__Morgana__

Hiya folks. I’m baaaaackkk! I missed you. Please forgive me if I start where I left off and don’t go back to read two weeks worth of notes. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that time is still a little scarce and I’d rather spend the time with careful reading going forward than with skimming going backward.

We had lots of fun at Disneyland and No. 1 is now safely ensconced in his first grade routine. I must admit I have been drinking very little tea. It was blisteringly hot in D-land, and it’s been hitting over 100 degrees since we got back, which may have something to do with it. I have noticed, though, that when I do drink tea after not drinking it for a while, I enjoy it that much more. It’s almost as though I’d desensitized myself by drinking 20 or so cups a day, and until I stopped doing that I didn’t realize I had. Anyone else ever had that experience?

I took this tin with me to D-land and made some every morning in the little pot in the room before we went down to breakfast. I tried to use bottled water, but if I didn’t have enough I supplemented with tap water.

Anaheim water is weird. I thought the Pirates of the Caribbean ride smelled funny because the water was recycled, but then I noticed that the water coming out of the shower smelled similar, though hot instead of cold. It’s got a sort of marine/minerally smell to it, so the brewing conditions weren’t great. Since this wasn’t much of a favorite to begin with, I wasn’t too concerned about ruining it with bad water. And I’m glad I took it with me because I can now decupboard! Another to cross of the list and not to repeat, I’m afraid, but at least it contributes to the goal of getting the quantity of tea I have in the house under control. I will say that it grew on me a bit. I just got really used to it. But not enough to give it a point bump.

Hope everyone had a great end of summer!

This tea makes you go “yum.”

There is something about yunnan that makes Earl Grey Lavender work really well. I think this is the secret to Samovar’s Earl Lavender success, too.

In the sample packet there’s a pretty strong smell of lavender and that’s about it. But in the cup, that yummy sweet malty yunnan aroma comes out, like syrup or molasses. The lavender mellows a bit, too. There’s a slightly citrus note, but it’s not the main event.

The flavor seems to be stronger on the lavender than the bergamot, but it still gives the impression of an Earl Grey and it is delicious. I don’t think it quite matches the Samovar, but it makes me curious enough about the differences to try a back to back tasting at some point. There are a lot of similarities between the two. I think the Samovar wins for overall smoothness, depth of flavor and complexity, but this has a lot going on, too. The floral aspect is wonderfully aromatic, and the black tea base lends it a bit of seriousness. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I wish the bergamot was just a tad stronger.

Still. Om nom nom nom nom….

I’ve had this in my cupboard for a while along with a number of other teas from my initial Tavalon order and I’m just now getting to them. (Yes, I am on serious lockdown. I am considering not coming out until I actually need tea, which could be a year from now.)

I am a sucker for names sometimes, and I spend a lot of time homesick for my old Upper West Side neighborhood. So of course, I had to try this.

The dry leaves look sort of twiggy, like Ceylon leaves sometimes do, but they also seem a bit heftier than Ceylon leaves. They smell like Assam to me. I’m guessing both of those are represented in this blend.

The liquor is medium amber with a twinge of red. Not quite the russet beauty that some other Ceylons produce in my cup, but its an intriguing color. The aroma is fruity, and somewhat malty-sweet.

This tea has a lot of substance to it, though exactly what makes that up isn’t readily apparent. I guess that’s what makes it NYC breakfast; it’s very much like most of my New Yorker friends. This is not a shallow tea, though it’s not overly complex. It’s pretty smooth, and slightly stout. Not really sweet, but not bitter. It doesn’t make you go “yum” but it has something sophisticated about it. It’s not as brash as some stronger breakfast blends. It’s just enough to get your eyes open while you wait for the subway to show up. Or to give you an edge while you’re sitting on the steps of the Met in the autumn chill, before you go in to get lost in an exhibit for a while. It makes me think of Central Park, undoubtedly because of the name. I may be gullible, but I get it.

And now I’m homesick.

Finished up this sample tonight. I have to say that I enjoy this more when it’s not tasted on the heels of other teas. I had this with dinner tonight (nothing special, just a bunch of odds and ends thrown together) and it was really nice with Italian bread. That said, though I’m willing to try more Dragonwell, I’m not a convert quite yet.

There’s a chance I may be scarcer than usual for the next couple of weeks. First, vacation (the Magic Kingdom next week) and then getting No. 1 ready for his first day of first grade. I’m planning to pack some teas to take with me, probably mostly samples. So I probably won’t disappear completely, but I’ll have to sort of play it by ear as vacations with 2 little kids tend to be the very definition of hectic.

