Carolyn

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Nice. I whipped up the matcha, enjoyed the deep green coloring and then added a spoonful of coconut milk and whipped that up with it. I like the creamy green coloring produced by the mixture. The green vegetal of the matcha marries well with the coconut taste and is more substantial on my tongue.

Today was my first trip to deliver meals on wheels to elderly people. After my work buddies kindly told me told me what to watch out for (naked old men who like to expose their privates and then grope female food bringers, elderly women who yell if you are late, vicious biting dogs, dirty houses, murderous neighbors, and so forth), I was terrified.

Fortunately, it was all untrue. Everyone was nice and it was fun to be out in the air bringing hot food to people who smiled at me. It was also fun to see the beautiful historic houses and the well-manicured lawns and shaped bushes. We even saw a camellia in full bloom. It was all good. Fun for me. A good deed. And I bonded with a work buddy. So, a total win-win-win. After delivering our meals and taking back the coolers to the agency, we went out to eat Thai food (our own private meals on wheels) and visited an antique store. They had this tea prominently displayed and I couldn’t resist.

The tea brews up into a murky reddish brown liquor that smells primarily of marzipan with a light coconut note. The marzipan fragrance carries through to the taste, but a strong black tea is married to it. It tastes like some sort of Ceylon black and the dry leaves are small, broken, and slightly wiry. There is a slight bitterness that tells me that four minutes was plenty of steeping time for this tea.

It’s a pretty golden green liquor scented lightly with apple, almost as if a smidgeon of apple juice had been added to the tea. The taste is sweet and light with more of an apple flavor than a sencha flavor. Bliss!

The tea brews up into a purple black liquor with the by now familiar somewhat pleasant, somewhat strange, wet yak smell of pu-erh. There is a strong overtone of orange and some kind of spice, perhaps a clove or cinnamon. Unlike other orange scented teas, this is not a sweet flowery orange but a strong orange, which I suppose matches the strength of the pu-erh. There is a whisper of ginger, but it is subdued.

Overall a very nice experience. It is a slow sipper for me because of the pu-erh, but I’m enjoying it with my morning rice.

Much thanks to takgoti for the tasting.

Ah, it’s a morning that demands balls. Either that or sliding back under the covers and sleeping in. As always the dragon balls are lovely and strong with a strong cocoa undertone. I ordered ten ounces from Adagio and I am in awe of the giant can they are in. I’m glad I did. This is shaping up to be one of my favorite teas.

A delightful milky caramel fragrance. It has a very light taste, not heavy at all. I had stir fried Brussels sprouts for lunch and needed a sweet chaser. This is a nice one.

I’m so excited that I get to try this Hawaiian tea! Thanks so much to takgoti for sending it to me. I’ve read about it in books and online and daydreamed about lazy afternoons spent drinking Hawaiian teas, but had no idea where to find it. Once she sent it to me I’ve looked and looked at it and longed to try it. But there was never a moment when I was healthy enough to taste it properly, had time to dedicate to it, was not running to a meeting, had a thermometer, and hadn’t had my taste buds corrupted by other teas previously. But today is the day!

The leaves are beautiful, big, full leaves wrinkled into variegated colors of green, dark green, and brown.The tea itself brews into a golden liquid that smells like flowers along with some sort of dark flower. Here in Memphis there are flowers that scent the air at night. This tea’s fragrance is reminiscent of walking through a Memphis summer in the moist flower-fragranced night. There is a slight undernote of resin as well.

The taste is light and flowered as well with a sweetness that doesn’t cloy. This is a really nice oolong with none of the strange boiled vegetable taste that some oolongs have. There is a very slight grassiness, a brief flirt with the taste of green tea, but not strong enough or lasting enough to be anything other than a tease. Mostly I taste flowers and a whisper of honey. It is splendid!

Felt like a bold chocolate blend today and this is a great one. The fragrance is of chocolate. The taste combines chocolate, a distinct flowery tea taste, and a strong firm taste of something else (almost a coffee note), probably the pu-erh. It doesn’t taste much like the classic pu-erhs I’ve had, which works well in this tea. The tea itself has that wicked black color that I usually see in pu-erhs.

I felt like something sweet this morning, which I typically don’t in the morning. But today my desires drove me to Honey Pear tea, which is one of the sweetest teas I have. The delightfully sweet smell of succulent ripe pears rises from the cup and fills the room with sweetness. The honey smell and taste is somewhat overwhelmed by the pear taste, but notes are there. The black tea at the base is a good non-bitter, non-astringent black. Nice.

What can I say except yum! It’s a wonderful lychee-fragranced black tea that chimes my bells.

This is really nice. A beautiful green (of course) with a slight vegetal, nuttiness, and sweetness. It is truly calming as well. I’m really impressed. I need to have my own tea ceremony just to savor this tea.

It brews up into a pretty brown tea with a sweet cranberry fragrance. Surprisingly, the tea taste is paramount and the cranberry and fruit tags along to add flavors, but they’re just side dishes. I can definitely see serving this on Thanksgiving with the pie.

