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Generic pumpkin spice tea. It smells delicious, yes, like creamy, sweet pumpkin pie filling, but in the mouth it’s rather flat. Neither creamy not sweet and no pumpkin flavor. It tastes mostly of pumpkin pie spice flavoring mixed with a floral black tea base that has a propensity toward bitterness, which I find an odd combination with the spice but not bad. Mix that flavor with some sweet Yunnan black and it’d be much better.

I got this as part of a 3-tin stack of seasonal blends including Hot Apple Cider and Pumpkin Spice. In the stack, this one is called Hibiscus Cranberry, but it’s the same tea as Cranberry Spice Hibiscus. Idk what’s up with that.

The dry bag smells like hibiscus and cranberry with spices. Aroma is strong cranberry spice, like Yankee Candle levels. One small cup permeates my entire living room. I do not object. The taste is exactly as advertised in the name – cranberry and hibiscus foremost with a light spice flavor underneath. I can’t pick out individual spices. The dark berry red tea is drying and very tart. I like hibiscus but this one is so tart it gives me reflux which I rarely get. Very glad there are only 12 bags per tin because this one is kind of brutal. Definitely won’t be looking for Hibiscus Cranberry next season.

This is another normally-sold-as-loose tisane from ArtfulTea that I have as a sample in an unbleached filter bag.

Love the look of the chunky material in the bag. Brewed up, it’s mostly lemongrass tasting and sweet from the licorice root. Not sure, but I can maybe pick up on the ginger and peppermint in the aroma. It is warming from the ginger, though, and I do feel my sinuses opening up from the peppermint. The green cardamom pods are doing nothing for me even though I can smell them in the steeped bag. In my opinion, cardamom seeds need to be crushed.

Somebody out there will enjoy this, I’m sure, but for some reason I don’t like dried lemongrass even though I like other lemony herbs. Fresh, though, hell yeah. This tea isn’t bad – it’s smooth just not my taste.

My aunt gave me an opened box of this to take home since it’s only 2 months from the Best By date. I’m a little bit of a scavenger by nature so I ain’t complainin’. She does this with wine, too, which doesn’t have a best by date. She just gives me all the red wine she receives as gifts that she doesn’t think she’ll like. Definitely not complainin’ about that one.

For being opened for who knows how long and so close to the Best By date, it’s still very potent. It’s mostly a drying cinnamon oil and clove spicy herbal tea with a decent chocolatey carob note and a hint of vanilla. Carob and caramel sweetness settle at the bottom of the mug for a nice ending. It’s warming and tasty enough to drink two cups in a row. I let the bag do its thing while I sip. Glad I can still find some joy in grocery store tea.

Rejoice! First day of the rainy season! Let there be oil-slicked roads and accidents, landslides, lakes on 101 that span 3 lanes and potholes lurking underneath that eat cars for breakfast. Wash away the stench of months of… nevermind. It’s gray and wet, the air is clean once again, I am happy.

Wild Boar. April 2018 harvest. Gone western. 2.5g (2tsp), 8oz, 205F, 3 steeps at 3/5/11m.

The dry leaf is fragrant with dark fruit notes such as prune, blueberry, blackberry and cherry. There is a rose floral note that sits just beneath the dark fruits and an undertone of cedar and malt.

After the first steep, the wet leaf smells like prune, blackberry and a faint menthol. These also show up in the the liquor aroma with additions of cedar, amber and another incense. The first thing I notice about the liquor is not the tastes but the body. It is s full, robust and brisk with an interesting tingly, astringent mouthfeel I’ve never experienced before, pleasurable and reminiscent of a Ceylon but not quite. It’s lightly bitter, tart and mineral.

Once I get used to what’s going on in my mouth, I can focus on the tastes which are almost like a Darjeeling. I pick up on berry, cypress?, autumn leaf, salt, cherry, raisin, rye and faint malt, walnut, rose and incense. There’s a gentle menthol cooling quality to this tea that opens my sinuses. I can breathe clearly again. A moderate to strong, delayed returning sweetness appears. In the second steep, I can also pick up some butter and an odd impression of creaminess in the body. That becomes more prominent in the third steep. The aftertaste is pleasant and tart with some salivation.

