__Morgana__

I’m astonished to realize that after all this time I still haven’t written notes on all the fab and gear Dammann Freres teas from the virtual shopping spree Doulton organized weeks… no wait, it must be months ago now. I am going to remedy that post haste! And yes, I did do the weight work out. [self-congratulatory one handed applause] Now I’m just “resting” before the aerobic part. I wonder if it’s possible to read War and Peace while on a stationary bike?

Golly, I love how their teas smell. I really do think the French teas, for the most part, win the best fragrance award all around. This one has a fruity scent that is sweet and fresh smelling, and so well blended that I fully understand why they named it as they did. Once you read the ingredients, you can pretty much isolate all the individual scents. The orange and the cherry stood out most to me, though I could get the sweetness of strawberry underneath. What I understand to be peach actually smells somewhat fig-like to me, rather like the figgy aromas of some of the other Dammann Freres teas that actually do have fig as an ingredient. The leaves are pretty, too, with the purple mallow and yellow sunflower petals. I have been all along, but I’m now starting to appreciate more fully exactly what I sucker I am for flower petals in tea.

Now for something really mysterious. The aroma has shifted with steeping so that I’m now getting a much more obvious peach fragrance, followed by cherry, with just a tad of orange. Tres interessant.

In the flavor, yet another shift. The orange is back to the front, then there’s a mellow, water-color like flow from one flavor into the next, rather like riding a very gentle wave. Orange to peach (figgy still) to cherry, with a cherry/strawberry tail.

This is a happy way to end my caffeine for the day. Dammann fine tea! (Apologies, A&D!)

After my last cup of tea I ate dinner, and I still haven’t done the weight workout. It’s because I need a caffeine boost first. Otherwise how can I possibly be expected to “just do it”! Yeah, that’s the ticket. So I’m going to have another cup of tea.

I wanted a Kusmi for some reason, and I couldn’t decide which one so I did a little bit of a GM sampler redux here and just stuck my hand in among the black teas until I got a Kusmi. This was the one that came up.

I’ve decided I really need to read War and Peace so I’m in a sort of a Russified mood, and so it was somewhat fitting that this Russian sampler one came up. The Kusmi samplers are in itty bitty tins that look like baby versions of the bigger ones. Is it just me, or does anyone else get a Fancy Feast vibe from these itty bitty cans?

In the itty bitty can, Anastasia smells flowery and citrusy in that French perfume sort of way that many of the French teas seem to have. I definitely smell lemon, and the bergamot is there but seems like it’s sitting in the back seat. I am coming to believe that when one puts lemon with bergamot, the lemon will always come to the fore. This is, in any case, my working hypothesis.

Deep mahogany liquor. A very ceylon aroma, sweet molasses smell. There’s a fruity smell but it’s not wholly citrus. It’s more of a sort of dark berry smell I’ve smelled in Ceylons before with citrus around the edges. It’s like someone rolled a berry in a primarily lemon coating that had some orange sprinkled in.

I was expecting a strong fruit flavor but I’m really not getting that at all. It does have a sort of Earl Grey feel, but only in a tangential way. The main citrus flavor is lemon, and it adds a bright little sparkle, but it isn’t overly strong. I like the lemon in this. It’s not too tart or soapy.

But there’s more to the fruit than the citrus. I get a sort of a berry flavor to the tea as well. The tea is generally smooth with a little bit of bite right at the end every few sips. It’s not really full bodied, but it gives the impression of being that way.

It’s a really interesting tea, somewhat surprising. I wasn’t really expecting to like it, but I do. I will have to taste it against the TeaFrog Earl Grey Special just for laughs when my TeaFrog order arrives.

One day a while back when I was whining about how every time I was moved to order a first flush darjeeling I’d been met with “OUT OF STOCK” (which really is almost as disheartening sometimes as “GAME OVER”), Rabs very kindly offered me a taste of this, the full name of which, according to her darling Old Typewriter fonted label is “Namring Upper Estate 1st Fl Darjeeling FTGFOP1 (TD88).” I’ve been waiting for the right time to give it a taste, and, unfortunately, I’ve discovered that as with having children, there is no right time. I must just come to grips with the fact that there’s never going to be a quiet day when I’m rested yet perky with a relaxing expanse of time in which to savor this.

