ashmanra

Finished this sample up today! Shared a pot with a friend and it is just as delicate, just as girly as ever – and that was a good thing! I already had a tea to kick me into gear this morning, but now it was afternoon and I was ready for a gentle tea to enjoy this beautiful weather. This was a great tea for that. I really taste the jasmine in this one, but it is so nicely balanced with the rose and neither are cloying or artificial.

Haven’t had this one in a while! It smells a lot smokier than it tastes, but that has been true of most of the lapsangs I have tried. This tea has heft. You can tell that this is a high quality tea, not something that NEEDED smoke to mask its inferiority. I like teaequalsbliss’ description. It smells CHEWY! And it is indeed good. Today I took one cup plain, and drank the rest like a breakfast tea with milk and sugar. Both ways are great! I haven’t tried to resteep this as Sandy did. Perhaps that will be my afternoon pot of tea!

This is very different from the three pu-erhs I have tried. All the others were unflavored
and had the earthy, horsey aroma and smooth taste. Steeped, they were blacker than ink. I never get up thinking, “Gee, I want a big cup of pu-erh right now!” , but I do like it well enough and will drink it if it is offered. It also makes me feel better when I have overindulged in a fatty food, which is what pu-erh is most noted for.

The dry leaves of this one smelled minty. That’s right, MINTY! And the tea tastes more green than pu-erh. Even the dregs in my cup right now have that minty aroma. If you are looking for strong, black, horsey pu-erh, forget it. This brews up very light like a green! It is pretty good, refreshing, and worth a try.

Fabulous tea, took it this time without additions as I usually do with any afternoon teas since we usually have cookies with! For breakfast, this one gets milk and sugar. The hint of smoke is a real pick me up.

Another Wednesday tea party tea! This is the best Irish Breakfast I have had anywhere, hands down. The leaves are large and there is so much gold. This isn’t as bitter as some Irish Breakfast teas can be, and there is no smoke like you would find in an English Breakfast. Wonderful with additions, but still drinkable without. Still, I like my breakfast teas WITH, thank you very much! :)

This was one of the Wednesday tea party teas! It is very bright without being tart, smooth and flavorful. We took it without additions and it went very well with our cookie plate!

Overslept this morning and needed a really good pot of tea. Youngest daughter and I made a little bowl of cheese cubes and brewed a pot of this. Aaaaaaah! This is even better than I remembered. Last time it was a little on the weak side for me, so I increased my steep time to 4 minutes. Again, the aroma of cocoa was AMAZING! This is probably the most chocolately smelling tea I have had, excluding those that have chocolate flavor added. This time I also detect what I thought was a light vegetal note, perhaps what the company is describing as fruity. It is just a hint of what I taste strongly in Ruby #18. Very complex, very smooth, very, very satisfying. Thank you, again. Jacqueline! I had been wanting to try a Red Robe style tea for some time…..

I love the aroma of this tea! It tastes very good even without additions. Tonight it had the unfair trial of being tasted right alongside The de Cigales by Dammann Freres. The Boston won in the aroma category, but the Dammann Freres has more flavor. Granted it is a different flavor tea, but with the same “mood” of cup in my opinion. They are warm contemplative cups. A very good tea with a heavenly aroma.

I had to wonder if this tea was really as good as I thought, or if it was just my imagination on that first cup, so tonight I had another. Not my imagination! This tea is so flavorful! It has depth and richness, with the fig lending warmth, the nutmeg adding interest, and the many other ingredients making your mouth SING! It is THAT good. I must get more! No additions – this one is too too good as is!

Since I drink this several times a week, I don’t usually tealog it every time. However, for a big change I will make a new post about a tea I drink often. The big change…..I am no longer adding milk and sugar! This is a route I never expected to take, but between George Orwell’s admonitions about sugar in tea and my two friends who take theirs straight when we drink it together, I was ashamed to keep adding it all the time! I won’t say I will not add sugar ever, or that all teas will be without it from now on, but the list is getting longer of teas I take straight now. Maybe I am growing up?

A sample from JacquelineM – thank you, thank you!

Dry leaves – sniff sniff sniff. Every time he walks by the tin….my hubby is opening it and sniffing. It smells that good.

Steeping – Pouring the water over the leaves releases the strawberry aroma almost immediately. A very long five minutes ensues….

Drinking – First tried it plain, as I like to try all my new teas: very nice, light, and fruity. A genteel cup of tea, not tart at all but nicely berry flavored. I add milk before the sugar this time to see how it affects the cream aspect and don’t note a huge difference, but I only had skim and I know some people like to add real cream to this one. A dash of sugar, and let it cool for a minute and you really release the flavors. Aahhhhhh.

Today’s tea party teas were Golden Luo by Harney and Sons and Boston. Boston was the hands down winner among the folks who drink their tea with no additions. This tea is…sigh….a hug in a cup. I really don’t want to talk to anyone while I drink it because I want to keep my nose in the cup, sniffing the lovely aroma. This one is already going on my reorder, and I have only had it for one week, but the tea guests all love it! Must have more….pound bag, here we come!

These leaves are neat-o! I’m showing my age when I say that, aren’t I? But they really are nice to look at. The big shocker came when I poured the tea. Wow, that is DARK! Well, darker than I expected this to be when it had so many golden pieces in it. And it smells like……coffee? Just a bare hint of coffee, but probably what I am detecting is the unsweetened cocoa present in lots of Chinese black teas. Still, that is a surprise for me. This was sweet enough to drink with no additions, and while not as good as Golden Monkey to me, it might be nice if you have a day where Golden Monkey is just a little too sweet and honeyed for you. A very good tea.

