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I have not had tea for the past few days because I was sick. I am so glad to be getting back to my teapot and my calming evening cup of green tea!

This is a sample of the 2013 harvest sent by Teavivre. Many thanks!

When I made this tea, the kitchen lights were all out but one, so I saw the dry leaves only dimly. Everyone was getting ready to head to bed. After it steeped, it wouldn’t have mattered if all the lights had been out. The leaves were such a vibrant green they would have lit the room. They were so beautiful – fresh, alive, and crying out that they were the newborns of spring!

The aroma was of soft spinach, no hard or bitter edges. The liquor was a much paler color than I expected after seeing those electric green leaves.

The flavor is mild and smooth, nothing harsh or biting is to be found here. There is almost no aftertaste, which is having the effect of making me drink more and more because I want to keep experiencing the flavor.

Hubby came in after I had already finished two cups. He poured himself a cup, then another, and was about to pour another but the pot was empty. I asked if he wanted a resteep and he said, “Yes, please!” I made the second pot and he drank a cup and told me he had to go to bed now. He left the room and was back in less than three minutes pouring another cup of tea.

There is a mineral freshness to this along with the vegetal flavor, rather than the butteriness sometimes found in a vegetal green. My mouth feels so fresh and clean, yet there really wasn’t any astringency. I have really enjoyed these two pots of tea tonight, and hope they go a long way to rehydrating me!

Thank you, Angel and Teavivre, for these beautiful samples!

I received a wonderful box of samples of the 2013 harvest today from Teavivre. Thank you!

Hubby and I have not had our bedtime green tea lately. We’ve been a little out of sync schedule-wise, so tonight we set that straight.

He really has been enjoying green tea though he is still rather new to it and says he really can’t describe flavors yet, but tonight he said “vegetal, I definitely get that this is vegetal.” He agreed that there is also a hint of butter and a nice toasted flavor. And this was just bursting with flavor! We had five steeps of it, and I have saved the leaves because I think I can get a few more tomorrow.

This is an excellent Dragon Well. I liked the first one I ever had. It was purchased from a tea shop not far away. For some reason I never finished that bag of tea, but when I tried Teavivre’s Dragon Well last year I had to order. This one is every bit as good as last year.

Hubby drank right along with me and kept refilling. He said he found this green tea particularly smooth and drinkable. I, too, found it smooth and easy to drink, and on one steep that went a little long there was a hint of root vegetable flavor (not strong enough to be unpleasantly astringent) that blossomed into sweetness after the swallow. Nice!

Thank you, Teavivre, for the samples! I look forward to trying all of them!

This is a sipdown of the sample I received from Nuvola a while back.

I had a bit of a stressful weekend so far. A truly toxic person is trying to get me involved in her dramas, I had a lot of tedious work to do that I wasn’t looking forward to, and we have some decisions to make that I just wish would go away, preferably because we won the lottery and were Elvis-rich and then I would fly to Nevada Hospital and make tea for GMathis and surf teh interwebs with her. I would bring Samwise and say he was a therapy dog and we would dance with him in the waiting room. (Can you tell I need an ESCAPE???)

I took a break from my cleaning and had a cup of sanity and some Bissinger’s Chocolates. Honey, if tea and chocolate don’t make it better, you need to get in somebody’s LAP!

I had forgotten that this black tea steeps up rather light, but it surely was good. The taste is very fruity and complex. It went quite nicely with the chocolate even though it wasn’t as powerful as the Keemuns I usually drink with sweets. Instead of cleansing the palate for the next tidbit like my usual choices do, this sort of sidled up to the chocolate and made friends. There was a hint of roastiness for a low note, lots of middle fruity notes playing along, and a high note of sweetness singing over it all.

This is a really nice tea and not “run of the mill.” I think it would be great to have hanging around!

SIPDOWN! I got up at 5 am to keep an eye on the new hen. When they are adjusting the pecking order, sometimes the newcomer or the smallest hen will get beaten up, but they have behaved themselves wonderfully. They didn’t even get up until 6 am today!

Another tasting note inspired me to make a pot of this, sit outside, and watch the chickens for a while. The wind is blowing and we are supposed to have a thunderstorm, so it is quite overcast and cloudy with sudden piercing beams of sunlight warming your arms and face. The dogwood trees are sprinkling us with petals and stamens and pistils as the wind ruffles through the branches.

I made three steeps so this is a little lighter than I usually drink it, though I did use extra pearls to finish them off cleanly. No fear. The tin is already refilled with Teavivire’s Superfine Downy Jasmine Dragon Pearls. My next purchase from them will be their Jasmine Silver Needle.

These are the jasmine teas I drink when I want to enjoy an excellent jasmine tea by itself. If I am having food, I drink Silver Jasmine Green instead of pearls.

Wow, this stuff is good. Tonight was writers’ group night at my house and they have grown accustomed to having tea. This was the second giant pot we had. The aroma is so fresh and fruity.
We made a 22 ounce steep using two sachets, poured it into a much larger pot and made another steep to combine with the first. Only three of us were drinking tea tonight but I think we finished 76 ounces in all.