So instead, I’m going to have it now, after a day that included a flat tire coming back from a work related event and an afternoon (when I should have been doing more work) at the doctor’s office trying to get number 1 son in to be checked for strep throat (again) before the weekend, along with an unhealthy degree of anxiety over the fact that I haven’t done my weight workout yet today which makes a full week of no weights. I hate doing the weights, so I feel particularly guilty about it, as though any discipline I once may have had has flown the coop.

However, I have been granted a furlough of a few hours by the BF who has said he’ll amuse the kids (which I think means sleeping while they play with the Wii) so I can work out. And yet, as you can see, I’m not yet working out. I’m gonna have some tea, dammit.

How green this looks! I’ve read that darjeelings aren’t fully oxidized, but seriously, this looks very very green. Like a green tea. Or maybe white? It’s green in color but it has that silver/grey tip thing that white teas sometimes have. In any case the color is not at all what I’ve seen in other darjeelings. The leaves are for the most part fairly large and curly. They have that sharp smell I associate with darjeelings and that I’m guessing is “muscatel” since I don’t know what muscatel smells like. One day I’ll have to find out.

The tea’s liquor is a deep yellow, sort of the color of liquified butter. Its aroma isn’t strong, but I pick up a nut current as well as a very dilute essence of the sharper smell of the dry leaves.

The mouth feel is pretty amazing on this. It’s soft. Really soft. It reminds me of how I used to feel after visiting some place with hard water and then returning to New York, and washing my hair. And feeling like I couldn’t get the conditioner out no matter how long I was under the shower. Then realizing that it was out, it was just the softness of the water that made it feel like it was still full of conditioner. Brooklyn water was even more that way than Manhattan water. This tea feels like Brooklyn water.

To me the flavor isn’t really rich. It’s delicate. Mild and smooth; no sharp edges to this one. It’s the second darjeeling I’ve had recently that seemed closely related to an oolong, in that it seems toasty and buttery like an oolong. I do get the muscatel notes, or at least what I think they are from the fact that they taste like the smell (see above). And I am getting a really nice finish with a sweet aftertaste. It’s kind of like a darker version of one of the better green oolongs, if that makes sense.

Anyway, I’m quite enjoying it. Thanks much, again, Rabs!

To be honest I have no idea as to temperature (it was v. hot) or steeping time because I got this at the local frozen yogurt joint after going out to dinner with the fam and another fam tonight. The really really really young guy at the counter insisted I should steep this for “another 3-5 minutes” after he handed it to me. Bah, say I. I pretty much yanked the bag out right then and there. I hadn’t seen a Mightly Leaf bag before and it was one of those pretty gauzy stitched up things like the Kusmi ones but since I only saw this one wet, it might not have been as elegant. Chances are it wasn’t, Kusmi being French and all.

Anyway, really not used to drinking green tea in water so hot it sears the epidermal layer right off my tongue, but that’s what I found myself with. I took the top off the cup to let the steam escape all the faster, but I was still nursing the thing when it was time to leave. It was preternaturally hot water, and it took a helluva long time to cool to drinkable temperature by which time everyone was done with their yogurt and ready to leave.

I will say, for a drink in too hot water in a paper cup, it did have quite a bit of flavor. A strong but somehow also gentle jasmine, less in your face than the Numi bagged jasmine, but very flavorful. The tea was fresh tasting and mild.

For rating, I’m going with slightly better than the Numi, but not quite as good as the Golden Moon.

This is a June tea of the month on the classic plan. I’ve now had several green rooibos blends from Teavana, all of which were successful in not tasting of rooibos. This one should be interesting. I noticed when I first opened it up that it appears to be a hybrid of a rooibos and a fruit blend. It has the ginormous chunky fruit pieces I’ve seen in Teavana fruit blends before (but not in rooibos) mixed in with the green, needly rooibos.

Smells fairly one-notedly of strong lime prior to steeping. Afterwards, there’s a mellower lime fragrance and a faint apple note. It’s a very pale, clear yellow.