This is my first An Xi tea! The first cup – smooth, vegetal, very milky looking in the cup but light and sweet. The second cup – now the tea is very clear instead of milky, but has as much color as before. A good SLURP to aerate it gives me a new flavor – the tiniest nutty taste but lots of floral notes and a good roundness that carries the scent and taste well back in the palate and up. Probably won’t be able to review the remaining steeps right away, but wanted to get these in while I can! Steep time varied from 1 minute up. This oolong is very green! Thank you, JacquelineM!

This was an unexpected (yay!) sample in my Harney tea order. The aroma is definitely guava and reminds me of when my eldest daughter was really little – about three years old. She loved guava juice. The guava is the prominent note in the aroma and in the tea, so if you love guava and you are a fan of flavored green teas, you should like this one. It doesn’t have a lot of the buttery or vegetal taste many greens have, but rather a fruity floral taste. There is also a bit of black tea blended in this, which seems to deepen the color of the cup a little but isn’t a front note in the taste. Thank you, Harney and Sons!

Another sample from JacquelineM! When I opened the container and saw the rose petals and smelled the aroma, I wanted a huge bowl of it to display as a decoration and scent the house – drinkable potpourri! Many Earl Grey teas scare me a little when dry because they can smell overpowering and that makes me think of industrial strength cleaners. This one, steeped, is delicate and a light amber color. The rose flavor is in the forefront and I think there is jasmine sweetening this as well? The bergamot is not strong at all. Although it was good plain, I think I liked it best with a tiny sprinkle of sugar. Thank you, J! A lovely tea to look at and to sip!

Thank you, JacquelineM! This was delightful! After having quite a day, I needed a good cuppa! There are so many flavors in here to experience, I can’t wait to drink it again. It is like meeting a really interesting person and knowing when you leave them that you haven’t heard even the half of it and you can’t wait to see them again. This one will tease me until I drink it a time or two more and really figure all those flavors. It doesn’t get muddy or dark, just so so smooth and flavorful. No additions – this was great plain.

I love this tea! I bought it on a whim in anticipation of cool fall weather coming. (HA! Like that will happen anytime soon..) I already had some Cranberry Autumn and thought this would be more or less a clone of it with a tiny variation. Oh, was I EVER wrong! The personality of this tea is completely different. Cranberry Autumn is bright and bracing, great for a gathering of friends or a party – I consider it a very social tea. But Boston, now…Boston is curling up on the couch feeling very mellow and satisfied, Boston is intimate, Boston is “pray for a rainy, chilly day to read a good book” tea. Boston is contentment, with a happy little glow in the hearth of your heart. I WILL be ordering more of this. I have served it to one friend already who loved it, and the others who love flavored tea will be getting some soon….

This is a popular Harney tea in fall! It is very bright and bracing. The cranberry flavor and citrus blend nicely and make for a good, warming “social” cup of tea. Read my review of Boston and you’ll see why I call it that! I want to try it soon with a touch of freshly ground cinnamon…..

Thank you, JacquelineM for this sample! I made two separate pots of this today for our little tea party. I made a plate of fudge covered grahams from Keebler and Pepperidge Farm chocolate assortment to go with our tea. As I poured the tea, I thought I was smelling chocolate – but surely it was on my hands from the cookie plate? But I had never noticed it before. Smelled my hands – nothing. Smelled the tea – there it is! I have heard of teas having chocolate notes, I’ve even tasted unsweetened cocoa notes in some teas, but this smelled CHOCOLATE! It is a good, smooth tea. I think when I serve this in future it will be with a cheese plate to complement the chocolate notes instead of having chocolate-y cookies that compete with it. Very nice premium tea from Premium Steap! I think it could withstand an even longer steep time if you like your tea stronger.

This one just gets better each time I have it. I now drink it with no milk or sugar, and enjoy it with Aero whipped chocolate and Pepperidge Farm cookies in the afternoon.

Thank you to Lori for this sample!

I am with Morgana on this one. I smell and taste darjeeling. I don’t know if it is really in there, but that is what I get. It is smooth, not too astringent, and I really don’t detect any smoke at all. It has good flavor, though, was decent both plain or with milk and sugar added, and ….I think…..it may be reminding me of Margaret’s Hope 2nd Flush FTGFOP. That’s the darjeeling I am sensing, I suppose. Maybe the tiniest bit pepper-y, too?

Yes, I drank this one AGAIN. Yes, I still love it. It is still lightly smokey and intoxicates me on frumpled mornings. And even though I used the last marvelous leaves to make this cuppa, I refuse to click “Remove from Cupboard” because I marched right in here and ordered a whole pound. Aaaaaaaah.

I ordered the sample of this one since I am not a huge fan of Yunnan teas, although I enjoy a few pu-erhs. It is rpetty nice, but I would say that the astringency is leaning toward 2 for me, though Harney and Sons rates it as a one. The teas with NO astringency usually get a one. This one was a little drying on the tongue the more I sipped. The flavor is pleasant, I detected the very lightest whiff of smoke, and there was just a hint of pepper. I agree with another post that it tends to a white pepper scent rather than black pepper. Still, I stand by my personal feelings about yunnans and this one doesn’t sway me, though if you are a yunnan fan, you just may love this one.