T-We Tea

Strange, I thought I had done a tasting note for this tea but evidently not.

Tea of the morning. This is a local San Francisco company with a very unique blend of black teas here, assam, nilgiri and keemun. This gives it somewhat of a stout flavor profile with a bit of heft as well. Not really for the faint at heart, I definitely needed soymilk in this but it’s good for the morning time, hence the name. Nilgiri was an interesting choice to blend with the keemun and assam, which gives it an almost lemony component.

Can’t write too much more or I’ll be late for work!

I stopped by this shop for the first time last week and picked this up. I think ashmanra told me about this company. I didn’t know it existed, and it’s only a couple blocks from my work! Anyway, it’s a very modern, tiny little shop. They have their regular blends and then they have their “fancy pants” blends. Haha! Their teas seem to only come in 2.5 oz. packages. They don’t have a huge selection, but they did have 3 different chai’s. They have Chai Me (herbal), Chai This, and Chai That. I picked up Chai That because it had star anise in it. I think it’s supposed to be the spicier of the two black chai’s. I was a little disappointed in the packaging, because inside the box, the tea is in kind of a thin plastic bag with one of those curl-down ties, but once you open it, it’s not as secure.

The dry leaf of this tea smells great! There only seems to be one little star anise in my little bag though. Once steeped, it still smells great! However, the taste was disappointing. I thought the spice blend was pretty flat, meaning I couldn’t discern high or low notes. Oh well, it was fun to try, but apparently not the blend for me.

I discovered this tea company recently when I was at the Treasure Island flea market and it will be worthy of a blog post pretty soon. :)

Don’t know why there isn’t a photo of this tea on their website. Anyway I thought this combination sounded intriguing: Indonesian java black tea, Chinese keemun black tea, cacao nibs and cinnamon.

It is interesting. The cinnamon is a very predominate flavor.The cacao is pretty light but the black tea base has a bit of smokiness. I can’t remember how long I steeped this for exactly because I’ve been picking up and trying to get my laundry done. I’m sure I steeped it for at least 5 minutes and then added some soymilk to add a bit of creaminess. It’s good! The blend is really creative and I look forward to trying more from this San Francisco company.

I received a small tin of this as a Christmas present from a subset of in-laws.

In the tin, this tisane blend smells faintly of the rose petals and that “dusty” smell that most dried roses have; but none of the orange slices or coconut pieces.

Brewed, this tisane still smells of the rose petals.

I added a bit of honey, because I have to have “sweet” tea.

Aficionados of extremely delicate tisanes would probably enjoy this, but I prefer a bolder, black tea that can chase away English rain, despite living in Texas.