Dinosara

This is one of my favorite blends, made all the more amazing because I am not typically impressed with Teavana’s blends. So when I happened to see that it was on sale during the sale recently, I went ahead and bought 4oz, which for me is enough tea to last a looooong time.

This morning I had some and managed somehow to not boil enough water to fill my teapot, so I steeped it for a bit shorter than normal to make up for the higher tea:water ratio. It worked out perfectly, with not a trace of bitterness. Just lots of almond and rose, two of my favorite flavors ever (I have particularly been on a rose kick lately). Yum.

I discovered 3 extra sachets of this tea recently… I had thought I was all out. I had one sachet a few days ago and I am having a second now. And I am definitely remembering why I love this tea so much. This was really the tea that got me into tea and I still love it so much. Eventually I will pick up some more for sure, though it may be a while before I can bring myself to make another tea order. I will miss it once I actually am officially out!

I picked up a big tin of this tea at the Kusmi shop in NYC before I left. Yes, I have officially moved away from New York, and all of its lovely tea shops. It’s definitely a bit sad but I am moving on.

I bought a whole large tin of this tea because it was not included in their Russian sampler collection but I very much wanted to try it, since it included almonds and rose as two main flavors. I do not have optimal brewing conditions here at my parents’ house, but I can tell I will definitely enjoy this tea a lot when brewed properly. I definitely get light almond and rose, with a bit of orange. A very pleasant blend.

I am using up the last of my sample for this cup, and I am somewhat sad to see it go. I wouldn’t have expected to enjoy a blend of these ingredients (peppermint? chamomile? chocolate?), but I really do. I didn’t really have quite enough actual tea left in my sample for a cup, so I threw in an extra pinch of Laoshan Black.

Today I really need the calming yet awakening properties of this tea. Dissertation committee meeting this afternoon, and I already know it’s going to go poorly (I mean, it’s a committee meeting, they never go well). I steeped this up and I am just sitting here next to it, waiting for it to cool enough for me to drink it, and I started smelling wafts of what smelled a lot like amaretto. Wuh? No, just the notes of this tea combining in an intriguing way.

Very tasty, and I am consistantly getting those amaretto notes in the aroma this time around, but not in the flavor. The flavor is all lovely Laoshan black with additions. Man I love Verdant’s blends.

Sample #2 of the day. This one comes to me thanks to Faith!

Not being very familiar with the Canadian prairie, I have never had Saskatoon berries. But I am always up for a new and interesting fruit!

The the tea smells very berry-ish, definitely the tart, sweet kind. I also smell the warm, roasted oolong base underneath that seems like it goes pretty well. I am getting quite a lot of tart berry from the flavor, cranberry for sure and perhaps Saskatoon berry, though I don’t know that I would be able to identify it. The oolong base is a touch roasty but not very strongly so. As opposed to several other reviewers, I get basically no maple syrup, and I would hvae liked some maple syrup. Still, this is a pretty tasty tea and I enjoyed it.

I am trying to do some sample stashbusting for the rest of this week! Lets see how many samples I can get through before I move.

I had a sample of this before, but another sample pouch of this came to me via Infusin_Susan, I believe. I really liked this one before and am interested to see how it comes off now, since my tastes have changed quite a bit from the last time I tried this.

I have to say that whereas once was quite a fan of this, now it’s decent but not great. I don’t know what to point out except that I don’t think I am really that much of a lavender fan. That said the lavender in this is light and not soapy, which helps its cause a lot. I think it is partly the base that I no longer care for so much; it has a particular flavor that I am just not digging. But it is still a drinkable cup and I am enjoying it.

I drank this one earlier today while doing some work. I wanted to try this one (and once again, Alphakitty was willing to oblige… thanks so much!) because I love nutty flavored things and nutty flavored teas. I wasn’t totally sure about chestnut because I didn’t grow up eating roasted chestnuts or anything so I am not super familiar with the taste of them. I do love chestnut-filled mochi that I buy at the asian grocer, so I figured that there would be a good chance I would like this.

To me, this is like you took some of the buttery, nutty, and what I call cookie-ish notes that are naturally present in some awesome straight green teas and turned them up to 11. I was never able to properly identify those notes in those teas, but now I know they are chestnut notes. I would assume that the base teas contain some of these notes to start, but they have just added to them in such a way that it makes it seem like it is totally natural. Really, quite a delicious tea and one that I could definitely see getting more of.

Backlog from yesterday.

I also got this tea from Alphakitty, thanks!

