__Morgana__

While I was waiting for the water to heat up to black tea temp this morning I thought I’d give this a try, since I’d seen a flurry of notes and comments about it recently.

Interesting. The dry mixture looked and smelled identical to the Den’s Genmaicha Extra Green. Seriously, I couldn’t find a difference, except perhaps that the Den’s leaves were a bit longer. I liked that one pretty well, so I expected to like this about as much.

The first departure was in the steeping instructions and in fairness, I really should do a side by side comparison of the Den’s using the same steeping parameters. That one called for 30 seconds/boiling, but I followed the instructions on the Samovar sample packet and used cooler water for a longer time with the Ryokucha. The liquor of the Ryokucha was reminiscent of the Den’s but not as atomic-green. More of a chartreuse.

The nose was toasty rice, as expected. But the defining characteristic for me is something Ricky mentioned and that I echo. The sweetness. There’s a green, juicy sweetness to this that dances with the rice flavor in a really interesting way. It’s almost like a very very light soy sauce. Or the aftertaste of edamame. In any case, I’m not sure it’s crack (I guess that’s what they all say the first time) but it’s worth getting to know. I do like it a bit better than the Den’s on this try, but I will go back when I get more of this and do a side by side to be sure it’s not just the Olympic effect (i.e., that the last to go tend to get the higher marks).

The ol’ two-bags-of-Tazo-honeybush-steeped-along-with trick works with this one too, though perhaps not quite as well as I’d hoped. It takes the edge off the tartness but isn’t quite enough to sweeten it up to my “perfect lemon” standard. (I know, I know, my expectations are unrealistic perhaps.) It’s still worth tasting, for the reasons I mentioned in my previous note. And I’ll give the honeybush another go as well. It could have a completely different effect next time, since the ingredients in this tisane are so unusually unbalanced — really big pieces of lemon and normal sized pieces of other things.

I had high hopes for tea notes this evening but they were dashed. My kindergartener’s homework (!) was to write a story about his week with the class mascot (a stuffed Clifford the big red dog) and illustrate it with photographs of the two of them, and of course we left it till the last night. Partly this was because we barely have time to do his other homework as it is, what with both parents working and all, but mostly it was because I got a new camera and couldn’t get the printer to work with it. Ugh. Anyway, I finally figured it out, story is now done and child is in bed. Whew.

So I’m backtracking to another bagged hanger on that I haven’t yet written about.

This is a serviceable spiced rooibos, but I’m not sure it’s a very good chai. I haven’t had a lot of chai, so what do I know. All I can say is I’ve had a really good one. Part of what made it so good was the richness the milk imparted. This doesn’t stand up to milk. Another thing that made it really good was the black pepper kick. There’s no black pepper in this. And another thing that made it really good was a really luscious blend of spices that gave it a lot of character and depth. This has a sort of generic cinnamon-spicy thing going on.

I would have the Tazo Decaf Chai over this if I was looking for a caffeine free chai in a teabag. It stands up to milk, it has black pepper. Two out of three ain’t all bad.

Another Teavana tea of the month for March. (Hmm. Wonder when April’s teas will show up?)

And another I would not have selected were it not a tea of the month club offering. Confession time: I am no longer sure how I feel about rooibos (but don’t let rooibos know, k?).

When I first started trying to become a tea drinker, I liked it quite a bit. I think I liked it because it was (a) different from other drinks I’d had, and therefore novel, and (b) such a good flavor enabler. It may be particularly attractive to recent converts because it forms the backbone of so many interesting sounding drinks that, when you’re first getting your feet wet after less than stellar experiences, sound appealing because it’s almost like not drinking a tea-like beverage. Like Rootbeer Float and Tiramisu. The more excellent loose leaf Camellia Sinensis I drink, the less appeal these frou-frou approximations of existing beverages or foods have, though I remain a sucker for a good flavored black tea.

So say what you will about it, rooibos does have the very endearing quality of being an excellent backdrop. It’s the tofu of the tea world. It doesn’t have a strong flavor of its own, and the flavor that it has is mild and neutral. So it basically takes on the flavor of whatever is next to it. It loves the one it’s with.

