1711 Tasting Notes
After a morning of dumping out several mediocre cups of tea I had to turn to one I know I love to restore my faith in my love of tea. It is flavorful, smooth, warming with a hint of chocolate under the spices… it’s dreamy. I want to soak in it! …which could totally be a thing! A spa with tea soaks! It could be like a mud bath with all the peat in it, bottom fed with hot spring water, but with tea instead of peat! I’m going to have to google and see if this fantasy exists!
Preparation
Tastes like cardamon with heavier notes to carry it. I can taste something else, but it all blends together in a way that makes it hard for me to decipher individual items. Cream knocks some of the cardamon out and brings out the other flavors a bit, but it still isn’t feeling like anything exciting. I don’t hate it, but I’m not excited by it either.
Preparation
Trying this again and it’s just not doing it for me. It’s not bad, but it’s not delightful either which means it’s just going to sit in my cupboard taking up precious space while I reach for other teas. To the “get rid of” pile!
Preparation
This tea is giving me the hibbie jibbies, which is to say it has hibiscus in it that I can taste, which means it tastes gross. It smells great, all chocolate orange like, but all I get on the sip is tart hib. I wonder if hibiscus hate is similar to cilantro hate where it’s actually something in your brain that registers the taste in a way that the majority of the population doesn’t and it’s all you can taste while it overpowers any other flavors. Anyways, I’m done trying to make friends with this tea.
Preparation
At least based on the reviews that come through my dashboard, I’d tend to think it’s a minority of the population that likes hibiscus and the majority that hates it, heh. I swear I see about 90% reviews that hate the flavor of hibiscus and only 10% that like it (with me being in that rare 10%, so I feel somewhat like an alien on this site). I had to actually add plain hibiscus petal from my stash to my tea last night because it was somehow missing from the teabag in my advent calendar and my tea tasted weaksauce and gross without it. I am probably the only person on here that was legit upset to get a hibi-cider that was missing the hibi. :-P
I don’t hate it per se, but I do dislike when it overpowers the other flavors in a blend.
I personally think something has to do with the receptors on individual tongues; I’ve always believed a person’s tastes seem to be as personalized as their fingerprints. For example, I’m extremely sensitive to spicy tastes, and avoid really spicy food, while I have friends that are very much, “The spicier, the better!” You could give each of us the same spicy food and ask us to rate it, and something they say is a “3” on a scale of 1-10 I’d say is a “13” and is burning my mouth off. I think my tongue is personally very receptive to the sour/tart/tangy areas of taste, while I think other people might overly sensitive to these sorts of flavors, hense me finding a flavor like hibiscus quite pleasant, while someone with that sensitivity finding it super sour and getting that puckery effect… the way I get a burning mouth from a spice that someone else might find mild.
I didn’t know that about cilantro! How interesting. I’m going to have to look that up as I’m one of the haters and nobody seems to understand why. I hated this tea, and don’t have a problem with hibiscus usually, so I’m leaning towards this just being gross.
My friend actually has the “cilantro effect”. It’s something genetic with certain people. It tastes like soap to him! He knows immediately if even a tiny amount of cilantro is in something, heh.
I’m like that, too. It always baffles my family how I can tell.
A friend of mine who is a cilantro hater (he describes it as a mix of aluminium foil on a filling and soap) noticed his kids got the cilantro hate gene too. Because it is in so many types of food and one leaf ruins a dish for him, he has worked for years to overcome it by eating small amounts at a time.
Cilantro is so obnoxious. Like bitter metallic parsley with some chemical soapy flavour in there. Yuck, it ruins anything it touches. I don’t like hibiscus either.
Advent Day 4
I’m missing something here. All the reviews of this tea talk about it being the best EG ever and I’m not getting that in this cup. Maybe it was a bad batch of tea? Maybe it was old stock? Either way, what I’m tasting is and EG light with the strength of a third steeping of any other EG. The base is nice and smooth… a little malty, but the bergamot is almost non existent. Adding creamer drowns out the berg and makes it a little more malty, but it’s still not worth drinking this cup. Down the drain with you!
Preparation
I’ve had this chai a couple of times now and it has been a disappointment every time. I have tried steeping it, boiling it in nut milk and now doubling the amount of tea to try to pull some flavor out. Chai is usually spicy and warming, filled with delightful flavors with a base of tea to carry them. This doesn’t have that. At all. I can smell a little bit of the spices as I sip, but get next to nothing on the palate. The idea of a tea kept wet with a sweetener is interesting, but the company has WAY oversold this tea as “the best chai this side of Mumbai”, which raises expectations to something this tea can not deliver.
Preparation
Day 2 of Advent
This is a smooth cup, no bitterness. There is almost a truffle hint in the sip which is strange! Even so, I find the cup a little boring with nothing standing out and grabbing my attention. Adding cream makes it a little more interesting and makes it a little more buttery, but doesn’t change it enough to where I’m excited about it.
Day 1 of the F&M advent calendar!
The rose scent was super strong as soon as I broke the foil behind the door in this packaging. It’s in tea bag form, which I feel eh about, but I’m not going to let that ruin my advent fun. I like flowery flavors, but I’m not a huge rose fan and don’t tend to gravitate towards rose tea so I didn’t expect to like this one. I like it. Once steeped, the rose is strong on the nose, mellow in the sip and comes back in the finish. The tea base is perfectly balanced and not the least bit bitter at all! It is strong enough to carry the rose without overpowering it. The end of the sip is super smooth. Adding cream towards the end of my cup was a gamble that paid off! The sip is now creamy with the rose being subtle, but the finish is filled with a hint of creamy rose at the start and as the cream tapers off the rose comes back out. I’d say I probably wouldn’t buy this tea because I’m not likely to reach for it in my cupboard when I have a ton of other options, but it’s a really enjoyable tea and I’d gladly have another cup of it in the future if given the option!
Preparation
Went to the SF tea festival and picked some of this up after sampling. The tea maker was there talking about how this tea is from his backyard. His backyard is a tea farm of many acres, so not the small yard I was first imagining when he was describing it. They say the company gives back to the community and workers, so that is nice to hear after reading about other tea plantations that treat their workers poorly.
The tea has a very light grassy taste. It isn’t a bright flavor, but is subtle and mellow. The tea has an almost sweet quality to is as well. My mouth is left slightly dry after the sip where the flavors linger briefly then fade. It’s a nice cup when I want something subtle.
Preparation
Awesome to hear about companies like this that appreciate their workforce!
I bought the sampler pouch from them, and it has this one in it! I haven’t tried it yet, though.
Ethical and thoughtful companies are the best! Gives me a little hope that all is not lost.
I didn’t see a sampler pack! Nice!
