QuiltGuppy

I have finally found the perfect tea to grace the fine bone china teapots from Great Britain. Organic Victoria Tea. First, it’s a beautiful tea. The dry tea is a mixture of black tea and rose petals. Such a beautiful contrast. It smells of perfumed black tea as the bergamot is definitely there. Very nice and dainty.

205/2 min – Wow. This is a dark tea. It smells just like a creamy Earl Grey. I can smell the bergamot, the roses and (ack) the vanilla. Okay, vanilla’s not exactly what I like in my cup of tea, but I’ll give it a go… The taste is nice. It’s like a floral Earl Grey. No single ingredient overpowers the others and it’s all very well-balanced. I like that I can actually pick out the flavor of the rose petals. Usually they seem to get lost in the teas that I drink. The vanilla is not as evident when the tea is hot. In fact, it adds a hint of a creamed taste to the tea. However, when the tea cools, the finish is all vanilla. I ended up pitching the remainder of my cup. This was quite a nice surprise.

Another sample from Tea Licious. This tea smelled like Tetley tea bags, and so I have to say that I wasn’t shocked to find that it tasted just like them, too. For me, the only surprise was logging on to the website and seeing that this was in fact, a green tea. It tastes very much like a Ceylon tea. It had a slight astringency to it, but other than that, it was so close to the bagged teas of yesteryear that I would have sworn it was something else.

It’s not a bad tea, but it doesn’t stand out in any way, either.

Smells like dirt.
Tastes like mud.

Thank you, Ben Shan. You have saved me from quite possibly the single worst tea tasting day I’ve ever had. This is one of the teas I bought as a sampler from Rachanac on teatra.de.

Dry, it smells vegetal and somewhat nutty. Nice, like a roasted oolong. 195/2 min. It’s a medium gold color. The aroma is still vegetal, worrying me a bit. The taste… wonderful roasted oolong. Thank goodness! I think I may have fallen over if yet another awful tea were to find its way to my teacup. This is a very nice, strong, full-flavored oolong.

Dry, this tea smelled sickly sweet. The oolong was dark black and scattered throughout, but it seemed as though there were more raisin-like fruits called schizandra berries (??) scattered throughout.

195/2 min. Ugh. The aroma is not pleasant. I can’t think of a word to describe it and I know instantly that even if this were the most amazing cup of tea, it would be difficult to drink the entire cup. Unfortunately for the tea, it’s not the most amazing. It’s certainly not the worst, but coupled with this bizarre scent, I can’t finish it. It tastes like steeped raisins and the oolong is not strong enough to hold up to its bizarre berry tea mate.

I received this as a sample today and it is so pretty that I couldn’t wait to try it out. Tiny rosebuds are scattered throughout deep emerald oolong balls, which are punctuated by woody lemongrass. It’s truly a beautiful tea.

195/2 min. I smell lemon and I taste lemon. Unfortunately, that’s all I can taste right now. I believe there’s too much lemongrass in here and it has overtaken the flavor completely. I cannot taste rose at all, even though I was able to smell a hint of it when it was dry. Where is the oolong?

Second steep: 3 min. Okay, less lemon. That’s good. I’m also able to pick up on more of the ginger flavor. Oh, and oolong, too. It’s finally making an appearance.

Third steep: 4 min. Much better. The lemon has been toned way, way down and the oolong is coming forth in a trusty oolong manner. No rose or ginger flavor to speak of, though. It’s very pleasing and by far my favorite of the three cups. I won’t try a fourth steep as I don’t believe it would hold out that long. The leaves barely contain any scent now.

Very vanilla. From the scent to the taste, the vanilla is ever-present. It’s a heavy taste and the oolong base holds up to it, but as I don’t care for vanilla, it’s not all too high on my list of faves, unfortunately. I can’t taste any citrus in this one. 185/3 min.

