Teavivre

These were my first dragon pearls and I was very excited to try them out. I used 6 pearls for 16 oz of water and steeped them for 5 minutes which I felt was long but that is what the site instructed. Luckily, the end result is neither bitter nor astringent. Instead, it is a smooth and slightly malty cup with notes of chocolate and Earth. I have another 6 pearls and when I brew those up, I might try a shorter steep time to see how that impacts the flavor as I am hoping to tone down the earth quality a bit and highlight the chocolate. Milk/sweetener might also do the trick but this cup I have chosen to drink straight and I am enjoying it nonetheless. Thank you Dexter for sharing these with me. It has been a fun experience for my first time with dragon pearls :).

I am in love with this tea – the whole experience! First of all, be prepared to be blown away by the size of the leaf for they are huge — thin, whole, flat leaves with lovely shades of green coloring in each. They are very delicate and paper thin like tissue paper. The tea leaves are fully hand-crafted and truly a sensational work of art.

I like to brew tai ping hou kui teas in my clear 12oz Chinese tumbler with screw-on filter for drinking. 180 degree water with 12-15 long leaves. It is always a pleasure to watch these tall soldiers stand at full attention in the water (this is the fun factor for me). The tea aroma was vegetal and sweet and was a very pale yellowish-green color. The flavor is sweet with clear vegetal overtones and I was able to detect a little citrus. I drink it down to the point where the tumbler is only 1/3 full and then I top off with more water. I had fun sipping this one all afternoon.

Thanks to Angel and Teavivre for letting me enjoy their new harvest of green teas when they are at their peak of freshness!

What a unique green. I’ve never seen anything like it! The leaves are huge and very dark bright green and pressed flat. The scent is crisp fresh veggies.

The liquor is extremely vegetal, slight tart cherry notes, and very little sweetness. I actually rather like this. It is a welcome change from all the buttery super sweet green teas I’ve been drinking lately. This one is different and has a lot of character!

Another from Teavivre. I got to brew this in my glass teapot. Yeah! The leaf is so interesting. Long and flat. Is it just me or does anyone else think it looks like green beef jerky? lol. The dry leaf scent is fresh and grassy.

I steeped the entire 5 g sample for 1 1/2 minutes in 12 oz of 175 F water. To me this borders on bitter without crossing the line. Teavivre says it is not bitter at all. I like the edge it gives the cup but I am wondering am I doing something wrong?

This is buttery with a taste of corn and peas with maybe some light green bean notes. For my preferences the closer to room temperature the better the flavors develop. A very nice tea that is kind of dragonwell like but completely different.

Thank you Angel of Teavivre for this wonderful sample! The package of green teas arrived the other day, and I just couldn’t resist it any longer. I opened this package up for a quick sniff, but it smelled so fresh and tasty that I had to let it jump the queue!

It’s the last week of school, and suitably hectic, so I made this Western-style in my travel mug. Sipping it now, I think it definitely deserves better treatment, so next time I’m going to get out my gaiwan for the full experience.

This morning I added 2tsp of raw sugar (which is actually pretty restrained for me, as I have a horrible sweet tooth) and I think that was just right. The flavor is light and fruity, with a crisp, grassy aftertaste.

I look forward to trying this again in the weeks to come!

Tried this one again today, but cold-brewed this time (in a large french-press overnight). I enjoy this particular tea a bit more this way. Its flavor profile is very well-suited for an iced tea. Interestingly, it seems to taste a bit more floral , and I’m getting a definite cauliflower note.

I received this as a sample courtesy of Angel and Teavivre. I was definitely excited to see this one, this is just about the last variety of Chinese green tea that I have yet to try and it’s been on my “to do list” for a while.

The dry leaf is very beautiful, and I was surprised to see just how intact these large, flat, elongated leaves stayed through shipping. There were very few broken pieces, I’m impressed. While it was brewing, it smelled very similar to a dragonwell, but with a stronger vegetable aroma. I was conservative on the temperature as I usually enjoy my green teas better that way (160 degrees) and I steeped it for two minutes.

I am sipping on the tea as I write this, and I enjoy it very much. It’s a beautiful sunny day, and a nice refreshing green tea is just what the doctor ordered. It is light and refreshing. The predominant flavors I pick up are absolutely those of green beans and peas as others have noted. I always expect a vegetal flavor in a green, but it is intriguing to me just how easily I can pinpoint the flavor of this one as those particular flavors! There is a very subtle element of silkiness/“buttery” flavor but it is just a light accent. There is a pleasant and refreshing brisk/astringent quality to it also. I just can’t get over how beautiful and interesting the appearance of the leaf is!

The overall character of this tea is invigorating and refreshing, and I am enjoying sitting in the sunshine and sipping it. Thanks a lot to Angel and all of Teavivre for the sample.

I received a generous sample of this from boychik. Thank you!