The flavor is, expectedly, limey. I get what Soccer Mom was saying about the apple, but in my first tasting it isn’t strong at all. I may have lucked out and spooned in mixture that wasn’t heavy on the apple chunks for my first brew. Mostly, I get a fairly mellow lime that isn’t tart, and isn’t really sweet either (though I think that’s the apple’s role, to make the lime not tart). It’s nowhere near as strong as the Numi Desert Lime, which is, frankly, a good thing.

I wouldn’t have picked this to try absent my tea ‘o the month membership, and it’s not the sort of thing I’ll seek out even after tasting it, but I’m glad I got a chance to try it and I’ll be happy enough drinking it on hot summer evenings when it’s too late for caffeine until my spoon goes clink at the bottom of the tin. It’s not at all rooibossy, which is, after all, the main criterion of a decent rooibos if you’re me.

BTW, tough day today. Learned of two deaths within 30 minutes this morning before work, one of someone only 5 years older than I am who was a sort of mentor to me. So I’m in a funk at the moment.

Looking back on what I wrote about this tea, I’m constrained to dock it some points. I’d originally given it a 63. Lately I’ve been drinking it a lot more, as I’m now down to just a few of my original “starter tea” tea bag boxes.

One of the problems I’m having is that I really did not like Om, which was another Tazo mixed tea blend with cucumber flavor. I drank a lot of Om trying to get through my stash at both work and home, and it never got any better tasting, in fact it got worse and worse.

Om may have ruined cucumber flavor in tea for me, or perhaps just cucumber flavor in Tazo tea. Though this one doesn’t have the same ingredients as Om, its cucumber flavor is close enough to the same that my sense memory is superimposing a spiciness on the cucumber that gives me that same pickle feel as I had with Om. Pickles being, well, pickled, that flavor undercuts the feeling of freshness I had the first few times I had this. In a big way.

Also, I had forgotten that Cucumber White, as this is actually named, also has black darjeeling in it, which makes it one of those “what temp do I use, and for how long” conundrums that I’d rather skip and just get to the drinking.

As I’m sitting with these white Tazos for longer, the Vanilla Apricot is emerging as a frontrunner, and the Berryblossom is growing on me. The cucumber, sadly, has fallen from favor.

Since becoming a chai fan I’ve been adding samples of anything that looks remotely like chai into my orders, which has been fun. But I think I’m starting to get tired of dating chais and ready to settle down. Not with one, of course. With a small harem’s worth.

I bought this sample with my last H&S order. In the sample packet, it has rather mild spicy scent. I can detect something that seems slightly like anise under the cardamom. Unlike many chai blends, I can smell a strong tea fragrance here. The Assam has an earthy scent, like soil, with an interesting chocolate note to it.

I prepared this on the stovetop, using TeaFrog Assam as extra black tea.

It makes a creamy, chewy, tasty, and very mildly spiced chai. Very, very mildly spiced. It’s on a par on the mildness scale with the most mild I’ve tasted so far, the TeaFrog.

What makes it somewhat different is that it seems to have a stronger tea flavor than a good many other chai blends I’ve tasted. Particularly in the aftertaste. This might be because of the CTC leaves. Since I haven’t tried this without milk and sweetener, it could be that the tea itself is much stronger with long brewing because of how it was prepared, and that this, accordingly, comes out as tea flavor under the milk and sweetener. Whatever the reason, it’s a nice change.

Still, I like even my mild chais a bit more strongly spiced than this. While I liked it, I don’t think it’s going to be selected for the harem in the long term.

I received this as a sample with the “Blue Knight Special.” It’s my first green Earl Grey.

In the sample packet, there’s a definite bergamot smell, and some lavender, and something that seems almost like vanilla. The tea may be there, but I can’t smell it for the other fragrances.

It brews to a clear light yellow. The aroma of the tea is mainly a green, vegetal sencha. Not particularly on the buttery side, with a sharp note that reminds me of bok choy. There’s the tiniest bit of lavender detectable, but I can’t smell bergamot?

Taste. Hmm. This isn’t what I’d call a flavorful tea. There is some slight vegetal flavor, a cool character that seems attributable to the lavender, and a very hard to find citrus note. It isn’t bitter, but it’s the first green tea that has given me a grab at the back of the throat. Which makes me wonder how green the Assam component really is.

I have some of the sample left, so I can play with it some and see if I can improve it, but after this first tasting it’s not selling me.

