cteresa

Look at what I found in the back of the cupboard – I still got some of it. Sadly aged a bit, I love Yumchaa but I really wish they had more air-tight packaging – tins ideally, or foil packets (which are indeed great and pratical).

While this is a bit less scented than it originally was it is still very smooth and a very lovely combination of flavours (not as weak as you might think. Yumchaa is really good at intense natural flavours). I love papaya, but not sure I get its flavour here, for me this is green tea with pineapple and strawberries and it is a lovely summer drink indeed.

Adding another note, because I can not believe I missed the nutmeg| Duh, it´s so definitely there as well, adds a background, some solidity to the peach and pepper.

I am liking this a little bit less this second time, but I think I brewed it too hot and well Assam is a tricky thing for me.

I made this a little bit too hot and I think a little bit too long – should have been 5 degrees (real degrees that is ;) Kelvin or celsius) and one minute less. It is, like a lot of Théodor teas, a forgiving tea. Though I think due to it being brewed hotter than my first attempts, I am finally getting a hint of the apple mentioned on tea description.

This is a masterfully well blended flavour tea – a great smooth green tea base and then a blended mix just in proportion of evocative flavours. No flavour is really dominant, this is not a one note or predominant note tea, but different flavours seem to work at different levels. The mint is the first thing, then the rose and apple and the date last. I do not detect the almond, but sweet almonds are not very strongly flavoured anyway.

A truly well done tea blend – and a very elegant one as well somehow.

PS – to add, it resteeps very well! Slightly different notes on resteep, a little bit more rose and more date and maybe the elusive almond, maybe not. I expected a lot more mint because the spent leaves smell so minty, but not so much on the taste. But a definite two steeps blend.

This is a tea which has been having rotten luck at my house. Whenever I make it I get distracted while doing it, and do not give it much enough attention. Ysaurella, to whom I had sent some in a swap did a tasting note before I ever got to it. Poor neglected tea!

Even today, I used water which was too cold – should have been a bit hotter. But even so, since the result was so nice, here goes. This is a tropical fruits oolong. Site says “pineapple, red passion fruits, mango and bergamot” and it is a nice touch to distinguish between the passion fruit type – I suppose their red is what we call purple passion fruit and which is indeed the better and pricier kind of passion fruit (green passion fruit grows better in our climate, it´s the only one which will grown on the mainland and produces tons more but is just not nearly as nice).

The oolong is not too dark, not too green, not too large, not too small – and not too noticeable underneath the fruit. There are some filler petals – rose and something else. There is bergamot in this tea but it might possibly be the most subtle use of bergamot I ever noticed (of course, uses of bergamot I never noticed would be more subtle even ;). For me the main note is passion fruit, with a touch of bergamot second and only then mango and then I take on faith there is pineapple. It´s fruity, smooth, and I think it would be delightful cold. I love passion fruit with its inherent tartness and funny how the bergamot seems to amplify it.

This is possibly the worst tea I ever had. Not helped by brewing preparation which was probably too hot, but really undrinkable stuff – bitter bitter and with an artificial “lemon” flavouring which reminds me totally of “lemon” cleansing products but not lemon. Horrible.

Just a note, I have been eyeing these kitschy (but cute kitschy!) tea tins in a natural beauty products store. But I am always wary of buying cute packaged teas particularly in that sort of retail.

But at a café recently they were serving these teas, and I had my chance to try this. I am totally unsure of brewing details since I did not prepare it, but as it was served (and I think not too carefully) it was quite nice. The almond and pistachio taste was delicate but still noticeable (if you paid attention), the tea strong bodied but not too rough. Not a great tea IMO, but a respectable honorable cup of flavoured tea. I have had worse and from more famous brands!

Thé-o-dor is a brand which has some interesting multiple takes on the same “ideas” – for example Adèle H and Mélange de Galice are both black teas with peach and are totally totally different. If you check the brand´s description of this Celebration it is:

CELEBRATION
Flavoured black tea with major notes of chocolate, vanilla and hazelnuts

as compared to their Thé du Loup

THE DU LOUP
Flavoured black tea with major notes of hazelnuts and notes of chocolate.

I had and finished and loved to pieces Thé du Loup. But it was sold out, and I was advised this instead and OK, I will try it.