This was pretty pleasant. The base of the tea was similar to the pumpkin cream: uninspiring, but inoffensive. The apple was juicy, the caramel was definitely caramel “flavored” but not very authentically. It’s like some caramel candies, or caramel flavored things that don’t have caramel in them inherantly. Again, not necessarily bad, but just with that hint of fakeness to it. Still, again, I drank up my cup of this tea with pleasure.

Backlog from yesterday. Super busy lately!

I got this tea from Alphakitty, thanks!

I love anything pumpkin, so I was interested in trying this. It was a pretty tasty tea! Definitely pumpkiny, though not especially creamy. It’s also only lightly spicy. A hint of pumpkin pie spice, but not overwhelming for sure. More like a delicate pumpkin souffle. The tea base was not very interesting, but also pleasant enough and not bitter at all. Definitely tasty and I drank up my cup with pleasure!

I’ve had this tea for just about a year now (ordered the sample packages from Naivetea’s black friday sale last year), and have sinced discovered that although I enjoy taiwanese high-mountain oolongs, they just don’t excite me that much. I decided today that I wanted to use up the rest of my sample, which probably had between 5 and 3 grams (a bit more than one tablespoon) left in it. It was more than I usually steep “western style” in my 12oz mug, but I decided to throw it in there and give it a 1 minute steep for the heck of it.

And I’m pretty pleased with the results! It smells lovely, all buttery and floral. I was feeling a bit meh about finishing up the rest of this tea, but it has reminded me that I do enjoy drinking these teas, even if they’re not among my faves.

This tea is amazing. I’m just going to start with that.

This has been on my “to try” list for it seems like forever. The idea of a lightly flavored floral-citrus blend, and the fact that it is unique in being a red (i.e., black) tea created from white tea leaves, were very appealing to me. Fortunately Azzrian was kind enough to send me a sample, and so my wishes have been fulfilled. And this one, lucky for me, lives up to my expectations.

First of all, it smells wonderful, like tangerines with a light floral note. Like orange blossom water with the addition of a brightish black tea base underneath. Flavor-wise, definite yum. It’s such a light and bright black tea, but still distinctively a black tea. The flavoring is present but light and natural. This seems like a scented tea, like the tea was dried with tangerine blossoms (like how jasmine greens are made), and maybe it was. In any case, I am very much enjoying this cup and this will definitely go on my “to order (once I gain control of my stash)” list.

This tea has been on my “to try” list forever it seems like, but I never got around to samping it or picking some up. But fortunatley that has changed now since Alphakitty was kind enough to send me some of this in our last swap!

The tea smells nice and lemony, coconutty, and also the somewhat more intangible “fresh and green”. The flavor is quite nice. It’s not too heavily flavored, which is good because it keeps it light and that fits with the tropical blend. Honestly I’d like a little bit more lemon to it, but the coconut is creamy and nice. The green tea in there even makes the coconut taste fresh, and I have the sensation of eating chunks of coconut right from the shell. Yum.

This tea comes to me thanks to Azzrian, who sent me an awesome box of tea in our recent swap. This is one of the few that I asked for specifically because I really love Teavivre’s black pearls and am interested to try others as well.

I used 5 pearls for my 12oz cup. After two minutes they unraveled pretty completely and the liquor is a dark reddish amber. It smells rich, a touch chocolatey, with a hint of something else I can’t quite place. Oh right, a bit of smoke.

Yeah, this definitely has a smoky note to it that I was not expecting at all. It reminds me a bit of a keemun I tried once… with all the grainy, mollassesy, chocolatey sweetness, and a hit of smoke on top. Unfortunately, I am not really a fan of those smoky notes. They really do not do it for me at all. I can tell this is a very nice tea and without those smoke notes, I would love it. But I definitely won’t be seeking this one out again. Thanks so much for letting me try it, Azzrian!

This is another tea sample that comes to me thanks to Alphakitty. I was intrigued by the flavor combination in this one: passion fruit, orange, grapefruit, and grenadine. Sounds pretty interesting!

The steeped tea definitely smells very citrusy, perhaps predominantly grapefruit. It’s actually really weird for me to try a “citrusy” tea without bergamot in it! But anyway, I definitely catch the grenadine in the aroma too, all dark and pomegranatey. And yes, some passion fruit as well. This is suddenly reminding me of a fruity, girly beach drink like a tequila sunrise. The taste is predominantly citrusy, quite grapefruity, with some nice tropical flavors backing it up. As it cools it gets a little astringent, but it almost works because that’s basically what a grapefruit does to your mouth anyway. Overall a pretty tasty tea, though probably not one I would pick up more of.

