ashmanra

This is another lovely sample from Teavivre. I have reviewed it before, so I will keep this short and just say that it is a mild white tea. Later steeps becoming a tiny bit drying, cleansing the palate. The wet leaves smell like the first freshly cut grass of springtime.

Do you ever fantasize about drinking tea and then have trouble finding something that makes you feel the way you wanted to feel? I do. But tonight I wanted some tea and this one has far exceeded my tea fantasies.

I decided to do a ittle gong fu brewing with hubby joining in. Oh my! The leaves smelled amazingly good when I opened the pouch. I did rinse the leaves quickly, maybe ten seconds. I don’t think that is really necessary with this one. The first steep was light yellow and lightly buttery with vegetal tones. I resteeped, and resteeped, and resteeped. The third steep was darker than the first two.

Now on the sixth some amazing things are happening in this tea. There is a mineral quality coming out, and a lingering cool finish rather like the feeling I get when I drink something with licorice root in. It caresses and coats the throat. There is that same quality that made me fall for Wild Forest Oolong, though this is lighter.

I am so glad I ordered their Tie Guan Yin with organic honey. If it is anything like this one, I am in for some highly satisfying tea times.

We had this with lunch today. With our food, it was rich and chocolate-y, but after the meal the remaining tea seemed to get a tad bitter. I was drinking it plain and youngest added milk and sugar. It could have been my imagination, or just being really sensitive to the change in taste once it was no longer paired with food. I have a hard time with this tea. Sometimes I really like it, sometimes I find it weak, sometimes it is too strong. It is one of the few teas that have that chameleon effect for me.

We made this after lunch, and it was brilliant. Baked sweet potatoes with caramelized juices, and this time I am getting a lemony or citrusy high note as well, especially as it cools. This was DELISH!

Since I made Shepherd’s Pie I thought some Shepherd’s Tea would be a fitting pairing!

This is really good! The white tea steeps to a nice light orange color, which always amazes because in my head white tea=almost clear tea. The peach flavor is natural tasting and the bit of licorice root is really, really nice.

Thank you, GMATHIS, for this surprise tea that came to my house day before yesterday! :)

There was a great temptation to crawl back into bed this morning, but I had bought some lamb and needed to get Shepherd’s Pie made. Once the puppies had finished ravaging my kitchen, I decided to get it going before I could change my mind. I thought this tea from GMATHIS might help me stay on track and not slip away to the soft, soft down comforter and all those pillows…oh, wait, this is called Focus, right?

So I took a sip. Nice! I taste the tea, and there is the chocolate-y orange-y flavor nicely present but not masking the base. I don’t know if I have ever had chicory, so I am not sure if I am picking it up, but I do taste a touch of the mate. I would swear I taste a hint of something Ike cardamom. Is that the chicory?

Thank you, GMathis, for a lovely new tea to start my day with today!

I have been getting nervous because I am getting low on puerh tea and lately I have been craving it. I saw this on sale at Whole Foods tonight and grabbed it. I am not sorry I bought it, but I probably won’t buy it again. It would be great for people who are a little afraid of puerh, but I like the stuff!

On the plus side, there is no fishy odor to this one. On the minus side, they call for a whole tablespoon of tea to eight ounces of water and a five minute steep. At those parameters, I would expect this to have more flavor. It was good but not great. Earthy, yes, but I am not getting the saddle leather, mushrooms, or horse farm notes I love!

I really like their double lidded tins and always reuse them, but with puerh such packaging isn’t necessary. Puerh does best with a wee bit of circulation. I also like that this is fair trade and I like how they do business, I just wish I really loved this tea.

My oldest daughter asked me to order some white tea for her. She has only recently begun to drink tea, and only because she has read so much about the benefits, so she really isn’t going to be attracted by the TEA taste. Together we chose this one as her starting place for white tea.

The aroma is lovely and very light and…feminine? The vanilla dominates but isn’t really strong. The liquor is darker than I expected. I think she will love this. My first sips were reminding me of something and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first. Then I got it…wedding cookies! The ones dusted with confectioner’s sugar. As it cools the lemon steps forward a little more, but overall this is a delightfully restrained tea with great flavor and classic character. Give this to your guests who think they don’t like tea and you will probably make them into tea converts.