This tea smells incredible – like a rich thick dark chocolate mousse drenched in Frangelico and yeah, a little bit of vanilla as well. It is very rich in little cocoa pieces, cocoa husks I think and I think there might be vanilla bean pieces in there as well – when brewing this up keep in mind to up the dose a bit, since the cooca husks will take some of the space of the tea itself.

Brewing it, following their 95 º advice with some trepidation but being unintentionally careless with time (they advise 3 minutes, it was closer to 4, and let´s not check which side of 4 minutes it was) this is an extraordinarily smooth tea. No bitterness or roughness at all, a very smooth base. It tastes less potent than what it smells, but the scent is so rich, so evocative I am not sure any tea could really live up to it. It is more about the chocolate than the hazelnut, and the hazelnut is almost liquorish, sweeter than in Thé du Loup.

I think when comparing similar teas of a similar quality, the first one tried always has an advantages, we are always comparing the second to the first, which somehow got canon status due to having been first. Maybe that is why I prefer Thé du Loup, do not know for sure. If you are likely to prefer something sweeter, then this; if you would prefer something “drier”, then Thé du Loup.

And I am amazed at how the same company does two very good flavoured teas with almost the same flavourings but which manage to have quite different personalities (and wonderfully smooth but different bases).

This is pretty much a staple for me, fruity red fruits rooibos – very very fruity, very very exhuberant, good rooibos done properly (bad rooibos is a terrible thing, good rooibos a wonderful thing). I take this for granted and hardly pay attention to it anylonger.

Except I was making this for a child and made it strong so I could add a lot of sugar and a lot of milk (half tea, half milk I think). I tried it to test temperature before handing it over and OMG it is like it is a new tea, it is wonderful like that as well. Totally surprising and unlike I usualluy have it, like a new reminder of why I love this so much. Child approved (though admittedly the child in question has unbelievably unlikely gourmet tastes and a very expensive-liking nose).

No notes yet.

This is from a sample very kindly sent by Barbara – she had said it reminded her a bit of our beloved Thé-o-dor Milky Oolong. I had misplaced the sample (I really have too many teas still to try!) but just found it so here goes.

This is rolled green oolong, bit smaller than that Milky Oolong, but not quite as tightly rolled as Ten Ren´s Sun Moon Lake. Infusing the tea, I was sure I had made a mistake in ammount or temperature, the water hardly changed color, a very clear very pale liquor – but the tea is resulting is indeed tea! Body, flavour, some sweetness, some astringency. Barbara mentioned a taste like raw chestnuts which seems spot on to me, that sort of taste quality.

I got to experiment with more steeps and as well, with a more generous ammount. This is further confirmation that after all I am a oolong person, as long as it is a really good green oolong.

This is something different indeed – I had never had Guayusa before (never even seen it for sale), and never had a Butiki tea either. Thanks to Courtney I now got the chance to try it.

This smelled absolutely heavenly when dry. Real apple with a bit of cinnamon – the orange and cloves will take on faith and indeed it is a more complex scent than “just” apple cinnamon. I have been a bit shy of brewing this, afraid to screw it up, and that it might not smell just as great as it does. I finally took the nerve to try it.

I used a bit more amount that I would have if it had been tea, and having learnt my lesson from mate, I was afraid to scald it so temperature was in the 80-90 range surely (Celsius). Never having had guayusa I can´t really compare to other blends. The apple scent is indeed transmitted to the flavour and it´s as complex as it promised to be, absolutely lovely flavoring.

I can not judge for its energizing properties just yet – I wanted to do the taste note with it on front of me, in order to not forget anything, will edit later.

But underneath the flavouring (lovely indeed), and ignoring its yet untested effects, judging this just by how pleasant a drink it is: meh about the guayusa. It tastes a little bitter at the back of the tongue and somewhat astringent, with a hint of an herbal-grassy sort of taste. The mouth-feel is well, watery, without the pleasing body of tea or rooibos. I will try different ways of brewing this a bit, but am afraid if I try to intensify the body by adding more leaf or hotter water it will also intensify the hints of bitterness. Any tips?

I have right now, two different rooibos mixes from two of my three favorite rooibos providers, both sultry mixes named in hommage to southern islands – this Baya which is supposed to evoke Île de Réunion, and Mariage Fréres´ Surabaya a hommage to Java. And suraBAYA and Baya, get it?

And they are totally different teas, while both matching the description of sultry rooibos. I made separate, previous tasting notes about Surabaya, just mentioning it because the coincidence is funny.

