Jillian

The last time I was in the Granville Island Tea Co in Vancouver they’d just got several new oolong teas in stock and I grabbed a small sample of this one to try as it was fairly expensive I seem to recall.

It’s clearly a fairly green oolong which the floral aroma seems to bear out. There’s also some sort of small, purple flower that’s mixed in with the loosely-rolled tea leaves, though I think that’s more for visual appeal than anything else.

There’s a surprising bakey note at the start of each sip but that fades into a smooth, slightly floral flavour at the end. There’s also hints of sweetness and maybe something vegetal mixed in with everything. This oolong kept its flavour well for several steeps and stayed pretty consistant throughout.

It doesn’t quite beat the awesome Iron Goddess of Mercy that this tea company also carries, but it’s a good, easy-drinking tea.

Even though this tea isn’t strictly a chai blend, I decided to turn the last bit of this into a latte using the recipe guidelines on Chai Wallah’s website: http://www.chai-wallah.com/makingchai.html

My boyfriend and I both enjoyed it even though I missed the cardamom notes that you’d normally taste in a chai.

I was very disapointed when T closed their retail store in Vancouver as I particularly enjoyed their own version of a gingerbread latte. They still operate online (at http://www.tealeaves.com/) so at least I can still purchase their teas.

Following other people’s suggestions, I tried adding agave nectar to my cup this morning and while I found that it did give the tea an interesting kettle-corn flavour it didn’t do much for the astringency of the tea base. It’s a nice idea but I’m afraid I still don’t care much for this blend.

I’ve been drinking this tea for awhile but for one reason or another just never had the time to write a tasting note for it. It isn’t bad for a red rooibos tea, the banana for one isn’t a flavour you often find in teas and it’s subtle but nice here. The chocolate could stand to be a bit stronger – I’ve noticed that the chocolate chips in this blend don’t dissolve easily, which is usually a indicator of cheap, low-quality chocolate (I used to work at Purdy’s Chocolates). Tsk, tsk, Frank. ;)

I was at a Chinese market today with some friends and I needed something to drink. This caught my eye and it was cheap so I picked up a can. I’ve never had chrysanthemum tea before. although I’ve grown the flowers and I know that it’s used a fair bit in eastern medicine.

I can’t say I was super impressed, but that might be because of the cane sugar. The drink was a touch too sweet and it managed to dominate the flavour unfortunately. It does have an interesting herbal/floral taste that slightly resembles the way the flowers smell, which makes sense I suppose. Still it’s not anything I’d run out to buy again.

How come I never blogged about this tea before? Well I can remedy that now at least. I love tropical fruits particularly mangos – my dream tea is probably some weird, Frankenstein-ian mix of chocolate, cherry and mango.

The coconut scent was quite powerful at first, but as the tea steaped the scent of the fruits gradually seep in. Coconut was also the flavour that I first picked up on in each sip, but it didn’t diminish the other flavours that followed – a mix that managed to be more than just ‘generic tropical fruit flavour’. I could definitely pick out pinapple and papaya, though I wasn’t sure about the mango. Either way I found it to be totally exotic and delectable. ^_

I tried adding milk and sweetener to this tea like some people suggested, but I didn’t find much of an improvement. There was maybe a tad more blueberry flavour but not enough for me to revise my rating of this tea. This is one tea that’ll probably go up for adoption some time in the near future.

I got a sample of this tea awhile back but I’ve forgotten who it was from – so whoever you are, thanks for the tea!

The dry tea smells like a tasty combination of vanilla and butterscotch which I could sit and sniff all day. :D Interestingly the rum/butterscotch is very subtle in the tea itself; the dominant flavour is the cream with hints of coconut. I’ve been drinking it with milk so that might be skewing the flavours a bit, but I would have maybe liked a bit more of the rum to come through.

It’s nice to revisit an old friend – plus I’ve been making an effort to drink up my older teas. I tried it with milk for the heck of it, and found that it actually worked fairly well, despite this being a fairly light tea.

I was expecting this tea to taste peachier than it actually does. There’s a hint of fruit flavour but I think that comes mostly from the oolong leaves themselves. Mostly it tastes like a fairly typical dark oolong – a mix of bakey and moss/wet bark-like flavours (in case you were wondering, I’ve never actually eaten moss or wet bark, but this tea is what I’d imagine they’d taste like).

Revisiting this tea. I’m not sure if I like this tea with milk or without milk more, although both ways are certainly agreeable. I also found that it goes very well with ginger snap cookies. ;)

There was a quite a yummy blueberry scent when I opened the package today. The green tea base is a nice one too, lightly vegetale with that hint of smokiness that I like in gunpowder greens. Like most flavoures teas, the blueberry flavour is more noticable as the tea cools and I found it nice and fruity without being too artifical-tasting. I’m not the biggest fan of flavoured greens, but I found this one to be quite agreeable.

This is another one of the teas that got spilled inside the 12 days of x-mas sampler box and I think it mixed with a few other because it smells a bit like the Rainbow Sherbet right now. So I’m not sure if I should rate this tea at all.

Taste-wise I didn’t find it anything special, as it mostly just tasted like plain tea with a hint of chocolate and sweetness, though it did go nicely with some of the ginger cookies I made yesterday. I’ve got enough left to play around with the parameters so I’ll see if I can’t find a way to coax more flavour out of it.

