__Morgana__

Done and decupboarded, and free to frolic with Earls I like better. I did have an interesting experience where I accidentally brewed this in the Breville one morning before I was awake enough to realize I had some Luscious Lemon by Simpson and Vail still in the pot and further too unawake to remember to rinse out the pot first. This resulted in a very very lemony version of the Blue Knight, which was actually not bad. But I wouldn’t recommend trying it at home as it would require buying two products, neither of which blew me away and both of which I have been on something of a campaign to drink up.

I am really looking forward to reusing the little tin this came in, though. It’s tall and tubular and kinda cute. Currently soaking to remove labels and hopefully a good bit of the Earl Grey perfume, too. It made me think of how my Dad, who was a stamp collector, used to soak stamps off of envelopes. Sweet little memory, that.

A while back I bought a number of Adagio sampler sets and never got around to tasting most of them. I’d been reading a number of tasting notes on Adagio and it seemed like most folks on Steepster viewed them as a starter or gateway loose leaf, and I started with specialty tea bags and sort of vaulted over them to Upton samplers and beyond. Then every now and then there’ll be a note about someone really liking an Adagio tea. So I’m thinking, I probably owe it to myself to taste them. I may have unfairly categorized them in my mind. And it would be shameful to be unfair to tea, don’t you think?

So I’m going to make an effort to start tasting my Adagio samplers now, and so you’re likely to see a lot of Adagio notes coming up. I’m sure I’ll get distracted by other bright shiny teas along the way, however.

Since I just tasted the Harney & Sons Silver Needle, I thought the Adagio namesake would be a good place to start. Besides, it’s after 10 p.m. and I can’t exactly start with the black teas now.

I’m steeping according to the Adagio suggestion of 180 and 7 minutes in the Breville. This is very different from the H&S suggested time of 3 minutes, though the temp is close (they suggested 175 for theirs).

The needles look and smell similar to the Harney’s, however they seem to smell a bit stronger. This may simply be a matter of sample density, however, as I’m putting my nose into one of those little sample tins the color of elementary school walls. I get slightly more earth than air and water in this one, but all three alchemical elements are represented. There’s a bit of hay to the smell.

I’m relieved to see that the color of the steeped tea is very similar to what I got with the H&S even with a more precisely measured amount of tea. Very nearly clear, water-like. I don’t get a great deal of aroma from the tea. What I do get smells like a very dilute version of what the dry needles smell like.

Ok. I’m waiting, tea. Where is your flavor? The H&S seems to me to have a lot more flavor even with less tea steeped for less time. Am I crazy? Have my taste buds done gone kablooey after an epic run of tea tasting? (Trying to get to that 400th note, you know.)

Seriously, something is not computing here. I’m getting virtually nothing. Not artichoke, even, which I would not have minded as I love artichokes. The most I’m getting is a vague, dewy sweetness and a little grassiness. And maybe some of that graininess others have mentioned.

Ok, hold the phone. I’m halfway through the cup now and now, I’m getting flavor. Holy way to tease, batman. And you’re lucky I’m patient, you Silver Needle you.

Basically what I’m getting now is the H&S without the deliciously wonderful honeysuckle note. It has the same slightly vegetal downturn at the end of the sip that is mitigated by the sweetness. Though the vegetable in question here is not bok choy. It’s not artichoke either though. This must be a characteristic of Silver Needle?

I prefer the Harney, but this is ok. I think I have some more Silver Needle samples tucked away in the white tea box. Note to self: try some over the next couple of days.

Switching to white tea now, given the hour. Steeping this at the time and temp in the H&S tasting note.

Beautiful, long, feathery silvery/green needles. They look like they’d be soft to the touch. I’m using the entire sample packet. It measured out to about 1.5 cups worth of tea. The dry leaves have that earthy, watery, airy scent that white tea seems to have to me. Essentially all the alchemical elements except fire.

The liquor is… white? Clear? (Did I use too much water in the Breville? Or do it blame it on my clear glass tasting cup?) It has a very faint floral aroma. The sort of smell you admire on a friend who has used just the right amount of perfume. I think it must be the honeysuckle I’m smelling, as it doesn’t seem jasmine to me. In any case, it’s divine.

There is flavor here, but you have to be patient. It’s sort of the same reaction I had to the GM Snow Sprout. At first it’s like there’s nothing there, but then, all of a sudden, there is. There’s sweetness, of the sort that reminds me of the nectar that I used to suck out of the ends of shrimp plant flowers as a kid but not as strong. There’s a floral flavor note that carries the honeysuckle from the aroma into the mouth. And there’s a tail of a slight vegetal bitterness, not at all unpleasant, just the sort you’d find in the bok choy of the H&S description, but mediated quite successfully by the sweetness of the tea.

