Camellia Sinensis

From Sil. :)

Just a sweet black tea. Little bit floral, tiny bit earthy.

Sipping on it as I try to get into the readings I have for class… not having much luck TBH. Maybe I just need to read the abstracts and identify what the method is.

Hello,
hello.

Just popping in here because Sil sent me this sample ages and ages ago and I finally tried it.

It’s, uhh, dirt tea. The stuff people always say tastes like chocolate.

I only finished half the cup.

Thank you for sharing, Sil, but this one didn’t work for me!

ALSO tasting note 2222. -

Made a fancy pumpkin spice latte on the stove top and decided I just wanted to go with a plain black tea so the other flavours could stand out. So the pumpkin and spices did the heavy lifting but this provided the perfect smooth base for those other flavours. Check out the pic here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CjWRvXhuaBD/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

My morning tea during the first of several video calls. It’s nice to be getting into work but I hate video calls so it was nice having a little cup of tea to keep me company.

An expert, I am not. But I can say the other reviews for this tea are quite accurate. As others have noted, MS is quite earthy. Adding to others, I find notes of beets, smoke, and sweet rice paper that play nearly identically on the nose and the palate. It is quite consistent across short steepings. A very interesting cup that is sure to please fans of Islay scotch whisky and maduro cigars.

I believe I had this on Sunday as a Western style cuppa. Though it wasn’t actually raining the afternoon had a similar feel to a more grey and stormy day which made it perfect for curling up with a good tea and some manga – very low key and cozy. This tea is nice with some pleasant sweet floral notes. It leans greener than I like my yancha, but on a more drabby afternoon that green quality certainly isn’t hurting!! Plus it still had some roast and an almost plum skin undertone as well which are a little more at home for me.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CYhdjpWO9K7/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ1EVMOlVI0&ab_channel=antiherovideo

Gongfu from today, post work.

This is greener than the yancha I typically go for, but I enjoyed it a lot! The session was filled with palate coating heady floral notes, soft consistent astringency on the bed of the mouth but a thicker and syrupy liquor, juicy lychee and white grape notes w/ a greener vegetal undertone!! To be fair, I definitely was brewing really heavy handed so I think a lot of that astringency was pulled out by me, so flash steeps or lower water temp might not have drawn that out; but I also think it probably wouldn’t have tasted so juicy and fruity. So, worth the trade off in my opinion.

Truly was an oolong kinda day today…

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/B—x3xyg96P/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wUKGHPbn_k

Following the lackluster chai latte at the cafe today, I decided to go with something else…a matcha latte. Now, I normally wouldn’t get this because the matcha I drink is almost exclusively flavored matcha. However, this was a white chocolate matcha latte and I figured I would give it a go.

I ended up really enjoying it. They whisked this matcha in some hot water and then dumped a few ounces of white chocolate. Like literal cubes of it. That was topped with steamed milk. It made for such a creamy and decadent latte. The white chocolate really came through and provided a great top note to the more vegetal base of the matcha.

It honestly was so good that I even got a matcha smoothie to go using this same matcha, a banana, and vanilla oat milk. Once again, I am enjoying it but the smoothie is a bit icy and not as good as the latte from before. Nevertheless, I have enjoyed this matcha today and would get either drink again.

Pot of tea!

I took advantage of my staycation this week to meet up at the Camellia Sinensis tea house with a coworker/friend who is on mat leave right now. I’ve shopped at the store many, many times since moving to Montreal but this was actually my first time in the tea house side of the location.

I had such a lovely experience, though I’m sure much of that was just the amazing company and thrill of catching up with someone I missed dearly. She had brought her newborn with her as well (two months old) and she was such an angel! She slept the entire time, and is just the cutest thing. I don’t even like kids, but I feel like I’ll like her!

We split a cheese tray, and I had a delicious creme brulee – but of course the point of going to a teahouse is to have tea! I picked this one because I was just craving some good shou, and I opted to have it prebrewed in a teapot instead of brewing it myself because I was a little bit paranoid about having hot water around a newborn when I have such a penchant for being a sloppy pourer when making tea gongfu.

It was a great tea, and while I didn’t pay SUPER close attention to the specific flavour notes (because the point was to talk and catch up with my friend!) I do recall it tasting sweet, smooth & earthy with a clean finish and hints of date jam.

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9C86R9gjIE/

Thick foam, milky taste, and vegetal aftertaste that has a little bit of a bitter bite.

Gongfu!

I’ve had a hard to place tea craving for the last couple of days, and this was exactly what I was looking for. The liquor is smooth and medium bodied with an overall warm, toasty profile of mixed grains and nuts. The top notes have just a tinge of a brassy mineral-type quality, and there an ever so slightly caramel like sweetness to the undertones. I’ve always been impressed with the tea productions from the Camellia Sinensis Tea Studio in India, but this is my stand out favourite!! Such a good kukicha – plus look at the gorgeous silvery colour of those twigs!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CzJ9rPMueFF/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WW7cuAm-7Y

Evening cuppa from this past weekend. Can you tell that with the change in weather I’ve been strongly craving more nutty/toasty/roasted/grilled type of teas? ‘Cause as I work on tasting notes tonight it’s abundantly obvious to me that was a major trend in my tea drinking this weekend…

Gongfu!

Thanks once again to my friend Teajay for having some virtual tea with me, and also for the gentle poke into making something roasted for my second tea of the evening/session. This was a great choice, and really delicious. I can only think to describe the taste as sweet, smooth and toasty notes of roasted peanuts and cashews with a bit of caramelized honey on them. Not the longest lasting flavour – five steeps, reeaaallllyyy pushing the last one – but damn fucking good!! I kept joking that I was drinking “sticks in a bowl” and that, in the past, a version of myself would have found that completely stupid and confusing…

Plus, it gave me an excuse to use my amazing Viter Ceramics shibo set!

