Doulton

My Silk Road Tea order arrived this afternoon and of course I had to try the Dragon Balls first. I was prepared for something a bit larger than a jasmine pearl and a bit smaller than one of those round gum balls. What I got was full-throttle testicle sized balls!

Anyhow, I put a ball into a glass tea pot and put in some just not boiled water and removed it to the dining room table, in scientific mode, to see how the ball would unfurl.

I was joined by my grey cat who is known as Bongo or Princess Annie or “mon frère”, depending on which member of my household you happen to be. He stared, utterly enchanted, at the slow unwinding of the dragon ball. At first it seemed to be resisting the heat and looked like a huge wad of chewing tobacco stuck in the cheek of a New York Yankee. Then slowly and subtly, the ball began to disintegrate. The cat and I were both captivated. It may have been something like watching an elderly movie star remove her make-up to reveal the ruins underneath. It ended up in a long-leaved mound and looked a bit like one of Monet’s paintings of hay-stacks in my glass pot.

The ball took five minutes to become a large mound and I thought it was high time to drink it (I had been making some experimental pours throughout). The water was a deep amber and indeed I thought that perhaps it would sport the kidney taste redolent of a tad of urine. Dragon Ball tea is indeed a bit funky, but not like urine. It’s more like the taste of decorous garden greens taken from a nut-growing plantation.

Oolings are rapidly becoming a favorite brew for me. They are subtle and they make me think seriously hard to pin down my characterization of their taste. I don’t think that there are enough analogies, similes, and metaphors to cover, adequately, the world of tea. I’m thrilled that I will get three or more steeps from my first ever Dragon Ball!

SECOND Steep: When I poured in the water, the Monet hay-stack collapsed into a pile of long delicate leaves. The second steep reinforces my favorable opinion. The aroma is delicate, nutty and floral and this time I can taste some buttery malt—subtle but certainly there. The color is a deeper amber because I gave it an extra 30 seconds. This tea is delightful on its own, but the name and the slow unfurling of the big ball make it a real conversation piece as well.
P.S. Thank you very much to Erin who told me how to bold text.

If you like Cinnamon you will likely love this. I do not believe I have ever encountered such a concentrated cinnamon taste. It’s quite overwhelming. I’m not a subtle person at all, but I would prefer that this be a bit toned down.

As far as cinnamon teas go, this is certainly the tuba, the percussion, and the whole orchestra added in. I cannot detect the orange and the clove but I will try this again with less steeping time, perhaps or add some milk and sugar.

Note: added small amounts of sugar and milk. I think that the milk cuts through the cinnamon a bit. The sugar makes it almost unbearably sweet and I added only a couple of small crystals.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for a great cinnamon hit. If you love this spice, you will love this tea. I prefer a more moderate cinnamon, but this is certainly a tea that delivers on all of its promises.

Second Steep: Although the directions call for a 5 minute steep, I made my second steep for 3 minutes. As a second steep, I used a mug that is about 16 ounces (i.e. almost twice as big as my first cup). I also added water from the start. This is good now and still extremely rich and flavorful.

If you love cinnamon, I’d recommend buying this tea and working your way UP instead of, as I often do, working a way down. It’s really concentrated. Try less than a tsp at first and try a 2-3 minute steep. Some experimentation will get you the most cinnamon-y tea out there!

I’m going to try this again. My first date with Blueberry Cocktail was disappointing. The hibiscus taste (or at least I think it is hibiscus) runs away with the whole gestalt. There are ample blueberries in the dry tea. Plenty of blueberries! And yet, perhaps, the other components overwhelm the blueberry.

For me, the hibiscus comes across as a loud and brassy citrus-y note, but without the clear flavor of an orange, grapefruit, lemon, or lime.

My palate is undeveloped, but some teas give me a taste of greatness. I cannot put my finger on it absolutely and resort to some of those much-mocked ipsedixitisms of the soi-disant oenophile, such as “this cougar of a cabernet is a saucy seductress with a Meerschaum of criollo overshadowed by a wench of a plum and a slippery nuance of black current which dabbles in an unsullied yet impertinent side serving of a cumulous cloud of Pringles Potato Crisps.”

Well, I can speak like a pretentious snob if I want to, but my tongue is not as far reaching as my vocabulary. Like the truculent tourist from the mid-west, I’ll say only that “I don’t know if it’s art, but I like it.”

With this tea, I do know that it’s tea, but I am not sure why I like it. It has a very light, very subtle floral sweetness. And it makes me understand the devotion that many drinkers have to Darjeelings.