Oh, yes! This is the kind of green I enjoy most! The dry leaves smelled nice and vegetal when I opened the pouch…not quite as sweet as buttered squash, but maybe a bit like bok choi? The liquor is pale yellow. The taste is so so smooth. I am so glad a made a pot of this and not just a cup.

Long ago I wanted to drink green tea for my health. I bought grocery store bags and prepared them all wrong, drank what tasted like hot water and got a stomach ache.

When Sandy first took me to A Southern Season, I bought a dragon well tea because I had heard they were some of the healthiest. When I made ithe tea, it was such a far cry from the first bagged green I had tried that I could hardly believe it.

This is really excellent. The greens I have had this week so far have been astringent. This one is not. It is smooth, sweet, and wonderful. Here is another tea that needs to go on my Teavivre order. I can’t wait to have my daughter try this one.

Thank you, Angel and Teavivre! This is really hitting the spot!

When I made the last Ripened Aged Mini Tuo Cha from Teavivre it took until the third steep for it to really break up. I often do not rinse my tea if they seem to steep to a deep color right away. I hate to waste any of the tea so I drink it and enjoy, but that one really did need the rinse to be strong enough. This one, however, disintegrated as soon as the water hit it. As I poured off the rinse, it was at first very light and then quite dark at the end of the tiny pot.

I then added more water and did a short steep. Delicious! Earth and leather! It takes me back to my childhood when I owned a pony. This is the scent of the field full of horses and my little fellow freshly saddled. (I had prayed every night for a pony and one day a lady asked me to sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. Another lady heard me, started crying, said she was from West Virginia and asked me if I wanted a pony. I was about ten years old. I said yes. I named him Sam.)

I do not have the most sensitive or educated palate in the world, but I am not finding the rose flavor. Like KS, I feel that it may be there or it may exist only in my imagination. It may be lending a ghost of a hint of sweetness. The rose bud is pretty and I think this will make a beautiful tea for my son to give his girlfriend for Valentines Day, but the bud is tiny and I just don’t find the flavor of it in my cup. I agree that it might be a good thing.

The bottom line: this puerh has no fishy or shrimpy aroma or taste. There is rich earth and also saddle leather. On the third and fourth steeps the liquor is still quite dark (it was inky black at first) and it is becoming rich, plowed farm soil in summer sun. This is one of the best puerh experiences ever. I may try to have their plain puerh again a little later today to compare and see which I want to put on my order. I definitely want to keep this around, and need to since three frequent visitors to my home have become hooked on it.

This is my first Chun Mei, at least as far as I know!

The aroma and look of the leaves was completely different from the green tea I drank yesterday. This was not as brightly green, and had a completely different aroma. No wet cooked turnip or mustard greens here!

I accidentally used too much leaf. The first sip was astringent and a little sour, my fault. I had already resteeped the leaves so I did what I had read in an article on serving tea in Britain through the years. I read that sometimes tea was made extra strong and the hot water pot was used for people to adjust the tea to their liking. I picked up the kettle and added water until I had the right amount for the amount of leaf I used. All better!

This is still a drying tea, as it is supposed to be. It is neither bitter nor sour. It makes me think of sunshine on dry hay. I made four steeps and combined them all into one pot after tasting a sip from both the first and second steep unmixed. There is plenty of flavor left. I shall enjoy having this as my morning green!

Thank you, Angel and Teavivre!

I made a pot of this for tea time with my girls today because I wanted to compare it to the Premium Keemun Hao Ya from Teavivre that we drank yesterday. This is weaker than Hao Ya A from Harney and Sons which, to be honest, is too strong for me. Maybe I need to make it differently.

This Keemun has less delicacy than Teavivre’s. I didn’t like it plain and added milk and sugar. Once we started our snacks I had a second cup with just a splash of milk. It is certainly chocolate-y and a little smokey, but for the price difference and the taste I think I prefer Teavivire’s. This one from SS is $4.75 an ounce. Teavivre’s works out to $3.20 an ounce, resteeps well, and tastes good without having to be tamed by additions, at least for me. If you love bold, brash keemuns, you might prefer this one, and Harney and Sons more so. I prefer Teavivre’s.

No notes yet.

This is from the new tea box that just arrived from Teavivre. Thank you! I am also grateful that it was the excellent puerh they sent me that set my son and now his girlfriend on the tea drinking path. Neither of them liked tea until I gave them the Ripened Mini Tuo Cha Puerh.