This was my second time with this tea and the words to describe it still escape me. I enjoy this tea, but it is not one that I crave. It has a quality about it that I just can’t describe. It is sweet, but more ice tea sweet than, potato/bread sweet. I am not sure if that makes sense at all. I guess to try another angle it is a lighter bodied tea that has more hints of honey and hay than bread and sweet potatoes. I have enough for one more session and I hope to be able to describe what I am tasting a little better next time.

I have long been on a quest to find a Monkey Picked oolong as good as the one at Teavana that I am in love with. This one is definitely the closest I’ve found so far. Anddd it’s cheaper than Teavana too-which is always a plus :P I like enough teas from Teavana already, I don’t need to waste all my money there XD
But yeah, definitely a good tea! :D

Water: 8oz

Leaves: tiny curled leaves

Steep: 1m,2m,3m

Aroma: Spinach, Collard greens

Color: light pale yellow

Taste: The aroma for this was quite different it reminded me of spinach & collard greens. The leaves were tiny curled and a bit fuzzy. I accidentally forgot to time my first steep when i sat down at my computer (I use an online timer). I found this cup to be quite smooth & lightly flavored. I want to try things differently next time i brew this tea, use more tea leaves. I usually go for the 1tsp per 8oz of water but have been wanting to test the waters to see which result I’d get from more leaves. The other brews remain the same keeping with the overall lightness of the tea. Spring 2015 harvest

Water: 8oz

Leaves: tiny fuzzy rolled rods

Steep: rinse,30s,50s,80s

Aroma: Grassy

Color: pale almost clear

Taste: Due to last nights brewing session I now know that 15 minutes is the perfect cool down for my kettle when steeping green tea. Upon opening this tea it reminded me of a fuzzy Laoshan green. As with the other tea the aroma was grassy & pleasant. A 30s steep left me with a light flavor with the fuzz from the leaves floating in my cup. 50s the color deepened but the flavor remained about the same. Lastly the 80s the grassy aroma it once had faded a bit, as for the taste it was relatively the same. When speaking of the leaf size once they fully unravel they are much bigger than what you start off with, which was pretty cool.

Hello everybody, I’m still alive! Reason to celebrate!

I would have been here way more frequently if there was a Steepster app. I checked again in the app store after typing this just to be sure, but there was only one called “Sleepster”…not helpful. I find it very annoying to use Steepster on my phone or ipad. I’m at work now so this will do…

I drank this tea the other day. Why did this tea inspire me to jump back onto Steepster after a hiatus of what I can only imagine (without checking) is months and months if not a year or more? Well, I remember when I first tried it long ago (and I had rated it 74, just saying), I wasn’t in love with it. The other day when I had it, I was pretty jazzed about how tasty it was, it kind of surprised me actually. Not sure if it’s because I had been trying to get rid of old flavoured teas that I no longer care for, but when I made this one I was like “WOW! It’s so sweet and delightful!” I never thought a green tea would be sweet. But this one was. And I actually felt like I was drinking something that was natural, rather than a chemically flavoured concoction.

So, i figured I would share that with whoever cared. I still love all my Teavivre teas. I find lately I’m doing REALLY sad sipdowns of Butiki teas that I’ve been clinging to, along with rotating between a variety of Teavivre, Whispering Pines and other tasty black teas. It would be nice if the exchange rate would be better for us Canadians. Not that I need more tea.

My profile on the side talks about how much I love Harney and Sons, that was past me. Present Me is cursing Past Me for buying so many gigantic tins of teas that I don’t love anymore.

Shaking my fist at you, Past Me. No one needs that much of ONE tea. WAH.

Bumping this rating up to 80 because i feel it deserves to be higher than the 70s

Received a bunch of Spring 2014 green tea samples from Teavivre today! So exciting.

I grabbed a random one to try first, and this was it.

Let me set the scene: I’m sitting down to enjoy a much needed cup of tea for a couple minutes while my baby plays contentedly in her exersaucer…..probably won’t last too long.
Went for our stroll earlier. It’s really hot and humid here today. That never stops me from drinking hot tea though I’ve been taking iced tea with me on our walks.

So I opened up the sample pack of this and was overwhelmed (in a good way) by both the appearance of the leaves (bright green, small, curly and fuzzy), and the smell – fresh, vegetal, appealing in a foreign (to me), way.

I steeped at 85 degrees for 4 min (package said 1-5, next time I will do three as it got a wee bit bitter on me). The wet leaves looked so pretty and new in my steeper.

The liquor was a pale greenish yellow, smelled really vegetal, and just green, if that makes sense….I’m normally all about the black teas. This was a nice change.

I brewed this not knowing what to expect, and ended up really enjoying it.
Unfortunately I’m terrible at being descriptive in a way that would actually help anyone, but I did go read some other reviews to see if I could reach some of those conclusions in my own cup.

I definitely see where the whole “vegetable soup broth” thing comes from, because it’s more of a savory cup than a sweet one, though it has its own sort of nutty, vegetal sweetness to it.

That’s about all I’ve got for you though. I’m looking forward to trying the other samples…thanks very much Angel/Teavivre!

I think I’m going to enjoy these lighter teas for the summer!

