987 Tasting Notes

75

This one seemed like it would be just the perfect thing for this morning – soothing, comforting, not too abrasive. I ended up not watching the clock, though, and steeped it for 3 minutes rather than 2. What a difference that extra minute makes! The peach wasn’t very noticeable at all.

Still got a few spoonfuls of this mix left.

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 3 min, 15 sec 3 tsp 24 OZ / 709 ML

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My latest entry in the Sunday Tea and Books series is up!

I ended up making this iced by taking about 3-4 tsp of leaf and steeping it in 1 cup of hot water with a bit of sweetener for 4 minutes, then pouring the resulting tea over ice to make iced tea. It’s ludicrously hot and humid out, and iced tea seemed like the only reasonable option today.

The dry leaf smelled fruity and sweet, and this translates over into the brewed tea. It says online that this tea is a mix of white and green, and contains jasmine in addition to plum flavouring. The jasmine does a good job of merging with the other flavours here instead of being the star of the show.

However, I’m not getting plum when I smell and drink this tea. There’s a sense of juiciness and flowers that comes across when I drink it, along with some of the deeper bitterness of the tea (I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m not a white tea person). Oddly enough, when it all comes together, I get notes of mint and of roses, with the roses being stronger.

This is a very feminine tea, I think. And when I think of roses, I think of one character in particular. I’ll give you a hint – this tea seems perfect for someone from A Game of Thrones.

Have a guess as to which character it could be? Well, my blog post reveals all: http://christinavasilevski.com/2014/06/sunday-tea-books-plum-blossom-white/

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74

Grr. I was just typing out this wonderful, detailed note about this experience I had last night, when I clicked on the wrong thing and the page disappeared. Steepster, there’s got to be a way to save notes in progress!

Anyways, I had a really wonderful experience last night, and I wanted to write it all down for you to share, but now I’m too frustrated.

This tea is a sipdown. I steeped it twice for 4 minutes, and both times it was nice and vegetal, with a flavour of grilled nuts. Thanks muchly to aisling of tea and De for sharing this with me in a swap about 3 1/2 months ago.

Preparation
170 °F / 76 °C 4 min, 30 sec 2 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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75

Another good tea to drink in the morning. And I have confirmed – this is definitely a tea that benefits from overleafing, since it’s so fluffy. I had a pot today and it was nice and minty and otherwise not very confrontational.

Also, I oversteeped this thing a whole lot (6 mins instead of 3) and it still tasted good. No astringency. So take note.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 6 min, 0 sec 5 tsp 24 OZ / 709 ML

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61

Backlog from yesterday morning. Tried to underleaf this, but I think I still oversteeped it. Bitter. I will be very glad once I’m done this bag, because this tea is extremely fickle. Bumping the grade down again cuz I’m frustrated.

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Final tea of the day.

I got a lot of work done today, including finishing up one or two projects that I had been procrastinating on for a while. I really focused today, which was good. At the end of the day though, my brain was fried. I’ve been feeling listless for the last hour or so, kind of restless.

So what the hell, I figured now would be a perfect time to face one of my personal tea demons in the name of benefiting from its reputed therapeutic effects: chamomile.

Jude sent me some really good whole flower chamomile about a month and a half back in a swap – it smells sweet, but not nearly as metallic and cloying as chamomile from a teabag. I ended up mixing 1.5 tsp of chamomile flowers with 1.5 tsp of lemon myrtle to see if I could still get the relaxing benefits of chamomile without the taste. (By the way, it appears that lemon myrtle might be my go-to tea to mix with others. Lemon myrtle and spearmint? Yup)

It’s not bad, as it turns out! I added a glob of honey, which always makes things better. It’s still lemony with a very thick mouthfeel, but I don’t mind.

Arshness

I wonder if you’d like my beloved Foxtrot. It’s chamomile mixed with several other teas that also have a calming effect. The end flavor is minty and sweet. You miss a lot of the chamomile flavor in it. It’s very, very good to me. ^^

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Backlog from this morning.

