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So I had a little bit of Earl’s Garden from DavidsTea left; not enough for a 12oz cup, but about a perfect teaspoon (i.e., 1.5 actual tsp). I didn’t have great success with it hot anyway, so I decided a cold brew incorporating it would be good. I usually put 4 perfect teaspoons in my 16oz cup, so this time I put in one scoop of Earl’s Garden, one of The Earl Grey from teapod, one of China Rose (black) from ESP Emporium, and one of Chung Hao Jasmine (green) from Upton. Kind of like Rosy Earl Grey, but with the added berry from the Earl’s Garden. Turned out great! Fruity with lots of berries and bergamot, floral with strong rose and jasmine. Really quite a delicious cup of tea, and one I might recreate by doing the last three I mentioned above with the fourth scoop being Black Currant or Red Fruits black tea.

When I read some reviews of this one I really wanted to try it because it seemed like my kind of tea. I love cranberries and pears, so why not together with black tea? Luckily DaisyChubb sent me a sample! Thanks!

The leaf is full of big chunks of fruit, cranberries, apples, and pears (which look pretty weird when rehydrated). I was totally not expecting the aroma after it steeped. Mmm, caramel! Where is that coming from? Underneath the caramel are notes of black tea and appley fruit. The flavor is primarily fruit… definitely apple and pear, with some tart cranberry in the second part of the sip. The caramel notes manifest very lightly in the aftertaste. The black tea just kind of sits down at the foundation, not too present, which is fine with me because when it does peek out I’m not sure I like it’s flavor too much. The fruit flavors, possibly mostly the cranberry, are fairly tart and have a slightly drying mouthfeel. Overall this tea is very tasty, and very autumnal!

Another DavidsTea sample thanks to DaisyChubb! Thanks for sending me the last of your packet of this to try, you are too kind! This one smells peachy peachy peachy dry. It’s not what I would consider an absolutely natural smelling aroma—it’s not what most peaches smell like when bitten into—but it’s still a very pleasant one. The slightly rolled green oolong leaves are mostly buried in a relatively fine powder of flower petals, with some obvious fruit and almond chunks in the mix. Steeped, the aroma of the peach has transformed into a more natural profile, like the smell of baked peaches. This mental picture is helped by the buttery oolong scent that has joined it. The liquor is murky with an odd color that looks reddish amber in the middle but intense yellow on the edges. I find it hard to believe that there isn’t also saffron in this mix, but it doesn’t show up in the ingredients.

I’m unsure if I got a good tea:extras ratio here because there was so much flower petal powder in the bag, I just dumped the rest of it into my steeping basket. Still, it’s a nicely flavored tea, with different flavors that are distinct but also work together pretty well. That tart, fruity peach flavor is there of course, along with an almondy nuttiness. I don’t get as much buttery flavor as I did scent, and the green, fresh notes I would expect from the oolong are a bit suppressed here. There is a kind of rich, almost savory note in the back of the aftertaste at times… which also makes me think of saffron. Overall a pretty tasty cup of tea, especially for anyone who’s a huge peach fan.

Update: I tried a second steep of this after rinsing some of the “yellow” off and got a cup that actually looked like tea (clear orangey-yellow), and tasted like tart, fresh peaches with a lightly vegetal, greenish accompaniment. I do think I prefer it in this second steep.

There was something about that last tea that just made me feel ill… sometimes that can happen with a particular type of black tea (though I don’t know exactly which one). Hopefully it’s not a type that’s common to all DavidsTea black bases! I decided to go with this tea to fill my non-traditional Earl Grey craving and hopefully chase away lingering yuckiness. It’s been quite a while since I’ve had it, but I still totally love it. I have a bit left, but it’s definitely a reorder when I get through that.

This is another tea from my swap with DaisyChubb! Be prepared to see a bunch of notes on teas from that swap, heh.

I wanted to try this one because of the Earl Grey + red fruits (basically) flavoring, which would be similar to the bergamot, red fruits and jasmine tea I brought back from Argentina (minus the jasmine, of course). I read some reviews so I’m not expecting much bergamot flavor, but I did get a bright hit of it in the scent of the dried leaf along with a decent amount of berries. Right after brewing the tea smelled like black tea, berries and bergamot in that order, but after cooling a bit the berries take over. A lot of strawberry, a hint of raspberry and black currant.

The first sip on this was incredibly bitter! So disappointing. Remember that I’m very sensative to bitterness in teas, and someone else had problems with bitterness, so I should have known better than to brew it at boiling, I guess. Beyond the bitterness I can taste that it is very, powerfully fruity. Even without the bitterness this doesn’t seem like quite the right flavoring for me. The black tea base also errs on that side of whatever black that I really don’t like the taste of (and often that’s where the bitterness is coming from).

