BlueKittyMeow

This is nice – it tastes like a cider actually. It really is a great Winter tea – wonderful to curl up with. Not at all bitter or astringent, not sweet either, just super wonderfully pleasant and fruity with great apple elements. After I brewed it up there were big pieces of orange peel in the strainer :)

This smells like coconut candy. Which is amazing right now because I seriously need something sweet and relaxing.
Actually… it really smells like buttery coconut shrimp. Which sounds weird but is, again, amazing. I seriously love oolongs.
I was a little disappointed with the flavor – it was kind of thin. I added a little extra leaves anyway so I think I would need to brew this longer, closer to three minutes to really get the flavor – I was missing the lilac notes too.
It does smell amazing though.

Hmm – somehow I wasn’t thinking when I brewed this up. I treated it like an oolong! In my defense, I did brew it a little cool for that, ~188 so just take this with an extra pinch of tea leaves in case I botched it, right?

More tea that I have had freaking forever. And yet it still smells good. The dry leaves had a great deep caramel flavor, with brown sugar elements. The leaves were rolled up tight in little balls – there was a slight amount of dust and broken leaves.
When I brewed it up, they unfolded into these incredibly long spindly skinny leaves – really interesting looking, like something out of an Edward Gorey drawing or a Lovecraftian opium vision (what, too fanciful? Come on, it’s almost Halloween! … and they really look that strange).

The liquor smells great – almost a caramel or tobacco flavor. I still get some of the notes of oolong butteriness, but it is more like a smokey sweet kind of scent. It smells like it would taste like butter spice cookies. (This is really not sounding like a green tea, is it? …)

This tastes suspiciously like chestnuts. I definitely brewed this too hot – I taste bitterness but that might be an illusion exacerbated by the astringency of this tea. It is very nutty in a great walnut/chestnut kind of way.
I definitely have to try this tea again and make sure not to mess it up because I can see the potential here.

Yay! I love this matcha.
Like… love.
I have tried a few other kinds of matcha before this and they had had a sharper more vegetal bite. This is much smoother.
I still like to make my matcha with cold milk but this has nice nuttiness and isn’t sharp. Eminently sippable and it got me through three days of filming on around 3 hours of sleep each night! That gets a serious A+.

ETA – thank you for the free sample, Kaimatcha! I love it :)

This was neat – it smelled like jolly ranchers loose but had a decently subtle taste when I brewed it up.
It only had a mild kombucha bite to it, and the oolong didn’t sing to me but somehow I still liked this. I’m backlogging so I am sure I’m forgetting a lot of what made this great. Suffice it to say I enjoyed it.

I’m a little scared of this one – it smells medicinal. Not in that cough syrup way but in a kind of dental novocaine/disinfectant kind of way.
I actually like the way this tastes. The scent remains but this has a nice hibiscus flavor. I am one of those people who really likes hibiscus.
I have to take points off for the scent though because that is seriously off putting. I don’t like feeling like I’m drinking poison, ya know? The flavor is nice and I’m getting tired and ready to go to sleep, so not a loss at all.

This was so neat – not at all what I was expecting. I was actually expecting more oolong flavor and was shocked and yet pleasantly surprised when I got darjeeling flavor (yes, I was really distracted this morning).
It was raining here all day while my fiance, my sister and I tackled some freakishly intimidating camera equipment.
And you know what? We nailed it. Follow focus with all of its gears? Got it. Monitor with crazy focus and exposure assist settings? We so have this. Crazy sweet camera with all its features? Nailed it.
I feel so much better about Friday when we are actually shooting.
Back to the tea – it was nice to have something to calm my nerves. I did supplement my exhaustion with coffee, but I tried to tamp the jitters down.
This so matched the day – kind of smokey, kind of rainy (yes, the tea was kind of rainy), really nicely mellow and bracing in that almost black tea kind of way. I bet this would be fabulous with milk in the morning (I know, oolong and milk= sacrilege.)

The loose leaves smell great. I brewed this up for 8 minutes (which is one of the longer hot steeps I’ve done).
This has an interesting light note to it. The mint is cooling and makes the liquor feel very thin. I taste the chocolate. Actually the two flavors go really well together, giving me an ice cream type experience of mint chocolate chip.
There is something in here that I’m not sure is working so much for me. I think it might just be the choice of base. I don’t care for honeybush as much as rooibos to begin with, so this might just be my own bias, but I feel like the honeybush dominates the other flavors. I don’t really know what I would suggest instead, and I am enjoying this, my brain just wants to process this as “interesting” rather than “delicious!”.

Super-short note: I liked this. It wasn’t mind blowing, and the orchid taste and scent really came out for me on this oolong.

