Teavivre

I get a malty aroma from this tea. It has a mild sweetness with flavors of wheat and brown sugar. It is a good cup of tea, but not one that will make it into my regular rotation.

Now, this one was a disappointment, which does not happen with Teavivre often in my experience. The appearance was cool and the aroma intriguing – grass, mushrooms, leather, spices. The taste, however, was quite meh, with astringency and copper predominating. No reason to order it again.

Received a sample ball of this probably over a year ago but forgot about it. Rediscovered it today and decided to give it a try. I placed the full 6.5g ball into my 90mL jianshui and brewed it up.

I gave it two rinses steeps to let the leaves open up. Once open, the leaves brew a medium yellow and tastes slightly bitter but moderately sweet. Light apricot taste alongside green wood and generic “sheng-y-ness.”

This is a decent tea; above average for balls/mini tuos but not particularly special

One of the few teas from Teavivre I did not care much about. The roast is pretty strong and as a result the taste of Tie Guan Yin is mostly overpowered. The taste of char, malt, some floral sweetness and grass: it sounds more complicated that the taste itself, which is pretty one-dimensional. It just seems to me that you do not have to start with a good quality tea to achieve very similar results.

As the roasted oolongs go I strongly prefer Huang Guanyin from Teavivre as a a good representation of this style.

I have been drinking this tea for a while and it has been steadily growing on me. It has a very appealing sweet smell and taste (chocolate, honey, some indeterminate flowers). The taste is not very complicated but consistently pleasant and warming. In addition, it holds extremely well across for multiple gaiwan infusions.

This is not the tea that wows you and stops in your tracks but rather the one you can rely on to cheer you up. A bit of a trusted daily drinker.

I won this in Teavivre’s awesome giveaway… you win something every time you spin the wheel. Love it. So I won a sample package, a couple giftcards (one $10) and many reward points. This is probably the oddest tea I’ve ever seen. It’s a tiny green orange with a whole in the bottom and top filled with tea. However do they get the tea in the orange? (The tea in the sample pouch came wrapped in foil and taped together with a sticker.) The orange might look moldy, but Teavivre says it is just the sugars. You’re also supposed to steep the whole orange — which is fine because it is about 1 1/2 inches across anyway. I suggest pulling out some of the pu-erh into the infuser before steeping the whole orange, otherwise the pu-erh will have nowhere to expand within the orange. I would say the flavor doesn’t have much additional orange and the pu-erh also doesn’t have too much of actual pu-erh flavor either. I like a deep and dark pu-erh. The pu-erh crammed in this orange is fine… sweet and mild. But it isn’t my type of delicious pu-erh. It’s a very special presentation for a tea but the flavor is lacking in both the orange and the pu-erh itself. I love the idea of an orange flavored pu-erh, so I won’t give up searching for the perfect one.
Steep #1 // one whole orange for a full mug// 8 minutes after boiling // rinse // 3 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 4 minute steep
Steep #3 // just boiled // half a mug // many minute steep

I had very high expectations for this one based on the ratings by others. It does look gorgeous: wiry and multicolored. And it does taste great: malty sweetness. But when you drink it it feels weird. It has a strong backbone similar to keemuns but it adds to it the sweetness of blackberries, overripe black cherries and mangoes – and it does not blend that well. Maybe because I like keemuns so much …but this tea just comes to me as a worse option for a robust cup of tea.

In the subsequent steepings the taste of berries becomes way less intense but that results in the loss of its most memorable quality. It could be good for someone else but I will stick with my keemuns.

The subtleness of the flavors in this tea is quite unexpected. It starts out slightly bitter and grassy but then you get hit with vegetal notes and then it kinda disappears after it’s swallowed. I had to use two tsp for this brew as my first one turned out too light in taste.

I like Teavivre. All of their teas I have tried so far are good and reasonably priced. And now there is this Osmanthus Oolong, the first tea from Teavivre that is different and not in a good way.