The dry leaves and flowers are beautiful and they smell like old fashioned orange rind candy. The chamomile adds a honeyed note. It is not all that different in the cup. It brews up into light liquor with a sweet citrus smell. It tastes strongly of orange with notes of chamomile peeking through. There is a very slight hibiscus note, but I wouldn’t have noticed it unless I was looking for it. I can’t say that it makes me sleepy, but it is a nice relaxing cup of kindness before bed.

It’s an interesting looking tea. You can really see the different components: the long green leaves, the short brown ones, and the tiny dark brown leaves. Once wet it looks like fall leaves in my strainer.

It brews up into a red-brown liquor with a pleasantly sweet mixed with a lightly smoky fragrance. The taste begins with the light smokiness of an English Breakfast tea with the addition of a floral aftertaste and a slight toastiness. It is a surprisingly complex tea but without any astringency or bitterness. Very nice. Much thanks to takgoti!

This was one of the first teas I tried before I learned that time and temperature were important. As a result I steeped it for a long time in boiling water and I hated it.

I decided to try it again. It has a pleasant sweet fruit smell like warm fruit punch and light sweet taste. There is a slight amount of astringency but no bitterness. The liquor is golden with small suspended particles. I like it now. What a difference time and temperature make!

In all honesty, it’s difficult to find a Genmaicha with Matcha I don’t like. I love the toasty smell and taste, the sweetness of the matcha, the cloudy green color. This one is slightly better than Holy Mountain’s and Upton Tea’s but only slightly. In fact, I’m not even sure it isn’t exactly the same. Clearly I need to do a Genmaicha taste test and comparison. But that will have to wait until after NaNoWriMo. Meanwhile, I’ll just say “Mmmmm! Genmaicha with matcha!”

Basically I’ve been living on Sinharaja. It provides me a warm, comforting cup of tea that says, “It’ll be ok. The words will come” as I work through NaNo. It’s not that I don’t want to drink other teas. It’s that this one is easy on the tongue and easy on the mind. I don’t have to worry about temperatures or time and that leaves my mind available for writing.

I’ve had the flu and been unable to write and without an appetite for much of anything, including tea. Today I feel almost human and I’m celebrating with this delicious lychee tea. Lychee is one of my favorite fruits and this tea does a reasonable job of bringing the lychee flavor to this mild black tea. Overall it is quite nice.

Nice creamy tea with a good mouth feel. It has a delightfully roasty aroma that carries through to the taste, but gently. It has the vegetal of the sencha and the beautiful thick green liquid of the matcha all combined with the sweet roastiness and not a lick of bitterness or astringency. It’s very yum! Much thanks to Takgoti for this lovely tea.

My Rishi Tea Mannong Manmai Sample set came today and this was in it. Oh my these are big bags for samples! I’m used to Golden Moon samples (only enough for one cup) or Upton Tea’s samples (enough for 4-6 cups).

I am feeling sick (fever, sore throat, cough) and while I normally do not desire Pu-erh, and indeed I normally have to use my Be Brave days to try new pu-erhs, today I crave it and crave mint. Strange.

The tea brews into a nearly black liquor with the envigorating smell of mint and the classic earthy pu-erh smell under that. Strangely enough it smells really good to me today. The taste is nearly all mint with a dark, chocolate taste underneath, but softly, softly. The mouth-feel is quite full-bodied and it has substance on the tongue, almost a creaminess. Also it takes Silk Creamer very, very well. Overall I like tea. It is a good tea for someone sick.

This was my first experience with good teas and I’m so glad I tried it since it has led me down this delicious and involving path. It brews up into a beautiful golden color with only a touch of green. The smell is an inviting cream oolong smell and the taste carries through to the taste perfectly. It has a very clean taste with floral undertones and (of course) the milk taste. The tea is not flavored, it comes by this taste as a result of the conditions it grows under. As such, the taste varies from year to year as the weather varies. I am told by Cecilia that this last year was not the best milk oolong, but since it is new to me it seems marvelous. I can’t wait to try next year’s Jian Xuan!

I am fascinated by the idea that everywhere in the UK needs its own breakfast tea. Scottish Breakfast Tea should carry me away to the highlands (at least in my imagination) right? I have the bagged version of this tea.

It brews up into a reddish brown brew with a sweet tea smell and the strong taste of Assam. It has some astringency but it’s not too bad. There is a slightly unusual note, perhaps a barely there floral citrus? Perhaps that is the African tea I’m tasting? It’s really quite pleasant.

It has nice caffeine kick, which I need since I didn’t get enough sleep last night. It is defnitely a tea I could drink a second time.

Sweetly fragrant with a slight nutty vegetal scent with floral overtones. It brews up into a pale yellow golden liquid. The taste is a warm nutty vegetal that is very pleasant. I can see accepting this as a tribute tea.