I received my Mintastic today and decided it was just the thing. Dry, it smells lovely with spearmint perhaps winning the mighty contention between minty compadres for the “lead” aroma.

Once brewed, the odor is of a toothpaste/mouthwash mix. Pepsodent with a touch of Listerine? Ipana with Lavoris possibly, although I know that’s a little bit Ike and Mamie. Crest with extra whitener? I was a bit perplexed at first, but gamely sat down to drink my tea, knowing that I’d end up with minty fresh breath at the very least.

On taste, however, any serious intimations of toothpaste or mouthwash or anything medicinal, disappear. The trio of spearmint, peppermint, and wintergreen dance a lively gavotte in my mouth. No, it’s more like a Morris dance, where they take turns leading. No, it’s more like an English country dance, which Henry Tilney tells us is an “emblem of marriage”. The three distinct tastes remain distinct, and yet know when to blend and when to dip and when to “do si dos”. In sooth and in truth, it’s a delightful marriage of mints.

I can certainly see this as making a great iced tea too. Totally refreshing!
I have been consistently pleased with 52teas and consider their quality and their level of invention one of the best deals in the tea-buying world.

SECOND TASTE:
I like this as much if not more than I liked it yesterday. I used a smidgen less tea and this time I added a very small brown sugar crystal or two and a quick dash of milk. Although toothpaste overtones remain to the aroma, it’s a satisfyingly minty blend and it tolerates the milk very well.

I packed up 6 samples to go out to various members of the Steepster community and still have a couple to go…in the meantime, I decided to reward myself by steeping Napoleon.

I really cannot say that I am disappointed at all but my expectations get very high for some tea brands. If this were a TeaVana or an Adagio I would probably rank it close to 100. Keeping that in mind, the brew smells and looks rich, honest, and sincere. The predominate flavor that I get is a great solid black tea with generous vanilla overtones. As a lover of vanilla, I am certainly pleased. There’s nothing synthetic here, nothing cheap or cheesy.

Overall, I’m delighted and will almost certainly reorder unless I find a better black vanilla. TWG stands for “The Wellness Group,” by the way. I can most certainly see this tea promoting wellness. Named in honor of Napoleon, this tea makes me feel a bit more successful and a bit European!

ICED TEA: I put this on ice last night and the results are very pleasing. The appearance is cloudy (does not bother me but I might not serve it to guests) but the taste is delicious—the vanilla comes through loud and clear. Very nice!

This pale yellow tea belies its simple color by packing a good deal of complexity and flavor range into my cup. It does not have some of the overwhelming vegetal taste of the greens (which I do like—-I’ve discovered that I like hot buttered “spinach” in my cup.

This tea is more delicate yet quite fulfilling. The “vegetal” elements have been reigned into a decorous garden taste. The tea is naturally sweet on its own and has got a lot of “buttah” as well—not cardiac strength butter, but a delicate amount.

The tea conjures up a sort of pure elegance and understated glamour. I don’t see how anyone could dislike this. I also am rethinking my earlier and stupid aversion to white teas as being tasteless and packing no punch. That prejudice was ingrained, no doubt, by somebody’s elderly tea-bag once upon a time. This tea makes me want to try more silver needle types and start paying attention to white teas in general.

I’ve really gone off rooibos teas. Somehow I can’t get the sense of sawdust out of my mind. I purchased this tea before I knew that I had to limit the rooibos in my life. It’s a superb rooibos with no false flavors and a strong vanilla taste. I am not certain about detecting the bourbon or any kind of liquor—maybe next time I’ll watch for it more closely.

So far Eros is winning my Mariage Freres top-affections. But this is nice and very vanilla-y for an evening tea.

Mokalbari Estate was my morning black tea today. A strong Indian tea with a heady and delicious taste, I could recommend this as a reliable daily morning brew. The resteep help up and was strong but not bitter, even though I gave it a couple of extra minutes.

In very broad strokes, I tend to think of a new tea in four broad categories: 1) intoxicating and I want to reorder it immediately, 2) very impressive and I’ll keep it on my list to reorder. I want to drink it again, 3) What’s all the fuss about? This tea is OK, but I don’t get the rave reviews or the outpourings of adoration. I can live without it, and finally 4) What fresh hell is this? What travesty has ended up in my mouth?

Mokalbari Estate is certainly a 2. It inspires me to try more Indian tea and to move away from drinking too much tea that has Count Chocula, Froot Loops, and Kiwi Pineapple Breadpudding Wine overtones.

