JacquelineM

Just a little note to say “OMG! Currently my favorite tea in the whole wide world!” Chocolately and bittersweet and dried fruity (apricot?) and ooooooh I love it! It resteeps so beautifully too. <3

I didn’t have quite enough of this for a pot so I put a little Fortnum & Mason Earl Grey in with it – delightful! We’re having another Day of Deluge (it’s been pouring rain/tornado watch like every other day here) and this is a bit of sweetness and brightness on a dark and stormy day. I don’t love it enough to purchase, but it sure was nice to sample!

My coworker said that the office smelled like Hershey’s Chocolate World because I was brewing this tea today: http://www.hersheys.com/chocolateworld/explore

Enough said!

I have a sixth sense about teas that I know I will absolutely love. Without a moment’s hesitation, I plunked down the dough to get 16 oz of these pearls without ever tasting a one!

They arrived on Saturday (fantastic service, thepuriTea!) with 3 nice samples (thank you!)!

I am trying them for the first time today (4 pearls, about 9 oz water, 3 min) and wow – they taste exactly as I hoped. Molasses-y on the first steep, and oh my god the second steep is so dark chocolatey that I had to pause and blink! (blink, blink! Oh this is good!).

I’m sorry but I have to end this note. This second steep is so good that I don’t want to do anything but drink it!

Thank you moraiwe for the hot tip!

This is another of the teas that Whittard of Chelsea sent to me! Thank you!

I am flagging after spending the morning at yard sales, so a breakfast blend just after dinner makes perfect sense to me. This one is excellent. Honeychocolate! A little fruity. The Assam and Keemun make beautiful music together. It is certainly a bold tea, but it’s also extremely smooth. Downright velvety. Chocolate mousse smooth! Perfect with a scant teaspoon of sugar and milk.

I want to call it a classic, but I can’t — it has something a little bit different about it which makes it special. This is one I’d serve guests and save for special days. I love it.

You can find this tea at www.whittard.com! Look at the beauteous tea caddy:

http://www.whittard.com/tea/black/1886_blend_tea/125g_tin_1886_blend.htm

This is a Tea Sipper Traveling Tea Box Tea!

Train delays had me hot and cranky by the time I got to work (an hour late!)! I wanted something light and fruity to sip today, and the raspberry in this was very appealing! I just had some raspberry cider the other night, and can’t get raspberries off of my mind!

This is nice! A good light but natural raspberry flavor, and a medium, mellow oolong. I see this as an enjoyable everyday-ish oolong. Usually I like the first steep and love the second steep of most oolongs, but my first two steeps were remarkably similar — less raspberry-ish on the second, but the oolong didn’t change much. Interesting.

There is a little bitterness in the tea — I should try it 10 degrees cooler the next time I make it.

Love this one in the hot weather. Juicy berries, citrus, and a good, strong tea base to keep your energy from flagging. I give it a shortish, slightly cooler than boiling steep to keep the bitterness at bay, and add sugar on my first steep. What I like about this one is that you can get a great second steep, then drink cool, fruity, lightly tea flavored steeps all day!

This one has to be good iced!

Just a note of continued appreciation for this one. I love Golden Monkey so much, and Harney’s is still the most consistently delicious one that I’ve found. Sweet honeyfruity which turns milky on subsequent steeps. Fantastic resteeper. Good at any temperature. Wonderful with a croissant!

I am very low, and I just checked — there is some available to purchase. It’s pricey, but very much worth it to me. Heaven.

Delicious. Everything I love in a black tea. Tangy, roasty, chocolatey. Am I tasting cinnamony too? While it tastes kind of similar to the Fujian blacks I adore, and kinda similar to The Simple Leaf’s Dawn (!) it definitely also has it’s own thing going on. I keep on tasting a variety of nuances each time I sip. Buttery? Fruity? Bready? This is one that you don’t want to rush through, and one that will reveal different facets of itself each time you drink it.

Also – the Verdant $5 try me pack? Talk about an offer you can’t refuse! I was so pleased with both the amount and variety they sent. So excited to try the others.

