cteresa

Well well, so this is FRENCH lapsang souchong. It´s a totally different lapsang souchong, while being very lapsangsouchong-ey, than my usual beloved but run-of-the-mill Twinings.

I brew it wrong, did not give it the attention it deserved, but even so I think there is the potential here for a mad love affair.

ah, a warning, this tea is for acknowledged unashamed lovers of Lapsang Souchong only: – first, you probably won´t like it if you do not like LS;
- second it´s a waste of this tea to have people who do not love LS drink it. Let´s save it for the rest of us, ok?

This is as tibetan as Marco Polo is related to anything Marco Polo himself might have encountered – that is, no relation at all. This is, to my mind, the fanciest, most french, most feminine earl grey blend ever. There are other things there, but bergamot is most emphatically there and puts it clearly on earl grey territory in my mind. But if Guerlain made Earl Grey tea, this would be it – I can sense the vanilla and rose there, and it just amplifies the other many little scent notes, this is like a symphony of flavours, with bergamot as soloist and all those many other support notes as an orchestra behind it.

(I got no clue why they think this reminds them of Tibet. Then again i do not know why they call Marco Polo that)

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

Almond. With some spices – a hint of cinnamon and maybe clove as well. And other things. First time I tried this, and it was not love at first sip. Don´t get me wrong, it is very very nice flavored tea, but then again considering the source and price, so it should be – I am not sure (yet) if it is going to became one of my MF favorites.

This is very very fruity – I convinced a friend to order a teapot so i could try this, she did not love it unfortunately. And neither did, not quite, I. It is maybe trying too hard. It´s floral tea with straight ironed dyed-platinum hair and long fake nails. It´s too much, thank you very much.

It tastes strongly (nicely but too much and too sweet) of loquats (nêsperas!) to me, can not spot any other fruit (maybe some citrus?), though it also smells a bit floral.

I will try this again if I can, just to make sure, but it is probably not going to ever be my cup of tea.

Sometimes, no strike that, almost always simple is best. It has taken me ages to try this, it sounded so simple, raspberry and vanilla (with rose petals) rooibos. Nothing really new or different. But oh my, is this awesome. Awesome indeed. Smells like raspberry, very intense, but just kicked subtly into more awesomeness by the vanilla and rose. I was in love at the first sniff, the taste is as awesome as the smell and this is probably going to be a full fledged long term love affair. Love this.

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.