NOM! love this dragonwell. Tigress_Al sent this to me. I’ve had it before but it was so nice to revisit. I tend not to stock green teas in my cupboard because i drink them so infrequently. this is just a great cup of tea…fresh, sweet and lacking that totally vegetal quality i often get tired of. thanks madam!

thank you Angel of teavivre for sending me this tea. As most of you know, greens are not my go to tea. That being said, these teas from angel are almost enough to make me want to change my mind. :) This is a fabulous dragon well. it’s tangy and very much GREEN but without that overly vegetal taste that i dislike. there’s a buttery sweetness to this as well that i am loving! i drank more than a few cups of this today. I may need to see if a joint order is possible since i DO love these teas but i can’t get through a 100g bag fast enough to keep the freshness!

Water: 8oz

Leaves: large rolled rods

Steep: rinse 30s,60s,90s

Aroma: Grassy

Color: pale almost clear

Taste: I decided to use my new electric kettle today which made this experience more exciting. I hope to get the brewing right since i don’t have a thermometer yet. I let my kettle cool about 15 minutes then i gave the tea a quick rinse & steeped for 30s. The aroma was grassy & vegetable like. The large leaved had unraveled quite a bit after rinsing and steeping. As for taste it was slightly grassy but overall very light and refreshing.

I was late to the Jasmine Dragon Pearls party (where have you been all my life????), but I’m making up for lost time. These beautiful specimens from Teavivre are very nice indeed. I love the uniform size and the silver striations of the dried pearls, the gorgeous unrolling of the leaves during infusion, and above all the taste! They were already on my “to stock” list, but tonight we are reaffirming our vows.

I’ve been noticing that my fear of oversteeping Japanese teas has been carrying over to China greens, which I seem to be systematically understeeping and underheating. Instead of 73C, I now believe that I should be using closer to 79C, in order to extract all of the goodness, especially in a case such as these tightly rolled dragon pearls. They need a bit of a push in order to unfurl. I suppose that the less they unfurl in the first infusion, the more flavor there will be in the second infusion, but I’m going to try to aim for 79C from now on for China greens, since this temperature is giving me consistently better brews. I still believe that 85C is too high, though it is a frequently prescribed temperature on packaging.

The smooth succulence of this tea is a joy to experience. I do believe that I prefer jasmine green to white because of the flavor imparted by the base tea.

Roses and jasmine are often combined in perfume, so I figured that I should have some jasmine as a part of my Rose festival. Yeah, I know. I’m moving to Rationalization City!

In truth, I just felt like brewing some of these yummy jasmine pearls—so I did! The first and second infusion were very good: smooth and very fragrant but also with a fine green tea base. The third infusion began to wane a bit, so I threw it in the refrigerator to try iced tomorrow.

How did I go more than a week without drinking any jasmine???? Well, that unacceptable state of affairs has now been rectified, as I just enjoyed a large glass of Teavivre Premium Jasmine Pearls.

Today I really noticed the quality of the base tea, which is very silken and smooth. This is a case where the floral flavoring and the base tea are equally important and neither is present to cover up the deficiencies of the other. The liquor is pale green veering peach.

The uniform smallish-sized pearls have not yet fully unfurled and are still extremely fragrant, so another tasty infusion definitely lies on the horizon…

Ever since my reawakening to the possibility of imbibing jasmine, I’ve been looking forward to trying the Teavivre jasmine-scented teas. This is one of those odd cases where a few negative experiences long ago (or was it only one?) led me erroneously to conclude that jasmine teas don’t work for me. How wrong I was! Since taking a chance on a higher-grade variety than whatever it was that turned me off in a very big way to the idea of drinking jasmine, I have had a number of positive experiences and am even approaching the point of jasmine obsession!

It’s not that strange, really, given that I love natural jasmine in perfume. I wear jasmine soliflores with great pleasure, and the discovery that jasmine works inside my body as well as on my skin was a happy one!

The Teavivre Premium Jasmine Dragon Pearls are on the small side (relative to what I’ve seen), but they are beautifully striated with shimmering light and shadows. Silken strands run throughout the uniform-sized balls.

I used 3 grams in about 9 ounces for 3 minutes at 79C. That was quite a few pearls (maybe 20?), because they are fairly small. The liquor was pale peachy green and the taste that of natural jasmine flowers. The green tea used must be of high quality (no surprise) because it has a subtle taste and smooth texture. The pearls unfurled pretty well over the course of the first three-minute infusion, and I intend to reinfuse the leaves, as they are still redolent of fine jasmine.

I am happy with these pearls and look forward to trying the other Teavivre jasmine varieties, both the downy and the peach-scented pearls, in addition to the other scented green teas.

(Blazing New Rating #52)

Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – October 2023 Tea #4 – A tea that gets you going

I was buzzing about today and I thought it must have been this tea.  Then I remembered this prompt and that I had finished off this sample today.  Keemun usually gets me buzzing about!  This was okay, but Teavivre’s other keemuns are obviously much better.  But I have also had much worse keemun!
2023 sipdowns: 89