This Baya I had smelled but not had a chance to buy (strategic decision of picking other teas) a few months ago, and I had promised myself to get it next possible chance. It got here, and it was slightly different than remembered. The official word is that it is rooibos with vanilla, ylang ylang, nutmeg, jasmine. The more poetical descriptions of it also mention pepper and passion fruit. Pepper is not particularly noticeable at any level but indeed there is a fruity note which seemed pineapply-or-passion fruity (more likely) to me.

This was, to my tastebuds, sublime. Very intensely flavoured, maybe a rooibos for people who do not like rooibos, and an unlikely but unbelievably good mix of flavours. And perhaps more strangely, the flavours change in the mouth, there is a fruity like smell which you can feel in the front of the mouth/tongue, but as you swallow there is a vanilla-ylang sweetness at the back of the tongue and then also that touch of the nutmeg. A very interesting sensory experience, this tea seems to work at different levels. I absolutely loved it – the vanilla is strongly there and bourbon (reunion? how appropriate) vanilla, and the touch of ylang is a delicious addition to it. Jasmine is not too strong, but just a hint, melds with the fruitiness of the passion fruit (surely there is some?) and then a touch of something deeper which is quite probably the nutmeg. And a good, smooth (nearly undetectable except in that structural body) rooibos underneath.

I am not sure I love this better than Carpe Diem, another huge favorite Theodor rooibos – let´s see with acquaintance. I do love it better than Marabout which was also an impressive rooibos mix.

Ah, anecdotal, but this seemed to have a very efficient and pleasant digestive-help effect.

I just managed to order (with difficulty and problems sadly!) some new Thé-ô-dor teas from a local retailer. Cocotte, the famous tomato darjeeling was on my wishlist but out of stock. This was instead a rather random pick, but wow this is unexpectedly filling the wish for a strange surprising tea.

I would probably not have picked it if I had smelled it before buying. It smells like pepper, black pepper, with peach and some unidentifiable flowers and just a bit strange somehow. It brews slightly different, less flowery, all (to me, at this first acquaintance) just tea, peach and black pepper. It´s a complete (but excellent) taste dissonance to have the unmistakable strong black pepper with the peach, but it was coup de foudre, love at first sight (or first cup). That pepper and fruit, it somehow works (for me. I suspect this will not be everybody´s cup of tea). I think this is the cure to me being tired of nice polite flavoured teas which seem samey-samey and forgettable. No way anybody could confuse this flavoured tea with any other flavoured tea.

The base is lovely, smooth but strong Assam. I am reminded, as I was by Mandalay, that chai is not just any tea with spices. This, like Mandalay, is a tea where a spice is essential, but without being in any way a chai.

I am slightly in love with this tea, unexpectedly. So lovely.

This was a cup I had on a tea shop, on my effort to try to get darjeelings. I did not prepare it.

There is a definite rose flavour to this – many times weaker than regular run of the mill china rose congou, but there has to be some extra flavouring here. I had misunderstood and though it was unflavoured, that the rose was metaphorical, so not quite what I was expecting. I did not much like it, but then again me and darjeelings are not too friendly.

I suspect preparation was not quite perfect, infusion time was up to me, and I think I overbrew it slightly. But a tea to not buy, and will keep trying good quality (UNFLAVOURED!) darjeelings whenever I get the chance.

A sample kindly given to me by Angrboda, thank you so much! This was sort of a random pick, whatever was closest – I needed to cleanse my palate after a really bad tea (“japanese” green with quince, from the cutesy gift shop. I am a sucker for quince and was looking for a quince flavoured tea but I should have known better! At least it was cheap but OMG it tasted so so so cheap) .

I had never had white tea with jasmine before (though I had had it with a touch of osmanthus) and this is lovely. Very good quality tea, and there is an underlying woodsy-ness beneath the flowers which gives it depth, which I quite like. But there is a but, while I like jasmine teas very much I think I prefer my white teas plain or more lightly flavoured. I like jasmine with green tea – not sure if there is a real judgment there or it´s just due to familiarity.

Spring, after taking its own sweet long time to arrive, decided to pretend to leave after all. It´s cold and windy, very disappointing. But it´s making me turn to my tea corner and drink and sampling those samples I was saving, as a treat and a way to cheer up.

Mandalay was another sample so kindly sent by Ysaurella. I had been so intrigued by her references to it. And this is just not what I was expecting. I was expecting a chai, and while this is spicy, it´s a totally different type of tea.