Wild Boar is an interesting, unique tea. It offers a kind of simplistic quality upfront, but once I take the time to appreciate it, the scents and tastes really open up with some complexity – something that makes me want to try this brewed in a gaiwan. It has a great body and robustness that makes this a nice breakfast/morning tea. It’s not mind-blowing but for the price, this kind of quality is hard to beat.

It’s a smooth, fragrant, flavorful chamomile. Nothing to complain about, nothing to rave about. Fresh and good quality but nothing I’d seek out since I don’t buy plain bagged chamomile.

Organic Nighty Night is a smooth bedtime blend. It has a forward but gentle and cooling mint and catnip taste. Underneath that, it is slightly earthy-leaf, floral-chamomile and herbal-citrus. Breathing in the minty steam, I also get something faintly sweet and almost like vanilla – I’m guessing the linden flowers. How pleasant.

This was very easy to drink even with leaving the bag in the mug as I sipped.

I adore this tea. It’s a little on the thin side and missing a lingering aftertaste but it makes up for that with its clean, dark and seductive waves of black licorice, star anise and concentrated red cherry aroma and taste. It has just a hint of bitterness and astringency that mingle with the sweet-sour taste. I like to do two western steeps.

The base tea is Whispering Pines’ Ailaoshan Black which I also adore and have ordered over a few seasons. It tends to be a light-bodied cookie-wood-dark fruit tasting tea to me. This Cheshire Black is from 2017 if I recall correctly and it seems that the base tea has matured, really bringing forward a red cherry aroma and taste. To me it is not a medicinal cherry; rather it is specifically reminiscent of cherry Jolly Ranchers candies. The star anise has lost its sharp edge since I bought this batch but it is in no danger of fading away anytime soon.

Man, this is the perfect tea for this time of year.

On a tea related note, school was cancelled M-W (we also have off R and F for American Thanksgiving) due to the air quality still being so poor from the fire up north. With my unexpected free time today, I wandered the streets of Chinatown in search of puerh storage containers.

I’m excited to have found a clay pot that’s glazed everywhere except the underside of the lid. It’s the perfect size to accommodate 4-200g cakes and I can wet the underside of the lid for humidity. $6 filthy find stashed out of reach on a top shelf of some store called The Wok Shop. Lady said the pot has been there like 20 years. It did have some unidentifiable ‘dust’ objects inside it. shrugs

At a no-name odds and ends store I bought a smaller double-lidded ceramic crock for $5 to keep a broken up shou cake. My final purchase today was $5 worth of osmanthus flowers from some ginseng shop. I’m excited to finally try osmanthus by itself! Awesome, cheap finds today and I didn’t buy any actual tea :)

Dabo turned out to be very similar to the Jin Guazi. Same aroma and taste – sunflower (Old Ways Tea mentions orchid in the description), winter squash, sweet potato-ish, nutty, mineral. However, this tea has about half the intensity as the Jin Guazi in aroma, taste, texture, feelings of relaxation and longevity. Dabo is also nearly half the price of Jin Guazi, reflecting the difference in character between these two teas. This is big leaf material (found a 10cm long leaf!) and I wonder if it is from the same bushes or trees as Jin Guazi since it has a nearly identical flavor profile.

I recommend this tea on the caveat that it is brewed gongfu to get the full experience which was rather short-lived for me with 6 good steeps and another 2 that were pushing it. OR, now that I think about it, do a longer western steep. A western cup brewed at only 3 minutes turned out too light-bodied and watery for my liking. A second 5-minute steep was where I felt this tea opened up.

I enjoyed Dabo and think it is worth a try despite what might sound like a negative review. My bias follows an incredible experience with the similar but very expensive Jin Guazi and I’m leaving Dabo unrated because of that.

This tea is subtle in a good way, it possesses a softness that a blender of nighttime teas should strive to create. The combination of ingredients makes this taste like a lightly minted, fruity and soft rose honey. Except I’m just not one who appreciates the flavor of bees’ alchemy and I have found that I do not like small amounts of hibiscus mixed with a majority of chamomile. Rating is my personal preference, as always, but I think this herbal tea would please a lot of people.