Mostly, successful rooibos blends seem to be about the proportion of whatever the other flavor is to the rooibos. At least, I find the more successful ones to be those that sit the rooibos in the corner and don’t let it talk too much.

And that is why I find Rooibos Tropica to be a successful blend. It has a wonderful strawberry/peach smell when dry and is pretty to look at. It looks like dried rosemary dotted with blue, white and reddish-purple flower petals. (I agree with the quiet life, I don’t think there is any red rooibos in there. The ingredients on the bag don’t list it. Maybe they did change the blend.) When infused, the aroma is strawberry, peach, and a somewhat green note which could be from the rooibos, or the flower petals, or both.

It doesn’t seem that sweet to me, though strawberry is definitely present in the flavor and I’m finding Teavana’s strawberry to provide some degree of sweetness to their blends. Without the strawberry, I don’t think it would be at all sweet. If I try really hard I can taste something that seems like peach, and something that seems like orange. But what I find interesting about the flavor is that the ingredients together have some sort of synergy going on, where the sum of the individual parts is greater and different than the whole. As a whole, it’s a tutti-frutti mixture that suggests mango, pineapple, even banana — basically all the fruits you’d find on Carmen Miranda’s hats — even though none of those are identified as ingredients. And the rooibos is sitting in the corner, quietly, exactly as it should be.

So this gets a high rating for being an excellent example of its genre. Tied with the SpecialTeas Rooibos Lemon Chiffon, which I have not had in a while and need to revisit to see if recalibration is in order. However, whether I buy more is still an open question given my current doubts about my relationship with rooibos.

The rapturous tasting notes about this made me want to try it and, on the offchance I’d get lucky, I sifted through my last batch of Life in Teacup samples and voila! Lucky, lucky me. I am all for instant gratification. In this case it was so instant I placed my order right before writing this.

Let me add my own effusive praise to this lovely tea.

Yellow flecked, deep green, twisty, curvy leaves. Not the biggest I’ve seen in an oolong, not the smallest either. They really do have an amazing fragrance. I often have difficulty detecting floral notes even in teas that are scented. I think it was Shanti who said this smells like a garden and she’s absolutely right; it’s like sticking your nose into a gardenia. There may be other floral scents in there as well but I’m notoriously bad at placing floral scents. Lily of the valley maybe?

The brew is a light yellow with a tinge of green and smells like someone poured melted butter over the aforementioned flowers. The leaves unfurl to increase dramatically in size after multiple steeps.

And in honor of laurenpressley’s impending addition, let me tell you what the taste reminds me of.

There’s a little white flower called “baby’s breath,” which is often used as an accent in bouquets. It doesn’t have much of a scent on its own, so until I became a mother I thought the reference was to the milky white color of the flower. Because after all, babies drink milk.

Then my first son was born. And in those first few days of holding him and nursing him, I noticed an amazing thing. His breath smelled divine. Sweet, warm, milky, buttery. Pure. He took nothing into his body other than mother’s milk. There were no teeth yet, to collect what the mouthwash commercials refer to as “odor causing bacteria.” Just this sweet, lovely baby milky smell.

That’s what this tea tastes like. That, and flowers. What’s not to like?

Methinks it is time to start on my sampler. Here goes nothing: No. 1 of 31

Took a page from Ewa’s book: closed my eyes, thrust my hand into the basket, diddled it around and grabbed. This is what came out. (That was really fun, by the way. I intend to go through the whole thing entirely at random.)

Pretty, pretty dry leaves. Long, twisted, pointy; a cross between olive green and chocolate brown. And the smell! First, chocolate. Then, tobacco. Then, coffee. Then, something green and toasty. All mixing together and swirling around. Bizarrely, the image that came to mind was of tiny, silver, schooling fish swimming this way and that.

I used the whole packet. According to my scale it is enough for 1.5 cups, but my favorite cup for tasting teas holds 12 oz of water, rather than 8. So six of one, half a dozen of the other as my mother would say.

A golden brown, “tea colored” liquor. Lighter in color than I expected. Sweet, chocolate/malt/brown sugar aroma.

