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Sooo…. I can’t give this a rating because i pretty much screwed up brewing my sample a la not enough tea for the water i dumped it in. That being said, from what i can tell i probably would have really enjoyed this tea :) soooo yeah. that’s my story. I’m sticking to it. so there. neener neener neener!
One cup away from an empty package of this one, but I enjoyed it immensely. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that I was rocking gently in the patio glider, temps were in the lowish 70’s, had a good book in my lap, and the lawn was finally mowed.
Love this one because it is truly fruity and not tart. Probably won’t shop for an equivalent until spring, but I hope I can find one.
Oh dear. I drank all of this without writing any notes! Hmm…what can I remember about this…? I remember not being all that impressed, honestly. I threw out the first infusion as a wash, but the following infusions were so weak and watery for a puerh. The leaf seemed to be finely ground so that might explain the rapid loss of flavor. I made it again but drank the first steep. Not too bad. Smells like wet earth tastes a bit like cocoa. It doesn’t fill your senses with flavor like other puerhs I’ve had. I guess I started with the good stuff and now I’m spoiled. :)
Thank you for sharing with me TeaEqualsBliss!
Backlogging. I want to thank Mercuryhime for this one!
I enjoyed a few cups with my sister on Thursday Evening. She had never had flowering tea before. She liked it. She said it was a nice mellower green tea.
I enjoy flower teas. I thought it was alright. It wasn’t overly intense in anyway. It was a fair Jasmine and a fair green tea flavor combo. I seemed to enjoy this one a bit more iced than hot.
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I love love love love Creme Earl Grey! It’s my new favorite! I somehow have in my possession three blends of earl grey in the last month! This was sent to me by Rumpus Parable (thank you!). I love the perfect mix of creme and bergamot and a black base. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even like bergamot by itself. I could drink gallons of this stuff. But this is why you don’t try the horrible tea bag labeled ‘earl grey’ and then assume you won’t like any other earl grey. As far as my Battle-of-the-Creme-Earl-Greys goes (see the Element Creme Earl Grey), this one is pretty darn similar to that one. Is it possible it is the same blend? But the more I have of this, the better. I won’t ever get sick of it! (I think I’ve already had six cups of creme earl grey in the last two weeks!)
Actually, I’m not sure if this is the tea I have. It’s one steepster select gave out but it is labeled Creme Earl Grey. Can someone confirm if it is the right tea? I couldn’t find Creme Earl Grey and I figured it would be on steepster somewhere, as it was part of Steepster Select…
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While listening to One Hit Wonders Of the 90s I’m going thru some tea stash piles and putting some more swap packages together…this one it going to go to a good home – but not before I have one last cuppa.
Subscribing to the it’s-going-to-be-stinkin’-hot-so-make-your-one-good-cup-count theory today. This is light and sweet, but enough so that the flavor makes itself known to you—your taste buds don’t have to hunt it down. What I wish all white teas tasted like (if this were a white, which it isn’t).
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I had this one misfiled as a green/oolong, and I believe it’s a Darjeeling — and wow, what a nice one! Big old fluffy leaves that are, indeed, silvery. At just 2 1/2 minutes, it’s a light copper color with what I think is the fruitiest flavor I’ve ever encountered with a Darjeeling. Almost apple cidery. Medium weight and very silky to the tongue.
Since SpecialTeas is obsolete now, I’ll have to putter a bit and see if this variety is available under another umbrella.
Backlogging
Experience buying from SpecialTeas http://steepster.com/places/2931-specialteas-online-stratford-connecticut
I bought eight ounces of this during SpecialTeas’ going-out-of-business sale at the beginning of 2011 for 75 % off.