Having had a less than great experience with flavored green teas, and never having tried a chocolate green tea before, I was a little wary of this one. And I was pleasantly surprised. It’s pretty good.

The tea is pretty, with whole chamomile flowers in it, as well as nuts and little bits of chocolate, etc. adding texture and color to the green of the leaves. It smells nutty and chocolatey, sort of liquer-like.

The liquor is pale yellow, like many green tea liquors, but cloudy from the dissolution of various other ingredients. It has a chocolatey sweet smell.

The taste was surpising to me. I didn’t find the tea bitter. It wasn’t the main event, but it could have turned the experience into a bad one had it been an unimpressive or bitter green tea. Mostly, the flavor is a somewhat delicate, chocolatey, nutty, spicy combination that hit the spot after a really long day.

BTW, I am now the proud owner of a Bodybugg! I got it for my birthday and it is sooo cool. It’s giving me a much needed boost of motivation to lose those last 10 lbs I’ve been working on for a while now. Love it, love it, love it!

Buh-bye! I’m decupboarding you, you candy corn herbal doo dah you. You had little time to grow on me since it took so much of you to create taste in a cup that I went through you in a mere three (big) cupfuls, but that’s ok. I just don’t think it was in the cards for us. I’m sure there’s someone out there who can appreciate you, perhaps with a bit of peppermint. ;-)

But it ain’t me, babe.

Now. Am I too tired to try the ChocoNut tonight? I have to confess, chocolate green tea scares me a little.

Moving right along in my deep wade through my “everything with the word chocolate in it” buying spree of yestermonth, we come to this Teavana offering. I’m most excited by the fact that this has neither rooibos nor honeybush in it. I am trying to recall whether I’ve had an herbal chocolate blend that didn’t have rooibos or honeybush. Yeah, I think there was a TeaFrog sample of a tisane with chicory in it, but that’s all I can recall.

It’s got fruit in it (apple and strawberry) but the fruit morsels are surprisingly tiny in their chunkiness compared to the usual Teavana fruit blend. The smell of the dry mix reminds me of what I’ve smelled when I’ve stuck my nose into a Halloween bag after trick or treating. A lot of different sweet smells all mixed together, with chocolate and fruit among them. Oh, and there’s spice, too. A pretty strong spicy note, which fits right in with the Halloween theme as it takes up the banner of red hots and their ilk. Spicy sweet, but not cinnamony.

The infusion is the color of apple juice, the dark, no sugar added kind, and cloudy. It has a less intense version of that generic candy aroma from the dry mixture.

Now here’s the really weird part. As I started to sip this, I realized why I made the association with Halloween. Candy corn! Yeah, strangely, that’s what I taste. More of a corn syrup flavor than anything else. Maybe a tiny bit of cocoa, and some sweetness from the strawberry, but put it all together and I get candy corn.

The first time I made this it was pretty weak. I was able to strong it up a bit, but it didn’t change the candy corn note. The spice isn’t enough to make an impression.

Candy corn is ok, but I don’t really care for it in my tea. Fortunately it takes so much of this to make an infusion that is strong enough to have flavor, I only have about a cup’s worth left.

In the container, this has a recognizable and pronounced smell of bergamot, and something else that is… odd. It’s a sort of minerally, metallic smell that I haven’t noticed in tea before. I see a few cornflowers dotting the dark brown leaves.

The web site says the tea is from Sri Lanka, which is the only clue as to the type of tea base this is. It doesn’t have the color I’ve seen in most Ceylons, though. That reddish, russet color is only barely there. It brews lighter than other Ceylons I’ve had. The tea’s aroma strikes me as bakey on first sniff, like too much baking powder in the muffins. Not a good sign. As I sniff longer, I’m getting something else. Potato? At first I thought it was sweet potato, but it really isn’t. It’s the sharpish, earthy smell of raw potato. Oh, and some bergamot, too.

The flavor is strange as well. It’s got a mentholly feel to the after sip, which must be from the bergamot oil, and it tastes a little potato-y, with a tad of starchy sweetness at the finish. The feel of the tea is soft to the mouth. The metallic, minerally smell is consistent with the potato-y taste, at least for me. Raw potatoes smell like that to me. There is a citrus note, but it’s not strong.

It’s more Earl Grey-like than the Kusmi, but it’s such a strange flavor that I’m not sure what to make of it. From the fragrance of the dry leaves I wasn’t expecting to like this, and I’m not sure I do. I don’t have an active dislike for it, though. I’m going to give it a slightly higher rating than the Kusmi for being truer to the Earl Grey genre, but this is not likely to become a favorite.