The American Tea Room provides really speedy service. I know that I’ve said it before, but it bears mentioning again.

Thank you so much to RICKY for sending me this sample. I have to agree with the other assessments here. I think that this is a really reliable, traditional type of tea that you could offer to anyone without causing dismay.
While there is nothing utterly distinctive about it, the merit comes from a good strong smooth taste with nicely balanced flavors.

I should always have a tea like this around to serve when eating a really strongly flavored food or to serve people who don’t like green tea or flavored tea.

I ordered a sample of this from the American Tea Room because I liked the description. Either because of or in spite of Julia Roberts, Notting Hill remains a nifty neighborhood in London. In my mind, really, Notting Hill is the place where some of Iris Murdoch’s “knottier” and sometimes “naughtier” characters live (in a pre-upscaled world). And yes! We are dressed like Sherlock Holmes with cape and deer-stalker hat.

American Tea Room has provided a perfectly apt description of this tea and I cannot do any better. It seems like a gentleman’s tea brewed in the country estates for those days when you need a really strong brew with your kippers, grilled kidneys, and marmelade.

Delicious!

Until I discovered Steepster I always thought that London was the epicenter for tea. Notting Hill by American Tea Room reminds me of that sense. This is the kind of tea that might be served to the men whilst the women have a lighter blend in a Victorian novel. It tastes of the outdoors. It tastes as if we are marching through somewhat boggy fields on our way to the hunt. Or to fish.

I decided to place an order with the American Tea Room late Sunday night; on Friday they’ve delivered. I have quite a few of their teas now. I went for “Brioche” first. Their descriptive copy is not an exaggeration. The aroma as I opened the bag was magnificent. It was like entering a “snobby” (i.e. good) bakery and zoning in on the almond croissants.

The brewed tea is very bakey-cakey and the flavors of almond, cinnamon, and vanilla dance about in a nice solid black suspension. I think that it probably has a medium amount of caffeine—perhaps not the strongest brew for first thing in the morning, but great for the rest of the day.

As I near the end of the cup, I long for more already. I feel as if I’ve actually consumed a nice chunk of almond croissant. So far I’m loving the American Tea Room with their wide variety of teas and their speedy delivery service.

In my reviews, you must always keep in mind that I’ve got a sweet tooth and a love of novelty. I love almonds, vanilla, and cinnamon flavors a lot. Indeed, my second son was cursed with the nickname of “Almond Stick” because his older brother called slivered almonds “almond sticks”. It seemed clever at the time.

It is delightful to get great carbohydrate satisfaction without reaching for an actual pastry.

Thank you, Cait, for the sample. I’m liking this tea.

The dry tea was alarming because it reeked of maraschino cherries. I loved that odor when I was 8 years old and prone to stealing one or two of these cherries from a jar my parents kept in the refrigerator. I suspect that they had had them around since prohibition. The problem with my petty thievery was that all 5 of my siblings were also drawn to the maraschino cherries, also stole a few, and hence our family suffered through Maraschino-Gate after my parents commenced a Select Committee to nab the magpie amongst their offspring. But I digress.

To this day, I find the odor a bit alarming because it is redolent of child-hood busts and childhood disappointments.

Through the alchemy of boiled water, the maraschino cherry odor disappeared and now I am drinking something that is certainly a vanilla caramel. It is sweet and rich and of course it’s a dessert tea (I take my dessert teas at all times of the day). I don’t know if I will buy this, but the tea does make me want to investigate more black caramel teas. Good cup! I’m ready for seconds.

This tea is from the TTB. I am not totally certain it is Harney & Sons. The tea came in a small attractive black tin with a picture and an elegant description: “A simple Chinese black tea that has been made over 200 years. The brew is a nice easy-going tea that is round in the mouth. It is a favorite at our Tasting Room where its simple charms are appreciated.” These words do not come up via a Google search, although the first two sentence do come up as a description of tea sold at the Cincinnatian Hotel for afternoon tea.

This small black tin resembles a miniature Harney & Sons tin and has the same type of black tape so I’m going to assume that it is likely to be a Harney & Sons tea with different and creative packaging.
I took it from the TTB because there was so little. It was a very skimpy teaspoon.
With tea, I am like Julia Child with cooking wines and liquers. I tend to add more than the “recipe” calls for. I taste the dry leaf; I fool around a lot. The dry leaves here were about 3/4 of what I would use for one serving. Keeping that in mind, I used less water and did not make a full cup.

