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This was gifted to me by Mastress Alita, thank you! :)

It’s a very interesting tea. I find it common in ume-flavored things for there to be a strong shiso taste, and the same applies here. It’s more shiso to me than ume. There is definitely a bit of savory plum in the background, but the basil-esque shiso is in the forefront. The combination is actually quite nice with the higher quality sencha they used, which gives it a full texture and adds to that savory quality.

I do wish there was more of the actual ume flavor, I think a stronger fruity-tart presence would really help to balance things. But I still really enjoyed sipping through the packet, and would consider ordering it again in the future.

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First one for August, yay! \o/

I found this one a tad bit disappointing. That being said, it’s only because of the goji berries. I was looking forward to seeing how a touch of fruitiness would meld with a genmaicha, but I couldn’t taste even a hint of goji here.

It is a nice enough genmaicha though. The Laoshan green is naturally super nutty and beany tasting, so it goes splendidly with the toasty rice. Overall, it tastes like creamy edamame mixed with toasted cashews and a bit of brown rice. Sweet and savory, a bit brothy, and very restorative.

Not sure I would order it again, since I could just mix something similar myself. But a very tasty tea!

ashmanra’s Sipdown Challenge – “A tea with orange flavor”

A new month brings a new set of sipdown challenges! Going to try to use these prompts to steep up some teas that I either haven’t tried, haven’t written about, or just haven’t sipped in a long time.

Anyway, it’s not that this is a bad tea. It has a very prominent green yerba maté flavor to it, herbaceous and woody and slightly smoky. And I like yerba maté, so I do enjoy it. I just feel like the clementine takes such a backseat that it ends up being in more of a supporting role, rather than the star flavor. It does add a nice sweet, citrusy brightness to the blend, I’m just left wanting more of it.

Maybe next time I’ll try a shorter steep, or even try this cold steeped to see if it brings out more clementine zing.

P.S. – Dammann’s new website is gorgeous! And love the changes like displaying a short description of each tea’s flavors in the grid, and showing the ingredients on the product pages.

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Another belated July sipdown, and the last one from my Adagio iced tea order.

I also added some Strawberry & Lemon cold brew sachets from Twinings, mostly because I’m trying to use them up and I don’t love their Cold Infuse teas on their own. Here the lemon adds a nice counterpoint to the strawberry, which reminds me of Welch’s fruit snacks. But this tisane was also perfectly pleasant on its own (if a bit generic), with a candylike strawberry flavor and a lot of tart apple and hibiscus.

I probably won’t reorder this, but we’ll see!

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Belated July sipdown. For cold brew, I count it as a sipdown when I dump the tea into the pitcher and put it in the fridge to steep, but obviously the actual drinking doesn’t happen until the next day or so. Anyway, I’m counting this for July.

Quite enjoyed this one from Adagio. I also tried it with adding in some of the Twinings Watermelon & Mint cold brew sachets, but I found the mint sort of overpowered and ruined it for me. This is a bit light, but so refreshing, and has a nice combination of sweet watermelon candy and more tart apple flavors. The hibiscus is a good amount as well, not so much that it tastes like hibiscus, but enough to add some dimension.

Anyway, I ordered a bunch of other fruit tea samples from Adagio to try cold brewed, so we’ll see which ones I end up ordering after that. At the moment, this one and Wild Strawberry are my top contenders.

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This one was too mild for me, I ended up adding two sachets of the Twinings Mango & Passionfruit cold brew tisane to every pitcher to add some additional flavoring.

It definitely helped, adding some juicy passion fruit notes to the subtle peach and apple. Plus it also helps me sip down the other tea, which is not particularly good on its own either.

Anyway, definitely won’t reorder this one. I do have a sample of their Peach Serenity on the way, so we’ll see if that one’s anyway better.

ashmanra’s Sipdown Challenge – “International Friendship Day! Do your thing – have tea with a friend, send tea to a friend, write to a friend, make a friend, or call a friend while you have tea and let them know you are thinking of them”

So my mother has been visiting me for the past week or so. She’s not a tea drinker really, but she was so interested when my JusTea order arrived that we decided to do a tea tasting. Well, then she found one of my afternoon tea cookbooks so it sort of turned into a casual afternoon tea, and my husband joined us as well.

We made three-cheese scones with mustard butter, egg salad and cucumber tea sandwiches, and a rustic sour cherry cake. And then, in the spirit of the original tea tasting idea, we tried 6 of the 7 JusTea teas I ordered – Nandi Gold and Turmeric Ginger for the first course, African Chai and Purple Leaf for the second, and Cream Earl Grey and White Rhino for dessert. In actuality, we sort of ate the scones and sandwiches at the same time anyway. I also put out little dishes with the dry tea leaves for everyone to look at and sniff, and we had fun doing that.

We enjoyed all the teas to varying degrees, me more than the other two. This was my mom’s favorite of the selection (I already ordered her a tin from Amazon to be waiting when she gets home, shhhh…), so I thought I would leave the note here. I’ve never though of myself as a turmeric lover, but I really enjoy this tea and purchased a whole tin of it. The turmeric is earthy and sweet, the lemongrass light and citrusy, and the ginger and peppercorn add just enough spice while still leaving a somewhat mellow cuppa. Also worth noting, my husband hated this one, LOL! It’s always interesting to see non-tea people’s reactions to different teas…

ashmanra’s Sipdown Challenge – “Your most unusual tea”

I went back and forth a bit on which tea to sip for this prompt. I thought about having a tea with interesting foraged ingredients in it, but I feel like the concept of “wildcrafted” tea is not that unusual nowadays, even if the ingredients can be. So then I settled on this tisane from Obubu, because roasted sakura is just not something I’ve ever seen anywhere else. I also have a roasted sakura sencha from them, but I felt the combination with wild mint leaves was a bit more unique. Amusingly enough, I saw when I went to write this note that I also chose this tisane for the “a weird tea” prompt last year… :P

This wasn’t my favorite at first, but I grew to love it as I sipped through the first package, and by the end I was happy to have a second one. The roasted sakura has such an interesting toasty-savory flavor to it that’s somehow light and cozy at the same time. I can still taste the ethereal fruity-floral notes of the sakura, but the roasting gives it more presence and body. The mint is actually quite mellow in this, a nice accompaniment to the sakura that also gives the tisane a sweet and refreshing finish.

Such a lovely one, and I guess it sort of is “wildcrafted” since both the cherry trees and mint are apparently wild. :P

So I’ve mostly been using these Cold Infuse sachets to add additional flavor to some of my Adagio cold brew pouches, but I figured I should go ahead and try this one plain like I did with the others.

I noticed right away that this has a lot of hibiscus in it, which I was actually pleased about since it might be able to actually offset the undoubtedly large amount of flavoring that will be present. And it really does help, this is definitely my favorite of the three flavors I bought. The hibiscus gives it more of a red fruits flavor, but then I can taste the watermelon as well, and the mint comes in at the end of the sip to give it fun sort of mocktail vibe.

Quite nice really. I’ve been adding this to Watermelon Cooler from Adagio but I would definitely drink it plain as well.

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Last sample from Savoy. They accidentally left this one out of my order, so it was sent along later alongside a couple of free samples.

I’m not a lapsang lover, but this sounded interesting. It’s meant to be whiskey-inspired. Actually though, I feel like I’m tasting banana somehow…? Banana and a touch of caramel, and then of course the savory smokiness and earthiness of the lapsang. Perhaps a hint of cinnamon in the finish.

It’s nice enough, not quite what I expected, but I do enjoy banana teas. Not one I would reorder, but enjoyed sipping through the sample.