How to describe the taste? It’s smooth and gentle, completely without sharp edges. It isn’t full-bodied like the Samovar Breakfast Blend; on the other hand, it is refreshing without being thin. This seems to be the influence of the darjeeling.

It has a taste I can only describe as leafy. It isn’t particularly sweet, though it does have a hint of malt. It makes me think of fall in the Northeast US, when the leaves are falling from the trees, fresh and fragrant. This is what I’m getting more than “floral” but perhaps it’s all part of a Kingdom Plantae continuum. There’s a nice, lingering, quintessentially tea taste. It’s what tea-flavored candy tastes like without the sugar overload.

It’s lovely. I’ll definitely order it. I like Samovar’s Breakfast Blend better, but who says you can only have one breakfast blend? It would be like only having one pair of black shoes.

Still liking this one generally as far as bagged teas go — I won’t repeat myself as to why as it’s in a previous note. Just wanted to add, though, that I’ve noticed that it has a fair amount of astringency. I take it from what I’ve read that astringency is a desireable quality in darjeelings, though I’m not expert enough to know how much is desireable and whether the amount present here is too much.

Ahh. Wednesday. A work from home day.

Which means my overflowing shipping boxes full of recent tea deliveries are surrounding and beckoning to me. Yes, that’s where I’m now reduced to collecting (I won’t say storing because that might mean it would become a permanent solution) my tea deliveries, one for each type from black to white. On second thought, beckoning is the wrong word. It sounds gentle and polite, or at least resistible.

But first, I must not ignore my crusade to drink up the bagged tea to make room for all the new stuff, lest the boxes indeed become permanent. The good news is that though there are still way too many, I’m finding that I’m running out of ones I haven’t written notes on.

This is one. The bag has a deep “black bagged tea” smell, a bit like the Numi pu erh bags but minus the leathery/earthy notes. It steeped to a dark brown. I used 2 bags in 14-16 or so oz of water which likely resulted in a darker liquor than would be typical.

The tea smells much nicer than the bag; it has something similar to that sweet, brown sugary/malty smell I detect in a lot of the black Samovar teas and that I just love.

The sweetness isn’t as apparent in the taste, unfortunately. There’s a tiny bit of sugar in the finish, and a full, malty flavor with some astringency. It seems better than many of the bagged blacks I’ve had. But it lacks the depth and smoothness of the loose blacks that are my frontrunners at the moment. I’d be afraid that steeping any longer than 3 minutes would turn the corner into bitterness.

I’ll finish this up and would choose it over other bagged blacks in a pinch, but there are better teas. I’m spoiled by Samovar and Mariage Freres and look forward to more spoilage as I work through the contents of my shipping boxes.

This is Ceylon BOP Item TC50B and it came as “a complimentary sample perfect for Iced Tea” with my last order from Upton. I had never used the refrigerator method before and I tried it with this. Here were the instructions:

Empty the contents of the packet into a clean jug and add a quart of cold water. Refrigerate for 12-48 hours, strain and enjoy.

The margin of 36 hours seemed a bit daunting. I tried it after about 24. It’s a nice, standard black iced tea. I’m not a huge iced tea drinker, but in my view this is better than the usual restaurant fare. That’s mostly where I have iced tea.

My boyfriend, who drinks far more iced tea than I do, though also mostly at restaurants and without a great deal of sophistication (though he does insist that it be brewed and won’t take it if it is from a mix), pronounced it “OK.”

I’d had some success sweetening up Numi’s Desert Lime with honeybush so I tried that tonight with this, which as I mentioned in my last note on this is pretty tart. I stuck two Tazo Honeybush teabags into my oversized mug along with about 3.5 teaspoons (maybe 4) of this. It does make a difference; really ratchets down the tartness to something less puckerful, without oversweetening as splenda seemed to do.

I’d read about certain green teas having a post-apocalyptic, glowing green color — the sort of color that makes me think of some of those post-apocalyptic games I played (can’t now remember, was it Fallout? Half-Life? Doom? All of them?) but I’d never actually seen a tea that color. Until tonight. Whoa. Amazing green!