Not recommended for those who prefer strong flavors in teas. I generally prefer strong flavors but I’m always amazed by how an extremely subtle tea can also grab me and I can like it just as much as the deepest smoky tea. I guess that probably says something about my personality but I’m not gonna dwell on it.

I think I’ll resteep this instead.

Steeping this at the time and temp shown in the Harney note.

I’m on a mission to try all my Harney samples so I can place an order for the ones that make the cut. This is the last black tea sample I have from my two orderings. I also have a white, and some greens including the green sampler set, and the oolong sampler set.

The problem so far is that most of them, except for the tisanes, are making the cut. Which means I’m likely to end up with more tea than one can possibly drink in a lifetime (and I already think I have more than that). Especially since I like two decafs and they seem only to come in teabags or 1 pound loose leaf. What’s up with that? Suggestion box entry: 4 oz tins of the loose decaf blacks please.

Anyway, black teas and oolongs are apparently my weaknesses, so I’m hoping that I’ll be able to put the breaks on after this one and the oolong sampler.

I enjoyed reading the description of this in the H&S note here on Steepster. Very interesting story. The dry leaves are quite pretty. Very delicate and spidery looking. I do get a cocoa note from the smell of the dry leaves, but mostly I get a fruity smell. Yeah, it could be apricot. I don’t think I’m being overly suggestible here.

The tea is a really gorgeous color. It is a sunset red/orange when seen through a glass cup. The tea’s aroma is very honeyed, very fruity.

It has a bite to it. It’s grabbing me in the back of the throat a bit, not a sensation I’m ever overly excited by. Which is odd, because it otherwise gives the impression of being quite smooth. It has a very “tea” flavor, by which I mean (and I know this is going to sound bad though I don’t at all mean it that way) it tastes like Nestea smells, that superconcentrated slightly sweet quintessential (for an American) black tea essence. Now that I think about it, there is something very apricotty about that smell, and that’s what I taste here. I’m not getting a ton of cocoa, but that could be because I got distracted playing a game with the kids and this was a little cooler than it perhaps should have been when I tasted it. I do get some in the aftertaste, which is very nice. I have enough in the sample packet to try again and drink it a bit hotter.

I’m torn on this one as I really dig the flavor, but I don’t dig the bite. Rating it on the low end of excellent for now and will see how the next steep plays out.

Another sample that I’m hoping technically doesn’t break my moratorium against black/green tea blends. This one has oolong, but the only thing that’s listed in the ingredients that could conceivably refer to a green tea is “silver tips” and looking at the Harney site, I’m guessing this is a Ceylon white, not a green. At least the only tea they seem to have with the words “silver tips” in the name available on the site is a white tea.

One of the nice things about Steepster (among a litany of nice things) is that you can take a look at how others have steeped something that seems potentially mysterious in what it wants as its parameters. Since H&S steeped this at 205 for 4 minutes, that’s what I’m doing.

I’ve just had several Harney blends with Assam in them in a row, and in the sample packet, this one has a lot in common with the others in terms of fragrance. It’s got that underlying earthy, loamy smell to it. There’s a little sharpness that may be from the oolong, and something that adds a sort of fresh smell. I’m wondering if that’s the Silver Tips.

The tea’s aroma is an amazing swirl of different teas. It’s like that scene in the movie of the Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy watches out the window as various personages, animals and farm equipment fly by and (at least the people) wave. I feel like I’m waving at a malty sweet Yunnan (hi, how are ya?) and then a vaguely smoky Keemun (how’s it goin’?) and then a slightly woody, fruity Ceylon (dude, what up?), and then a fruity, toasty something that could be Oolong or could be Darjeeling or could be something else entirely (hello, hello, whoever you are!). I don’t think I’ve had Nilgiri before but I’m sure it’s flying by as well. (Thanks for stopping by!)

And delicious! I think it’s the Yunnan that gives this a fuller bodied feel than the other blends I’ve had today, Elyse and Palm Court, but rather than heading toward a stout breakfast type tea as something with this body could, it has a sort of an upswing toward a mid-range of flavor that is easy on the taste buds and the stomach. I think it’s the Oolong and Darjeeling that are mainly responsible for this uplift, but it could be the Silver Tips as well. I’m getting no bitterness, some astringency but just enough to make it interesting. The aftertaste has a little smoke, some sweetness, and a kind of bready/green note that is difficult to describe.