This was my first pu-erh, and with the exception of a blended pu-erh from Teavana, my only one to date. I don’t have much to say about it, except that I did only one steeping with one Tuo Cha in my teapot and three to four cups of boiling water for five minutes, almost a year ago (my notes show that I rinsed it), and I remember thinking the flavor was earthy, and the liquor was black (I have never before or since seen ‘black’ tea). I am simply stating this here for my records before I forget. I am deliberately staying away from pu-erh, because I have plenty already to keep the tea enthusiast in me happy concentrating on green and oolong teas (at the moment). But, some day, some day …
Backlogging
Experience buying from SpecialTeas http://steepster.com/places/2931-specialteas-online-stratford-connecticut
I bought eight ounces of this during SpecialTeas’ going-out-of-business sale at the beginning of 2011 for 75 % off.
This was my first Honeybush. The rich red color in the pot blew me away. Although initially I found it so different than anything else I had ever had, over time I came to appreciate the tobacco-like flavor and aroma of it (my wife, sadly, has not). I have had red rooiboss since then, and I seem to prefer it over this honeybush. I will leave off the rating (this being my first honeybush, and since I have yet to try any other ‘unflavored’ ones).
Backlogging
Experience buying from SpecialTeas http://steepster.com/places/2931-specialteas-online-stratford-connecticut
I bought two pounds of this during SpecialTeas’ going-out-of-business sale at the beginning of 2011 for 75 % off (I think we paid roughly $6 for it; yeah, that makes it less than $0.20 /OZ; I don’t think we’ll ever get a tea for less than that).
I think I only brewed it once on it’s own. It was decent tasting. It was also my first loose-leaf black tea. From then on out I have been ‘blending’ it with the flavor-added black teas we have, usually in a ratio of 2 parts flavor-added tea to 1 part Java OP (I have also blended it as 1-1); it seems to blend very well with every tea I’ve tried, such that I can’t tell the difference between not using it and using it ( I always brew up any flavor-added tea w/o the Java the first time). That helps to ‘stretch’ our flavor-added black teas. For that, I am really glad we found this tea! We still have plenty of it (it takes a long time to go through 32 ounces a few teaspoons at a time), and I think it will be around for quite awhile longer. I am leaving off the rating (my first black tea).
Backlogging and based entirely on my memory
Experience buying from SpecialTeas http://steepster.com/places/2931-specialteas-online-stratford-connecticut
I bought two pounds of this during SpecialTeas’ going-out-of-business sale at the beginning of 2011 for 75 % off (I think we paid roughly $12 for it).
This was a flavor-added gunpowder green tea (although they don’t mention ‘gunpowder’ in the description). As with The Blanc de Cassis initially my wife and I liked it, but over time it lost it’s appeal (although it took much longer to lose it). It was still enjoyable after it lost it’s initial appeal, but just not as good as the other green teas we began drinking. Still, I more-or-less enjoyed the last pot I made of it (about a month ago). I tried slipping this one past my wife with the last pot, and right away she remembered not liking it (foiled again!).
I bought two pounds of it of it because it was inexpensive, and I was looking for a flavor-added green tea. It was a visually appealing tea with all of the colorful goodies in it. Overall I was satisfied with it (I think my wife was mixed). It did have a couple of pleasant spicy notes in both the aroma and the flavor which complimented what the gunpowder had to offer fairly well. The amazing thing about gunpowder is that it seems it has better longevity than most other green teas because of its shape: the leaves are wrapped into tiny pellets thus exposing very little surface area to the elements that often work to quickly degrade a green teas fresh flavor. Although some of the tea from SpecialTeas (and Teavana that we bought at the same time) were starting to taste flat, this one never did. Overall, this was a reasonably good flavor-added gunpowder.
Backlogging big time and based on my long term memory
Experience buying from SpecialTeas http://steepster.com/places/2931-specialteas-online-stratford-connecticut
I bought four ounces of this during SpecialTeas’ going-out-of-business sale at the beginning of 2011 for 75 % off.