Rarely am I that drawn to one of DavidsTea’s new flavors, but this one was intriguing to me and early reviews were positive. Vanilla flavoring on an orchid oolong, could be promising. It was actually the main tea that I wanted to get a sample of when I went to DavidsTea on Bleecker a couple of weekends ago.

I didn’t even thing about it until just now, but I do have another vanilla orchid tea that I like, but it is a black tea base. Vanilla is an orchid itself, after all, and very fresh vanilla beans can have a lovely, light floral quality.

The steeped tea smells nice, very floral and orchid-y, but also super sweet and creamy vanilla accompanying it. This is quite a lovely tea! I am really enjoying it a lot. A great balance of creamy vanilla and floral orchid oolong. I’m really quite impressed, and I could definitely see myself stocking more of this.

I ordered this tea quite a while ago, but never got around to trying it because I didn’t have a scale to weigh the leaves and wasn’t confident on my ability to estimate. Then I finally brought my kitchen scale into work, but still I forgot that I had this tea and now could drink it, until just the other day. Well, I’m finally trying it now.

Let me start out by saying that I am attempting to follow the “dragowell style” steeping instructions on Verdant’s website. However, I am a little miffed that the instructions on Verdant’s site say nothing about the size of the “glass tumbler” used in this method. A medium sized gaiwan, I know what that means. There is not a standard size of a glass tumbler. :P

My cup is about 8oz I think, for anyone looking for the sizes people have used. Otherwise, I followed the instructions. Except for the fact that just about the entire batch of tea leaves is floating on the top of my in a thick layer (and my mug is a wide mouth!), making “blowing them out of the way” nearly impossible. I am definitely eating quite a few leaves, not exactly on purpose. Not to mention that in attempting to blow the leaves out of the way I am mostly succeeding in blowing water all over the place (the water moves, the tea leaves don’t!). This is not exactly an enjoyable way for me to drink a cup of tea.

With all the fussing and such, I couldn’t even concentrate on the tea. What I did taste was tasty, with a nice buttery-bakery flavor that I like in dragonwells. But this experience was not conducive to a review. I just don’t forsee myself brewing it this way again. Gaiwan/teapot it is, next time.

This one intrigued me with the promise of berries, citrus, and florals, so I asked for some in my last swap with Alphakitty and she was kind enough to send me some!

To me, the leaf looked suspisciously like a black green blend, but no one has mentioned this at all, so I thought I was probably just hallucinating something. I went ahead and brewed it boiling, and most of the leaves in the infuser appear black, though I will say there are a few greenish-tinged ones that are intriguing.

Nontheless, the resulting tea isn’t bitter or scorched like a green might be when steeped at that temp, so I guess everything is ok. This tea is super duper berry-licious. It is berry to the max. I can’t really pick out a specific berry, necessarily, but it’s definitely berry. Maybe some black currant, yeah. It’s honestly perhaps a bit too much berry for me, and I would like it if the berry might step back a bit and let someone else have a bit of the spotlight. Because there are other flavors, playing in the background. A bit of bright citrus, for sure, and a hint of florals. Not really that floral, just a bit of orchid somewhere in there. Anyway, it’s a pretty tasty tea but it’s a little too in-my-face with the flavoring and I’m not quite feeling that this morning.

Yet another that has come to me thanks to Alphakitty! This one was high on my list of wants because lychee and jasmine? Sounds like heaven to me. I meant to drink this one yesterday when I was doing all my lychee teas, but I forgot. But today I remembered! It seems like forever since I’ve had a green tea.

I admit I have become pretty skeptical about blends that appear in among many retailers, acquired from some unknown wholesaler, and this seems to be one of those blends. However, this one is still pretty well done. It is floral but not perfumy, and the lychee is juicy and delicious. It goes well with the green tea and makes me wonder why you don’t see many lychee green teas. It’s a light and refreshing tea, and my only criticism is that the flavors are a tinge artificial. Like, not chemically, but the lychee is a bit candy-ish instead of being all fruit, and I would like more floral notes from it, actually. Still, this is a pretty tasty blend. Thanks for sharing it with me, Alphakitty!

This is another that comes to me from my recent swap with Alphakitty. Thanks so much! Of course I love Earl Greys in many forms, so I was excited to try this one that is supposed to be Earl Grey and caramel.