I liked the name, Osmanthus, which sounded very exotic and promising. When I tried the first steep I was surprised by the taste: it’s like half of it a typical Ti Guan Yin and another half some fruity-flowery component. And these two halves did not blend well. In the subsequent steeps this initial composition disappeared, with Ti Guan Yin taking almost all of the available space. In the steep 4 the offputting sourness appeared: i.e., this tea does not resteep well.

Al in all, the first steep is not bad and kind a unique but overall for me it was a disappointment. Will not order again.

I think this will deliver a fine experience for DHP enthusiasts. Personally, though, I found the first infusion nice – caramel-y thick body and powerful flavors – but then it sort of died off. But, that is a complaint that I have with most DHP and quite a few Wu Yi oolongs in general.

The roast is present but not overpowering. Good lasting minerality. Nice fresh flavors in aftertaste of tart red fruit and coriander seed.

There you have it. I have other Wu Yi oolongs that I prefer, but this does deliver a good hit of mineral flavors with some nice fruit flavors in the aftertaste.
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Dry leaf – roasted peanut shell, wet rocks, hints of baking spices, freeze-dried strawberries and raspberries. In preheated vessel – charcoal roast prevalent.

Smell – charcoal roast, wet rocks, hint of raspberry

Taste – arrival of charcoal roast, dark caramel, peanut shell, then wet rock minerality. Develops with some hints of cinnamon and baking spice, but overall dry wood and mineral flavors. Finish of coriander seed. Aftertaste of lemongrass, coriander seed, red currant and raspberry.

I didn’t realize until looking up the tea to post this tasting note that Teavivre had a “Golden Monkey” AND and “Premium Golden Monkey.” My sample is the later. The leaves are very furry and delicate, though not quite as tiny and golden as Teavivre’s Tanyang Gongfu. Like the Tanyang there is a slight smokey aroma.

The taste is very mellow and smooth. Tastes of malt (in a lighter way), sweet potato, brown sugar, a faint fruityness, and just a hint of smoke in the background. Very velvety mouthfeel.
Gets tart, but not really bitter when overbrewed. Very different from the Golden Monkeys I’ve had from Teavana and other vendors. This tea is sort of like the missing link between Teavivre’s Tanyang and Bailin Gongfu.

I got a sample of this simply because of the novelty of the huge leaves. There is something really rewarding about holding a giant tea leaf in your hand.

What’s even more rewarding is a session of this tea! Really nice vegetal flavors of spinach and corn, with hints of honey and floral sweetness, all finished up with fresh grass and mint flavors.

In general, fairly familiar green tea flavors, but the added bonus of some green oolong-like floral notes. The finish is also nice – fresh grass and mint. The thick vegetal notes transform into a really refreshing aftertaste.

Priced as a premium tea, but still very reasonable and affordable. Well worth the experience.
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Dry leaf – buttered yeast roll, roasted corn, tomato vine, fragrant floral. In preheated vessel – thick roasted corn sweetness and nuttiness, wildflower honey, cooked spinach.

Smell – corn and spinach, fragrant floral sweetness

Taste – roasted corn, cooked spinach, fresh grass, hints of wildflower honey. Incredibly sweet and fresh aftertaste – honey, honeysuckle, fresh grass, fresh mint

If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought this was a Laoshan Black Tea. It tastes of chocolate and malt. I was surprised at how small the leaves are given that it is a wild grown tea. It is quite tasty.

Wow. I got it as a free sample and it was quite an experience. The tea looks stunning dry and smell incredibly sweet and complex. The complexity persists in taste. There are so many different components that all blend so nicely: wild honey, caramel, rose, graham crackers, flowers and many, many other things. Every time you take a sip you pick up on something new.

And yeah, it has a long, sweet aftertaste. This tea is just such a show stopper on so many levels. It is a poster child for why you need to drink tea without milk, sugar or any other additives. And it priced very reasonably for all it gives. I am ordering it now.

Dry leaf aroma is of strawberry candy.

Strawberry candy scent is present in the brewed tea.

Strawberry flavour is mild and candy-like. Oolong is sweet, reminiscent of chamomile.