I’ve been drinking this every morning for the last week and I’m still not sure why it thinks it is an Earl Grey. It’s a peppery black tea with a bit of citrus, but it doesn’ t have the classic Earl Grey bergamot laden taste. Note to self: tomorrow morning try this against one or two other Earl Greys just to make sure you’re not losing your mind. Which is entirely possible, seeing as you bought a full size tin of this before tasting the sample. Which you would not have done had you actually TASTED the sample first. See, this is what I mean by having so much tea I just can’t keep track of it. Sigh.

This is the first in my Adagio honeybush sampler. [Looks around for Rabs…]

I am somewhat bewildered by my decision to buy the honeybush sampler, but at least I had the foresight not to buy more rooibos. I have been gradually consuming my rooibos stash to bring it down to reasonable levels. What is reasonable has changed since I bought the oversupply of rooibos. Now I think a couple or three really good ones is reasonable for me since I’m not loving it these days.

The only honeybush I’ve had until now has been in bags, the Numi and the Tazo. I still have some of each of those, though I’ve used up a fair bit of the Tazo sweetening too-tart fruit blends.

I’m sniffing this in the tin and thinking it smells a bit woodier than I remember honeybush being; kind of disappointingly rooibos-like. That’s the main smell I get, with mango behind it. Which sort of worries me.

Fortunately, the addition of water works a sort of transformation, whereby the mango aroma becomes pretty much the main event. Wow! There’s just a little bit of a honey fragrance as well, but the wood has vamoosed. The liquor is a reddish color with a bit of orange and brown as well.

The flavor seems to be right in between the dry smell and the steeped smell. Mango, but some reedy flavor as well. I just read Rabs’ note about steeping longer and I will try that next time. Losing the reedy flavor would make this much nicer. As it is, it’s a little like sucking on mango-flavored bamboo. Which, surprisingly, isn’t as bad as it sounds, but I’d prefer to be able to focus on the mango flavor to the exclusion of the earthy cellulose.

Finishing up the last of this sample tonight, and it appears that the Ricola really didn’t matter that much. Somewhat tart, somewhat sweet but not as sweet as the Fruit Medley, not much of a wine flavor from the currants. All true, even without the Ricola effect. A mixed berry flavor with raspberry in the front. No change to the rating here. And darn, I had to put off my birthday dinner because the 4 year old didn’t get down for a nap until late and decided he had to sleep through until tomorrow. Oh well, at least he got some rest.

Delayed in my ritual decupboarding by my dalliance with Dionysus last night, but tonight I’m saying goodbye to this one. A weird experience, what with the lunch meat aroma and all, and one I’m not hopping up and down to repeat.

I am moving on to sampling Teavana’s Azteca Fire next. Seems the Mayans haven’t cornered the market on spicy chocolate, there’s another ancient American civilization that also has a claim. I can’t believe I also bought (during my chocolate fanatical purchasing rampage of a month or two ago) ChocoNut, which is a green tea blend. (What was I thinking?)

Heya. Not drinkin’ tea tonight, oh no. It’s my birthday and I’m a celebratin’ with da vino!

Happy birthday to moi…. happy birthday to moi….

Gosh, wish I wasn’t so old. But the alternative…. much much worse.

In the sample tin, there’s a strong spicy smell to the dry leaves which are dark with bits of what looks like citrus peel among them. This says it has three kinds of citrus in it, lemon, bergamot and grapefruit, but I am not smelling any of those. Instead I smell the spices, clove in the lead by a wide margin.

It mellows some after steeping but there’s still a good bit of clove, a vanilla note, and a bit of citrus. It’s a dark reddish amber.

The minute I took a sip, I knew I’d tasted something similar before. And then it hit me. This is v. much like Constant Comment in terms of its spice profile. It isn’t as orangey, but that’s what it reminds me of. The main difference is that in the Prince V., it’s a more subtle flavor and the tea shines through.

It’s quite nice for when you’re feeling that such a flavor profile would hit the spot, but you’re not in the mood for heavy spice. The tea base is smooth and tasty, and the spice is just enough to flavor the tea without masking it in any sense of the world.

I like.

If there’s darjeeling in here, as the Kusmi site appears to suggest, it’s a very dark one. The dry leaves in the sample tin have no green-ness to them. If I try really hard, I can get a bit of a darjeeling sharpness in the smell of the dry leaf, but it isn’t overly obvious. Mostly it smells like a peppery black tea. Hmm. I got pepper in the Earl Grey too.