The results are pretty decent. It seems to be a very smooth, medium-bodied “basic black” with a pleasant aroma. Perhaps its biggest virtue is that it is not offensive in any way, but it also lacks some of those distinctive properties that make me fall in love with certain blends. I wish I had some more of this to muse upon.

Upton’s catalogue notes that this tea is also known as “Buddha’s Tea” so I got a 12g. sample in order to see what the jolly wise one drinks. Foucha Imperial strikes me as a green tea without too much attitude. I’ve been sampling some green tea with very high accolades and rave reviews of late. This tea does well without being showy. The tea does have a smooth buttery taste but with some restraint—it’s not enough “butter” to make me think of a “coronary by green tea”. It’s got the typical vegetal taste—-more freshly mown grass than deep fields of spinach, however.

Mae West says “I like restraint, if it doesn’t go too far.” So too with Foucha Imperial. The restraint does not go too far so it’s a very satisfying green experience. I would call it a very sincere green but not a pyrotechnical one. Sometimes less is more.

I like this although I’ll try teas with slightly fewer calories. Honest Tea does make good products; I like their work ethic and the messages under the bottle tops. Now that I’ve successfully brewed some of my own iced tea I will stock this in case of emergency outings.

In spite of the sweetness, this is far better than other sweetened bottled teas and has less sugar.

I enjoyed this very much. I got the strawberry aroma and the taste, although I was not feeling the cake, which is fine with me. I was pleased and I will remember this tea if I feel a need to buy strawberry tea—you never know. I generally think that The NecessiTeas does a very good job with flavored teas.

I got a sample of this from Cait. So far, it’s a bit disappointing but that might be because I’ve been drinking very high-quality green teas and this seems like an abrupt switch. It’s possibly like switching from butter to margerine.

It tastes like a generic black tea. It does not have the bitterness that one might get from a tea like Lipton. The apricot aroma creeps out a bit but I cannot pick up at all of the orange, rose hips, mango, or cinnamon. It’s odd but not unpleasing that gentle little apricot is triumphing over the much more intense flavors—-I’d usually expect cinnamon or rose hips to eat up all the apricot.

So a tribute to the plucky little apricot aroma which does not quite make it into the taste. I have more of this tea blend and will revisit.

I’m excited to finally try this tea which has reached a seemingly mythic reputation here on Steepster. Thanks to Cait, I’ve brewed my first pot. I expected to smell spinach or asparagus or new-mown grass. Instead, the first aromas of this lovely delicate amber brew convey a buttered flower-garden. The taste is smooth, butterly, fragrant, and my tea-drinking has taught me to be totally NOT non-plussed about putting flowers in my butter or buttering my garden. Delicious! I need more.

SECOND STEEP: A nice fragrance which is more subtle. It seems as if there’s only 1 stick of butter in this and not an entire pound. I do like creamy and buttery teas and this is excellent. The second steep is a bit more vegetal; I can see that we’ve moved down the flowery garden path to the vegetable garden. I steeped this for two minutes which seems about right for a 2nd steep. I’m still liking this tea and will have to order it someday. But today I got: 4 boxes from Andrews and Dunham, a big box from Upton, some generous samples from Norbu, and an order from Pangea tea which also calls itself the Lavender Tea Company. Not to mention a genuine, old-fashioned letter from a friend.

The first impression of the brewed tea is a strong sense that I am wearing spinach perfume. I’m not put off. There’s a company that makes odd perfumes: Demeter Fragrances: http://www.demeterfragrance.com/
They are novelty odors and don’t have much staying power. I consult their web site to see if they have spinach perfume. No, but if you are interested in wafting of celery, dregs, earthworm, tarnish, vinyl, or waffles, that’s the perfume company for you.

The tea is still hot and tastes like really rich spinach water. As it cools, however, more flavors are starting to emerge. It’s as if someone unleashed some fruit and flowers into the spinach brew. And yes, it’s like butter.

Does anyone remember “Coffee Talk with Linda Richman” on SNL? She thought that Barbra Streisand was just like “buttah” and so is this tea. It’s a deep golden brew of buttery spinach with a touch of flower and little slice on honeydew on the side.

I’m liking this and looking forward to the second steep. I hope that nobody is put off by my description of “spinach” tea because I really do think that the taste has got something of ineffable sublimity to it and I have not found the words to describe it adequately.