I had today just tried a perfume (mother´s day is coming. everybody wants you to try perfume, you can not walk on the street past perfume shops without being offered a sniff). It was a woody spicy ladies´ perfume, with a cedar base and flowers, patchouli maybe. And in my mind this tea is irresistibly linked to that perfume – a sort of “dry” floral with woody overtones. In the perfume it was cedar, here it is the spices, cinnamon (which I guess is woody as well) and others (cloves? cardamom?) and then a bit of rose indeed, but the mix of roses and cinnamon tastes melded somehow into something woody rather than separate. A very interesting taste.

I do not have a lot of experience with Pu´er – and the plain ones I have had were sort of awful to my palate. The flavoured ones I have found easier to drink, but keep in mind, I have very little experience with pu´er teas.

This was kindly sent in a swap with Ysaurella and she had not tried it yet when she sent it to me, so no brewing tips. The Cannon website seems totally useless for anything (and flash should die….) so I have been experimenting with this. My problem with it is trying to make it strong, or better said intense enough.

My first experiment with water round 80-85 and my usual ammount of black tea resulted in a mellow earthy sort of cup, but a definitely too weak one – very intense color and a sort of thick texture to the liquor (there has to be a word for it, but totally escapes me), and a nice mellow yeasty almost type of flavour, with some vague vanilla and peach-mango hints, but very watery somehow. I amped up the temperature to 95 degrees, and steeping time to 4 or 5 degrees and used 50% more leaf than I would think to use and it was much better. A nice cup of tea. But still not particularly fruity. And my brain finds the different tea-ness of pu-er baffling.

I am not going to rate this yet, because I am not quite sure what i think of it. My second time having it and not only my feelings changed from the first experiment, but my feelings are changing as I drink the cup.

First, the scent – this has an extraordinary scent, a rich, sultry vanilla scent, totally different from cloying one-note artificial vanilla scents and a scent which reminds you that why yes, vanilla is a flower, an orchid (ok, yellow orchid which then creates a black pod, and yes, it´s the seed pod, but still vanilla is floral). Sultry vanilla caramel, that is it. This went on my wishlist the moment I smelled it. Right now I was in the mood for a vanilla tea, and I went on a walk which accidentally took me past the tea shop and well, it came home…

Expectations are funny things which get in the way of appreciating what we get instead. This tea is not truthful to the scent. It´s much more sedate, much less exuberant, maybe classier than its scent. No caramel after all. So I was underwhelmed at first, since it was so very different from what I expected from its scent. But if what I was expecting this as a lightly naturally flavored vanilla tea then well this is indeed lovely. It´s got an incredibly smooth base (thank you Mariage Frères, for not using the same base for *everything) which I think has some, but not a lot, of Assam on it. And a lovely aftertaste. I am getting to like this more each time I have it, I will make another taste note after I have it a few more times.

Angrboda, not sure this will be your vanilla tea indeed, but if you ever want to try it, let me know!

Now it´s getting hot I have been trying different ways to brew this up. This taste note is a DO NOT DO AS I JUST DID warning.

I liked this brewed hot. I wanted to try a cold brew, which I just did – 4 grams of tea (which is a lot of volume, I weighted it and surprised myself at how much it was), half a liter of cold water left in the fridge overnight and then strained. And it turns out: bitter. Either it was much too long or too much tea.

I get some citrus yes, but I get an acrid bitterness mostly which is not pleasant. I did not use sweetener and not sure it would have improved it anyway, it´s not tartness which often can be rescued and improved by sugar, it was a different type of bitterness.

Weirdly enough, the older the tea (strained) got the more bitter it seemed to me. Despite that, I did drink almost all of it – I wanted to test if it was really that bitter and try to figure out where I went wrong. And as an energizer it did its usual work! A different type of wake me up than coffee or tea, a smoother one IMO.

Happy story with this tea, it´s now ubiquituous and easy to find (Continente, 3.95€ and the tins are reusable). Cheap thrill yay. I am now on my third tin. But a warning this tea is ONLY ANY GOOD ICED!

Hot, it´s too much hibiscus with too strong a fruit flavour. But if I make it very strong, add lots of sweetener or sugar and cool it, I love it.

