28 Tasting Notes

75

This is a decent blend. It does not taste very much like lavender, mostly like chamomile. It is a little sweeter than some straight chamomiles that I have had. I like to drink this in sachets, because I can easily grab it out of the cupboard and prepare it without even turning on the lights late at night.

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85
drank Paris by Harney & Sons
28 tasting notes

This is my daily drinker work tea! The sachets are so much easier than trying to deal with any loose leaf mess at work. It is also really forgiving. I just use water out of the hot water side of our water cooler, and often forget that I have started a new cup and brew the tea for about 10 minutes. Regardless of how much I abuse this tea, it comes out slightly sweet and floral – the perfect accompaniment to long days staring at computer screens. I can also steep the sachets twice in my 12 oz cup.

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Oh god, I have had this sample literally forever. I was very good about my other, non-pu-erh samples from Yezi, but I could never bring myself to take the time and make this one.

Part of the problem is that pu-erh is kind of scary, and I’ve never really had one that I’ve liked yet. I chose this sample to stretch myself and try a new, higher quality pu-erh than I’ve had before.

Dry, the leaf smells sweet and slightly of hay. It’s very reminiscent of midwestern autumns.

I am using an approx. 75 mL gaiwan and about 1.5 g of tea, per the website’s suggestion. Water is near a full boil. I will also be following the website’s suggested steeping times.

Rinse: super fishy smelling. Wet leaf: Now smells like wet hay. It’s very strong, I can feel it at the back of my throat. There’s a sweet undercurrent similar to the soft innards of homemade bread.

30 sec: Auugh, I splashed myself with some of the hot tea! After cooling my poor scalded finger, I come back to a cup cool enough to drink. The upfront taste and smell is all hay. I am stuck on hay today, apparently. However, there is this incredibly chocolatey aftertaste that hits maybe 10 seconds after I swallow and lasts for quite a while afterwards. Wet leaf now smells of new shoe leather and wet autumn leaves.

40 sec: Not much development from the first steeping. It feels pretty thin, but the flavors are very similar to the first steep, down to the chocolate aftertaste hitting after I swallow. Wet leaf smells crazy like hay again.

1 min: I have lost the chocolate aftertaste.

I have probably steeped this a total of about 5 times now and the flavor hasn’t really changed. Overall, this is fine. A lot better than the pu-erh that I have had previously. It’s made pu-erh a little less scary. However, I don’t think I would drink it again; it just doesn’t do much for me. I will hold off on rating this tea, because as I said, I am not a pu-erh drinker. I would not want to affect its rating because of that.

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Teavivre is currently having a giveaway in exchange for reviews. I chose to review their entire “5 Featured Black Tea Sampler”, not realizing I could only have one entry. I will include my reviews for all five teas in this entry, and I’ll divide out the individual teas in a few days. <edit: after 4 years, I have finally divided out these entries…>

Leaf: Dry, I see slim twists of black tea with golden tips. It smells rich and smoky and a little acrid, as if someone briefly uncapped a permanent marker. The acrid scent could be from the masking tape I was handling a few minutes previously, though. Wet, it smells like the damp, dewy remains of a a campfire after a night of camping.

Water: I don’t have a temperature control kettle, so I just have to estimate water temperatures. My kettle is glass, though, so I can get a pretty good idea of what is going on. The temperature I used was below boiling, at the point when small bubbles are formed on the bottom of the kettle and the first bubbles begin to be released.

Amount: I used approximately 2 tsp of tea for 8 oz of water, brewing western style.

First Steeping:
1 minute: The tea is a light gold. It doesn’t taste like much on the tongue, but the after taste when I swallow is slightly smoky and malty. I will let this steep for another minute.
At 2 minutes total steeping time, the tea is now a darker, honeyed orange. It smells much more smoky. It has a very thin mouthfeel, much different from the usual lapsang souchongs I am used to. The smoke flavor is fairly light and subtle.

Second steeping:
3 minutes: I used slightly hotter water this time, because the water seemed a little too cool to properly brew the tea last time. I can immediately see the difference when I remove my steeper. The tea is a dark, rich amber. I can smell some of the underlying tea base beneath the smell of smoke. For all of the smoke scent, there is not much smoke flavor. It is surprisingly light for a lapsang souchong. With this steeping, it is very subtly sweet.

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85

Sadly, it has been a while since I’ve had the time to post a tasting note. But what a perfect way to get back into my semester at school, by taking the time to sit down and drink a complex oolong. I overleafed for my teeeeeeny gaiwan, but compensated with extra short steepings.
First steeping: Very sweet, lingering flavor. It sticks around on the back of my tongue for ages. It’s a kind of savory tea, it makes my mouth water a little drinking it.
Second steeping: More vegetal. I feel this one in the middle and tip of my tongue. There’s a layer of floral spice to it, as if cinnamon were extracted from flower petals.
Third steeping: Oof, I must have steeped this one too long. It’s very bitter and astringent. Gonna gulp it down quick and start on infusion four.
Fourth steeping: It’s starting to get more one dimensional. There’s one sharp flavorful note, but the other undercurrents of flavor have kind of disappeared. May stop with this one.

May thanks to Yezi Tea for providing me with this sample.