SECOND STEEPING: What a difference! I steeped this for 2 mins and 30 seconds and should have left it at 2 minutes. It’s slightly oversteeped. The spinach aroma and taste have disappeared almost entirely—just fleeting little returns are present. Aside from the slight overbrewing (a lesson to learn: green teas are more sensitive than the ever vigilant infant who suspects his or her parents have fallen asleep and hence must shout inconsolably) this is a very light floral experience. Orchid? I cannot quite pin it down. I don’t recognize it from any of my perfumes. It’s subtle but excellent.

THIRD STEEPING: The cost of this tea has become eminently reasonable when I consider that I can get three very good cups from it. The third steeping was less rich and deep and tasted more like a generic vegetal green tea that was somehow buttered. I also added a tiny bit of brown sugar and that was nice—the natural sweetness of the tea does not require any additions, but I wanted to experiment. It still felt like a full brew but less distinctively unique. Third cup remains most certainly satisfying and rich; did not have any hint of being “water down” in any way.

This is a winner in my book. It’s very refreshing after a surplus of rooibos teas. I used to hate chamomile until I realized that I had never experienced it in a decent format. This lovely delicate balance between orange, lemon, chamomile and a few other flavors is refreshing and will make a splendidly bracing iced tea. The flavors are very nicely balanced and nothing dominates.
It’s a Mélange of pleasure.

I woke up to a hallucination today: snow was all over the place. It could not be because last night I was drinking this lovely brew iced—and it makes a divine iced tea. But as my eyes are clearing, I see that snow really is everywhere1

I love this both hot and iced and can see it becoming a favorite iced tea for the summer. I’m giving it a nudge up the ratings scale.

CAIT sent me this and I think I’m getting along with it better than she is. While she got menstrual blood, I got fig newtons. I’m not sure that the flavor of “love” can be distilled into a rooibos blend. The envelop that TeaFrog uses calls it “Love Flavored Rooibos”. The ingredients include rose and orange, but I am not picking up on them (at least not so far). The dry leaves smelled like root beer, which was delightful but the brewed tea is a bit of an anticlimax. Is the TeaFrog presenting us with some sort of a Zen Koan about the flavor of Love? And more powerful than the tea itself, the name has me regressing into a Burt Bacharach kind of mood and I hear Dionne Warwick warbling “The Look of Love”. “I can hardly wait to hold you, feel my arms around you”—I think that was before she was a psychic friend.

A tea that gives me a Proustian moment cannot be all bad; but the previous tea I sipped led me to Florence Italy in my mind, which might be a better place to be than my old bedroom when I thought that Dionne Warwick was the epitome of sophistication and that Burt Bacharach was the bard of love!

Design a Tea was offering free samples—perhaps they still are. Today I got mine only a few days after I had requested them. One of my picks was Zabaglione because I love the flavor mixes. It’s difficult to make a good zabaglione and because the dessert requires so much intensive, last-minute cooking and detailed attention, few restaurants seem to offer it. Sometimes it’s called a “Sabayon”.

The ingredients for the Zabaglione are “Koslanda-Dimbulla blend from Sri Lanka” and “All natural flavoring”. My tea revealed a complex unfolding of flavors. As you might expect, the eggnog flavor predominated but there were little rushes of true marzipan, almond, and a general sweet creaminess. The only tea I’ve tried which is similar is, not surprisingly, an eggnog tea by David’s Teas. This one, of course, offers more than the generic eggnog—not that that is not delicious alone.

I drank most of it straight up and then added a soupçon of sugar and milk which enhanced the creamy sweetness.

I’m impressed with Design a Tea. They have a similar concept to Adagio’s, but seem to be smaller and perhaps offer a purer, more organic, and focused product. I plan to order from them after the fantastic tea prOn experience of spending time on their site.

This tea is not quite the Nirvana that Premium Steap’s Organic Black with Coconut is. But it’s excellent! The chocolate is deep and rich. The coconut comes out mostly in the aftertaste for me. Black tea is most certainly the base note and a sweet bright chocolate is the middle note. The after-note is the coconut. As the tea cools, the coconut comes out to play a bit more.

Think of this as a bit of coconut enrobed in a big swirl of dark chocolate. It’s very good but perhaps I prefer single-notes in teas (or at least for today!).

Premium Steap has most certainly earned a spot on my "to buy from " list. They have some luscious looking samplers too!

Note: I did use 2 tsp. for about a 10 ounce mug; I’ve been adding more tea than suggested to many of my brews.