The aroma is mild with a tiny bit of the pepper I smelled in the dry leaf. Otherwise it has a generic black tea smell. It’s a medium-dark amber with a little red in it.

The flavor has a cleanness and a perkiness to it that could well be from darjeeling. It’s a little brisk, and fairly smooth except for a small, barely noticeable peppery kick. I can see why this is billed as an evening tea. It isn’t thick or malty or hearty or eye-openingly strong, or any of the other qualities I’ve come to associate with breakfast blends.

It’s sort of like the Earl Grey, except without the pretext of being Earl Grey and so lacking a little bitterness injected by the bergamot, and though it has a peppery reminder, it’s not nearly as peppery as the Earl Grey is to my palate. Which makes it, actually, more pleasant to my mind than the Earl Grey. There’s a mild, slightly sweet aftertaste.

Though I like some of the other Kusmis better, this isn’t bad. It’s probably on the low end of the good black tea huddle I have going that I’m going to have to pare down eventually, but only because it doesn’t have the depth and character I enjoy in really fine black teas.

I’m almost ready to decupboard this. Either tonight or tomorrow.

I got the weirdest olfactory flash from this tonight. Are you ready? Bologna! It smelled like bologna! (Thank you, Oscar Meyer song, for teaching me how to spell this.)

Fortunately I didn’t get that in the taste. This is not a favorite and not a restock, though it’s been slightly more even over the course of a few tastings. There’s still a weird vacancy in the middle of the sip, but the chocolate has been more concentrated the last few times. I wonder whether the chips sifted down to the bottom of the tin. In any case, I had some on the bedside table last night and the BF sniffed the air and said “Chocolate?” So there’s an objective verification of its chocolateness.

I think if I want a spicy chocolate flavor, I’m going with Melange de Chamonix from Upton. I realize it’s not caffeine free, but them’s the breaks. It’s just so much nicer in flavor that the chocolate tisanes.

Finishing up this tin of sachets and decupboarding. I am likely to buy this again at some point. Not any time really soon, because it’s not a “can’t live without” thing, but I can imagine myself craving it at some point. Another reason I won’t buy this any time soon is that I found myself craving Teavana’s Caribbean Breeze, so I bought some of that and it’s very very similar to this.

I also want to try the Passion Lemonade at Starbucks sometime between now and the end of the summer. Just have to do it after I’ve been really good so I can justify the calories. ;-)

Anyway, I know this isn’t goodbye forever, so I’m enjoying this last cup.

This is the last of the Adagio herbal sampler. I see that I was also possessed to buy the honeybush sampler, so I’m not quite tisaned out. At least I skipped the rooibos. I must have been past the rooibos infatuation but didn’t yet know what to make of honeybush when I ordered it.

In any case, this is straight lemongrass, which I don’t think I have had before. It looks like fine, greenish straw, and it smells lemony, planty and vaguely spicy.

It has a pretty, light, lemon smell, and though it’s surprising to me, I’m finding I like it more than the Luscious Lemon from Simpson & Vail, which was an attempt at blending about a gazillion lemon things and which sounded terrific on paper, but which had a bitterness to it that I didn’t find pleasing.

Though this is definitely a single note, it has a mild, almost sweet endpoint to the sip rather than turning bitter. Inexplicably, it is lemonier to me than the Luscious Lemon was, probably because I don’t associate lemon with bitter (tart yes, bitter no).

It’s really not bad by itself. Way better than I’d expected. I should mention that I used quite a bit of “leaf” which may have helped. Fortunately, even if I overdid the leaf this didn’t turn soapy on me like the lemon myrtle did. In fact, overdoing is the way to go, I’m convinced.

It’s not the perfect lemon, but it’s surprisingly within striking distance.

The second in the flavored oolong sampler and sadly, it’s no grapefruit oolong.

The fragrance in the tin is supposed to be peach, I guess, but it smells more generically like a sweet, slightly vanilla, flavoring agent with perhaps a cocoa note. The tea looks pretty much like the base of the grapefruit oolong and I’m guessing they are the same Formosa oolong.

This steeps to a tawny, golden-brownish color and the aroma is like a spread out version of the aroma in the tin.

I should mention that I seem to get peach and apricot flavorings in tea confused sometimes. Often when I’m supposed to taste peach I taste apricot and vice versa. On the way home from work, I was having some of the Vanilla Apricot White from Tazo in a tumbler, and when I had my first sip of this, I honestly thought it tasted exactly like the Tazo. Which is odd, because not only is the flavor supposed to be peach, and not supposed to have vanilla, but the teas are of different types.