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBWJivBAYw6/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reD4QVFDEfg

Yes, I picked a song called Peanut Butter for a tea that tasted like Peanuts. It wasn’t really a conscious choice, but when I realized the tie in I just KNEW that it was some subconscious part of my brain that was all “Yes, this is right”.

Gongfu!

Had to pick up this very unique and interesting take on a Kukicha from CS – and while I think it will probably taste best brewed Grandpa style I also couldn’t resist finding out what happens when you Gongfu brew it. I paired this would some beet hummus, and that ended up working quite nicely.

The tea was really, really roasty – with a sweet roasted/caramelized peanut brittle type of vibe. It’s not overly complex at all, but sometimes you don’t need complexity if you have one or two really well executed flavours. The nutty flavours especially complimented the creamy, earthy flavours of the beet hummus.

It was a good time.

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/B7zIIeIAWzJ/

Check out the third photo, where you can see the dry leaves. I really liked the grey blue hue of this tea a lot!

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f7_Y9LTuZs

This was the tea I picked for the “black tea” prompt for Mastress Alita’s scavenger hunt and after the lapsang, I was just disappointed by it.

F is for…Feng Huang Hong Cha

This is tasting very petrichor/forest-y today and that doesn’t seem right. Am I having an off day? Or is the tea? It’s not bad. It’s just not what this usually is.

I had a gong fu session with this when I realized Camellia Sinensis has instructions on their website for gaiwan brewing. Since I’m still trying to find my footing with it, instructions are helpful.

This was very smooth and malty. No tannins or astringency either. I find when I use about 2 grams of leaf in my 100 ml gaiwan, I don’t get the astringency that I got with some of my other gong fu sessions using more leaf. In fairness, 2 grams is also what the companies recommend for 100 ml so I will probably stick to that at least for teabento and Camellia Sinensis teas unless otherwise instructed.

Other than this being smooth, I don’t remember much because I sorta just enjoyed it while watching Shameless. I didn’t pay much attention but instead just kept steeping and sipping.

In my recent CS order, I added this sencha. It is much more expensive than your average sencha, but based on the description I wasn’t sure why exactly was it special. Having tried it now, I can see why its uniqueness may be hard to convey in words.

There are no specific aspects of it that are very unusual on their own I would say. The tea has an aroma of freshly cut grass, while the taste profile has a strong umami, nice grassy sweetness, good minerality and almost no harsh bitterness or astringency. It is very elegant and balanced, yet strong tasting. There are many fleeting notes to be uncovered, let me just mention lime and pine nuts, others escape my mind now.

The aftertaste is long, grassy, expansive and cooling with an interesting returning fragrance. Later on it gets a bit more spicy and herbaceous. Texture wise, the tea is viscous, thick and buttery, plus I get a good body warming sensation.

All in all, this is just such an elegant and tasty green tea that I think it might even be worth the high price for special occasions. The fact that it lasts almost twice as long as an average sencha just underscores that.

Another green tea I got from CS. I was intrigued by the description, and the tea didn’t disappoint – it is indeed quite unique for a Japanese green tea.
The floral aspects are very strong, mostly in the aroma and the aftertaste. At times it even reminds me of a Taiwanese high mountain oolong. However, it has lighter body and silkier mouthfeel than those tend to have.

Smelling the dry leaves in preheated kyusu produced an association of poppy seed pastries, and some flowers. The latter were then complemented by a sort of meaty aroma after the rinse. The colour of the liquor is fairly light, but still bright green as you’d expect. It tastes crisp and fresh with good amount of bitterness and very little astringency. There are notes of rapini, green apple, and distinctive sugar sweetness.

This Kabusecha is a delicate and well balanced tea with little bitterness or astringency and a velvety mouthfeel. It doesn’t seem have any sharp or particularly strong characteristics, although the sweetness can be quite interesting at times – it reminds me of both Yi Wu shengs (Yi Shan Mo) and light-roasted high mountain Taiwanese oolonsg (Shan Lin Xi). It’s a great morning tea for days with savoury breakfast; my default choice for morning tea with sweet breakfast are blacks.

The aroma emerging from the preheated kyusu bears resemblance to pastries, rye bread, pollen, and cut grass. It gets weaker throughout the session though. Taste is crisp, bready, tart, and savoury, with a decently strong spinach note. It transforms into a sweet, floral, and marine aftertaste.

Gongfu Sipdown (715)!

I’ve been trying something new with tasting notes – for a few months I was queuing everything up from the week and then writing all the notes up on Saturday but that was starting to feel exhausting to me and I realized that with Advent Calender season coming up I’ll be drinking 5+ teas a day just SPECIFICALLY from advents. So, the number of tasting notes I’d be doing in one day would have been insane. What I’ve been doing for a week now is just setting a “cap” to my queue – it can’t exceed more than fifteen teas. That’s been more manageable for me, and I’m still getting the satisfaction of writing tasting notes without the exhaustion I was experiencing on Saturdays…

Anyway! Here’s what I wrote on instagram for this bad boy:

_Sipped an interesting green tea from the Camellia Sinensis Tea Studio today; a Nilgiri grown Mao Feng!! I received this in my MTL tea festival sample bag & I’m happy I did because this unique terroir & production style combo was really educational, but likely not something I’d have independently sought out! A bit bitter and bitingly astringent at times, but that steeps that weren’t had a lovely vegetal sweetness to them that even I, as someone with a bit of a green tea aversion, could appreciate!

I think we got around eight steeps in total, but honestly only about half of them were good. I enjoyed the experience a lot though; every time I get to try a tea with a unique terroir or production I get a little excited!

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/B5XzADAA8vw/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIGNNOZ0948