Nikolai

No notes yet.

Lovely, savoury, roasty smell. Taste has the same savoury edge, a little vegetal, but fairly mild. Noticeably dry feel, though. Second steep is much lighter flavour and more typical green tea, with a sweet melon note, and the savoury quality only coming at the end of a sip. I like the smell more than I like the flavour, and second steep was underwhelming, but it’s still very nice.

This tea didn’t sound very appealing to me, but I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t overwhelmingly spicy or all high-pitched fruit, but a mellow green with cinnamon and a touch of plum for depth. Having said that, it was a little flat. Still, quite pleasant.

Nice, smooth but strong. I can definitely taste the Assam, but it’s tamer and not as raisin-y. Very full flavour with high and low notes. Not remarkable, but definitely a very solid black tea that I’ll be sure to drink often.

I’d never had pu-erh before, and was hoping for something a bit more… intense? I should note that the description on the box says it’s sweeter and less earthy than traditional pu-erh, so I can’t accuse them of false advertising on that count. Unfortunately, not earthy, relatively sweet, and complex, while it might be unique among pu-erhs, also means it doesn’t deviate much from the norm of green teas, so I was a bit disappointed.

It smells softly earthy, which is promising, but the taste doesn’t measure up. It’s very mild, first of all. I could barely taste anything at 2 minutes, so I resumed steeping for a little longer and had more luck then. What I can taste is interesting, definitely complex. A bit sweet, dry, astringent… The problem is that it’s so light in flavour that my not-yet-refined palate is having a hard time picking up on the nuances. I might experiment with steeping time to see if I can coax out more of the flavour.

One of my favourite flavoured teas. I love ginger, and there’s definitely a good bit of it in here. It doesn’t bite as much as it burns on a low level, if that makes sense. I also taste more peach than many people have noted, but it’s definitely dependent on steeping time – I’ll need to pay more attention the next few times I have this. Then again, I’m not a huge fan of fruity teas, so a touch of peach is all I need. Very interesting, versatile tea. I’ll drink it often.

Beautiful smell while brewing. Definitely malty, with smooth raisin-y flavour, and just the slightest hint of dry smokiness in the aftertaste. Strong, but not bitter at all. It’s very nice, but I’m not a big fan of raisin notes in my tea now.

I can’t quite decide how I feel about this. I wasn’t really impressed to see that the tea was more fruit and spices than tea leaves. Brewing, it smelled incredibly spicy, almost overwhelmingly so. But to taste, it was really sweet. Sweeter than any other chai I’ve tried, and fruitier, too. I give it credit for having good depth of flavour, and it was quite strong for a fairly short steeping. I found the cinnamon a bit overwhelming, though.