The Cultured Cup

Beautiful, tea. Not muscatel but certainly unique high elevation grown. A bouquet of flowers, with rose being the dominant note.

Scenting a white tea with grape flavorade is a horrible idea.

White grape would be the perfect ice-tea drink for some yuppy mother wanting to get as much of the ‘anti-oxidants’ she can while still getting some purple drank.

This black tea is good, but I’ve recently enjoyed several others more. I probably didn’t give it a good chance to enjoy, though, as I was swamped at work and didn’t get to it when it was the hottest. I’ll try again later and see if it improves.

I like this tea, but not as much as the French Breakfast tea from Marriage Freres. It is a lower price point, which makes it easier to drink more often, but it doesn’t have the rich, full taste that the French Breakfast tea exhibits.

I liked this again today. It had more flavor than the last time, possibly because I used two teaspoons of tea per cup of water in the Breville. The first infusion, I limited the time to 3 minutes. The second was 4 minutes and quite good, too.

The second infusion of this tea was quite good. I also did a third and even a fourth infusion of this tea. Strangely, it now is much darker and tastes more like the black teas I’ve been drinking. This could be byproduct of the tannin and buildup in the Breville tea carafe, but it is odd. It also could be related to the longer steeping times I did because I was doing the extra infusions. I much preferred this when it looked, smelled, and tasted like a green tea. I’ll have to check this again in the future.

I’ve been adapting to the green teas, but I really like this one. I brewed it as suggested by The Cultured Cup with tea teaspoons per cup of tea at 175 F for 3 minutes. I find it to be a wonderful cup of tea. The nutty flavors are very pronouced in the first cup. The aroma of the tea before it brewed was very grassy. The tea itself has a thick feel on my tongue.

I like this much better than the Phoenix Mountain oolong from The Cultured Cup. It has good tea flavor but is not nearly as strong as the French Breakfast tea. This is a good general tea.

Although I usually dislike flavored teas, I find the Goji Berry and other flavors in this to be very good. They are not overpowering and I like the fact that it doesn’t have caffeine. This makes it a good afternoon tea, but because I can easily get a second and third infusion on it, I sometimes have to have it the next morning or brew my morning tea another way. This is billed as “A Cup of Value” from The Cultured Cup – I think it is a good value.

Brewed per instructions. Nice, lighter tea.

Working with a sample of this from a tea tasting, I have been most impressed by the quality of this vs the other Yin Zhen I have had (from Chado, which admittedly was probably rather antique when I last did a formal tasting).

Brewed with 2 grams of tea in a gaiwan averaging about 2 oz/60mL of water per infusion, I started at 30 seconds, and kept going for 7 infusions before I ran out of heated water.

The flavor is fruity, floral, sweet, but more delicately fruity than the Pai Mu Tan it was paired with. And even after 7 infusions of 30-60 seconds, there was more in the leaf to give.

This is an excellent tea.

As anticipated, this makes a dynamite iced tea, although I might have overdone it by trying to make sure it would be strong enough when chilled; the lemon is less prominent in this version.

Hard to believe I missed rating this one already. It’s simply brilliant. Warm strong Rooibos bass notes, then highlighted by intense, wonderful lemon WOW. The combination of the lemon and the Rooibos is just amazing. It’s got zing to make you sing. I shared it with colleagues at work last week and everyone liked it, and most said WOW. I know what to stuff everyone’s stocking with this year.

It doesn’t get bitter if left to steep for a long time, and you can resteep it a few times before it starts to lose the lemon zing.

Steep about one teaspoon of tea, 5-8 ounces of boiling water, about 3-5 minutes, and enjoy.

I can really think of only two knocks on this tea: one, the little bits of rooibos can escape unless finely strained after brewing; and two, the boiling water infusion means it is hot enough to burn my fingers when I drink it from my handleless cups, if I don’t let it cool long enough.

This is the go-to tea if you must focus on tedious tasks, i.e. Microsoft spreadsheet data consolidation. The amber liquor will cheer you and banish any lingering thoughts of monotony. Although some may prefer this with sugar, for me it’s perfect without it.