I saved the leaves yesterday and made a third steep to go with lunch today. The spinach flavor is seriously dialed back but it was still a good cup of tea. I miss the creamed spinach richness of yesterday, though.

This came as a sample with the matcha I ordered from ZenTea. I understand there is more than one company by this name. To clarify, this is the company in Canada whose site is ZenTeaLife.

I am having some of the Asian buffet leftovers for lunch and wanted a good green to go with it. I am delighted that I spotted this in my free sample and swaps box. I will get to do a sample SIPDOWN, which isn’t as exciting as for some of you because I don’t put samples in my cupboard, but is still exciting because I have reduced the embarrassing large amount of tea I own by one so I feel a little better about myself. Ha!

The color reminds me of the organic unfiltered olive oil I buy. The leaves in the sample pack are a good size but lots of teeny tiny bits escaped into my cup. It didn’t matter – it didn’t make it bitter. I have made two steeps so far and the second is as good as the first and just as flavorful.

My main thought as I drink this is that if I were chewing, I would know for certain that I was eating creamed spinach. I really like creamed spinach, by the way. So I thoroughly enjoyed both cups of tea and am glad to try my second gyokuro ever. Now I know what to buy for that rich, creamy spinach taste.

Thank you, ZenTeaLife for the sample!

Hoorah! Hooray! My tea came today! I just completed a SIPDOWN of another brand of unflavored matcha so I am glad to have this. I bought two pouches of it because the price was so reasonable and I would save on shipping in the long run.

The color of this is quite similar to the one from Zen Tea Life, and both are heartier in flavor than the one I got from Olive Nation. It is not as vibrant green as Kai Matcha or as the higher grades of Red Leaf Matcha, but it is lovely and an excellent price for a good quality of tea.

I made a latte with this as soon as it came and it was yummy! The smell reminds me very strongly of some Ti Kuan Yin and Dong Ding teas I have had, the smell of the acrylic paint art studio I took lessons in when I was very young. I LOVE that smell!

One thing I will be doing with this….I started out ordering all my matcha from Red Leaf in Robust. Now I love plain matcha and the robust flavor level is too much for me. Some of the flavors have a chemical taste if I put a full measure in, and if I cut back on how much Red Leaf I use, I don’t have enough matcha flavor for me anymore.

Solution: use half as much Red Leaf flavored, and replace the other half with a good unflavored matcha – like this one!

I am going to give a bit of this to my daughter and my bestie, because I think they are really going to love it.

Why are the chickens making me crave black tea? Each morning I go outside and watch the chickens we bought Sunday. One of them had laid an egg in the box during the auction. I didn’t expect them to lay for a week or so since they had a major upheaval in their lives, but yesterday both laying hens laid an egg. (One is an adorable pullet, too young to lay just yet.) I am on pins and needles looking for two more eggs to come at about five o’clock. Meanwhile, though, in the mornings I LONG for a pot of black tea even though I haven’t been having tea until afternoons for a long while.

This one sounded good today. It is one of only a few Assams that I can drink and not regret it. Others are too harsh for me and give me an angry stomach. I actually got distracted and steeped this one for over five minutes instead of the 3 1/2 I normally do. I was afraid it would be undrinkable but I took it outside and enjoyed every cup with a bit of Blarney Castle cheese from Kerrygold. Is anyone else excited at the cheese they are carrying at Sam’s Club now? They have some pretty decent ones and I try to buy one or two a month to expand my horizons.

Grace Rare Tea is consistently good for me. They don’t offer a huge number of different teas, but they offer high quality teas and people who have tea at my house generally really like their tea. I have had their Formosa Oolong, Assam, Winey Keemun, and Jasmine Green, and they have all been tasty.

I have had this for about three weeks, but I waited to review because I thought I had done something wrong. (Hang in there, I didn’t do anything wrong but there was a very fixable problem – solution is thanks to Rashad.)

The first two times I tried it, it was anything but delicate. It wrestled my tongue into a headlock and tried to cut it with a shiv. It was some very aggressive tea. But it wasn’t the base, it was the flavoring. I had loved, I say LOVED, every other Nina’s Tea I had tried. Other people loved it. Rashad loved it. What was wrong with me? I served it to a guest, and they said, “Meh.”

Then Frank’s teas started getting some off comments and he said maybe people could try airing it for a bit.

Rashad’s tin of Marie-Antoinette arrived and it was “anything but delicate”, while his sample had been quite good. He decided to air the tin, and when I saw his note I decided to try it, too.

All the difference in the world! That is what it made, indeed. Now this is a sour apple tea that is lightly rose scented. The rose appears in the scent and in the aftertaste but is light, not heavy and perfumey. The tea base can now be tasted, and I really wasn’t getting the base before.

Nice tea save! Thank you, Rashad!