My recipe right now, is with digital scales add 12 to 15 grams of the tea to a teapot. Add 1 liter of boiling water and let it stand a couple hours or overnight. I usually add a lot of sweetener and sugar to this, maybe 8 teaspoons or even more – I usually never have sweetener or sugar with hot tea but this really is much better with sweet to balance the tartness. Chill it very well and it´s awesome. Even if it does have hibiscus.

Having another test of this. I am now expecting the hibiscus on it, but even so, it still overpowers me. There is the tartness, the acidity, and it seems to spread all over other flavours without being balanced by anything else. Maybe there is a peach and berry underneath it all, maybe there is rooibos (rhetorical, there is rooibos evidently on the mix) but the hibiscus just takes over.I am not a good person to rate this, hibiscus really is not my thing.

LaFleurBleue kindly sent me some of this in a swap and she sent some great detailed instructions. Which I misplaced (so sorry, lafleurbleue, I appreciate very much the effort just the same) and then kept postponing trying this in case I got this wrong – it´s my first formosa high mountain oolong, did not want to screw it up. And having found finally the entry for this tea after making it, I did indeed screw up the process but it does not matter because it forgave me and keeps forgiving me.

I used maybe water at 70 -75 for 2 or 3 minutes for the first brew, and then a bit hotter water also for about 2 minutes for the next ones. Which is not as I should have done and will try the brewing instructions next time now I found them. The first brew I got some astringency, but not an unpleasant astringency at all. The next brews are fantastic IMO, a very clear liquor, a very light pure kind of taste but magically invigorating and a herbal type of taste which is just lovely. I am going to keep steeping these leaves – which btw is sort of magic, such tiny tiny little compact balls of green slowly unfurling (only at 3rd steep are they really open) to huge leaves and branches. Magical. If you get the chance brew this in a clear container to enjoy the unfurling.

oh, wow, this is maybe the fruitiest green tea I ever had. It smells amazing though I worried it might be “too much”, like those scented pens or stationery when I was a kid. Brewed up it smells slightly different and at first sip it´s not cloying, but a very strong taste of peaches and melon.

I had to go check on the Theodor website what were the notes of this – the peach and melon are obvious and far stronger than everything else, though I think in retrospect there is a hint of the passion fruit. The website specifies it is vine peach which vindicates my nose, I did think it was vine peach. The melon is the dominant note here, though interestingly it seems to spread, move to the forefront as it cools – when I poured the hot water the peach was more obvious and also more present at first sip, then it started to get more in the background with each cooler sip. It´s still there on the last lukewarm sips but just as a background.

This is just lovely. I think this would make an excellent (though probably quite expensive) ice tea. And it´s very summery as well, a great tea to have, hot or cold, on a warm day (is spring finally here? cross fingers!). While Mélange de Galice, another peach Theodor tea, was a sort of summer dreaming tea to have in the darkest of winter, Pêché Mignon is a summery tea to have when summer is coming – or maybe that is just me being fancy.

This is going on the to-buy list for sure, though in practical terms, it might not happen anytime soon.

PS – second steep, using a little hotter water, a bit less water and a slightly longer steep also good. But less intense melon and more noticeable peach. Not sure peach is stronger actually, I think it is just that by the melon being more toned down you notice the vine peach more.

Soooo, lotus.

I have never (or not yet) had plain lotus tea. I have seen it for sale, plain lotus on chinese grocery stores, but never quite dared (most of tea in the local chinese grocery stores seems to be intentionally medicinal and/or for slimming and taste even worse than you would expect. Very dangerous places to buy tea if you are not totally sure what you are doing).

I think I am learning what lotus brings as a flavoring by comparing mentally teas that I have had which have had lotus as a flavoring (this, elixir d´amour), though not sure that is leading to the right image. Sultry and floral maybe.

Barbara and I have been swapping teas and since we are both fans of Theodor teas, we have been sharing a lot of our Theodor purchases. This is an interesting blend she sent me, one which I have been half eyeing towards purchase. Green tea with fig, and named saigon, ah, tempting (though admittedly just about everything from Theodor sounds tempting). Barbara has warned me about being careful when brewing this. I got to test with the rest of the sample, but I think I followed close enough. The result was lovely but I think I am probably not a lotus person (if I can figure out what lotus is). The fig was maybe in the background a dried fig like flavour and it was mostly a sultry floral-type. I could not detect the lemon. The tea base was lovely and not bitter.

Not rating this right now, since I want to try brewing this a couple more times to figure out if I am really brewing this right. And what lotus is supposedly to smell like!