I don’t have a lot of caramel teas, but it is one flavour I’m considering expanding in my cupboard. However, I’m not sure if this is the right caramel tea for me. It smells divine when brewed, but the taste is not as strong as I expected it to be. Luckily, it wasn’t very astringent. I have maybe about 2 tsp of this left. Into the sipdown pile it goes.

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 2 min, 30 sec 2 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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86

Backlog from this morning.

OK, it’s official. This tea, or similar teas like it, are probably going to become a standard part of my tea rotation. This is just a good everyday sort of tea for when I have no idea what to drink, and don’t want to think about it too much. You can overleaf it, oversteep it, and it will still taste perfectly fine with absolutely no astringency.

You know, I remember Sil saying in a different tasting note that she liked RiverTea’s white and green blends more than their black ones, which was unusual for her. For me, it might just be the opposite – I’m in love with the one black tea I ordered, and so-so on everything else. Gonna bump this rating up again.

Sil

Straight blacks from RiverTea, i am enjoying…just not the blends :)

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Backlog from last night.

Since I bought an iced tea pitcher about a month ago from David’s Tea, I am now in a MUST HAVE ALL THE ICED TEAS mood. This seemed like it would be a perfect fit when I ordered it from RiverTea. I could smell the lime scent even when the box was still full of packing peanuts!

However, this tea didn’t taste like it had any lime in it at all when I brewed it. I tasted a citrus sweetness from the rosehip and the lemongrass, but oddly enough I also tasted vanilla. It reminded me of a different RiverTea flavour in fact, Infinite Good Feeling. No lime at all – which is a real disappointment. However, the dry mix itself doesn’t appear to contain any limes – all of the dried citrus wedges I see are orangish rather than green. Does lime turn a different colour when it dehydrates?

I’m going to try brewing it up a different method next. This time I used hot water and steeped it for about 10 minutes at double strength, then topped it up with ice cubes. Next I’ll see how it tastes when coldbrewed for a day. I hope it will be more limy then.

Flavors: Citrus, Rosehips, Vanilla

Preparation
Boiling 8 min or more 15 tsp 60 OZ / 1774 ML

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63

I had really high hopes for this tea when I ordered it. I saw the redcurrants in the ingredients list and hoped they would be tart and fruity like in my old favourite, Teaopia’s Spring Morning. I thought that the apple would just reinforce this, and it would be a big, fruity, juicy cuppa.

However, when I opened the package from RiverTea, the smell that met my nose was not a lovely juicy summery fruitiness, but instead woodsy and medicinal. It reminded me almost exactly of the blackcurrant lozenges I was using to get over my cold.

Subsequent smells of the dry leaf reveal a deeper apple smell, but the medicinal smell still exists. Tonight I summoned up my courage, and drank – and yup. It smells AND tastes like cough medicine.

It’s passable, but it really needs something else in there to overpower the medicinal flavours. Ah well.

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 30 sec 2 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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Profile

Bio

Updated March 2016:

I’m a writer and editor who’s fallen in love with loose-leaf tea. I’ve also set up a site for tea reviews at http://www.booksandtea.ca – an excellent excuse to keep on buying and trying new blends. There will always be more to discover!

In the meantime, since joining Steepster in January 2014, I’ve gotten a pretty good handle on my likes and dislikes

Likes: Raw/Sheng pu’erh, sobacha, fruit flavours, masala chais, jasmine, mint, citrus, ginger, Ceylons, Chinese blacks, rooibos.

Dislikes (or at least generally disinclined towards): Hibiscus, rosehip, chamomile, licorice, lavender, really vegetal green teas, shu/ripe pu’erh.

Things I generally decide on a case-by-case basis: Oolong, white teas.

Still need to do my research on: matcha

I rarely score teas anymore, but if I do, here’s the system I follow:

100-85: A winner!
84-70: Pretty good. This is a nice, everyday kind of tea.
69-60: Decent, but not up to snuff.
59-50: Not great. Better treated as an experiment.
49-0: I didn’t like this, and I’m going to avoid it in the future. Blech.

Location

Toronto, ON, Canada

Website

http://www.booksandtea.ca

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