This is the last tea in my sampler, and the fine, very green dusting of the matcha over the leaves and rice is pretty cool looking. It looks like bright, lime-green powdered sugar over long pointy/twisty leaves. It smells juicily vegetal.

I steeped according to the pamphlet instructions: 30 seconds/boiling. The liquor color is a glowing green, not as lime-like as the dry leaves. More tending toward avocado.

The aroma is classic toasty rice, a smell which to me is somewhat similar to the way the old maids in the popcorn bag taste if you chew on them as I’m prone to do. It’s the primary taste as well, with a fresh green tea underlay.

I like the flavor of genmaichas whenever I drink them. I don’t often sit around thinking that they’re just the thing that would hit the spot, though. This is a good, solid genmaicha and I can see ordering it again, but I think the others in the Den’s sample were more suited to frequent drinking as far as my tastes go so I ranked this one a bit lower than the others.

I’m coming back to this one to try the same experiment I tried last night with the Mint Puerh. Since this one actually has green tea in it as well as pu erh, I’m wondering which version will come out better.

Two identical glass cups, roughly the same amount of water. One steeped green-tea like for 2 minutes at 175, the other steeped pu erh like for 3 minutes at boiling.

The longer steep, not surprisingly, resulted in a deeper color. But even the shorter steep is a deeper color than the mint of yesterday. They’re both orangy-brown and clear, the longer steep is browner while the shorter is more orange.

Interestingly, there is not nearly as much difference in the taste as there was with the mint, and as I expected here. The shorter steep is a lighter version of the longer, and I preferred the longer as the taste of the pu erh was more prevalent. This may have more to do with the water temperature than anything else.

The main difference is that the floral quality I described in my earlier tasting note is more present in the shorter/cooler steep. This makes me wonder whether it is really magnolia so much as the green tea influence on the flavor. While I preferred the taste of the longer/hotter steep generally, I was hoping for a more floral quality from this given its name. As it is, it really does seem like Emperor’s Lite. And I’d probably just drink the Emperor’s Pu erh if I was in the mood for that flavor.

The bag smells of blueberries and sweet white tea, and something that might be cranberry but could just as easily be some other red berry. I got a pretty, deep yellow color at a low brewing temp with a generic, fruity and white tea aroma.

This is pleasant enough and I’ll definitely finish what I have of it, but I can’t rank it any higher than this because I can’t discern any berry in the taste. At all. If it tasted like it smelled, it would at least get into the 70s, and granted, it doesn’t advertise itself as having anything more than a hint of cranberry and blueberry. But I guess in this case I just can’t take a hint…

This morning I finished up my last bags of this. My assessment remains the same, but I can’t see myself going back to this as a standard. I have many more Earls to try in my cupboard, but if I don’t find one I love I already have in the Samovar Earl Lavender.

After the first time I tasted this I’d been meaning to go back to it and play around with it a bit. While I liked it, second only to the chocolate among the Numi pu erhs, I wasn’t sure I’d steeped it correctly the first time.

The instructions on the bag seem to suggest it ought to be steeped as a green tea. I found this confusing, because whereas others of the Numi pu erhs do seem to be blends of other teas with the pu erh, this one’s main ingredient is “green pu erh” and its only other ingredient is mint.

So I decided tonight to give it a side by side test in identical glass cups. I brewed one as a green tea, with a 2 minute steeping time and 175 degree water, and the other for 3 minutes with boiling water.

Let me back up for a minute and say that the bags smell quite nice. Very minty, with the barnyardy/leathery scent of the pu erh as almost an accent, keeping the mint from being too candy-like.

The longer, hotter steep yielded a darker liquor; more tawny/tan yellow than the other, which looked very like green tea liquor, a greenish yellow. The aromas were interesting to compare. The longer steep brought out more of a pu erh smell, while the shorter seemed almost like a minty green oolong, with just a hint of the earthy tone of pu erh.

Taste-wise, the comparison came out similarly. They were both nice cups. The longer steep was heartier, and had more in common with the other Numi pu erhs I’ve tried. Leathery, barnyardy, earthy. The mint is a nice contrast to this, a fresh high note that would probably be appealing to people just starting to experiment with pu erhs and those who are looking for a counterpoint to the dark, pungent flavor. The shorter steep was heavier on the mint, thinner on the pu ehr flavor, but tasty in its own right.