I’m really glad that H&S was able to pull off such an amazingly ambitious blend. In lesser hands this story could have had a sad ending. I am very pleasantly surprised at how much I like this one!

ETA: The lingering aftertaste is really lovely, both sweet and refreshing. Bumping up a couple of points for the wonderful reminder over time.

On the one hand, how can I not drink something that is served at the Plaza? I spend a lot of my time homesick for New York, so anything that invokes NYC is going to call to me. On the other, I do have this thing about multiple kinds of tea in the same blend. I suppose I can make a distinction here though as there’s no green tea in this. Technically, the green/black moratorium doesn’t apply to black/oolong. I’ve had another black/oolong blend recently that worked fairly well, can’t now remember what it was.

The smell from the sample packet is Assam and Keemun. There’s a teensy smokiness, and a general impression of hearty earthiness.

The liquor on first glance appears to be heavily influenced by the Ceylon as it does have a twinge of red in the burnt orange, but it’s got more orange in it than I’d want in that sweater I’m looking for. The aroma is interesting. It gives the impression of being somewhat simple, but if I sit with it a while, that seems deceptive. There’s more complexity here than meets the initial sniff. I’m getting some smoke around the edges, some malty sweetness, and something sort of vaguely buttery that may be from the oolong. It’s generally smooth but there are little sharp peaks to it that make me think of the crests of waves.

It’s flavor is deceptive as well. Initially it seems fairly one-dimensional, but it’s a nice dimension. It’s somewhat astringent, and feels medium bodied to me. As I drink it more, though, I’m getting some stone fruit notes, some smoke, a tad of sweetness, and something that is almost biscuity.

I know I’m predisposed to liking this because of the name (I can be pretty gullible sometimes) but I do think it’s worth more than just a second look.

Surprised I’m the first to write a note about this one as well. (I see I’m coming up on 400 notes. Wow. It’s a long weekend ahead, wonder if I can get there by the end of Monday? Any bets?) I really need to get to my Maeda-en Sincha notes as I’m feeling guilty about being granted free tea on the promise I’d write a three part note and haven’t done it yet. (Hanging head in shame.) I just haven’t been in a green tea mood that much and I didn’t want to force it. I figured forcing it would make me harsher in my opinions.

This is the first time I’ve knowingly had anything with Kenyan tea in it, so that will be interesting. You may wonder what business I have drinking black tea this late in the afternoon, but I have to clear the cobwebs. The entire household took a nap, something rather unprecedented these days. The 6 year old is still sleeping, which is astounding. He was bribed with the promise that he could play Wii tonight if he took a nap, which he needed as he was up a good bit of the night crying with growing pains.

When I first took a whiff out of the sample packet, I thought, “that’s interesting, there’s nothing in here that looks like flowers.” There’s a sweet, floral smell to the blend. Then I read the description again. Ah! It’s the honey! Yes, it’s got that polleny, flowery, sweet honey smell. Underneath that is the earthiness of Assam.

The liquor is a lovely color, which I am seeing frequently in Ceylons. I’m going with the theory that it’s the Ceylon giving this its reddish orangy color. Still looking for a sweater this color. It’s not quite as red as some others, but still very pretty. There’s a gentle, honey aroma.

And basically, that’s what this tastes like as well. Gentle, smooth, honeyed. It’s medium to light bodied, and somewhat brisk, a really nice perker upper after a weekend nap. I wish I could unravel the flavors to say what the Kenyan tastes like, but I can’t. The black tea blend is pretty seamless.

Nice.

Having now had a number of chocolate teas, I’m returning to the first one I tried with the express purpose of seeing where it fits among the others I’ve tried over the past few months. Ok, that and the fact that my compulsiveness is kicking in and it’s starting to bug me that I have some notes without ratings. I’ll be fixing that for all of them sooner rather than later.

This one is fitting quite nicely into my afternoon. It’s got a rather mild chocolate flavor, not the baking chocolate I’ve tasted in a number of teas, nor a sweet milk chocolate, but somewhere in between. I’m thinking dark chocolate, sort of semi-sweet. It does chocolate well. That is definitely the flavor that is front and center.

Sometimes I think I’m getting a rose note, other times it seems like one of those things where you think you saw something then decide you didn’t really, it was a brain blip of some kind. I get that feeling mostly mid sip, when the tea is right up against my soft palate, and I’m guessing some of the rose heads straight up into my nasal cavity. Then again, not sure it needs a lot more rose. The petals are pretty and add romance, but I’m not sure the tea is trying to be a rose flavored tea. (Maybe LiberTEAs can answer that?) I understand the reference to vanilla, it’s that chocolate/vanilla continnum I’m finding to hold true with a lot of flavors. Seems like there’s a place where they merge and become virtually indistinguishable.

