cteresa

It´s not you, cup of tea, it´s me. Seriously, you smell awesome and the ingredients read like a great idea. But I got a perhaps irrational dislike to aniseed (or liquorice, or anything of its family) and dear tea, it´s not going to work between us at all.

(nice rooibos base though)

Serving this to non-tea drinkers (who loved it), I was reminded again just how awesome this is. Which it is. Keep blending it and keep it on stock, please Yumchaa.

I ran out of my first 50 grams, and yeah bit the bullet (the €€€ bullet) and bought myself a tin of it. I do love it that much.

A warning, this is (obviously) sensitive to brewing temperature – more than most green tea blens. It is ALWAYS drinkable (to my taste buds calibration), just some times sharper, sometimes smoother. Keep it in mind when brewing this, experimenting a bit might be worth it till you know how you like it.

No notes yet.

Not THE Marco Polo, and seriously nothing like it. And the geek in me wants to point out that historically calling this “red” (pu-erhish?) with spices tea after Marco Polo seems a bit more likely than the very french, fruity and refined Mariage Freres blend. This is a little bit more like a silk road in the 14th century drink.

Nice. Be careful with steeping times though or it can get overbrewed in an instant.

Meh. Sort of. It´s not bad tea at all, I think Yumchaa has not yet sold anybody any tea which did not qualify as good by any objective standard. But somehow, the concept, the particular blend is just not my thing.

Nothing to see here, move along, move along. Nothing new. But this, while not being anything extraordinary, just really is my cup of tea, I just keep reaching for it. When flavoured teas (even grey mixes) are just not IT, when black tea is just too morning-like, when green tea seems too sharp and oolong too weedy-herbalish, there is lapsang souchong. And the Twinings one is oh so reliable at that punch of smoke. Thank you, that was just what i needed.

(to like this it might help if one likes smokey whiskey. And vice-versa of course. It most certainly will NOT be everybody´s cup of tea, even if it is mine)

No notes yet.

Lady Grey, Lady Grey, I do love you. Maybe I do not sing your praises often enough. I do take you a little bit for granted (even after we had that scare a few years ago, where nobody in this country seemed to keep you in stock at all). But just been reminded that as long as I can get boiling water and a cup, you can on your own really improve any dreary wintery afternoon. Awesome Lady Grey.

It still, if not quite sucks, disappoints its promise and smell. No, it´s not at all bad. And it just might be unfair to compare its taste to its divine (no kidding) scent, but even ignoring the promise of its scent, it still taste uninspired. Ingredients seem to be top quality, it smells (seriously, trust me on this) marvelously. But no matter the variations I make, it makes for a not nearly awesome cup of tea. Oh well. Bye.

I had been rationing this a bit, but even so I just went to make myself a cup of this and got a bad scare, there is hardly any left. What, already?!? So yeah, this is a huge favorite of mine. Which I will need to rebuy.

Tastes like green tea with lemongrass and lemon and something else (tangerine?), all very balanced. It is lovely. It is one of the few teas I love when it´s really hot, and I love it as well when it is cold, dreary and damp.

Regarding fruity flavoured black teas, I got a weakness for lychee as a flavour. Seriously, just try it, it´s flowery, fruity, exhuberant and somehow it just goes so well with tea – beats earl grey all the time (lady grey is a different matter). Even the most humble lychee blends can make a cup which makes me go hmmm.

This is maybe the nicest lychee flavoured black tea I ever had. It´s bagged yes, not sure they even make loose tea, but the quality of the tea and flavour is awesome, and it´s tea bags in those hermetically sealed little tin foil packets – those envelopes do no miracle for bad tea, but when tea is good, it can be so much better than more oxidized loose tea leaves.

Just a note, blender description says lychee blossom flavour. I never ever saw a lychee blossom, and have no idea what it smells/tastes like. For other fruits the blossom and fruit usually taste and smell VERY different (orange blossom and fruit, for example), so I wonder if they made the blossom/fruit confusion, this to me tastes precisely like juicy sweet ripe lychees – the fruit.

Hmm, tasty. Infusing twice working nicely as well.

A warning, my appreciation of this might be biased, Mozambique tea was the standard of “just right” black tea for portuguese ladies of my grandmother´s generation, and this tastes just like “just right” grandmother´s tea to me. Cultural expectations of taste are pretty strong.