I was contacted by Whittard of Chelsea and was asked if they could send me some teas to try and review. I usually say no to these types of requests, but I was absolutely delighted to accept some teas from this venerable tea merchant! On Saturday I got a “Knock! Knock! Knock! Delivery from the UK!” at my door — it was the tea! Thrilling! I tore open the package to find three beautiful full-sized loose teas.

I’m one of the few Darjeeling fans here on Steepster. I adore the muscatel flavor — so I was happy to see this tea in the package, and chose it as the first tea to try. I decided to take it with a little sugar “like the Germans.”

It’s delightful. Divine muscatel and a delicate but rich tea flavor. It’s a lighter tea — so perfect for the steamy day — but very flavorful. I drank it at work and had to pause for a moment to let the flavor wash over me. The wineyspicy muscatel, distinctive and delicious, was just so good. The sugar made it round and sweet without any of the astringency I usually find in a Darjeeling, but I took my second steep sans additions and there it was — a little piquant pucker. Love.

I was able to enjoy three steeps, the last one drank cool, which makes me think this would be a great fancy iced tea for a party (the color is a gorgeous amber – I could just picture it in a clear glass pitcher).

What a perfect introduction to Whittard of Chelsea — I am so, so pleased to meet you!

This has been my best friend during these busy end (of semester) times. Delicious, staunch, invigorating, and eminently resteepable. The strong bergamot makes me smile. I can’t believe I’m half way through the tin already! This tea has allowed me to mostly skip the iced coffee IV that I usually self-administer around this time of the year — I’ve only had two!

<3

It’s deja vu all over again! Made http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2013/04/17/apple-cinnamon-pull-apart-rolls-from-store-bought-to-homemade/ again, and there is nothing in the world I wanted to have more with them than Vanilla Black. That natural, dark vanilla flavor and good tea go so well with these little sweet breads. They are forever forged together in my mind…perfect pairing.

Many Thanks to Tea Sipper’s Traveling Tea Box for this tea!

I was Home Alone and had a Grand Plan to throw caution to the wind and drink a caffeinated tea in the evening so I could stay up and read The Hound of the Baskervilles late into the night under a blanket with my cat. Wild times. I made this one because I love chai :) and I had a single bag from TSTTB.

It was not the most distinctive chai I’ve ever had, but it was very good! There was nothing to dislike about it. Nice spices, nice tea base, good with a little honey and milk.

You know what happened though, don’t you? Yes, I fell asleep reading around 9pm, woke up at 2 am and tossed and turned because of the caffeine! This happens Every Time, yet every couple of months I do this thinking I’m going to stay up during the right part of the night rather than the wrong part of the night. Sigh.

One of my new traditions is getting a First Flush Darjeeling each spring. This year, I didn’t even have to go searching for one, as my Golden Moon Insider’s Tea Club selection was this lovely!

The amber color on this brewed tea is gorgeous. It has a much less green and more muscatel (and sweet!) flavor than most of the other FF Darjeelings I’ve tasted, yet it definitely doesn’t taste like a 2nd flush. Interesting! I’ve been contentedly sipping it all day. A little pleasantly astringent which is especially welcome after my giant burrito :)

The Insider Tea Club does it again :) Wonderful, special selection!

Many thanks to Tea Sipper’s Traveling Tea Box for this tea!!!

I made a pot of this for our evening tea last night. It was delicious! I didn’t get ginger snap, but rather a delicious apple cinnamon richness. I would have told you I was drinking real tea (I love those rooibos teas that are so rich they fool me!). Now that I am here on Steepster and am reading the ingredients list, I see that there are no apples OR cinnamon in this tea! Ha! In any event, it is very satisfying and screams “Fall!” to me. I have a little left for another tiny pot, and would adore having this in my cupboard come turning leaf and chill in the air time :)

I haven’t been writing many tasting notes because I’ve been doing so much writing for school. A 23 page paper is sitting in my bag to give in tomorrow. Phew! So I’ll be brief.

Berryfruity. Yum. Great with a little sugar. Lovely twist on an Earl for the warm weather. Would love to throw some into an iced tea!

I’m going to miss this one!

Enjoying my last pot of this creamy delight (courtesy of Tea Sipper’s Traveling Tea Box!). Great, strong enough for the morning tea base, a non-cloying yet perfectly creamy cream flavor, and an excellent bergamot. Plus, it’s real purty. Those blue cornflowers get me every time.