The tea base is smooth and I get some sweetness from it. After tasting a number of chocolate teas, I feel I can say this is a very nice one.

I should have known better than to drink the Samovar sample. It’s a serious problem in that they seem to do black tea exactly the way I like it, so they set the bar so high I want to stop trying other stuff and just go immediately to their online store, do not pass go.

I loved the Samovar Earl Lavender, and this is pretty much the Earl Lavender (as I remember it, it’s been a while though) without the lavender. It has the same brown sugary taste to the base as the Earl Lavender, and the same citrus presence without oiliness or too much perfume. The citrus is definitely there, but it isn’t overpowering.

I don’t recall noticing with the Earl Lavender that the bergamot had a lemony note to it. I usually get an orangey note from bergamot. But I get a sort of lemon/orange from this that is really nice.

Now that I’ve had a lot of loose leaf Earl Greys, I feel confident in saying this one is very special indeed. It’s a little nouveau in flavor owing to the tea base, with depth that more traditional versions don’t have however good they may be. I may need another category of Earl Grey in my harem, just for this. I can see it coexisting with a more traditional two dimensional Earl Grey for the times that’s what I’m wanting.

I’m boosting the rating of the Earl Lavender, too.

Hard to believe I’m the first to write about this one. But here goes.

I’m starting to get to what feels like the mid-point in my Earl Grey exploration before I settle down with some favorites. I’m thinking a regular, a creme/vanilla, a lavendar, a rose, and maybe one or two others for the Earl Grey harem. I may have to reconsider the Upton chocolate since I haven’t seen any other chocolate Earl Greys. Hmm.

I remember liking another French Earl Grey, the one from The O Dor, quite a bit. I’m interested to see how this will compare.

The dry leaves smell very strongly of bergamot, but I’ve learned that isn’t necessarily indicative of how that agent will show up in the flavor. I noticed from the note here that the tea base is Darjeeling, which I suppose is why the tea doesn’t look overly dark in color. It even has some green to it.

The liquor is a light amber, almost a bronzed golden color. Much lighter than the typical Earl, and explained by the Darjeeling base. The aroma is not at all strong on the bergamot, but it does have a sharpness to it, which I associate with Darjeeling.

The bergamot returns in the flavor, where it takes center stage. This is not what I am looking for in an Earl Grey. I like more of an essence of bergamot, a suggestion around the edges, enough to make it obviously and distinctively an Earl Grey (as I’ve also had teas that didn’t have enough bergamot to seem to me allowed to claim to be Earl Greys) but not enough to scream at me. I’m worried this one is going to sit heavily in my stomach. Which is a shame because the little glimpses of the Darjeeling that I get are quite nice. It has a sort of butteriness to it, which if the balance were struck differently enough to make it assert itself more, could be quite lovely.

It should be noted that this tea is very honest. Its notes say that it is “heavily perfumed” so the centrality of the bergamot shouldn’t be surprising.

I suppose I must be something of an Earl Grey purist, as I didn’t care for the only green Earl Grey I tried, either. Bergamot is such a strong flavor to me that it needs something equally sturdy to stand up to it. But those who love strongly bergamot flavored teas (Miss Sweet?) :-) might really like this.

So here’s what happened.

I put this into the Breville to steep, and then forgot about it and took my 4 year old to pre-K. When I came home I remembered, and the timer on the Breville indicated it had been available for drinking for approximately 54 minutes.

I figured it would be cold and probably not very good, but I tasted it anyway.

WOW.

It was lukewarm. But the first thing I noticed was the mouthfeel. Thick. Not really chewy, but thick and textured, somewhere between broth and syrup. And then, unexpectedly, the most wonderful flavor. Gently smoky, with a naturally sweet, smooth undercurrent of tea that tastes like… bread on the initial sip, and as it rounds out in the mouth, plums?

Enough. I have to go make more of this and see how it is hot.

While it’s making, I’m backtracking to the dry tea. Fairly large, brown tippy leaves. A very smoky smell, that has the salty, meaty smoke thing going on.