I have been looking forward to trying this sample given the love that this tea has on Steepster, and what with a good decaf being hard to find and all. I had had such a bad experience with the only other decaf vanilla black tea I’ve had, the Numi, that I was a little afraid despite my eagerness.

The leaves in the sample packet are lighter colored than I would have expected, and initially they give off a very very intense, creamy, vanilla smell. Once you get under the cream, though, the vanilla is pretty rich, with a hint of beany-ness. The 6 year old was persuaded to give them a sniff and went “MMMMM-MM!”

The tea doesn’t have a very strong aroma. I don’t get a lot of vanilla after steeping. Perhaps this is because I didn’t hear the Breville beep, so the tea had started to cool a bit by the time I got to it. There is a sort of disappointing wet blotter paper, or maybe cardboard, smell to the tea, which is generally what I smell and taste in most decafs.

But fortunately I’m not getting much of that in the taste at all. This is a smooth, mild vanilla tea, with no false steps. The vanilla is integrated nicely into the tea, and provides a sweet, creamy, flavor.

I can’t say that this would be a stand out for me compared to some of the really wonderful non-decaf vanilla black teas I have had. There’s still less to it, like it has been de-somethinged, but by comparison to other decafs it is so much more somethinged.

I’m rating this compared to other decafs, not to other teas generally. On a decaf scale, it’s definitely up there with the Harney Midsummer Peach. I’m going to say it’s slightly better just because it is such a success as a decaf black vanilla compared to the Numi.

After going on at some length about how I wouldn’t have picked a grapefruit tea when I wrote my note about the Teas Etc. sample, I now find that I was moved to buy an entire can of this by the 50% off sale and had forgotten I’d been so adventurous. What a drag it is getting old. Seriously, if I didn’t know better, I’d think I was coming down with pre-senile dementia. As it is, I think I’m just fast forwarding to senile dementia.

There’s a confetti-like look to this tea, with the long, pretty, paper like calendula petals mixing in with the long black leaves. It doesn’t smell that much like grapefruit, though there is a fruity smell to the dry leaves, and a mild, flowery, almost vanilla smell from the petals.

The tea’s aroma does speak grapefruit, in a gentle way. There’s a sweet, somewhat malty smell to the tea that isn’t Darjeelingy at all. It’s a rounder smell, not the sharp smell I associate with Darjeeling. The tea does taste like Darjeeling, though. It has a bright, sparkly flavor with a slight essence of grapefruit to it. It has a soft feel to it, which seems a little unusual.

I’m thinking this one might do a little better steeped a little longer. It’s a nice tea, but if I were going to do a repeat on a grapefruit, I would lean toward the Teas Etc. If I decide to buy a grapefruit tea, I’m going to want to taste the grapefruit more than I do in the LeafSpa.

Must experiment some to see if I can get the flavor to come out more.

BTW, belated happy father’s day to all the dads out there. Our fathers day brunch took about 2 and a half hours, longer than we’d planned, and I was pretty wiped out yesterday. Too tired even to drink much tea, hence no tasting notes yesterday.

Finishing up the last of this and decupboarding. My initial assessment still holds. Enjoyable, if you’re in the market for an orange fruit blend, which I’m really not. At least not at the moment.

The boyfriend, who is big on fruit tisanes liked it quite a bit, though he remarked that he’d like it better if it was peach rather than orange. I feel sort of the same way, only my flavor request would be lemon.

Yeah, I know I just wrote about something called “Green White.” It’s purely coincidence. I’m really not going for a color duo theme here.

It is as pretty as it’s picture, but of course, it has cornflowers. Big fan of cornflowers here. It smells mostly of chamomile in the sample packet, with a lavender background. The chamomile has a sweetness to its fragrance. I don’t always find that sweetness in chamomile, but I’m always glad when I do. It usually signals that the chamomile will have a fresher taste, rather than tending toward a bitter or pungent, or that sort of stale, dried paper/hay-flavored-with-chamomile thing.

It makes a light yellow, clear liquor. I was wondering whether the lavender would affect the color. Apparently chamomile trumps lavender. There’s no purple water here, or even grey water. Or what you might think would be the obvious result of a purple/yellow combo, something tending toward greenish. The aroma is a really nice mix, about 50-50 chamomile/lavender.