When I opened the pouch, the dry leaves smelled strongly of spinach or possibly even cooked mustard greens or tender greens. Quite aromatic! The leaves are a very rich green color, thin and twisted. I was surprised when I peeked in the pot and saw how much they had unfolded. They are not as big as oolong leaves, certainly, but unfolded to impressive size considering how they looked dry.

The tea in my cup stills smells very much like spinach or mustard greens, milder now. The liquor is very pale, a light yellow that is almost clear. The taste is not mild or hidden in any way. The first grocery store green teas I tried years ago tasted like hot water. Not this cup! The liquor may be pale but the flavor is bold, the tea astringent and palate clearing. It is not bitter at all. The taste lingers.

Both steeps were two minutes. I think I would enjoy this even more going to the conservative side of their suggested steep time and stopping the first steep around one minute.

The second steep is much the same but just a wee bit milder.

Thank you, Angel Chen and Teavivre, for the opportunity to try your wonderful teas!

This is a resteep of my sample from SimplyJenW. I used boiling water and steeped for about 3 1/2 minutes. This still has a lot of flavor, but the puerh flavor is still very much in the background. The citrus flavors are very good and still have pretty decent strength. If you want to drink puerh but don’t like it, give this a try. If you want to taste puerh, this might not be the best choice for you.

Lots of reasons to shout “Hooray!” today.

Last night, I got a text from my oldest daughter who recently went from being a tea hater to a tea-because-it-is-good-for-me drinker. She asked me to order both some green and white tea for her.

A couple of hours later, this was followed up by a text from my son, who also never drank tea until a couple of weeks ago, asking me to order tea for his girlfriend for a Valentines gift from him, as she had really liked the puerh I gave her. Hours later, another text came in asking me to order some puerh for him as well. I am positively giddy.

Then the mailman brought my third and final box from Teavivre. I think he was afraid I was going to hug him. I refrained.

Now I am not sure. Having had this tea, he deserved that hug.

The aroma is rich and slightly smokey in the package. The steeped tea is decidedly chocolate-y, reminding me very much of the aroma of Emperor’s Red from Premium Steap. I taste chocolate and roasty toasty goodness. The smoke is now very subtle. I steeped by the suggested parameters.

I have had keemuns that I loved, keemuns that I liked a lot as long as I added milk and sugar, and keemuns that were strong enough to be undrinkable for me.

This one is flavorful yet polished. It is not overpowering, not bitter, not astringent. I could even see making it with slightly hotter water or a longer steep time if you like the really strong keemuns. But this is just about perfect for me.

The pot disappeared quickly and youngest and I wanted more. I resteeped at about 205 degrees, a little hotter than Teavivre calls for, and went an extra minute to just over three minutes for the steep.
The color is still good, the aroma still chocolate-y. Though not as strong as the first steep, this is still lovely and very drinkable.

Youngest is a real Keemun (and smoke) fan and gives it a thumbs up!

I am finishing my sample from SimplyJenW today with my friend. I have already said how I feel about it. Nice smooth tea base, great chocolate flavor, creamy coconut.

My friend said, “Let’s split a one pound bag!”. So there you have her opinion!

Thank you, Jen! I think we will also be ordering chocolate and strawberry puer from Lupicia.

I received a sample of this tea from the ever generous SimplyJenW. Thank you!

I shared this today with my puer-loving friend. She is not a fan of tropical fruit punches, citrus flavors, etc. so she didn’t care for it. She likes a good, strong, unflavored puer.

I enjoy plain puer also, but I liked the flavor of this. I found it very orange-y especially. At first I thought I didn’t taste puer at all, but after giving it a good swish the heady, earthy taste rose up.

I agree with Jen. This is puer with training wheels. If you don’t like puer but want the benefits of it, you could drink this. If you love puer and want strong, earthy flavor every time, this probably isn’t the best tea for you. It is very well done and requires no additions. I think even people who normally add sugar and/or milk to their tea would love this plain.

I like it very much as a flavored tea, though it probably won’t satisfy the cravings of a hard core puer lover.

Thank you, Jen!

Went to bed with a backache. Had nightmares about my back. Woke up with a backache. Have to iron and then make filled cupcakes because all the kids are coming and you know how much college kids eat. And this is my fault for participating in the DOCTOR WHO MARATHON! for Tom Baker’s 78th birthday yesterday, staying up too late the last several nights and sitting, sitting, sitting on the back-eating couch.

