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The liquor is a lovely amber color. The flavor of this actually reminds me of an oolong. It’s sweet, malty, woodsy, but with a very…unique vegetal note. Not quite spinach but close. Almost as if someone mixed an oolong with chrysanthemum flowers.

Backlogging from last night.

I originally tried drinking this “Chinese style” with the leaves in the tea cup. After battling floating leaves through most of one cup and hardly being able to taste anything except the leaves that kept creeping into my mouth I decided that the Chinese must be either crazy or very skilled & dumped the leaves into my green tetsubin, adding a bit more since the pot is obviously larger than my cup.

Ah, much better. The pale pale gold liquor was vegetal, nutty, and (with a tiny bit of sugar) had a buttery, almost silken, mouth-feel. You know how it feels to drape a heavy silk brocade over your arm and hand and then you turn your arm this way and that to feel how it drapes and swishes, pretending that you are wearing a formal kimono with long, flowing sleeves? Yeah, it was kinda like that.

Having this again this morning. I think I like this tea so much partly because of how different it is from everything else in my cupboard.

Backlogging from this morning.

The first thing I noticed upon opening this tin was that the leaves were much smaller,(broken?) than that of the Bohea. The liquor, like that of the Bohea, is amber-gold but not as lively a color and with less gold. The flavor, unlike the color, was much lighter. The smoke and fruit notes much subtler. Due to this I actually managed to detect a coco note in my final, cooled cup :D

This is a very nice tea, but I think I still like the Bohea better. I never thought I’d say that about something that has as much of a smokey note as it does.

Morning! Time to try one of my new black teas! I got two with very similar flavor profiles so I decided to try this one first just because “Bohea” is fun to say.

The smell of the dry leaves was very smokey which made me a little nervous since the last smokey tea I had was rather like drinking a campfire. But at my first sip of this bright, amber-gold liquor I was, if not in love then in like, and very much intrigued. It was sweet and fruity and the smoke was a nicely subtle compliment to the other flavors. It was a very…thought provoking flavor combination.

At a couple points I thought I detected the coco note in either the aroma or liquor flavor but it was even more subtle than the smokiness and I cannot be certain that that was what I was actually detecting.

I think, after another pot or two of this I could very definitely be more than just in like. Perhaps even in love.

Backlogging from last night.

So I finally got a chance to sit down with my box of teas from The Tao of Tea last night. Being evening I decided not to dive into the blacks quite yet and so I chose this. I ended up oversteeping it…by a lot. 14 minutes to be precise. There was surprisingly little bitterness however. The pale gold liquor tasted just like biting into an orange. Granted it was more like a just-ripe orange that might have benefited from staying on the branch just a bit longer but it was definitely juicy, recognizable orange.

My Tao of tea order came in yesterday while I was at work and between the busy evening and waking up later this morning I wasn’t able to devote the time for a full review, making me very sad. So I decided to perk up my mood with an old favorite. I swear, I collect Stash chais. There are very few chai/spiced teas of theirs that I haven’t bought. This one is strongly cardamom and cinnamon like the rest but the white tea base gives it a lighter feel? flavor? I’m not quite sure how to describe it. But it makes it a great tea for a morning with just a bit of a chill.

I love the color of this tea liquor. It is a gorgeous deep red that mellows to a spicy-orange with milk. The dominant flavors are the lemongrass and pepper. I did oversteep this a bit but the resulting mild bitterness was smoothed out when I added honey instead of my usual sugar.

There was actually enough of this sample to use in my 12oz tetsubin pot! I still had to dump it into a filter though. Note: padded envelopes are marvelous things and not all that expensive either. The added cost is worth it’s weight in first impressions and customer satisfaction. Powdered tea, unless you ordered matcha, is not generally what a customer wants in their samples.

Anyway, back to the tea.

When I first poured the water into the pot there was a nice aroma of rose. By the time it had been steeping for 5 minutes it smelled like spinach, bitter spinach. I didn’t realize something could smell bitter. The color of the liquid was a dull olive-yellow. Thinking it couldn’t possibly be as odd as it smelled I took a small sip…

OMG what IS THAT!? D:

VERY bitter/acrid with a background of rancid greens. Like spinach that has been left to sit in the fridge for months upon months until the smell became so overwhelming that someone had to clean the fridge out before the stuff started it’s own eco-system. I was only able to make out the rancid greens flavor on the second sip though. Yes, I took a second sip. In the interests of a full review. If this had all the proven medical qualities of cold medicine I might drink a full cup, but only because I absolutely detest cold medicine and this stuff doesn’t linger on the palate.