This is my very first time trying Darjeeling tea. I’m so excited!
The dry leaves smell like cocoa powder. Mmm…
This has a funny mouth feel. It is almost powdery, yet thick and heavy.
It is hardly astringent at all and tastes interesting… it kind of has a generic “tea” flavor to me. I get a slight amount of what could be the “sparkling” feeling that I’ve heard associated with these.
I am not wowed, but this is a decent “tea tea” for lack of a better descriptor.
Of course, I just had a giant “break out the sunglasses and turn out the lights” migraine, so I’m not really fully functioning. Take my “not too impressed” with a grain of salt.

This smells so buttery – really like buttered popcorn.
First steep:
This has a nice balance of floral orchid notes to the butteriness. I got to this when it was cold so I might have missed out on some of the flavors.
Second steep:
I think I steeped this for closer to three minutes rather than two. It had a strong vegetal taste verging on bitter. Still not bad. Not my favorite oolong, but not bad either. I think I like this one better than Teavivre’s plain milk oolong.

Mmm. Unvelievable coconut scent, really creamy.
It has a sparkly kind of feel – first tea I’ve tried that really had that.
Running out the door so this is a short note, but this is a decent (if weirdly sparkly) black tea. I don’t taste the coconut I smell, which is fine I guess. I’m just going to add some milk.

The buds smell like brown sugar. Soooo good. They still smell like tea, just with a great earthy sweet spiciness permeating them.
I went with western style brewing – I rinsed them, then steeped for 4 minutes. The liquour is such a delicate light color.
The liquour smells a little woodsy. Like taking a tree, deep red with rain and drizzling honey over it and brown sugar and then sticking it over a fire, letting the sugar crystals pop and spark into a molasses syrup imbued with the scent of the wood.
I’m honestly not sure if I like the flavor. It is a strange mixture of sweet and woodsy. It certainly isn’t bad and it is fascinating but it’s not necessarily a flavor profile I’m feeling.
It does have a really nice aftertaste of nectar or sugar.
I think I prefer brewing Verdant teas gongfu style. Today I just seem to lack the mental energy.

I got this sample size from Amanda. I really want to brew this gongfu style but my life has been so nuts I just can’t. I have a little bit of time before I run some more errands, so I’m just brewing this up western style (1tsp/cup, 175 degrees, 1.5 minutes) or else I might keep saving all my Verdant Tea for “later”.
The liquour looks so light, I really wasn’t sure if I didn’t add enough leaves (I hate measuring dragonwell without a scale).
Okay, amazing notes now!
This actually smells like rain.
I am a fanatic about rain. I cannot work when it is too bright out, I would be perfectly happy if it was almost always raining. There are so many perfumes, candles, etc that are supposed to smell like rain but they don’t.
This smells like petrichor. And it’s reminding me of The Wasteland. My own headcanon version of The Wasteland where the rains actually come and the thunder isn’t just dry and sterile.
I get a little of the banana scent as well.
This tea is interesting – it has a rather delicate flavor. Initially it tastes very green, goes into a sweetness, segues into a slightly bitter flavor, and then resolves tasting like cream.
There is a slight mineral aftertaste, as though I had the smallest square of tin foil between my back teeth. And because I like strange or interesting flavors, I am calling this a good thing. Nowhere near some of the other Verdant Teas I have tried but head and shoulders above some other teas I have been drinking lately. I might try the last of the gongfu style later.

It is 12:45. I am dreaming such big dreams that I cannot sleep.
In the past three days I have booked an 1890s opera house, rented a marquee, rented almost $1000 in film equipment, solicited my friends help, and bought several hundred dollars of vintage costuming, all for our film’s fundraising video.
Can you see why I can’t sleep???
Relax
Okay, so seriously, if there is a time for tea it is now. I figured that since I like DavidsTeas’ Mothers Helper that now would be a good time to try this sample.
Flavorwise, I am tasting something along the lines of Mother’s Helper. I’m getting a berry thing, hibiscus-like notes, and some kind of almost umami finish.
Like other reviewers, I’m having a hard time picking out the flavors of this tea.

I think it’s as if a little woodland critter came up, wide eyed and bushy tailed and shoved a handful of sweet, citrusy, and bitter berries into my hands and had me brew it in a little mug hewn of chestnut wood.

I just got my free sample today – thank you Martin! I was really intrigued by the brewing instructions. It called for 160 degrees for ~4 minutes. Also, the liquor was very light when I brewed it up. The leaves also surprised me because they were so small and only .5tsp were called for per cup.
The tea itself smells fantastic however, allaying my trepidation. A little smokey, a little buttery, a little creamy, and a little… like it would feel astringent.
This has one of the thickest mouth feels of any of the tea I’ve had. The flavor is just as puzzling as the scent and instructions. I think I like it. It is a lot like walking through cedar woods in the rain. It is woody, a little astringent, reminds me of wine being aged in barrels, and it went perfectly with the rainy day.
I groomed a gorgeous Bedlington Terrier today, in my nice little studio with the rain storm out the windows. This was a nice way to relax, mirroring the weather.
I think I like it…

This tea is a little funny. Brewed up it smells like cherry. Cherry left in some damp gym socks. I’m a little scared to take a sip.
The taste isn’t bad but it’s a little blah. I get a hint of green and the idea of some kind of flavoring but not much. Woohoo it doesn’t taste like gym socks! But it is rather boring.