What an interesting tea. I got it as a free sample from Teavivre. It cannot be farther away from the smoked version. The dry leaf has an intense sweet smell of blackberry, raspberry and malt. After steeping it for 45 secs in a gaiwan it developed a nice amber color and an incredibly sweet taste of forest berries, malt, spices and honey. Both the taste and the smell are quite complex, well balanced, and powerful.

I do not remember having anything like that before. It is probably the sweetest tea I ever tasted, with the long spicy and bitter aftertaste. This tea grabs your attention from the very beginning – as soon as you put it in a Cha He – and keeps it well after you finished the cup. It is a great tea to have a conversation over, as well as being a “lift me up” cuppa.

With the repeated infusions (starting with the 4th) the taste profile becomes simpler and less balanced: bread, biscuit and malt come forward, while berries and honey disappear. It also becomes sourish. So, you can get 3-4 good steeps and that’s that but those steeps are totally worth it.

I will most certainly order it again and put it into a heavy rotation. This is the tea that you offer to your Lipton teabag friends to demonstrate what they are missing, to recruit and convert.

I wasn’t expecting much from this inexpensive sample but the taste and aroma of this tea really caught me by surprise. Out of the bag, an explosion of dark chocolate and molasses hits your nose. Placed in a heated pot, the dry leaves emit aromas of ovaltine and s’mores. The steeped tea has a complex and wonderful chocolatey flavor that reminds me of Laoshan black tea. But there’s so much more to it than just chocolate. I also detected hints of rose, berries, and a little sweet potato earthiness in the finish. Normally I don’t care for the sweet potatoey note found in Dian Hongs however here’s it’s subtle and balanced. There’s no smokiness to this Lapsang at all, just a lingering caramel like sweetness.

The flavor does fade quicker than I’d like. By the fourth steep most of the flavor had been drained. Nevertheless, this is really an exceptional tea for the price and one that I will definitely repurchase.

Well, the smell is good, very good actually. The appearance is promising too: it looks like a typical rock oolong with coal-black fat leaves. But the smell what is the best about this tea: very intense, malty, baked bread with the strong notes of rose and sweet fruit like apricots. And all of these fragrances blend together extremely well. It feels good just to savor the smell: it is so uplifting and comforting. This tea is a pick-me-up-when-I’m-down kind for me.

That is another way to say that the taste is not nearly that remarkable: the pale yellow-orange liquid has as the main component maltiness, mineral and some lingering rather sophisticated bitterness. It is the kind of tea that you have stop whatever you are doing and pay your full and undivided attention to get all the nuances besides the maltiness , which makes it a tea for special moods: quite contemplation, wakefulness, introspection.

A good tea but not for everyone and not for every day.

This is a tea I have been meaning to review for some time. I actually started a review months before my Steepster hiatus, right around the time it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to conceal the fact that I was seriously ill, but I did not complete it. At the time, I felt that if I were to focus on reviewing something that excited me, I would be able to rediscover some of my passion for writing, get back on track with my tea reviews, and then maybe start to put myself back together so that I would be more functional, but that did not happen. Instead, I stared at a blank screen for around an hour, got angry, threw my notebook across the room, and stomped away to sulk. I guess I’m done sulking now. This was a great tea. I wish I had reviewed it when I first intended to because not only was it very good to drink, it made me happy at a time when nothing made me happy and nothing felt good.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After rinsing, I steeped 7 grams of the tea leaf and rose petal blend in 5 ounces of 194 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was followed by 17 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 9 seconds, 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, and 10 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the blend of dry tea leaves and rose petals emitted an overpowering rose aroma that was underscored by subtle scents of malt, cinnamon, and cedar. After the rinse, I detected new aromas of chocolate, cream, smoke, and orange zest. The first infusion introduced a subtle baked bread scent. In the mouth, the tea liquor offered up notes of rose, cream, and malt that were chased by hints of chocolate, orange zest, and cedar. The subsequent infusions introduced a subtle roasted almond scent. Notes of baked bread came out in the mouth alongside hints of smoke and cinnamon. Impressions of minerals, earth, cooked green beans, roasted almond could also be detected. I even noticed some hints of roasted peanut, honey, sweet potato, and brown sugar. As the tea faded, the liquor emphasized mineral, cream, rose, and orange zest notes that were balanced by hints of baked bread, roasted almond, and malt.