The digestive aid properties of this one are not to be underestimated. I felt rumblings in my intestines almost immediately upon starting to sip this…

Hallelujah! I’m at the end of my bags of this! It wasn’t awful and at times was actually pretty enjoyable, but the bergamot was, in general, too heavy and perfumy for me. For a month I’ve been looking forward to better Earl Grey without the guilt of having unused bags lying around, and now I can sally forth guilt free. Hmmm. What should I start with? A&D? The Upton sampler? Samples from American Tea Room or Harney & Sons? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: so many teas, so little time!

Having just finished cups of Black Orchid by Mariage Freres and Starry Night by the Jade Teapot, I’ve turned to this one as the third in my tale of three vanillas.

The dry leaves look quite a bit like the Black Orchid. The color is similar and you can see vanilla beans in this one, too. I’d venture to say that the leaves of Black Orchid are slightly longer, which is probably owing to a difference in the variety of black tea used.

And that’s where the similarities end. I get the same chocolate note from the dry leaves of the Dian Hong that someone else mentioned instead of the amazing vanilla that came out of the Black Orchid. This, however, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just a different thing. The aroma of the tea also has a chocolatey note — in any case, it is not overwhelmingly vanilla, though I can smell some vanilla in it. Mostly what it has going for it is that aromatic Samovar black smell that is common to all of the black teas of theirs I’ve tried. It’s a brown sugary, malty, smooth, delicious foundation for all the other flavors to frolic on and among.

The two notes here, chocolate and vanilla, are like two for the price of one. If you’re looking for a vanilla flavored tea, you’d probably be more satisfied with the Black Orchid, which is classically vanilla flavored. But if you’re looking for something with vanilla flavor and something more, give this a try.

I’m not sure which I prefer to tell you the truth. Both this and the Mariage Freres Black Orchid are exemplary blends. Black Orchid is a Rembrandt, this is a Jackson Pollack. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. I’m calling it a tie.

Number two in the tale of three vanillas. I discussed its various merits in an earlier note. The purpose of this one is to compare this as a vanilla flavored tea with number one in the series, Black Orchid by Mariage Freres.

It’s fascinating to me how two teas with similar flavor profiles can taste so different, and each be so enjoyable in its own way. Where Black Orchid was symbiosis between the tea flavor and the vanilla flavor, this one seems to have a stronger tea presence in the beginning of the sip, follows by the vanilla, which lingers in the finish. There’s also an odd, almost green note in this one which I didn’t notice before but do in comparison to the Black Orchid. It’s odd that it’s present in this tea, but not an odd flavor. It’s rather refreshing.

Both experiences are pleasurable and lovely in their own way. This tea seems to have less depth than the Black Orchid, but that’s not such a bad thing depending on what you’re in the mood for — stew, or salad.

I missed my workout today and desperately need to go do it, but it’s been a long week and I’m not exactly perky at the moment. So I’m going to start a little adventure called a tale of three vanillas in the hopes that by the end I’ll be energized enough to work out.

This is the first in the saga, to be followed by a rerun of The Jade Teapot’s Starry Night and my sample of the Samovar Vanilla Dian Hong.

Gee, this tea smells terrific! No, really, it is a tantalizing smell coming out of the tin, a sultry vanilla smell. It’s incredible, you can actually smell the beany grain of the vanilla which gives it a slight resemblence to the smell of coffee. It’s like being inside a vanilla bean, or rather, swimming in a vat of vanilla beans like toddlers do in those ball pit things. There’s a dark roasty smell as well, which is certainly the tea, which is dark brown and luscious. You can see pieces of vanilla bean among the leaves.

The aroma during steeping is equally delicious. I think vanilla may be a hard flavoring to get exactly right and it seems as though its success is highly dependent on the quality of the vanilla used to flavor as well as the thing being flavored. My experience with the Numi Vanilla Decaf was pretty bad, and though I thought it unlikely this experience would be similar I was relieved to be right. The vanilla aroma rises gently and organically out of the cup, along with a malty, sugary tea smell that is quite enticing.