I asked the BF who is a big peach fan to taste it and he said it was definitely peach, but weak. I had to explain to him that it was oolong, as I think he was thinking it was black tea. He doesn’t know from oolong.

But it is… I don’t know if I’d say weak, but it doesn’t have a very robust flavor. The grapefruit seemed to bring out the flavor of the tea in a way that this isn’t doing. It’s just sort of a flat, shade of oolong taste with a sweet peachy/apricot flavor on top.

It doesn’t taste bad, it just doesn’t have much of a raison d’etre in my view. I went through three steeps and it was pretty much the same each time.

Sad that after such a nice experience with the grapefruit, this was rather a let down.

This is the second in the Adagio white sampler. I cracked it open a long time ago when I needed some white peony to make up a full cup when I ran short on another sample, but this is the first time I’m tasting it on its own.

In the sample tin, there’s a grassy, hay-like smell with notes that are both earthy and sweet. The leaves and buds are large, silvery green, and fuzzy. There are some twiggy stems in the sample as well.

I’m not following the Adagio steeping instructions as they seem to be too hot and too long, and with the time and temp I’m using I get a pale yellow, clear liquor and a dewy aroma. It’s like nectar, slightly floral, and slightly rain-like. Very pretty.

And that’s pretty much what I get in the taste, too. A very very subtle, nectar-like, rain-like flavor. It’s nice, but it’s not what I expected at all. I expected a lot more flavor. I’m wondering if I really am meant to cook this one some.

Trying again with the Adagio suggested time of 7 minutes and temperature of 180F. The liquor is a little darker yellow, but apart from that the difference in steeping seems to have made very little difference. The flavor is a little less nectary and little more earthy, but apart from that I don’t taste a lot of difference.

It’s quite a subtle flavor as I’d expect from a white tea. I’d hoped for a bit more complexity but it’s nice enough and I’m enjoying it more than my memory of my Silver Needle experience. I am not rushing to reorder, though, as I have a lot more White Peony samples to try and this one didn’t bowl me over out of the gate.

Revisiting this sample. This time I took it through four steeps, starting at two minutes and ending at 5. By the last it was starting to get a bit thin, but until then it held up pretty well. It seemed less grapefruity today, but was still enjoyable and refreshing.

I don’t find this a particularly complex oolong. It didn’t seem to evolve from steep to steep; it was pretty much the same in flavor from first to last. My experience of the tea base is of a fairly typical Formosa Oolong in flavor, at least superficially, but without the depth of some I’ve had. That said, the grapefruit flavor is really the reason to drink this as it goes very nicely with the base. The lack of complexity in the base is probably a plus in that respect.

The multiple steeps I put this through straddled my dinner, and the food brought out the grapefruit flavor a bit more.

I’m mildly surprised that I like this as much as I do. I’m adding it to the list for a restock when I finally come out of lockdown.

Trying this today using the Samovar stovetop method with Kusmi Chocolate as the extra black tea.

This is a creamy, chocolatey, spicy, comforting drink. The spice is just enough to make it known this is chai, and I’m getting a lot of chocolate taste (the use of the Kusmi as the extra black tea with chocolate chais has been extremely successful, and I heartily recommend using a chocolate flavored black tea for the extra black if you’re following the Samovar method with a chocolate chai).

Cheesecake, not so much, and I would have thought perhaps that was because I’d added the Kusmi, but then I read the notes here and it seems to be a common observation about this tea. There is a sort of creaminess to the flavor that accentuates the normal milky creaminess with chais prepared this way, and I’m taking that to be the cheesecake flavor. There’s not a piquancy to it that actual cheesecake has. It’s more creamy than cheesy.

I have one more 52 teas chocolate chai in my stash and I’ll be interested to see what the difference is in flavor between that one and this. I can say now that I prefer the spicy yet not blisteringly spiciness of this mixture to the Mayan Chocolate Chai for most purposes, though there are times when the Mayan seems like it would be the only thing that would hit the spot.

Finishing up the last of this sample. I liked it less this time, or maybe I’m not feeling very charitable today. I made a big pot to accomodate the last of the sample tin and I could taste the tea more this time. It was better with emphasis on the cinnamon rather than the tea; with the tea more front and center, the cinnamon took on a woody, almost bitter character. Knocking it down a few points.

Finished up my sample of this last night but was too comfy in bed reading to get up to write about it. The orange, such that it is, is tasty, but this last experience confirms that it isn’t enough for my taste.

The Teavana Wild Orange Blossom is far orangier than this, and if I were looking for an orange fruit blend I’d probably pick that over this, unless I decided to experiment further and find a still better one. But I’m not really looking for an orange fruit blend.