Mmmm. This smells like the best liquour dark chocolates ever. This makes me think of college when I would send chocolates to my now fiance more. I would sometimes send him a box of little chocolate mice filled with different ganaches and he would share them with me. This smells just like the fillings of one of the little mice (I think the cinnamon dark chocolate one).
This tastes dark, smokey, and slightly sweet. It has an incredible mouthfeel, dense and rich. I am in the mood for a little sweetness, so milk and sugar are being added but this can definitely stand on its own. I get a really neat little bourbon aftertaste.

_{It takes forever for me to describe the tea here, so Teaser! I am calling this my Baclava Tea. I also tormented this poor tea and broke several tea laws. I noted my rule violations at the bottom of my post}

My fiance got this for me… like last year. Or maybe even longer ago. So I suck. And now, so might this tea! Time to find out :)
No brewing instructions because this came from a little pharmacy on Canal St. I guessed 195 because it’s an oolong and decided to start with 3 minutes.
This thing is so cool – I haven’t had a blooming tea in years. Right now it’s deployed its oolong tentacles and is floating and spinning at the top of the pot like an anemone space ship.
And… then it descends, still spinning and lands, all of a sudden.
Awesome.

The liquor is still really light. And, confession, I totally forgot how long I have been steeping it for, distracted by the Space Tea. So I’m guessing on the time. I poured my first cup at around 3 minutes.

First cup: I let my mother have the first sip because I do not have a mouth of steel. She couldn’t taste anything, said it was too hot. My sister agreed but added “comforting” though.
Okay, my thoughts (geeze, BlueKitty, get on with it!!). It smells like honey. And it actually tastes really good! It has a nice nutty flavor without astringency. I feel like I just ate baclava actually… mmm. It has that oolong quality where it lingers in your mouth and throat.
You know what, enough said. This rocks. I am so pleasantly surprised! Tea lasts freaking forever, I guess.

… want to hear how I stored this? You will cringe I swear.

I got it 2 Christmases ago, I think. I stored it in a cabinet. Then I moved to nyc. It came with me. It lived above the stove there. Then I moved back. It went into a temporary greenhouse outside where many of my possessions got absolutely destroyed. This somehow was spared. Then I moved the bag to the cabinet opposite the stove over my sink for a year. Then I found it, squeed, and added it to my tea cabinet in a little sealed container.
So, all the tea violations here: ~2 years old. Kept over stove. Kept in hot humid conditions. And yet, freaking incredible.
And now I miss nyc again :(

I really wanted to like this tea. I actually saved it for the right time to drink it. I finally brought it out in the AM when I was relaxed but needed a little bit of a zing.
And you know what? I really hate to say it but I couldn’t even finish this. (Let me stop right here and say that I am not usually a pineapple fan, so your milage absolutely might vary). It tasted like chemicals to me. I can’t really say what because I waited for a while to write this review because I felt so bad about disliking it. But I really hated it :( I followed the instructions, drank it mindfully and just… nope.

I think I might just not be as fond of 52teas as everyone else is. I am getting strawberries, but it’s not the best or most pleasant strawberry flavor I have gotten. And I’m not tasting a ton of butteriness for some reason. I like buttery green teas but I’m not getting pancake flavor. It’s not bad but it’s not exciting either.

The leaves were really interesting – big cherry pieces and tiny black tea leaves.
Oddly enough this tea is remind me of electronic cigarettes… I’m not a smoker but I have tried the nicotine free flavored vapor things before – the cherry flavor. And that is what this smells like. Kind of creamy cherry with a smokey element.
Really not digging the flavor. Maybe I overbrewed it but I’m not getting a ton of cherry and I am getting serious astringency.
I’m going to throw this in my tumbler, add milk and sugar and shake it into a tea latte-thingy.
Okay, well, with way too much milk and sugar, shaken into a latte, this is great! I probably won’t brew this up again but it’s good to know I can rescue teas I don’t like

Mmmm. Smells like buttery coconut.
I don’t know if the flavor works for me. I taste the vegetal aspect of the oolong, like stewed fiddleheads and then the butteriness of both the coconut and the oolong, but the addition of sweetness of the coconut just seems kind of funny to me.

This tea is so visually pleasing – I love the way the berries look amongst the tea leaves.
This brewed up lighter than I was expecting but the package notes that a second steep of ~4 minutes is recommended.
This tastes buttery! It is like a berry cobbler or something. Wow good :)
I really like the way the berry flavors work with the green tea – I get a really nice round fullness of the berries that is supported by the buttery green. This is such a brilliant idea for a tea combo! Or rather, a really simple idea that came out absolutely perfectly.
This was a sample for the virtual tea tasting here this September… I think I might need to order more of this when I have a tea budget again.