The liquor is lighter in color than I’d expected from the darkness of the leaves, a sort of burnt orangish brown.

Yum. It tastes smoother and more delicate than I expected. It’s not a shot over the bow so much as a gentle rumble. The vanilla is sweet and delicious, and it melds with the tea’s own sweetness to create something that, astonishingly, is just the right amount of sweet. The flavors lean on each other nicely. A wonderful cup.

I’m not sure exactly what the right steeping time for this one will turn out to be. It was fine at 3 minutes but a bit better at 4. I might try 5 next time, just for laughs.

And as a postscript — the empty cup smells nommy!

In the “full leaf” sachet, this tisane is like a miniature bouquet of dried pinky red and yellow flowers complete with accenting greenery. Quite charming looking.

Its scent is hard to pin down as there is so much going on. I do smell the chamomile and the mint, but the overarching fragrance is floral with a tinge of spice. It smells like something you might take a bath in — bath-salty, without the salt.

The main flavor I taste is chamomile, and it’s a nice one. Some chamomiles have a tendency to taste a little like a mixture of paper and dried straw that’s been “flavored” with chamomile. This doesn’t. It’s a fresh-tasting chamomile, possibly aided in that respect by the touch of mint.

I don’t get an overpowering taste of mint as some other tasters have. It’s a suggestion more than anything else. There’s also a suggestion of something that is probably the hibiscus, a tangy, herby/earthy taste. It’s interesting to me that I don’t really taste lemon, though both lemongrass and lemon balm are listed in the ingredients. I taste lavender more than lemon, and that’s toward the end of the ingredient list.

It’s not bad, and I’m not a chamomile-hater. I like this much better than the Numi chamomile. The main thing I find objectionable about this is that it’s too busy to be calming. I can’t chill when I know there are nine different flavors, as I keep trying to account for all of them and how they interact with each other. It’s like trying to meditate and being unable to keep track of the mantra because the thoughts are coming too fast and furious.

Calm should be simpler than it is.

Den’s tea sample number three. Compared to the organic sencha of last night: these leaves look similar — feathery and delicate, but are a bit darker green. I had thought the organic sencha leaves smelled vegetal last night, but it’s interesting, compared to these they smell less vegetal and more, for lack of a better word, herbaceous. The liquor looks similar, a chartreuse color with tiny particles suspended in it. The aroma is similiarly cabbagy/spinachy/asparagussy, but more buttery and not grassy at all.

I did not get any bitterness in the taste, which was vaguely reminiscent of steamed broccoli, right when it turns that very bright green color and is still al dente. There’s a mildness that isn’t quite sweetness.

I’m not really sure which I like better, but I’m giving this one just a tiny bit higher rating because it seems to have just a tad more depth.

This here is not a tasting note or a pipe.

I only had enough White Peach left in my Jade Teapot sample to make .2 cups, so I dumped some of this in with it. Of course, I can’t really taste the rest of the Jade Teapot sample, but the white peony is sweet and tasty. Since I’m having it in an adulterated form, I am not going to write a full note now. More to come on this one.

I don’t feel too badly about not loving Yerba Mate after reading at the Mayo Clinic site that some studies have shown it increases the risk of certain types of cancer, particularly for smokers, if drunk in large quantities over long periods of time. I don’t smoke (and haven’t for years) but if I’m going to be drinking something tea-like, I’d much rather drink something that’s believed to inhibit cancer, like green tea.

I like this one better than the Mate Lemon by Numi. It’s better without the imposition of a green tea flavor in the middle of the lemon/mate mix that the Numi has. The Tazo has ginger in it, but it doesn’t affect the taste as much as it does in the Green Ginger tea. It has a smooth mouth feel, and a lemony/herby flavor to it that is ok, but just ok.

I’ll finish what I have of it, but it’s not something I like well enough to replace when I’m done.

A bit better with milk and sweetened up a bit, but doesn’t have the depth of flavor of the Tazo. Usually Numi’s subtlety is a plus when compared with the sometimes stark Tazo flavors that don’t blend so much as each scream independently to be noticed, but here it’s a detriment.