The first time I had this one I really enjoyed it but I felt I hadn’t put in enough leaf, that the flavors weren’t strong enough. I also brewed it fairly cool based on the instructions on their website, instead of where I would usually brew an oolong (especially a dark oolong). This time I’m pretty sure I have an appropriate amount of leaf, and a slightly hotter temperature, and also I’ve tried a lot more dark oolongs since this one, which was one of my first. I wanted to try this one again because thepuritea is having a 15% off sale right now until Nov 15 (use the code FALL), and I’ve been wanting to try some of their other teas (even though I really don’t need more tea right now).

So! This is very floral for a dark oolong, which isn’t surprising because it is scented with osamanthus flowers. The aroma I get from the steeped tea is dark and roasty, but with a definite sweet, floral note. I don’t really get the stone fruit aromas they mention, but the florals are sweet enough smelling to almost be fruity. That sweetness doesn’t carry over to the flavor/mouthfeel, which is actually more minerally (a character I’m starting to see in dark oolongs especially after having Verdant’s Big Red Robe). There are some toasty firewood flavors, and I do pick up a bit of a unsweetened cocoa note (not chocolate, but actual unsweetened cocoa powder). The high notes at the back of the sip are floral with bit of fruit. Revisiting this one, I’m less taken with it than I initially was. It’s still a very nice tea, and one of my favorite dark oolongs I’ve had, but I still don’t totally adore dark oolongs in general.

I have a sample of this thanks to DaisyChubb! I have returned from Las Vegas and even after sleeping a ton yesterday, I’m still exhausted, so I thought maybe this would be a good pick me up. I have a roasted maté with chocolate and almonds from Argo Tea that I haven’t had in a long time, but the aroma of this steeped really reminds me of it. Chocolately, almondy, roasty. There’s also another note in there that must be the raspberry, because it’s a bit berryish, but only faintly. It doesn’t stick out, really.

First I tasted chocolate and nutty almondy flavor (not almond extract/marzipan flavor, but more acutal nut flavor), but there was a note I couldn’t really identify at first that threw me off. I think it is the raspberry, but it didn’t really taste like raspberry. Then I read some reviews on here and now am definitely noticing a distinct banana flavor. It’s pretty tasty and I’m enjoying the cup, but there’s something about the fruit combo in there that’s throwing me off. I feel like I might prefer my roasted maté sans fruit. Also things that taste like bananas (that aren’t bananas) aren’t really my scene. But I’m glad I got to try this one, and I do feel a bit more awake now!

This tea is much the same in composition and overall feel as the other teas I’ve had from his company, though I would say this one is closer to the vanilla tea than the Earl Grey, which I feel was more successful than these other two. Like the vanilla, the tea base on this has a tendancy to get bitter, though this one lacks the creamy sweetness to smooth it over. The passion fruit flavor is fairly tart, but also has a mellower side which keeps it drinkable. These are so far decent enough teas and at least a step up from the conference teabags I would likely be having otherwise.

This morning I picked up this tea, one of the few other options at the coffee shop (I was disappointed that they don’t have any of their oolong teas for ordering; no doubt because they only have sachets at the shop). I steeped this for approximately 3 minutes, definitely not longer, and it still had a faint bitterness at first, though that faded as it cooled a bit. I’m getting the idea that the teas from this company are highly flavored, but so far they’ve been high quality flavors (if only the same thing could be said about their tea base). The vanilla here is strong but rich and a bit creamy with definite caramel notes. Unfortunately the black tea base has a tendancy to get bitter, and even when it’s not it’s not really that tasty. But a decent wake up tea this morning.

Hey I figured out how to use the sliders on my iPhone! Turns out my problem was trying to actually slide (silly me) them instead of just tapping. :p

There is something about conferences that just puts me to sleep in the afternoon, even if I haven’t been up really late the night before. I went on the search for a cup of tea in the vast maze that is the Paris Las Vegas hotel and found a takeaway coffee stand. The Paris seems to use Harney tea bags, because they also had them at the coffee service this morning for the conference. Normally I would be glad about Harney teas, but these are tea bags, not even sachets, and I don’t really like Harney’s Earl Greys anyway. Oh well. Like the Supreme, this is very lightly bergamotty tea that takes most of its flavor from it’s base, which in this case is pretty smooth but not my favorite blend. But it’s drinkable, and I’d still take it over the bags many other hotels provide.