And yes, it’s even better hot! The thickness of the mouthfeel isn’t as apparent, but there’s a carby sweetness, sort of yam-like, to both the aroma and the flavor. The smoke is an accent, not the main event, but a noticeable one. There’s a lot of depth and character here, something that reminds me of what I like about Samovar’s black teas. That particular quality is more apparent as the tea cools. Too cold, as my first cup has now become, and the magic goes poof. Would not recommend this as an iced tea. But any range between right out of the pot and lukewarm is delicious. Like a nice wine that’s left to breathe, it changes with time. One flavor may not be better than the others, just different and equally wonderful.

I was moved to give this a 100, but I can’t bring myself to do it on a limited edition. It would just be too sad to have decided on a perfect tea, and then have it be unavailable.

While I’m on a flavored oolong bender, I thought I’d give this a try. It’s my last sample from The NecessiTeas. With this I’ll have tried everything they currently offer in a sample size, and I suspect I will have ordered everything of theirs I am interested in tasting again with the exception of Coco La Ven. They are still out of that. Sigh.

So, as you can see, I’m coming into this with a prejudice against this tea. I just haven’t had great luck with The NecessiTeas with the exception of some of their rooibos and black blends.

In the sample packet, this tea smells pungently fruity, but I wouldn’t describe what I smell as pomegranate so much as a cherry/strawberry fragrance. The tea’s aroma is buttery and in general green oolongy with a sweet fruit note. I would not recognize it as pomegranate in a blindfolded sniff test. But then, I’m not sure I’d recognize even the most pomegranatey pomegranate so that isn’t saying much.

Unfortunately, my prejudices appear to have been well-founded in this case. The underlying tea seems decent enough, though perhaps a little on the thin and weak side in terms of flavor, but the “pomegranate” flavoring is a decidedly fictitious fruit taste. It has a sort of cherry candy/cough drop note to it.

Second steep. 3 min. Pretty much the same.

Third steep.

Nah.

This smells awesome in the sample packet. It has that planty, earthy smell I get from good Assams with something else as well. It’s not really chocolate, not really vanilla, but it might be a hint of either of those. Not really smoke but could be a hint of that as well. The leaves are really pretty and bird nesty looking like some Ceylons (which is interesting since this doesn’t have Ceylon in it according to the picture at the top of this page).

It makes a dark, mahogany colored tea, with a sweet, smooth and malty aroma. The flavor is really yummy. It is a hearty flavor without a heaviness to it like some of the stouter breakfast teas (e.g., Queen Catherine). I’d describe it as medium bodied leaning toward full. It isn’t overly complex or deep, but it is full flavored, fairly smooth (a got tiny nip at the back of the throat, but it’s not consistent), and not overly sweet despite its malty aroma.

My main problem now is that I’m liking so many black teas, I’m not being very successful at narrowing down what I buy after sampling. With the exception of a few real stand outs, I’m getting a cluster of very goods and excellents and I’m having a hard time cutting them more finely. I also can’t keep them all in my head each time I taste a new one.

Does anyone have a systematic way of doing this successfully?

I haven’t had a great deal of success finding something I love in the flavored oolong category. The GM Sugar Caramel Oolong was a winner, but the others I’ve tried have ranged from meh to ok.

This one creates a worthy first impression. It’s visually enchanting, with the colorful flower petals among the curly or balled up oolong leaves. It smells wonderful. I get the coconut, the chocolate and some pineapple fragrance. And something that smells a little like tomato. The cereal is even there, though exactly what it is is lost on me.

The tea is a light yellow color and clear, very much what I’d expect from a green oolong. It has that flowery, buttery, green oolong smell, too. The flavoring agents don’t present themselves much in the aroma of the steeped tea, which could be either a good thing or a bad thing.

I think it is turning out to be a good thing. And I think I may be turning into a bit of an oolong purist, as I am finding myself to be with green tea with a few exceptions. This may be one of them. I can taste chocolate and coconut in the oolong, which is actually going pretty well with the butter. I get a hint of pineapple, but it’s only a hint, which I think is a good thing.

Compared to my Toasted Nut Brulee experience of last night, this is a nice performance by a flavored oolong. The flavors work with the tea, rather than against it. They don’t fight with it, trying to cover it up.

I’m thinking the Sugar Caramel is still in the front position, but this is up there.

I’m not following the Dammann Freres steeping instructions, by the way. I’m doing my usual oolong in a cup steeping method. First steep 2 minutes, add a minute per additional steep.

Second steep: 3 minutes. Not surprisingly, given what I’ve come to experience with Dammann Freres teas, the blend does what it’s supposed to do (at least what I think it’s supposed to do). The flavor doesn’t all wash away with the first steep. The second has a nice chocolate/coconut note and I do still get a suggestion of pineapple in the aftertaste. And through this, there is also a buttery, sweet, floral tea flavor.