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88

Mmmm. I got this as a free sample in my last order, and while I never would have chosen it myself, I’m very glad that the folks at Verdant slipped it into my box. The tea brews up to a lovely deep amber, quite a bit darker on first steeping than the most recent batch of Laoshan black.
The first steep is very chocolatey, especially when piping hot. As it cools, malty, earthy undertones start coming through. It’s not bitter at all, but as I finish my cup, I notice a slight dryness in the back of my throat. It’s like the faintest memory of astringency, but an astringency that I didn’t notice while I was drinking. This reminds me a lot of the Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong (“I can’t believe it’s not scotch”) from Yezi Tea, actually.
Second steeping, much more earthy. I can pick up the mushroom notes that others have mentioned. When I sniff the cup quickly, I pick up a slight citrus scent that I don’t really taste. It’s very malty, but there’s another taste that I can’t quite identify. It’s a pretty familiar taste for me, but I just can’t place it. The third steeping, and the last one I drank last night, was very light and sweet and slightly floral. It reminds me a lot of the current run of Laoshan black, actually.

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60

This reminds me of the jasmine tea served in baroque Chinese restaurants, dimly lit and filled with gold leaf and large porcelain urns. It’s a pretty standard jasmine. The jasmine doesn’t taste artificial. The description says there are jasmine blossoms included with the green tea, but I only see one in my .5 oz sample. Also, slightly oddly, I get a hint of citrus. I don’t know if I’m not identifying a flavor incorrectly or if my brewing basket is a little dirty and I’m getting some cross contamination. It’s kind of pleasant, though, and I think I should find a jasmine citrus tea.

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57

This was an okay blend. I only had a sample, and I would not buy more, even if it were in stock.

My boyfriend was the first to open the package. He took a big whiff and turned to me with huge eyes. “It smells like Christmas!” He was right! It smelled amazing, and like delicious Christmas spices. He’s not a big fan of taking the time to look up the steeping directions online, so he steeped it without rinsing the leaves. That was probably a mistake. The spices were too strong and didn’t meld together nicely. Instead, it just tasted like a flat mixture of spices. Nothing stood out, nothing was of note. He dumped the leaves without resteeping it.

I tried this again the other day. I have some notes that I wrote, though I didn’t get to log it right away because our internet was out. I looked up Verdant’s directions and did two quick, 1-3 second rinses. The first rinse smelled so amazing, I had to take a quick sip. It tasted like gingerbread! Mmmm. I then steeped the leaves, I think for 2 min, as per the website instructions. Hot, there is a ton of cinnamon and ginger flavor. I can feel the cinnamon, slightly gritty in the back of my throat. As it cools, the vanilla comes out more. For something that is called a citrus blend, I’m really not getting any citrus at all. I have written down, “It’s like a spice cookie.” It’s a fairly creamy tea, though it still doesn’t stand up to the amazing smell of the dry leaf. I put in white sugar with the last half of my mug, in the hopes that it will help me distinguish between flavors, but it doesn’t really improve things. It’s not bad but also not exceptional.
Second steeping: It’s very flat, like dried, ground spices in water. I’m not getting any of the creaminess of the previous steeping, and not very much tea base. I added brown sugar and milk after just a few sips, because there wasn’t anything really going on with the tea. The brown sugar and milk help, it becomes a little richer and more like a winter dessert.

Overall, it was a decent tea. However, it was lacking that “Wow” factor that I’ve come to expect from Verdant.

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85

I received this as a free sample from Yezi Tea. Their samples come beautifully packaged in color coded foil packets which don’t seem to allow scent leakage. The whole unboxing experience was very neat and clean. The samples came in a tiny flat box, which was actually small enough to fit into my little apartment mailbox, and there were all sorts of cute thank you notes and notes about “red tea” as a name for black tea and smiley faces and stuff. They seem very promising for a starting tea company, and I hope to place another order with them soon.

The tea: On their website, they call this “I can’t believe it’s not scotch”, but as with the butter substitute, I certainly can believe it. I actually get some sweet, fruity notes from this tea. It has the lightest kiss of smokiness and an undercurrent I can’t place… It’s like a combination of pollen and nuts. The first steeping was a beautiful mahogany, which darkened to a deep raw umber with subsequent steepings. From the scent and the color, I was expecting a heavy handed tea that smacked you upside the head with flavor and smoke and depth, but the zheng shan xiao zhong was actually very delicate and light. All things considered, it was a pretty positive tea drinking experience.

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77

I tried this hot first, and that was a little… odd. It tastes like root beer, certainly, but when hot, it’s like hot, flat root beer – not so pleasant.

Iced, it’s awesome! I cold steeped it for about 2 hours before I got too impatient and had to drink it. Ideally, I would have probably cold steeped it for about 2.5 – 3 hours. I sweetened it a little bit and poured it over ice. The root beer flavor is spot on, though I don’t get very much ice creaminess. Basically root beer, not root beer float. My only minor issue is that my ForLife steeper/makeshift strainer wasn’t able to catch the smallest bits of rooibos, so there are some tiny little pieces floating in my iced tea. I feel like I might have them all over my teeth when I’m done. Fun novelty iced tea.

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After logging all of our tea, I’m vaguely horrified by how much we have. Especially because I know that we’re getting another huge sampler in a few days… Oh well, more inspiration to drink a lot more tea!

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