This was not a complex or deep blend in any way, but I do not think it was ever intended to be. It was all about delivering rose petal aromas and flavors springing from a typical Dian Hong base, and it did just that. The tea was just present enough to provide some balance, but it largely stayed in the background to let the huge rose presence have its time in the spotlight. People who are not huge on floral blends, and particularly people who do not enjoy rose with their tea, would likely not be into this offering at all. People like me, however, who love rose and black tea blends would almost certainly be into it. Definitely check this out if you like floral blends that are very heavy on the floral component.

I found this nice surprise while digging through my sample tin this morning. I always look forward to trying new teas and Teavivre teas never seem to disappoint me.

When I opened the signature Teavivre silver sample package and drove my schnoz inside, I was met with the aroma of a fine bourbon instead of the expected rose. The leaves were fairly long and black, brown, and golden.

I steeped the leaves at 195 degrees (as close as my tea maker can get to the recommended 194 degrees) for five minutes. The final color was a dark amber and the brewed aroma was very much like a rose as I again expected.

I am not a big fan of flowery or fruity teas. I especially tilt toward being a purist when it comes to black teas. However, there have been several fruity/flowery teas that I have tried and liked. I am happy to say that this is one of them.

My first sip had a strong rose taste with a mild black tea flavor riding shotgun. There also seemed to be a slight bite of astringency in the first sip. This very quickly settled down and, by my third sip, my taste buds were treated to a smooth, amicable, and full-bodied black tea flavor with excellently intermingled rosy characteristics, going forward. The aftertaste was graceful and brief.

This is another good flowery tea from Teavivre that I actually enjoyed drinking. Even though the rose flavor is quite recognizable, it tastes natural and is not overwhelming or perfumed.

Cold Brew!

Been a while since I last had this, and this reminded me why…

It’s just such a tart and shrill type of high acid hibiscus that kind of makes your hairs stand on end. I don’t mind a bit of tart and sour hibiscus, but this isn’t balanced well at all. You can just barely make out some waxy tropical pineapple and orange peel notes but the cup is dominated apologetically by the hibiscus.

Not a favourite, and a bit more of a chore to drink than a pleasure.

Cold Brew!

This was surprisingly a lot better than I expected. I’m nearly positive that I have cold brewed it before, but this was unlike any experience I recall having with this blend. It was pretty smooth, although still had a tartness/tangyness. I’d say it was sort of like a pineapple heavy fruit punch/juice type thing? With lots of hibiscus, as well.

But just not as intensely sour as I’ve experienced it in the past.

Made this one as an iced tea, but it was too sour and hibiscus heavy to be enjoyable. I made it through around half the cup, but it was honestly making my tongue hurt with how intense it was. I almost felt like it was more hibiscus flavoured that the straight hibiscus I own – but of course that’s not possible. Or is it!? I needed something to break up those sour, acidic notes though and it just wasn’t happening…

So, DAVIDsTEA has launched their new Spring Collection and I’m kind of just in love with the aesthetic of the whole collection. In particular, I’m kind of losing my mind over the Spring flower pattern atop that beautiful Navy colour and it’s been really hard for me to not just buy everything with that pattern on it.

Instead I just got the new tea press – and of course that means needing the perfect tea to christen it with. I’m sure I’m probably not the only person who puts so much thought into the first tea they steep in a new mug/pot/travel mug. Or at least, I hope I’m not the only person. Some of my coworkers were teasing me for putting so much thought into it…

I thought this would be a good one though because the name kind of works with the aesthetic of the collection, and the fresh fruity flavour seems pretty on the nose for the change of season/Spring as a whole. And so the decision was made. Flavour wise this was nice! Definitely a little bit tart/hibiscus heavy but mostly just a really nice, bright juicy pineapple flavour! It worked quite nicely and I was into it!