Third steep. 4 minutes. Still doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s as though the tea has been impregnated with the flavor; it’s actually part of the tea, rather than something added to it on the surface that washes away with multiple steeps.

Fourth steep. 5 minutes. The non-tea flavorings finally faded here, and the oolong itself is starting to as well, but a very good run! And the leaves have gone from something reminiscent of ball bearings to a rather amazing length. I’m eyeballing it rather than measuring it, but I’d say one of them is close to 3 inches long.

Another success story from the Dammann Freres sample-fest organized by Doulton.

Another June tea of the month on the classic plan.

It smells terrific in the bag. A sort of nutty, gingery, cinnamony mix. It looks like a typical Teavana mixture with stuff other than tea in it. Big chunky trail mix-like pieces. Not quite as big as some of the other Teavana fruit mixtures that featured almost entire slices of citrus, but chunky nevertheless.

The tea is yellow in color with some orange in it as well. Darkish yellow, and though not entirely opaque, it isn’t clear either. There are little rooibos kitties down at the bottom of the glass. The aroma is fruitier than the dry mix. I can smell the apple (second ingredient) and some other fruit that smells like citrus ( oddly, as there is no citrus listed in the ingredients). I can also detect a faint cinnamon smell.

The taste is, in fact, much better than the aroma at least at first. Interestingly, it’s a third thing altogether. It doesn’t have a lot in common with either the dry aroma or the steeped one. Here I really taste the toasted nutty flavor I was expecting from the name (since oolongs often have a toasted nutty flavor, it seemed a natural fit for this type of flavoring). It’s got a sweetness to it, and some gingery spiciness as well. There’s a strange orangey note that has no real explanation. It seems to be tied to the cinnamon, somehow. Maybe it’s a result of the combination of the various fruit pieces. I can’t say I taste pineapple or papaya.

It’s true, as someone else said, that the initial sips are the best. After the initial nuttiness and toasty flavor, the cinnamon and apple/weird orange note take over. It’s not bad, it’s just not as good as the first sips, and starts to seem more like a Constant Comment echo.

Second steep, three minutes. Pretty much all the flavoring agents were washed away in the first steep it seems, except for a slight apply/cinnamony flavor. Usually at this point at least I’d get an oolong flavor, but unfortunately, the apple/cinnamon flavor is so distracting I can’t even tell whether the tea is bringing anything to the party.

I should disclose that I put about twice as much of the mix in as would ordinarily be recommended, as I find that otherwise the size of the pieces in these mixtures makes for a weak steep.

Not the worst flavored oolong by any stretch, but doesn’t live up to the promise of its name.

I went through an ordering phase not long ago where I stuck anything that had the word chocolate in it in my shopping basket any time I bought anything from anyplace. Ok, maybe that’s a tiny exaggeration, but it was certainly true of online tea shopping. I was kidnapped by the chocolate tea nymphs and made to do all sorts of unimaginable things.

That explains why I voluntarily ordered rooibos from Teavana.

The mixture is kind of funky. I found what looked like about half of a stick of cinnamon in among the pumpkin-seed looking green cardamom, almost purple colored flakes that must be the chocolate, red rooibos, something that looked like chocolate chips (carob?), and assorted other hunks ’o stuff.

The tea looks a lot like apple cider, the kind that’s opaque. Oddly it doesn’t smell very chocolatey. There’s some chocolate right at the beginning, then a lull of almost no aroma, then the spiciness at the end, with a black pepper exclamation point.

The flavor is pretty much the same. It’s surprisingly vacant right in the middle, with flavor at the beginning and the end of the sip. I wonder whether, like other Teavana blends, I should increase the mixture/water ratio?

Better yet, I think I should make this on the stovetop with milk and sweetener and see how it comes out. It does have a lot of similarity with a chocolate chai, without the caffeine.

Further experimentation will be necessary. Though I’m not getting a lot of rooibos thanks to the spiciness of the blend, this would not be a top choice for me among tisanes just drinking it straight up.

This is a sample in a tea bag that I got with a Tavalon order a while back. I didn’t pick it, it just showed up.

The bag looks like a little evening bag. It has a string that attaches in two places rather than one, so it looks like a little gauzy pocketbook. The bag itself looks scarily like a bandage. On the plus side, it has an opening that is folded over, and if you feel curious you can peek inside and see the tea rather than having to hold it up to the light to get a feel for what the tea looks like.