Other than the name, I couldn’t find a picture or a description of this tea anywhere. This was my second sencha (my first was from a local spice shop). Other than the fact that the lemon scent reminded me of Lemon Pledge (strangely enough, that wasn’t all that bad), I really don’t remember much else. I do remember that it was of a better quality than the local stuff. Although I thought it was drinkable, my wife did not (too ‘grassy’, I think). I don’t think any of the teas from SpecialTeas were really all that bad, which is more than I can say for some other unnamed behemoth tea shop that bought them out; ah well, what are you gonna do? All-in-all, from what I what remember I judge it was a decent quality flavor-added Japanese tea. As it was my first quality sencha, I’m leaving off the rating (It’s actually kind of nice not having to assign a rating to some teas).
Backlogging and based on my long term memory and some on my notes
Experience buying from SpecialTeas http://steepster.com/places/2931-specialteas-online-stratford-connecticut
I bought two pounds of this during SpecialTeas’ going-out-of-business sale at the beginning of 2011 for 75 % off (I think it was around $24 for the two pounds). This is a very ‘leafy’ tea, so the bag was humongous, as you might imagine was needed for 32 ounces of fluffy white tea. It was basically a flavor-added bai mu dan white tea. The leaf when taking it out of its bag was so dry I thought something was not quite right (I believe that’s called, bake-y) and I’ve never seen that quality in a tea before or since. Still, I don’t think it was stale or ‘bad’, maybe just a bit over-baked when it was processed?
I tried brewing this starting at lots of different temperature ranges: starting points ranged from 160F all the way to 200F (increasing the temperature about 5F each steeping for a total of five steepings, as at the time that was what I was told to expect out of a white tea). It seemed starting at somewhere between 165 and 190 was best, otherwise it came out flat (little to no flavor). I used my standard white tea brewing times (start at 2 min, then add 1 min for each addn’l steeping).
The liquor had a very light strawberry color. I don’t really remember much about the aroma, other than it was mild, and a little unusual (this was my first exposure to white tea, so it was probably the standard sweet hay aroma). Finally, we come to the flavor; ah the flavor. At first we liked it. I don’t exactly know what happened, but after drinking it off-and-on for a couple of months (maybe less) it didn’t taste as good. It was like, there was something ‘off’ about it, and I started to think the flavors didn’t really belong together. I don’t think the change was due to the tea itself; I think it was our drinking preferences that had changed it was as if it lost its appeal to us, somehow.
After that I tried brewing it up every now and then (I could still drink it, although just barely), and every time I tried slipping it by my wife this is basically what happened: “What is it?” “Uh, a white tea.” She would then give me a suspicious look, and I would either smile, or walk away before our eyes would meet. Upon returning, “How did you like it?” “I didn’t. < pause > Is this one of those teas I don’t like?” It didn’t take long for her to ask me, as I handed her any tea, “Is this one I like?” Smart woman. : /
I gave some of it away, but we still have quite a bit of it (I estimate at least a half pound, or 1/4 of what we had originally, and maybe even more). One positive thing that sticks out in my mind about it: it was a somewhat colorful looking tea, with little blue corn-flower petal and red cranberries mixed in with the white tea tea-leaves. I am currently storing what we have left of it on the top shelf way in the back of our cabinet; and there it sits until I figure out what to do with it. We have talked about adding it to her bath water (similar to Missy’s idea of the foot bath), but we haven’t tried that yet.
Overall I’m disappointed that we stopped liking it. Yet, as with any interesting tea, I’m glad we at least tried it, as it was our first white tea. Since it was my first white tea, I’m leaving off the rating, as I don;t know what to expect at the time. I have tried other bai mu dan’s since, and although I like them, it seems my wife does not. So, maybe she simply doesn’t like the flavor of the base tea, and it wasn’t the flavoring. If I ever get around to swapping I would be more than be happy to give this away to as many that are interested (I just got two separate shipments of samples today—woo, hoo!—and although I was hoping to look into swapping this summer, I don’t see that happening for some time yet). As a final note since it has an odd name (for a dorky English speaker), I used to call it ‘Casablanca’. Can’t beat the classic with Bergman and Bogart, now can you?
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