Christina / BooksandTea Send Message

It looks like I’m slowly and methodically going through all my RiverTeas. This one is Number 3 of 10.

I’ve had a few other Yunnans beside this one – Simple Loose Leaf’s Yunnan Breakfast Black and Rishi’s Golden Yunnan – so it’s interesting to try this in comparison.

I steeped this one for about 3.5 minutes, and it tastes fairly light/smooth. There was no astringency, but also none of the really malty, cocoa notes I’ve been told to expect from Yunnans. I wonder how it will be if I resteep it for 5 minutes.

I will say that the dry leaf looks and smells lovely – it’s sweet and haylike, and looks almost like a black version of Bi Luo Chun because of the golden colour, the long strands, and the slight fuzziness.

If it doesn’t work out, at least I’ve got some perfect tea for my mother, who just wants plain ol’ black tea.

EDIT: I did resteep it for five minutes, but the resulting brew was nothing special. It was a lovely dark brown colour, but there wasn’t much flavour. This seems like a one-steep tea to me, with a longer steep being ideal. In that sense, it would probably make a good, no-nonsense tea for the mornings, since it’s not that challenging. I wonder how it would handle gongfu brewing, though.

Ok, I’m in a really weird frame of mind right now. I just finished watching “Oldboy” (the original one from Korea, not the US remake), and Jesus Christ, that movie is effed up. I mean, I knew the plot because of Wikipedia, but still…..oy. I wasn’t expecting…..I don’t know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t that.

So I sipped a pot of this while watching it. It was good, but this tea isn’t quite hitting all of the right buttons for me. I was expecting a tea that was really bright and juicy, something with a nice pop to it, but this one has a darker, smoother flavour. I want to call it “smoky” but that’s not really the right word – just the most fitting one I can think of right now. Maybe “caramelized” is a better fit. I could definitely smell and taste the apple and probably the papaya, but I’ve never had fresh mulberries so I’m not sure how to pick that flavour out.

This is definitely a good tea replacement for dessert, but maybe my head’s just on the wrong way because of that damned movie.

I was really craving a straight green today, and figured that since I had fond memories of this one, it was the way to go.

I think I overleafed it a bit this time, as it was more umami than I remembered it being.

Still, a good straightforward tea.

And now I try the first tea from my very first RiverTea order!!!

I chose this one because it’s extremely fragrant. You can smell it from outside its cardboard canister (by the way, I agree with everyone else in that RiverTea’s packaging is absolutely lovely). It smells heavily of roses and fruit, and also has a sort of tangy aroma that smells like champagne – I guess that’s where the natural flavouring comes in. The smell definitely matches the name of the tea.

The leaf itself is dark green, almost brown, and looks like a sencha, and mixed in with large chunks of the other ingredients – you can definitely see pink peppercorns, white rosebuds, and huge slices of strawberry.

I followed the steeping instructions – 1 tsp per cup, 80C, 2-3 minutes – and got tea with a very rosy scent and golden colour. The champagne and rose flavours, and perhaps a very very soft hint of the pepper, are noticeable in the taste, but I’m not getting much strawberry. Perhaps it’s really meshed well with the rose. I wonder if adding some sweetener would make the strawberry come out more.

Anyways, I have a huge pile of this to experiment with. It smells so lovely that I can’t wait to try it in other ways.

Sample sipdown!

This was quite a nice green, actually. Vegetal, a nice light tan liquor, and definitely an authentic flavour. It’s quite sweet as it cools. This is surprising since I steeped it at a very high temperature – it didn’t get bitter on me.

Sample sipdown!

I got a sample of this about a month ago in a chain store that’s reselling the Tea Emporium’s wares. However, I haven’t been impressed so far, and I’m not sure if that’s because the Tea Emporium’s teas themselves are bad, or because the reseller is not storing them correctly.

Anyways, this tea fits into that trend. It smells promising but the flavour is somewhat lacking. I can taste the rooibos and chocolate, but I can’t really taste the mint or the coconut, despite seeing huge flakes of coconut in the dry mix.

Sipdown!

I can’t thank Angel enough for giving me such a generous sample of this tea to try. I loved it. This is a definite contender for restocking (once I go through a bunch more of my cupboard).

I’ve found that slightly overleafing works well for this tea, as it’s so fluffy and fuzzy. And again, the second steep of this is my favourite – it’s so sweet.

Thanks again, Angel!

The day has finally come where I mustered up the courage to try this tea. I got it in my very first swap with aisling of tea and De about 3 months ago.

I’ve never tried matcha before on my own. I’ve had fruit smoothies with matcha powder at the mall, and I’ve tried green tea ice cream, but this is still a new experience for me.

I ended up mixing a full David’s Perfect Teaspoon (about 2.5 tsp) with a cup of almond milk and a cup or so of vanilla ice cream.

Mixed up, I’m not quite sure what to make of this. It’s minty, but the green undertone of the tea isn’t quite meshing well for me. Also, it tastes kind of chemically, when I was really expecting just to get a clear sweet mint taste like lifesavers.

I’m not sure if I did this correctly. I took the powder, put a splash of almond milk in to make it a paste, mixed in the rest of the milk, and then added the powder/milk mix to the blender with the ice cream. Any pointers here? I’ve probably got at least a few tsp of this left to finish off and I’d feel bad just throwing it out.

Sample sipdown!

I’m still new to the world of pu’erh teas, but this one didn’t really excite me much. It tasted kind of fishy and even a tad sweaty, and compared to the other pu’erh I’ve tried (Verdant’s amazing Tian Di Ren Bulang Sheng from 2006), this one seemed kind of flat. It was in a teabag so I didn’t rinse it – maybe that’s why.

This was a swap from Jude. At least I got to broaden my horizons a bit!