This genmai cha has more “popped kernals” than others I’ve had. It really does have a popcorny look about it, and I should know, having just eaten a bag at Toy Story 3 last night. (Great movie, by the way. Enjoyed it at least as much as my kids did.)

I’m having this at work, and yes, I did forget to bring a thermometer yet again. I have a mental block about it, I think. I figure the water quality is going to suck anyway, so trying to control for other variables isn’t going to make the brewing conditions perfect no matter what I do.

The tea’s aroma is curiously sweet, giving the tea an almost kettle corny smell. Almost. I don’t mean to suggest it’s bordering on cracker jacks by any stretch.

It has the expected toasty rice flavor over a mild, slightly buttery green tea. It’s not as toasty and nutty as some other genmai cha’s I’ve had, but it has more tea flavor than some others.

I suspect I’m going to settle in on Den’s as my genmai cha provider of choice with an occasional dip into others like the Samovar Ryokucha, but I’m glad I got a chance to try this.

This is another of the June teas of the month on the Teavana classic tea of the month plan. I tried it today using the Samovar stovetop method with Leafspa Yunan Gold as the extra black tea.

This is a sort of in-between chai on my scale. It’s not too spicy, but it’s hardly mild. It has a little kick at the end. The spiciness must come from the ginger and cardamom as there’s no pepper listed in the ingredients. It’s also got a decent amount of tea flavor to it, though there’s a tad of harshness to it even through the milk and sweetener. There is vanilla listed among the ingredients, and if I close my eyes and try hard I can taste the vanilla, but it’s not among the stronger flavors in this. It’s hard to say what flavor is the strongest, really. It’s probably the ginger, tied with the cinnamon.

If I hadn’t gotten this as part of the tea of the month club I probably would not have tried it. At this point in my chai experience I’ve narrowed things down enough to know that if it doesn’t have black pepper it’s not going to be able to compete with my favorites in chailand. Even so, I’m glad I got a chance to try this and I’m even gladder it wasn’t just a sample size so I’ll have another shot at it. At it happens, I made this then had to put the 4 year old down for nap, and fell asleep next to him so this was pretty much lukewarm by the time I got to it. I’m sure it’s improved by being hotter.

I enjoyed the rose Earl Grey from H&S, Sally’s Secret, quite a bit, so I was looking forward to seeing what this one was like.

In the sample packet the scent is very strongly of rose. Although I escaped an association with bath products, I can see how others might not. The ingredient list indicates that this contains rose oil, and there is a sort of volatile quality to it that makes it smell stronger than one might expect simply from fresh roses. This isn’t to say that the smell is bad or has a false note. I didn’t find it to be that way, but then I’m a really big fan of rose fragrance.

The intensity of the fragrance smooths out some with steeping and I can smell the biscuity sweetness of the tea underneath. There’s still a nice rose scent to the tea.

The rose is very, very present in the taste and I liked it quite a bit. It has been a while since I tasted the GM rose, and this is stronger, at least as far as memory serves. It’s about on a par with the degree of flavor present in the Numi Velvet Garden White Rose, only it may seem a little less because the black tea provides more of a buffer than white does.

This is a little too rosy for daily consumption, even for a rose lover like me. However, it’s an amazing flavor for an occasional dose of rose.

Slightly more than 100 pages into War and Peace and I can’t believe I didn’t have the guts to pick up this book before. It’s bulk scared me. But man, is it a fast read. I needn’t have been scared, it’s such fun I feel like I want to lock myself in a room with it and only come out to make tea. But alas, that’s unlikely. I have to go to that wretched weight work out soon and then we might go see Toy Story 3 or at least I’d like to if we can pull it off.

In any case, I decided drinking something with the word Russian in its name would at least keep me feeling like I’m locked in the room even if I’m not. In the sample packet this one smells nice and smoky, as I’d anticipated, very much like the H&S straight lapsang with the volume turned down by a half to two thirds.

After steeping its aroma is a bit milder. I wonder if Keemun is one of the four teas in here? Maybe Ceylon as well? The underlying tea has a sort of sweet, woody smell to it with a bit of smoke.

There’s a mild smokiness in the flavor, which is actually quite nice, and there is also some gentle woody flavor. I could see this one being a nice morning tea. Although I haven’t tasted it in a while, this one is making me think of Upton’s Baker Street Blend but without the perkiness. If there is darjeeling in this, I can’t tell. This one has a mildly smoky flavor that would make a nice segue into smoky teas for someone interested in giving them a try but not yet up for the very tarry, piney strength of the more intense lapsangs.