That pretty much describes the taste as well, and the effect is really interesting. At first I get primarily chamomile. Then that tapers off and I get lavender at the finish. The lavender’s volatile oils seem to contribute a freshness that keeps the chamomile from tasting weedy. Now, the note from H&S says that cornflowers are sweet and spicy. I have never noticed a flavor from them, I have mostly figured they are there to look pretty in the teas and tisanes I’ve tasted. And I’m not sure I can identify a flavor contributed by them now. Pretty much what I taste is chamomile and lavender, with the chamomile toning the lavender down and making it something more appealing than I experienced with the French Super-Blue, and the lavender, as mentioned, freshening and boosting the flavor of the chamomile out of tasting, as it sometimes can, like what I’d imagine a mouthful of decorative dried flowers to taste like.

If I buy a chamomile herbal, this would be a strong contender. I like chamomile, but it’s a very sometime thing with me. I really have to be in the mood for it, and that mood strikes only infrequently. I don’t expect to rush this into my next order, but it’s worth a bookmark should I have a chamomile urge.

We tried a new salad spot today. New to us, anyway, not sure how long it has been around. It’s a sort of trendy, shi shi place with (supposedly) healthy food, in any case clearly attempting to appeal to the upscale but natural foodsy university crowd.

The kids were past their melting point and so I didn’t have a chance to peruse the many, various RTD tea offerings in any detail as I was attempting to keep them from either killing each other or running aimlessly up and down the length of the restaurant. I basically grabbed this off the shelf because in an uncharacteristic fit of short term memory absolute recall, I remembered that I had had the one right next to it before, the Pure Green, and liked it. I also noticed a selection of Mighty Leaf tins at the ordering counter, but as I was attempting to keep the 4 year old from walking backwards into a klatch of coeds who were craning their collective necks toward the menu (which was hanging what seemed like about 30 feet over the counter) and didn’t see him at all, I was unable to ascertain what Mighty Leaf teas were on offer.

In any case, this tea was very nice and I wish I had had a quieter experience with it. As it is, I sort of had to chug it to keep up with what was going on at the table. I did notice, however, that the white tea flavor was quite prominent. Though this can likely be explained by the fact that I was tasting for it, I found it quite easily. It had gave the tea a nutty flavor, particularly in the aftertaste. I am not sure that the green tea added a lot, not sure I really tasted it much. Though I often find that if I’m not tasting something it’s accomplishing something else, like making the taste of some other ingredient stronger, milder, etc.

I think I may prefer the True Green, but it may also be that the True Green paired particularly well with the salad I had at Whole Foods when I tried it. This Green White seems more like the sort of thing one would do better to drink on its own, at least for an initial tasting. Today I had a salad called “Howdy” which had marinated tri-tip and sharp white cheddar in it among other things. Some fairly strong flavors, which may not have been the best pairing with the Green White.

I placed an order with The Necessiteas for the Bread Pudding, Coco La Ven (they were out of that one) and Strawberry Kiwi, and there were two samples I had yet to try, this one and a flavored oolong, so I had them toss them in. I’d actually tried to order this one before and they were out of it.

I’m reminded of Doulton’s post about what she described as her dysfunctional relationship with The Necessiteas. I have to say, it’s not her, it’s them. I have fallen into the same dysfunctional pattern. Place an order, don’t hear for a few weeks. Write a note, hear back in a few days that the package has shipped. Usually, by that time, at least one thing I’d ordered is no longer in stock and I get a refund to my paypal account. Seriously, I’m not sure it’s worth it. There are only a few things of theirs I like well enough to reorder in any case and if I didn’t have a compulsive streak I’d probably let it drop. As it is once I decide I like something enough to reorder it, I follow the web site for a restocking notice so that I can check that off the list.

This one is not going to be on that list. It’s not bad, really. The smell out of the sample packet is strongly of coffee beans. After steeping, the smell opens up some and I can get barley and chicory notes. The taste is pretty much a weak coffee flavor with a tea aftertaste. With milk, it’s more strongly of coffee than tea, so unless you’re just out of coffee and looking for a fill-in, it’s probably better to drink it unadulterated.