Second in my Canton Tea trials… the leaves are very pretty. Not too long, but thin and twisted with a pretty reddish color to them. The scent is mellow and I can’t quite describe it, but it’s not the typical black tea scent. It’s more subdued.

205/2 min. Um… vegetal. Yes. The flavor is just like stewed artichokes. I’m not impressed with this at all. I’m not certain what went wrong, but I can’t drink this. It’s not bitter or astringent, but there is no sweetness to this. Just artichokes.

I just remembered about my hidden package from Canton Tea Co. (My husband was pulling in at the same time I was pulling packages off of the front porch and I had to act quickly!) I pulled it out and checked over my forgotten teas. This one seemed to call to me, and I obliged it.

The jasmine scent that wafted out of the package was unlike any that I had encountered before. It’s extremely fresh and fragrant. Simply amazing! The leaves are fuzzy, whole and delicate.

160/2 min. The jasmine is still ever-present in this tea. The scent and now the taste, too, are full of it. It’s a most unusual jasmine taste that I haven’t encountered before. It’s like I just steeped a fresh jasmine blossom. The silver needle tea is so delicate and is very much overpowered by the jasmine in the first steep. The tea does become more discernible in subsequent steeping. Everything about this tea screams quality and delight. It’s a rare experience, and a magical one, too.

Edit: I wanted to include a note about this tea when it cools. I’m on the second steep and it has completely cooled. Now the flavor is so sweet it has taken on a jasmine-fruit note that is extraordinary. One of my best encounters with jasmine ever, hands down.

No notes yet.

This was my second time trying this tea before reviewing. I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. 190/3 min. There’s so much fruit in it that I thought that I could add more tea to the water and come up with a better flavor. It’s so extremely tart that it’s undrinkable without copious amounts of sugar… which I almost never do, but I had no choice as we were running late this morning. I cannot taste the tea at all. It’s hidden behind a very tart fruit flavor that causes such a pucker that I can barely drink it. Once sweetened, it’s much more tolerable, but not very pleasant. I used 4.5 tsp/16 oz of water. The only nice thing I can say is that it looks beautiful when dry!

Mmmmmm! This is one of the closest teas to my beloved (and discontinued) Sweet Lily White from Teavana. One of the things I really dislike is having to use 1.5 times the amount of tea just to get a decent taste. It’s so worth it, though! From the first sip, this tea was heavenly. It’s very sweet, almost nectar like in taste. The lychees feature prominently and the tea somewhat takes a back seat in the first steep. (In subsequent steeps, it does come forth.) There is no bitterness or dreaded vegetal tastes to be had and I’m in love with it!

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

I decided to try some of the different milk oolongs I had today. This was the first. It smells nice. Steeped 195/2 min. The milky scent is still there, but I’m not finding the richness in the taste. The tantalizing scent is there, but then it seems to lack the flavorful follow up. It’s nutty, but not as creamy as I had hoped.

The second steep confirms the lack of creaminess. I’ll try adding more leaf on my next go.

With all the positive comments I’ve read about pineapple sencha lately, I just knew it had to be good. However, I didn’t expect this tea to completely blow me away… and it did! Den’s Tea does a phenomenal job with its teas. The sencha is so very green and inviting and the little chunks of papaya scattered throughout contrast nicely. I loved looking at it and breathing in the fresh, pineapple scent. (At first it smells a bit too pineappley… similar to pineapple in syrup.)

I always worry about cooking my green teas and ending with veggies, so I took a lighter route again. 185/1 min. Now, the pineapple scent is subdued, but still very present. There is something else weighing in on the aroma, but I can’t quite place my finger on it. It’s a heavier scent, more vegetal and I’m a bit worried about the flavor this tea has. Until I take a sip…

The taste… amazing! First and foremost, I taste the pineapple. It’s still ever present, but is not too sweet. I can pick up papaya in the aftertaste, perhaps coconut, too. It’s a sweet/nutty combination of flavors. There’s a slight bitterness to the tea, not too much. Most surprising of all is the body of this tea. It has a thickness to it. I can’t believe it is just water here and not something heavier. There is most definitely a buttery creaminess to it. I think that’s what I was picking up in the aroma… butter. It’s a very interesting combination and an extremely pleasing experience. This tea is wonderful!

