Carolyn

I woke last night with an anxiety attack and during my nocturnal research (with heart pounding) I came across the information that gyokura has the highest quantity of theanine (a calming component of tea). First thing this morning I fixed a cup of Gyokura (and ordered more). It has a nice nutty vegetal taste and it worked. I do feel calmer. Now on to something sterner.

The tea has a lovely apricot and nutty fragrance. The tea itself has a sharp taste that means that I oversteeped it I suspect. It’s been a crazy, unpleasant morning and my tea-brewing skills have clearly suffered. I will probably have to rebrew it and revisit. So I’ll wait to rate it until I do so.

Update: I rebrewed it with fresh leaves. It is no longer sharp. It has a taste I associate with Darjeeling, which is not a surprise since it comes from Darjeeling. I am beginning to realize that I don’t care for Darjeeling teas. This is quite sad since they are so well-regarded it makes me feel like some boorish lumpenproletariat destined to dislike this “champagne of teas”. Well, I’m sure I’ll get over it.

I am wondering how I could possibly be good enough to deserve this tea and my mind is humming over trying to give examples (I cleaned out all the kitchen cupboards yesterday, I finished a significant task at work last week, etc.). But the truth is that no one is good enough to deserve this tea. It is a work of grace that this tea exists and we mortals can enjoy its warm cocoa taste with complex notes of tea and caramel. So now I’m blissing out on grace.

It’s an interesting chunky blend of fruit that looks like something I might put on meusli or oatmeal. It brews up into a fruit punch colored liquid that smells like fruit juice and honey. The taste is like tart fruit punch. This is one tea I’m tempted to sweeten with a drop of honey. I can see that this would be excellent iced with orange slices floating within it.

OK purists, shutter your eyes now. This is not real tea. This is a melange of roasted chicory, chocolate, pepper, and ginger. It brews up black like coffee with a strong ginger smell. In my teens I was quite taken with herbal experimentation and this smells like one of my experiments. It brings me back to my mispent youth. It tastes fairly close to coffee with a ginger chaser. It’s not terrible and I can see it as an option for evenings when I want something dark without the caffeine.

This tea has large, beautiful, multi-colored leaves that brew into a golden liquor with a sweet fragrance with hints of incense. The tea is from Darjeeling and I detect in it that same Darjeeling floral fragrance. The taste encourages a kind a lazy sensuality as it spreads its floral complexities across my taste buds. It is surprisingly light in taste for an oolong. As it cools a bit, the incense begins to come out in the taste as well as the aroma.

Welcome back to my cup, sweet Bohea. We’ve been too long apart. I’d forgotten your raisin sweetness, your handsome golden tipped leaves and your pretty copper liquor. Let’s just sit here for a while and get re-acquainted.

The tea is exactly as it claims to be: chocolate. This is probably the most chocolate of any tea I’ve had. It’s very good. It has a slightly odd perfumed fragrance as well, which I assume is supposed to be the “cream” flavor. It’s a good tea but somewhat monochromatic. If what you want is just this side of hot chocolate, this is a good place to go.

This is a tea takgoti sent to me since she knows that I enjoy trying pu-erhs. This one is quite nice. It has a very smooth taste. Of course it has that distinctive pu-erh fragrance. But I think I actually like this one. I will have to think on it further to determine what exactly makes it nice.

Update: Have now had three steeps of this and I like it more each time.

I felt like something simple and dark this morning and this came to hand. I really love the smell of this tea with its multi-layered floral and other notes. The taste is just a good ordinary black tea.

The needle-like leaves have a wonderful nutty fragrance with slight notes of resin and flowers when submerged in hot water. The liquor produced is pale yellow and has a slightly deeper resin fragrance than the leaves alone.

The taste is rich and complex with notes of butter, nuts, pine, and a few other tastes I cannot describe. A very worthwhile tea with wonderful surprises in the flavor.

I confess, I’m always a bit leery of oolongs. I’ve had so much bad luck with them that I approach them much as I do pu-erhs, with a “Chin up! Be brave!” admonition. But I remembered I liked this tea from The Simple Leaf (and I love the company), so I thought I would try it this afternoon. Hopefully it will help quell my hunger pangs until I can get home and eat something healthy.

