ask me how I make it, how many leaves I use to a pot, I’d have to just say, “Plenty.” My tea scoop was so not made for this size leaves! A scoop could be a decent amount of leave or it could be just a couple lying on the wrong angle of the scoop. No pot is ever the same when it comes to this.

It makes a very nice tea, though. Depending on how much it is steeped it’s got a good strong flavour. It’s not one of those white teas where you sit and search desperately for just a smidge of taste. This has got almost as much as an average green tea.

It coats the tongue quite nicely although it doesn’t really linger. There is some small aftertaste that seems to go on forever, but it’s not very strong.

It’s surprisingly suitable for the season. I would never in a million years have thought that a white tea could be anything but spring-y!

ETA: Do not under any circumstances allow it to oversteep. If you brew like I do, with the leaves loose in the pot, decant or drink quickly because it does get quite bitter.

Yeah this again. Nothing to say about really. But I had to enter a tea in order to make a post so… shrug

Am I the only one whose Dashboard page is acting up?

The ONLY updates I’m getting is what people liked and commented on. No reviews at all since some time yesterday.

And that’s not like you all to be so active with comments and stuff and logging nothing!

What’s up???

(Is anybody even going to see this…?)

I seem to have my innards back under control (fingers crossed) and I have also managed, it seems, to get rid of that godawful bad taste in my mouth. Good thing, that, because I’m sick and tired of peppermint infusion!

I’m sticking my neck out and trying some real tea. Hopefully I won’t regret it later.

This one was my first ever flavoured oolong (that I can remember), and it’s quickly become a favourite. It was lucky I found it because I was buying something else from the site at the time and just randomly started clicking around to see what else they had.

It smells absolutely divine and it tastes equally as lovely. I like it better and better every time I have some of it. It’s just what I need for a post-sick comfort tea.

I don’t really care much for mint flavours on their own. My colleagues drink this mint/liquorice root concoction that they claim is delicious. I disagree. You don’t even get the two flavours at the same time. First it’s minty mint and then the liquorice root doesn’t come through until you swallow, which to me seems like trying to have two different sorts of tisanes at the same time. Like they couldn’t decide if they wanted one or the other. But that’s not what I’m having now so I’ll shut up about it.

As mentioned I don’t really care much for mint. I have it so I can mix it into other stuff.

But then, on days like these where I’ve apparently eaten something or other that I shouldn’t have, it’s the only sort of tea or approximation of tea* that I can stomach. The very idea of anything else, even my normal favourites just make me go bleeeeargh!

So I’m having plain peppermint infusion now. I’m not enjoying it really, but it’s the only thing I want.

*Herbal infusions are of course NOT tea. Herbal infusions never HAVE been tea. Herbal infusions never WILL be tea. Herbal infusions have never even as much as seen a tea bush and are therefore no more tea than cocoa is coffee.

Yes, it’s me again with a word of advice. Don’t carry a full teapot seconds after you put lotion on your hands. Wasted a good deal of this when the handle slipped through my fingers leaving a very warm teapot in the pouring position.

Anyway, since the raspberry wasn’t all that autumny and I put half of it in the fridge for later, I found something else. Nuts. That’s very autumny, although this particular tea is sweet enough to probably be more of a dessert tea.

Doesn’t matter though. Not when my main reason for choosing this particular one right now admittedly had little to do with autumny-ness and much to do with lack-of-cake-in-the-flat-ness…

I’m having it now in spite of it hardly being a particularly autumny tea, simply because I found the tin in my tea cabinet and realised I’d quite forgotten I had it.

I see I’ve reviewed this one before and theorised that it might benefit from a little bit of sugar. So we’ll try it with a little bit of sugar this time.

Before, I said I could easily find the raspberry in the aroma of the dry leaves, but not really in the actual tea. I still agree with myself on that. I can find something nice and fruity, but not something directly recognisable as raspberry.

Trying it with a little cane sugar, but not too much, is nice and sweet and enhances the fruityness. It just doesn’t make it any more raspberry-ish.

Another tea that would be very nice on ice though, so since I made a small pot, I’ll drink this cup now and pour the other one on ice for later.

but with a twist!

Following yesterday’s chocolate chili fail, I got lots of suggestions for stuff to try instead.

Vanilla with a bit of peppermint was one of them.

I’d never have thought of this combination on my own, in spite, bizzarely, of having a pack of very nice chewing gum with this exact combination in my bag right now. I’d just never considered ‘translating’ it to tea.

It is, in tea, very nice! Both vanilla and peppermint have a natural sweetness, and their flavours surprisingly suit each other, making the tea sort of sweet but not.

I suspect it’s a combination that would also work very well on ice.

but with a twist!

I’m f-f-f-f-f-freezing! So I wanted a tea with a warming sort of flavour. You know chocolate with chili in it, right?

So I had this chocolate tea and I had this here chili powder and I thought, “hmmmmm…. Self, it’s worth a try.”

I made a small strong pot of chocolate tea and added half a teaspoon of chili, stirred and steeped.

The result was… this very red sort of tea, seriously it’s almost as red as a pu-ehr. It smells like a spicy spaghetti sauce and the flavour has gone really sweet in an unpleasant sort of way, with the hotness of the chili scratching my esophagus all the way down.

It’s not very pleasant and it’s not even warming. It’s not impossible that I used too much chili, but I don’t really feel inclined to experiment further with this.

I’m not going to drink the rest of the pot, but at least I’ve learned something. That in itself is a good thing, right?