This is rather delightful! Really nice, citrusy bergamot, definitely a nice Earl base to the tea, but then the addition of caramel is just lovely. Creamy and perfectly balanced. This reminds me of another tea but I can’t think of any other caramel Earl Grey that I’ve tried. There are enough flavors going on here that I didn’t notice the black tea base one way or another, which is a plus because at least I wasn’t bored with it. It supported, it contributed, but it wasn’t the star, and that’s ok, it still held up it’s end of the bargain. This is quite a delicious tea, thanks for sharing it with me Alphakitty!

One of my other recent lychee tea acquisitions. This one I bought myself a few weekends ago when I stopped by the DavidsTea store in the city. I have been interested in trying this one for a while but keep just missing it during swaps and such, so I bought a half ounce to try.

The dry leaf on this tea is potent and smells of a fairly flowery lychee, somewhere between a fresh fruit and lychee candy. I love both, so that’s fine with me. Steeped up, the liquor smells really nice, but the flavor isn’t as strong. Also the base tea is somewhat boring and doesn’t contribute much in my opinion. I will definitely try this one again with more leaf to see if I can boost the flavor, but there are a lot of lychee teas out there and this one doesn’t really compare flavor-wise.

I decided today would be lychee morning, as I recently acquired a few lychee teas and I kind of want to try them at once. This one comes to me from Rachel Sincere in a swap, thanks for sending it!

I think I’ve only had one Simpson & Vail tea before, but I enjoyed it and they tend to get good reviews, so I am excited to try this one. I love a good lychee tea.

And this is a good lychee tea! Lovely lychee flavor and a nice, robust, tasty base tea. I said on the previous S&V tea I tried that the base reminded me of that of Upton’s Rose Congou, and that is definitely the case here. I find this lychee to be not too flowery, actually. A pleasure to drink, and nice as a slightly more subtle lychee flavor than some others I have tried.

I feel like I made out like a bandit in my most recent swap with Alphakitty because I got sooo many samples of teas I wanted to try! I’m drowing in tea samples, and I’m very excited to try all of them.

I plucked this one out of the pile first because bergamot + rose = love, for me, and this blend also has cardamom and borage, which I didn’t know what it was at first but is apparently a mediterranean herb. I realized that I think I have seen this tea company at the NY Coffee and Tea Festival before, but I’ve never noticed this tea there I guess.

Steeped, it smells like a delightfully rosy Earl Grey. Unfortunately the taste is a little lackluster. As in, it doesn’t taste like much! The flavor isn’t very strong, and overall the tea really dries out your mouth and doesn’t really have even much of an aftertaste. I also get the impression that steeping it longer would just end in bitterness.

Oh well, thanks for the sample, Alphakitty! It’s good to know ahead of time since this company doesn’t sell small amounts of their teas. I will go back to savoring my Bergamot Rose Laoshan Black. :)

So I realized a little too late in the game that I was out of the raspberry tea from Monterey Bay Spice Company, which included raspberry leaf in the blend. I would drink it about once a month for some woman-specific symptoms, if you get my drift, and I needed some right away and couldn’t wait on an order. I thought about checking out Whole Foods, but then I was at a Home Goods store (sort of a reseller of all kinds of homewares, including some foods like jams, cookies, and teas) and happened across a box of this tea. Score!

This actually isn’t pure raspberry leaf, it also apparently includes raspberry fruit as well, though I’m not sure in what form. They are tea bags, but that is fine for an herbal tea. An extended steep yielded a yellowy, herby-smelling tea, and I rather pleasant flavor. It’s quite sweet, a bit fruity, and a bit herby. I wouldn’t say “yes, very raspberry!” to the flavor, but it’s certainly tasty enough. Very pleased with my find.

I don’t often return to a tea this quickly, but I was just really curious about this one. The black tea base on this seemed so nonexistant that I wondered what would happen if I just added another teaspoon of black tea to the mix. I’m logging this under this tea instead of Chance Combinations because it’s really all about this tea. At first I was considering adding sometime like a Panyang Congou sample I have around, or perhaps some Laoshan Black, but then I decided, you know what? I really want some chocolate in there. So I used the Tea Spot’s Organic Chocolate “O”, which, for those of you who don’t know, is a single-estate, high quality flavored tea. I actually did 1:1 mix here, and just added more black tea to almost the normal amount of this tea that I would put in my cup, so we’ll see if it doesn’t turn out too strong.

Not too strong, but I might dial it back a bit next time because it is edging on too strong. However, it does have a nice blend of pumpkiny flavors and the rich chocolate underlying it. It’s definitely a more enjoyable cup with a base that actually is interesting, so I’ll definitely be putting some various different interesting black teas in whenever I steep this one. It will be interesting to see what might be the best one!