The fragrance is honey sweet and the liquor looks like honey as well. The taste has floral notes, honey, and a slight sharpness that I can see would veer into bitterness with a longer, hotter steep. It’s nice.

I could drink these flavored senchas all day (and frequently do). Sadly, that means that I am ripping through my little bag of pineapple sencha and will have to purchase more.

The tea has improbably large, twisted black leaves that smell of chocolate. It brews up into a brandy-colored brew that smells like chocolate. The taste is true to the fragrance, it is like a cocoa tea with no bitterness and the merest hint of astringency. This is so good! I really need to order more of this when I run out of my small package. I’ve upped the rating a bit.

When I made a face and said that I didn’t like the tea I was drinking (Wild Monkey Masala) my beloved didn’t say, “Well let’s go for our run then.” (Though he’d have been within his rights to say so since we are late getting out today.) Instead he said, “Pour it out and have something better. I’ll wait.” I saw Cecilia’s review of mango tea and immediately thought that the Mango Tango would be a good way to drive out bad tea feelings.

Mango Tango is such a happy tea! Even the leaves are beautiful since they’ve been brightened with little yellow flower petals. The tea itself brews up into a sweet, fragrant liquor with a smooth ceylon black flavor peeking through the mango and passionfruit curtains. Now I’ll be able to run happily.

This tea has a very strong scent of cinnamon and that musty marsala scent (but the cinnamon has clearly beaten the tea and the marsala into submission). My opinion is that this blend takes the worst aspects of cinnamon, wine, and black tea and brings them out. If you are such a cinnamon fanatic that you would suck on cinnamon bark, you might like this tea. It’s a bit too much for me.

A nice tea with a buttered vegetal fragrance and taste and that slight nutty taste I’ve come to associate with Sencha. There is the slightest bit of something that might turn into bitterness if steeped too long or at too high of a temperature, but in my cup it is just fine and good with a slight tang.

A nice mellow Assam tea with delightful toasty notes and a slight sweetness. While it is not as complex as some full caf Assams I’ve had, it is nonetheless very nice. It makes a soothing cup to accompany me to bed. No bitterness. No astringency.

My office has free tea along with free coffee, but since discovering good teas I haven’t availed myself of it. However after the Tavalon Dragonwell, I needed something to clear my palate, something to wipe the weird, numbing coating from my tongue. So I chose this since I generally like white teas and since the tangerine should function quite nicely as a mouth cleaner.

It steeps into a murky orange brew with the fragrance of tangerine candy. It tastes like tangerine as well. There’s not much of a white tea taste, but I purposely understeeped it to avoid any bitterness. It’s an ok tea and great for my purposes today but it is profoundly a one-note tea. There is no complexity here.

It’s been over a month but I’m finally courageous enough to try takgoti’s Dragonwell tea, the tea that began our tea swap. This Dragonwell is quite different. To start with, the leaves are heavy, flat spears, while Dream About Tea’s are light fluffy things.

She’s right, this Dragonwell has a slight peppery smell, like carnations. It has a stronger vegetal taste with something that makes the top of my tongue feel slightly numb. Interesting. But I like Dream About Tea’s Dragonwell better. It fascinates me that tea of the same name can be so different. I very much appreciate the chance to make the comparison. Thanks takgoti!

This is a wonderful tea. It has it all: beautiful leaves with flowers and fruit mixed in, lovely buttery grape fragrance, and light nutty butter grape taste. Mmmm!

Made a hot matcha, banana, and soy milk smoothie and it is yummy.

I love the buttery pineapple fragrance and flavor of this tea. I usually do very little resteeping, but these flavored Senchas from Den’s Tea just beg for a good resteep. Also, since they call for very fast steeps (30 seconds to 45 seconds) they last really well over time. Lately I’ve taken to drinking one of these all afternoon with many resteeps.

Very nice for lazy Saturday mornings and the strawberry cream flavor combines beautifully with Silk Soy Creamer. Mmmm.