This is small leaf black tea, packaged in vintage style (well, not vintage style, real vintage vintage) instructions on how to brew a proper pot of tea . I followed those scrupulously. It would feel like ignoring advice from my grandmother, otherwise! It brews red and it reminds me a bit of Ceylon tea, just sweeter, gentler and without any metallic hints (Ceylon tea often seems to have this hint of copper or iron. Not a criticism, I like it like that). It´s not as strong as Assam, and it is quite different from Chinese tea. The taste reminds me a bit of raisins.

It´s also remarkably, the sweetest black tea I ever tasted. It´s sweet on its own, more than any other tea I ever had (tea tea, black or green or oolong or white, if you know what I mean). It also has very little bitterness, I think it does not have much tannin for the body it has.

I usually find it hard to give numerical ratings to tea usually, but in this case it is extra difficult to do so. But it is a lovely nice tea.

This is my foremost example of tea with hibiscus does not NEED to actually stink of it. Hibiscus can be done subtly. Seriously. Though this besides being my foremost example of that, it is also my only example but that is not the point of this review.

If I remember correctly, this tea has rooibos, hibiscus, rosehips, some cinnamon, I think some almond and some other things. All those tastes merge together without clashing and making something new (where even paranoid hibiscus haters can ignore it!). It is a lovely blend, keyword being blend, making something new and just right and totally different out of individual things.

My original tasting note said this was a definite rebuy. It is, though maybe it is not a definite immediate rebuy, this is very good, but a couple or more of other Yumchaa rooibos blends are even better (IMO. YMMV and all that,)

Damn it, yumchaa, there you go and make another blend which is going to became a staple and I will need to keep in stock when finished, no matter what. Please please please do not discontinue this, it just might have medicinal magical sinus clearing properties (I can not prove it, to New England Journal of Medicine standards, but it does feel that way!).

And well, this is it, the spicy rooibos mix I had been looking for all along. It´s got a definite hint of chilli-hotness (there is no proper word in english for it, piquancy maybe? this just might score, even if quite low, on the scoville scale). There is some cinnamon, and there is something from the red peppercorns, definetely there. And some nice rooibos underneath, though if you do not like rooibos I am pretty sure it is subtle enough to be ignored if you want to ignore it. And there is more stuff there, all very nicely balanced, and making something just right. Another huge favorite.

Ah, just a note, this is surely a winter drink kind of stuff.

I have been looking for a good spicy-chai rooibos for a while. This is perhaps my 4th attempt at finding a good one, and maybe just maybe, this is the one. The ones I had previously were all wrong, but this is interesting, none of the flavours really overpowers the other and there is a fiery hotness (piquancy?) of chilli there which works, and better than i expected to. I really loved my first cup of this.

Just not my cup of team (literally).

Ah, a cup of smoke – but it´s sort of an open air very faint autumn field smoke. I do love this.

The discontinuation of this was a false alarm! Yay – bought my second tin.

I like it well enough – rooibos with citrus. As usual with yumchaa everything is good quality and the flavour natural and not overwhelming. But sadly this exact mix is not a favourite of mine – I keep comparing it with Nil Rouge (which I like even more) and a long lost rooibos caipirinha mix i once bought and could never buy again (which probably could not possibly be as good as my memories of it are).

I think I will probably not like ginseng on its own. And I am pretty sure this is very ginseng-y. My first try of this I was really uncertain. It´s its own thing. it´s ginsengy, very. But then it is blended so well with things I love that I do love it, and somehow they have that magic where this tea just leaves you with this wonderful well-feeling.

About the medicinal properties, I do not know for sure. But it feels possible, a real feel-good tea and this is going on my staples rebuy-before-it´s-out list.

PS – not canonical for green tea, but I am brewing it really hot, and drinking it as hot as I can manage and really loving it that way.

This has its own vocal fanbase. I have been meaning to try it for almost two years, but it has been sold out or unavailable at the place I was (or to be fair, I think on one occasion I skipped it in favour of a few others, though I did not know it had such a following). And finally it is back on stock and available for mail order.

Alk that and somehow, amazingly it was not a disappointed. It is lovely, a blueberry-rhubarb-cream-peony petals mix where I think I can spot all the flavours (apart from peony, whose presence I am not actually denying. For all I know, it might be there, but I do not know what peony petals are supposed to smell or taste like. The only peonies I ever sniffed had not much scent) and all flavours meld perfectly. This is the more focused real tea, older brother version of Berry Berry Nice. (Berry Berry Nice is my favourite ever non-tea tea). I love it.

Turned out this is not my cuppa. Smells strongly perfume-y floral, the taste is sort of weak and can not feel the tea.