This is going to make it into my Russian run off, for sure.

I felt like I needed the Earl this morning, so I gave this a try. It’s good, but I need a sterner Earl for the morning, I think.

In the sample packet there’s a very obvious bergamot smell that leans toward perfumy, with a little sharpness from the darjeeling underneath.

The tea’s aroma isn’t perfumy at all, much fruitier than perfumy. It’s sort of orangy/grapey in a wine-like sense.

The tea is light bodied and mildly flavored. It does taste like Earl Grey, but like a baby blue version of what is ordinarily a navy blue flavor.

Not a breakfast tea, at least for me, but I could see it being, as others have said, a nice choice for afternoon if for some reason the Earl is calling at tea time.

I loved the description of this so I decided to order some with my initial H&S sample order.

It’s got whole flower heads in it, which I thought at first might be chrysanthemums. Thankfully they are chamomile flowers as I don’t get along well with mums. The leaves are a green/grey, and look like white peony. The smell is, oddly, chocolate/vanilla mint/creme. Like Andes mints with vanilla ice cream. No idea where this comes from given the almonds and chamomile, but I’ll go with it as I like Andes mints just fine. ;-)

It still has that Andes note in the aroma after steeping and there’s some almond here as well. The liquor is sort of a light amber. A bronzed yellow. Clear.

The taste is pretty interesting as it’s very similar to the aroma but not at all something you’d expect from the ingredients list. For one thing, it’s like the cardamom is chocolate instead of itself. I wonder whether that’s why some chais that aren’t chocolate chais still have a sort of chocolate note to them. I don’t taste anything that tastes like what I’d expect cardamom on its own to taste like. This isn’t a spicy tea. It may be spiced, but it isn’t spicy. The almond is sort of hiding as well. The vanilla is there, but paying homage to the chocolate/vanilla continuum in that it’s kind of hard to tell where one flavor stops and the other starts. Though let me reemphasize that as far as I’m told through the ingredients, there IS NO CHOCOLATE in this tea. Tell that to my taste buds.

I maybe get a little of the underlying white tea, but it seems mostly a base here for the flavors to do their frolic and detour on. Flavored white teas, it seems to me, are tricky. Not as tricky and more forgiving than flavored greens, but tricky nonetheless. The flavor of white tea can’t really stand up to anything intense. It does best with subtle fruit or floral flavors superimposed on it, nothing heavy which obliterates the tea.

This isn’t an unpleasant drink at all, it just doesn’t seem very self aware. I would think it could call itself White Chocolate and get away with it, but the Christmas name suggests something heavily spiced or appley, maybe. This isn’t that. Probably a good thing as I’d think that would make for an even worse white tea.

I don’t feel compelled to reorder this but I would drink it again if it were offered to me. And I wish there was some way to reconcile the actual ingredients with the flavor that didn’t leave me feeling entirely disassociated.

Wow! Hot cinnamon, no kidding! The sample packet gives off a strong Red Hots smell.

It’s only slightly more mellow after steeping. Same general cinnamonny hot smell with a smidgen of black tea trying to smooth it out underneath. There are some funky fuzz balls that must be from the cinnamon that have settled to the bottom of the cup.

The flavor is pretty amazingly cinnamon with nothing to mitigate or obstruct it. It’s surprisingly sweet as well as spicy, sort of candy like in its flavor. I like it much better than just about any other cinnamon flavored tea I’ve had, and it definitely seems like a go-to cinnamon. Not much argument there.

The smell out of the sample packet is rich and delicious. It made me go “wow.” Chocolate! Coffee! Sugar! A tiny bit of smoke, and some planty earth.

Deep dark reddish liquor. The many fragrances of the dry leaves smooth out into a malty, Yunnany aroma. There’s a little bit of smoke but it’s not super smoky.

The flavor is strong, bordering on intense. I wonder how it would be steeping only 3 minutes. Will try that next time. It’s definitely an eye opener at 4. The flavor has the intensity of coffee. Wonder what milk would do?

It isn’t quite as smooth and mellow tasting as it smells; it has some… not really bitterness, more a lack of sweetness that is surprising given the aroma. There’s smoke in the taste, but it’s not strong. The consistency isn’t chewy but the impression is stout, like a dark ale. There’s a kind of cocoa note in the aftertaste.

This one is going to be worth spending an extended visit with to see what variations might be possible. It will be interesting to go into a second tasting at another time now that I know what to expect.

Rating this because it has a lot of interesting things going on with it. Not sure how I feel about the intensity yet.