For my own taste, I’d just as soon drink a really nice cup of coffee instead. Or a really nice cup of tea. The weak hybrid thing is mildly interesting but now that my curiosity is satisfied I don’t see the need to do the dysfunctional dance to get more of this.

Started the morning with this one but didn’t get a chance to write about it. Had a nap, so I need to wake up and I’m having another cup now.

I have to say this house maintenance thing is more stressful than I’d hoped. Today we went to a lighting store because I want to replace the exterior lights and now I’m more confused than ever. This one looks good but you can’t put a motion sensor on it. That one looks good but you can’t put a dawn to dusk timer on it. This one looks awful but you can do anything you want to it. And are these even going to look good on the house? I mean, it’s a little hard to visualize while you’re there in the store and have to first visualize a larger version of what you’re looking at before you even get to visualizing what it looks like on the house. Ugh. And then I’m even wondering if I should pick these before the house gets painted. The painter said I should, but I’m not so sure. Double ugh.

Anyway. There’s an earthy black tea smell coming out of the can, very similar to that dry leaf earthy Assam smell I like. It’s sharper and less malty than the English Breakfast by LeafSpa I had yesterday, and the leaves are smaller and less tippy.

The liquor has a burnt orange/brown color with a small amount of red in it too. It’s that color I want in a sweater that I’ve seen in several other teas, notably GM’s Sinharaja.

The aroma is fruity and a little sweet. I get prunes more than plums, and something that is oddly like cola. (I’m not tasting the cola, though.) It has a crispness, a briskness to it, that is a refreshing quality for a wake up tea.

I think I prefer the English Breakfast, but I’m going to give this one a chance to grow on me.

I feel the need for some smoky tea.

It’s weird, it’s kind of like wanting a cigarette, though I can’t imagine that now after having quit about 14 years ago. I wonder if there’s nicotine in lapsang souchong. ;-) Golly, I hope not. It’s scary, because breathing in the smell of the dry leaves in the sample packet is rather like taking a long drag. It’s calming. They’re very smoky. A little salted meat smelling as well. I feel like I could tap my cheek and watch a chain of tiny O’s float skyward after inhaling this.

After steeping, the aroma is significantly calmer. Much less like smoked meat, or even smoked wood. There’s a piney, woody smell that is mellower than pure smoke. The color of the liquor is somewhat lighter than I expected. A light to medium amber.

The tea is gently smoky, not intense or tarry. It’s been a while since I had the GM lapsang, but this is similar in feel and character to the way I recall the GM lapsang being. It’s pleasantly sweet at the finish and in the aftertaste as well. There are woody, piney tastes and something bread like at the end of the sip.

Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in today, maybe it’s just been a long time since I had lapsang and was craving it, but I’m loving this right now. It’s really hitting the spot.

When I opened the tin, the dry leaves smelled very familiar. I wondered where I’d smelled that sort of smell before. Thinking it might have been in the LeafSpa Yunan Gold, I opened up that tin as well to do a side by side sniff test. There is a similarity, but the Yunan Gold is a stronger, purer smell. This one has a more subdued smell. Still, I’m wondering if there isn’t some Yunan Gold in this English Breakfast. (Hey, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter! No, you got your peanut butter in my chocolate!)

The leaves are large, dark and tippy, though not as tippy as the Yunan Gold leaves. As with the Yunan Gold leaves, they are very attractive.

The tea brews up very dark, a clear, chestnut leaning toward mahogany color, with some nice red tones. The aroma is malty and sweet, and has a slight cocoa note.

It has a maltiness to the taste, as well, but isn’t as sweet as I’d expected from the aroma. I don’t get smoke, really. Maybe a tiny hint of it, but this isn’t what I’d call a smoky tea. It is smooth, and medium bodied, leaning toward full bodied, with a silky mouth feel.

It’s nice. It definitely makes the English Breakfast semi-finals.

Not sure why, but the inside of my mouth is feeling a little sore. I hope I’m not getting sick. I felt a little achy yesterday, I was really dragging on my run today (of course it was ridiculously hot which could have something to do with it) and I know there’s something going around. The 4 year old was visited by the puke fairy Sunday night. Neither of my kids are big pukers, thankfully, so I’m hoping it was the stomach virus I’m told is on the loose around here. And I’m hoping I don’t get it.