Here’s another beautiful looking tea. The chunky fruits among the black leaves are stunning. The scent is a bit dark. I’m imagining that it must be a dark, heavy tea. So, in preparation, I’m adjusting my steep. 185/3.5 minutes. I also added 1.5 times the amount of tea.

I can pick up a fruitiness in the tea, with a deeper syrupy scent that I’m attributing to the fig. The tea is not all that dark, but I’m still glad I adjusted the temperature. There seems to be a nice balance of the fruits to the tea. As expected from the scent, there is a syrupy sweetness to the tea, not quite on par with a fig flavor, but slightly deeper, more like dark corn syrup that has been toasted. The oolong is present and does balance well with the fruits. I like the idea of pairing fig with oolong, but it feels as if the other added fruits didn’t quite connect and blend as well.

Wow. And WOW! This is really, really good. I can’t believe I put it off for so long…

It’s a neat tea, one that I can definitely share with my children. It’s caffeine-free and when it steeps, it turns a hot pink/red color. (Slightly murky though.) The “tea” is basically chunks of stuff. Almonds. Dried apples. Cinnamon bark. Other stuff. It looks lumpy. Anyway, I decided to go heavy on the tea and toward the lower end of their recommended steeping time. I put 1.5 times the amount of tea into the Breville. 205/5 min. It’s outstanding! It smells like an almond cookie straight out of the oven with warm applesauce. Like liquid comfort. It’s very sweet tasting and that sweetness increases as the tea cools. Actually, I’ve found that I really like this tea the longer it cools, around an hour after being made. It’s then that you can really taste the different flavors that are fused together in this cup of cookie heaven. I couldn’t drink it every night, but we’re ordering the large tin of it as it’s a winner in our home!

I’ve been on a bit of a coconut kick this week. So, I plucked this one out of the inbox that I created next to my teapot. It smelled wonderfully of fresh coconut when I opened the bag and I set the timer and went to bed. 165/2 min.

It still smells delicious. The taste is nice. It’s not quite what I had hoped for. I thought I’d encounter a fresh coconut taste, as the aroma implied. However, it comes out as more of a sweetened coconut flavor. Like a Mounds candy bar. It’s a bit too much and it does overpower the sencha base, which is very difficult to discern. Still, it’s a nice tea, very slightly bitter, but overall very pleasant.

No notes yet.

I didn’t have an issue with the scent of the dry leaves. They just smelled kind of plain to me. I chose a low temp and low steep time to avoid cooking the cukes.

165/1.5 min. It’s not bad. Smells like cucumbers and tastes like it, too. I’m not picking up any tea taste, more like liquid cucumber, no spiciness whatsoever. Actually, I think it’s pretty neat, but it’s not what I’d look for in a tea.

No notes yet.

Dry tea smells delightful. Fruity, perky and promising. 170/1.5 min. Not so fruity scented now, nor in the taste. Perhaps this would make a better iced tea. I didn’t really dislike it hot, but it didn’t seem like a mango taste to me. It was more of a cane sugar taste without the overwhelming sweetness. More syrupy tasting. I wonder if it would diminish when cooled.

This tea smells fruity, yet subdued when dry. The scattered flower petals are beautiful. I went light on the steep 175/1 min as I wanted to avoid cooking the leaves. The description of this tea has to be incorrect as it doesn’t mention vanilla. Either that or I totally missed it. I’m getting a very big vanilla scent and flavor. I do not like vanilla, nor would I have purchased it had I known. The sweet vanilla flavor so permeates the tea, that I cannot focus much on the other elements. I can taste some fruitiness, but am not enjoying this, so I can’t report any further. It lingers far too long in my mouth and nose.