Nice with a little sugar.

(P.S. – Do you have a favorite Earl Grey Creme? I’m thinking of picking this one up but I’d love to hear your opinions.)

I made these: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2013/04/17/apple-cinnamon-pull-apart-rolls-from-store-bought-to-homemade/ and as soon as they were out of the oven, all I could think of was having one (two, three!) with Harney’s Vanilla Black. I did, and oh. The tarry, sophisticated vanilla was just the foil for these delicious little breads.

When I bought this, I saw coco in the description and said “Ooooh chocolate chai!” and threw it in my cart. When it arrived I said “Oooooh I’m in the mood for some chocolate!” and made a pot. I tasted it and said to my husband “I don’t taste any chocolate!” and he said “I taste coconut” and I said “But it’s supposed to be chocolate!” and this went on for quite awhile before I USED MY READING SKILLZ to read both the packet and website which clearly states coconut. I’m not sure if this is better or worse than when I pried all of the little tongs off of Harney’s tagalong tins for months before realizing that you simply have to press the top to open it. I continue my reign as Steepster’s biggest dodo bird.

ANYWAY – Half way into the packet, I am finally over the embarrassment and can drink the tea for what it is — a sweet, delicious coconut chai. There is some pepper which nicely balances the very sweet coconut. Great choice in this one, even though I’m not usually big on the pepper. The chai spices are balanced. I still love the cinnamon chai the best, but am very happy with this as a change of pace, especially when I’m craving something sweet.

Another from TSTTB! #7, maybe? I’ve already lost count!

I thought this tasted like very rich and delicious caramel. Complex (yes, this honeybush dessert tea has nuances! A creamy-ness. A cake-ness. A burnt sugar-ness). It could have been because this was the very last scoop in the bag and the chocolate was gone, or perhaps it’s just the way I taste these flavors, but chocolate never entered my mind when drinking this tisane. I’m intrigued enough to pop this into my order to find out if there may be more chocolate in a full pouch, I’ll tell you that! Even if there isn’t, this one is superior to the caramel rooibos I have in my cupboard, and I’ll be extremely happy with it if it tastes just as it did last night.

The last of my TSTTB portion of this tea, and I am so sad to see it go! Both my husband and I greedily slurped our cups, oooohed and ahhhhed (“Cake! It really tastes like carrot cake!”), and enjoyed every last bit. So nice with a little honey and milk. How did they do it? Fusion captured all the subtleties of the cake itself — walnut, spice, cake, even baked carrot!

SO getting bought the minute I get paid :) Off to research what you guys think of the other Fusion Teas so I can cobble together an interesting order.

This tea really is a tiny bit of heaven on earth, huh? I almost feel funny drinking it on a mere weekday morning. Perfect amount of jasmine – and a wonderful pastry jasmine — not perfume-y at all. The green tea is excellent. It’s beautiful to behold the pearls when you open the tin. It smells wonderful before, during, and after it is steeped. Again, I don’t do ratings, but this is so, so, so a 100.

Another steamy day. Time for my favorite green tea. Me, putting favorite and green tea in the same sentence? Yes! This is the one I’ve nicknamed Lady Grey Green. It’s perfectly orangey and the green tea is sweet and pleasant and just complex enough for a person dipping her toes into greens. I love it so! Another thing I like about green tea on a hot day is that since the water is heated to a lesser temperature, it’s much nicer to drink than boiling hot tea.

I really have to get a (gorgeous!) tin of this into my cupboard for the summer. I only have 3 sachets left in my tagalong.

This was one of my free samples from my latest DAVIDsTEA order!

It’s roasting in my office, so I wanted something fruity and light. This one delivers! I was going to put sugar in it, but thankfully I held off until I had a sip — none needed;it’s very sweet. Mango is the predominant flavor followed by a slightly tart? astringent? flavor. Not sure if that’s the pomegranate, the tea base, or a combination of both, but it’s nice — it tempers the sweetness.

I’m not sure if I’d order this one, but I’m sure glad I have another serving! I may bring it home and add it to an iced tea — I bet that would be stellar!