This is my last TeaFrog sample from both sample orders and so something of a milestone. I just placed my order for those things from both sample sets that I liked enough to get more of and I didn’t put this on the list. But now I’m second guessing myself. Initially I didn’t think it was anything special, but then again I don’t think I’m tasting it properly because of my mouth issue. I will say that as I sit here typing, I’m finding the aftertaste from the second steep of this really wonderful. It’s sweet, almost sugary, with a very light, very subtle essence of slightly roasty vegetable that almost isn’t there.

I love the way this looks, too. The eyebrows are adorable. Like tiny green commas; almost like green caraway seeds. I can’t smell the dry tea because of the fruit smell-impregnated sample packet. But I’m having a lot of fun looking at it.

I’ve experimented with different times on this one. I started at 1:30, then went down to 1 for a resteep. Then with the rest of the sample I started at 2. All at 175 degrees.

Right now I’m drinking the 2 minute steep. The liquor is pale yellow, basically clear, with some visible solute but not nearly as much as I typically see in sencha, for example. It smells delicately and sweetly vegetal with a dab of butter and an interesting almost floral note.

At two minutes I’m getting a flavor that seems like it would be due to the pan fried nature of the leaves, or perhaps I’m just projecting. But it’s a lightly carmelized vegetal flavor with something dusky at the finish.

The deliciousness of this tea, I’m discovering, isn’t necessarily immediately apparent. I almost wrote it off because it didn’t have a strong initial flavor. I was thinking, oh no, one of those green teas that is indistinguishable from plain hot water. But as it turns out, the lack of seriously strong vegetal flavor initially (reminiscent of drinking the run off from your steamed vegetables at dinner) is part of the charm of this tea and there is a lot of flavor if you’re patient enough to linger over it.

Dammit. I wish I had stuck this in my order. Now I’ll have to wait until I have enough reorders to merit free shipping, and since I just ordered pretty much everything else I like of TeaFrog’s that is bound to take a while. Sigh.

This sample was a free sample as opposed to a purchased sample.

I forgot that when you place an order with TeaFrog they ask if you’d like to choose a sample, so I put samples of all the teas I wanted to try in my cart. I hadn’t picked this one because it’s a green/black blend, and I have a black/green blend moratorium in effect. But faced with the alternative of repeating a sample or trying something different, this was the most appealing of what was left.

I steeped like a green, per the instructions. And I got a minty flavored tea, where the mint is the most definite flavor and the tea flavor is mostly the duskiness of gunpowder. The liquor color is that light orange that’s between green and black, but I don’t really get a black tea flavor. I can smell it ever so slightly in the tea’s aroma.

There’s nothing wrong with this tea. It’s just that it’s not enough to make me break the green/black moratorium. If I were going to choose a similar tea, I’d probably pick the GM Vanilla Mint over this just because the vanilla adds a flavor and texture that appeals to me more than the straight mint in this blend.

Closing in on the last of the TeaFrog samples. I have this and two more left, I think.

Wow. The ingredients say pink rose petals. But I don’t have those. I have entire BUDS in my sample packet. Small, but fully formed, complete with sepals, and looking lovely next to the long twisty leaves. I’m smelling the fruity package thing I smell with all the TeaFrog samples, but also some coconut.

The liquor is a clear, light yellow and smells of vanilla and coconut. It’s hard to say which dominates. It seems to move back and forth between the two. I’m not getting recognizable rose scent or tea scent for that matter.

I’ll just say now that one of the things I appreciate about TeaFrog is that with an exception or two, they’re pretty self-aware in their descriptions of their teas. This goes for naming, too. Coconut Vanilla White is the right name for this tea, in the right order. The coconut comes first in the taste, then the vanilla. I get the tea more on a second steep than on the first, and it is mild, slightly sweet and a little earthy.

This is really tasty. It’s pretty sweet, and I think in general I prefer the blueberry white which isn’t quite as sweet and is more unusual (at least for me). Possibly I have that overall impression because I’ve had a lot more coconut and certainly a lot more vanilla teas than I’ve had blueberry ones, so I’ve already experienced successful blends with coconut and vanilla. But I can certainly see drinking this as a light dessert or a comforting sweet afternoon pick me up.