My last experience with kombucha wasn’t so hot, but I wanted to give it another chance. This one still smells like beer and tastes a bit like it too, though it’s mixed with something reminiscent of pear cider (the hard stuff). The carbonation ‘bites’ the tongue and leaves a rather sweet fruity aftertaste. I’m also not convinced that there’s no alcohol in this drink as this is a fermented tea and alcohol is a natural by-product of the fermentation process.

It’s…not bad, though I think kombucha might be an aquired taste. Still I’d drink this again.

This one is quite interesting – I half-expected the chai spices to drown out the white tea, but to my surprise I can taste its mix of vegetale and slightly nutty notes fairly well. The chai spcies are more subtle than they would be in a black tea chai but they’re still quite distinct. There’s also a nice apple-cinnamon flavour that comes out especially as the tea cools off and even a touch of vanilla though it’s well-hidden. It works quite nicely as a mid-afternoon pick-me up when I don’t want the caffeine load of a black tea.

PS: thank you to oOTeaOo for trading with me for this one.

Another offering from the 12 Days of X-mas Sampler (I’ll get through it…eventually) although I also have a full pouch of this tea in my cupboard that I haven’t opened yet.

When I first tried this tea plain I wasn’t terribly impressed, but what a difference adding a little bit of milk and/or sweetner makes! It really does bring out the flavour of the pancakes and I can taste a little bit of maple syrup too. It’s a great treat to have with my breakfast.

Eh, I’m not terribly thrilled with this tea. Supposedly it’s blueberry flavoured but I’m not tasting much beyond the basic tea base. There is a hint of blueberry but it’s too subtle for this tea I’m afraid.

I was surprised by how small and broken-up the tea leaves were – it looked like something more suited to being inside of a tea bag. At the risk of sounding snobbish, if I have to pay $9 for 4oz of tea I’d really like for it to be good-quality whole-leaf stuff. And of course this was one of the pouches that hadn’t been sealed properly so I ended up with half of it on the counter and the floor. >.<

Appearance aside, it has a nice blend of chai spices but I’m not really getting as much vanilla or caramel as I expected. I’ve had vanilla chais that were much creamier and richer than this one (Metropolitan Tea’s Vanilla Chai comes to mind) so it was a bit of a let down. That isn’t to say it’s a bad-tasting tea or anything – as a plain chai blend it would have been fine. It’s just a bit disappointing because I know Frank is capable of making better.

No notes yet.

I had all sorts of plans for today but unfortunately it’s wretchedly cold outside; -20 celcius with a strong wind that makes it feel even colder. The thought of standing at the bus stop in that sort of weather proved too much for me so I’m spending the day inside drinking tea. What a poor Canadian I make! XD

A nice, robust Assam seemed perfect for today, so I dug this tea out of the 12 Days of X-mas sampler. I was a bit amused to see whole cornflowers in the tea rather than just the petals. They actually look a lot like knapweed which is a horrible, highly invasive weed around here. I was expecting the tea to have a stronger vanilla flavour but it’s more of a subtle, refined note, I found. It makes the tea taste quite creamy and goes nicely with a bit of milk.

Another tea out of the 12 Days of X-mas sampler (I’ve given up trying them in any sort of order). I was expecting something a little more salty and buttery with this tea, but the result tasted more like kettle corn – which is fine by me although it feels a bit like false advertizing. ;) The black tea tea base comes across as rather astringent in this blend for some reason (which is a bit odd as I’m pretty sure Frank uses the same base for all his black teas, and it’s never really bothered me before) and I found it sort of distracts for the popcorn flavours.

Hmm, not bad, but not my fav either.

Got this from the 12 Days of X-mas sampler – I’m finally getting around to trying the teas from the days I missed. First of all the smell of this tea is just incredible, it really does smell exactly like the rainbow sherbet that as a kid I used to look forward to for dessert. This is the tea I smell whenever I open the sample box – although that might be because this was one of the pouches that spilled its guts as the pouch wasn’t sealed properly.

It’s noticeably missing the sweetness I’d normally associate with sherbet, so I’m going to try sweetening it next time to see if that makes a difference. I can clearly taste the orange and the lime but they aren’t so stong that they taste bitter or astringent – they’re part of a whole, and not meant to stand alone. The raspberry is a bit trickier, it could be a little bit stronger, but again I’ll see if adding sweetener brings it out more next time.

I really enjoyed this one Frank, you outdid yourself.

My first tea review of the new year. :D

The smell of the steeping tea was distinctly fishy which had me worried for awhile, but thankfully it didn’t translate to the flavour. Oddly enough, I’m not really getting much pu’erh at all; it’s mostly the ginger that’s coming through. I’m not too fussed about that – I’m rather fond of ginger and it’s my go-to medicine when I’m feeling sick. Still, this is supposed to be a pu’erh tea and apart from a bit of earthy fullness, it’s just not there.

First of all – Frank, I love your teas, I truely do, but you have to find a better method for sealing the bottoms of your sample pouches. Today makes the second time I’ve taken a pouch out of the 12 Days of X-mas sampler only for most of it to fall out the unsealed bottom and make a huge mess on my floor. I also have a few that spilled their guts inside the box including the new mystery tea (which is no longer a mystery – sorry) and mixed together a little bit.

But enough of my whining, I really did enjoy this tea. The cinnamon tastes a bit more like those camdy cinnamon hearts than cinnamon rolls – sharp and hot vs warm and mellow. There’s a nice baked flavour that comes pretty close to the taste of pastery dough and the honeybush’s natural sweetness makes it seem like a dessert in a cup.