Who do I always turn to at such a time? The Queen! And I must say she did not let me down. The first sip was instantly soothing and bolstering at once. No additions, unless you count JJ Heller radio on Pandora. (Thank you, GGMathis! The girls and I have been loving it! Great station.)

It is going to be a good day.

My daughter ordered a couple of Dammann Frères teas for me for Christmas and they sent a few samples along as well. I thought the sample pouch for this one looked tiny, and when I cut open the little pouch, found a sachet instead of loose tea. The scent was mostly just oolong. We are not picking up much floral aroma.

I began steeping this in the sachet. The liquor was incredibly pale and a trial sip was very weak, so I decided to cut open the sachet to let the leaves expand more. The sachet was fairly bursting at the seams at that point. Once the leaves were released they expanded beautifully and are now huge!

Because of all the waiting, testing, cutting, the tea oversteeped a wee bit. The first cup reminded me of tender greens, something local farmers sell but I am ot sure if they are called that everywhere. I think it is a mix of baby turnip green leaves and bany mustard green leaves. This first steep is a little stronger than what I usually mean when I say something tastes like buttered veggies because usually I am thinking squash or bok choi.

The second steep is better since I can now time it accurately and the leaves are free. It is milder and still very pale. The osmanthus is so light that I would probably mistake it for a natural floral note rather than a scenting of the leaves with flowers. The oolong itself is filling my head with warm, woodsy flavor. There is a ittle roasty toasty something about this oolong. It is a somewhat drying, but not at all bitter. I recently read some Chinese tea reviews that indicate that this is often highly desired as a means of clearing the palate after a meal.

The third steep is still woodsy and tasty. I think this may go to five steeps, but I don’t expect to go much beyond that and still have flavor. We shall see!

I don’t think I realized this when I made my first review of this tea, but mine seems to be packaged differently from others. Instead of individual samples that make about a small pot each, I have a large foil pouch inside of a larger zipper pouch.

The aroma is so intense. My mouth started to water as soon as I smelled the dry curled leaves. Beautiful leaves, beautiful scent! It amazes me that something natural and unflavored can be this aromatic.

First steep – light gold in color, light to medium buttery vegetal flavor.
Second steep – went a little too long as I am making bread at the same time and had to go turn on the oven as the bread is rising in the brotform. It isn’t bitter, but it is stronger with grassy notes and is more drying.
Third steep – paying closer attention now. The tea is now a very light golden yellow and so translucent. It is beautiful in the tiny cups. Now I taste an edge of hay framing the buttery vegetable liquor. It is a little less drying now.

I will continue to resteep this today and it looks like I may get another four or five steeps from these leaves.

Delicious, and so fresh. Thank you, Angel and Teavivre!

Our final tea today was one we have had many times, but we haven’t had in rather a while. Paris is the tea I used to make for people who they “don’t really drink tea.”. This one would win them over. Although oddly enough, with the college age kids hanging around my house these days, it is the puerh that is converting them to tea! Go figure!

Delicious, as always.

This was our second tea for the tasting today, and it was fabulous. The aroma of the steeped tea was so awesome we all had to stop and give it an extra moment of appreciation. No one could describe it better than JacquelineM already did – a naked sweet potato with skin on. I can even picture the amber syrup seeping out from where a fork or knife has pierced the sweet potato.

There is a honeyed sweetness to this. It was excellent paired with our foods today, which were Hickory Farms Beef Summer Sausage, Cheese with Onion, Breton Multigrain Crackers, fresh fudge-y whole wheat brownies from freshly ground wheat topped with whipped cream and served with strawberries on the side. This was the tea I kept coming back to when it was time to refill my cup.

Absolutely delicious. Teavivre, this tea is a magnificent work of art. Thank you!

This was the first tea sampled at tea party today. And it was hit!! I knew it would be!

The base is smooth and mild, but the tea isn’t hiding. The chocolate is there without overpowering the tea, and the coconut is creamy and somewhat subtle. I really like this! As I was drinking it plain, I could really see that if someone wanted a decadent dessert cuppa, this would taste positively sinful with sugar and milk.

Thank you, SimplyJenW! This was wonderful, and I still have enough left for one.more.cup!