I am doing an internal happy dance because I’ve basically put this one to bed. I have one more cup’s worth or so left from the initial bagged tea stash. It was one of the first I drank when I started this adventure last February, and one of the first I took an active dislike to. I kept drinking it to see whether that would change. Although I got used to it, I can’t say it grew on me. Or I could, but I’d have to end the comment with “like a fungus.”

In truth there’s no ready explanation for why I should dislike this tea as much as I do. After drinking my way through more than a box of it I can say I can taste pretty much all of the ingredients, so that’s not the problem. I think the main problem is either in the ginger or in the green tea and I’m going to go with the ginger. (The pear is subtle enough that it can’t be objectionable by any standard.) The ginger doesn’t have that fresh, sharp, ginger aroma or flavor, nor does it have a particularly sweet or candy-like taste. Either would have been an improvement.

The ginger here seems to me to be tired. And stale (not literally). Like it is mustering all its strength to exert power and so doesn’t have the will left to try to taste good. It certainly is powerful. It all but pushes the green tea taste out the window.

I’m not at all sorry to see this go. Happy dance! Happy dance!

In the tin, the leaves smell strongly of bergamot, but fortunately strongly does not equate to perfumey in this instance.

After steeping the tea smells sweet and malty and the bergamot has all but receded into the wings. There’s a faint, orangey smell but not a lot of bergamot in the aroma.

It makes a return in the taste, but not in an overpowering way. The tea is fairly smooth and is mild but flavorful. It has some natural sweetness, but it doesn’t taste as malty as it smells.

Basically this tastes very similar to the Blue Knight Special by TeaFountain in terms of the balance of flavors. The main difference is that the TeaFountain has a lot of rough edges, whereas they’ve been filed down here for the most part (there’s still a sneaky little bite at the back of the throat that can happen sometimes but it’s not consistent). The mouth feel has some substance to it, which I like.

It’s a very no nonsense Earl, no variations, nothing frilly. A very purely Earl Earl. But fortunately lacking the major thing that can ruin an Earl Grey for me — overpowering, perfumey, volatilely alcoholic bergamot.

I got this sample with my first Teas Etc. order, and on my continuing quest to reduce my samples I decided to try it this morning.

In the packet the dry leaves have a sweet citrus smell. It’s a sweet grapefruit smell. It reminds me of how my mom used to serve grapefruit for breakfast. Sliced in half with sugar sprinkled over it, eaten with a “grapefruit spoon.”

It brews to a light brandy color and smells like a grapefruit! The tea is mild and smooth and has a substantial mouth feel. I can’t tell what kind of tea it is from the flavor. It could be a mild, non-smoky keemun or maybe a mild yunnan. There is a sweet citrus flavor that blends nicely with the tea and a surprising grapefruit aftertaste.

I would not have picked this to try. I like grapefruit ok, but it’s not a favorite of mine. I’m glad I got a chance to taste this though. It’s actually surprisingly delightful. It might even be delightful enough to encourage me to order a small tin.

A sample from the original sample order. It was in my “white tea” box, or rather carton, and as I’ve mentioned I seem to have a hard time figuring out when to drink white teas so they tend to get short shrift. I’ll be trying to make it up to them over the next few days.

I’m not following the TeaFrog directions. Instead, I’m using the Breville suggested temperature and steeping time for white tea.

In the packet there is a smell that could be blueberry. It’s definitely fruity, and it also smells vaguely like incense. The leaves are stupendously large and twisty, with (my favorite) cornflowers very bluely strewn through the mix.

The tea aroma definitely has a blueberry note, with that incense one as well. It’s slightly wine-like, too. The liquor is a gorgeous tawny gold color.

Yum. It reminds me a little of the GM Persian Melon white tea, mostly because it’s a flavored white, I guess. But it’s different, too. It doesn’t have the fermented winey note in the taste that the GM had. The tea base is earthy rather than winey. It definitely tastes of blueberries, though. It’s got much more berry flavor than the only other (somewhat) blueberry I have to compare it to, Tazo Berryblossom White. I eat a ton of blueberries, usually with breakfast cereal, and this has almost the same aftertaste as the real thing.

Though I hesitate only because I am having trouble finding time to drink the white tea I have now, I think this one is a keeper.