Dinosara

After my previous tea I needed something I knew would be high quality and not over-flavored. I reached for this tea from Verdant Tea’s new Alchemy line because it seemed like it would likely fit the bill. The scent of the dried leaf seems to confirm that: the first thing I smell here is an herby green oolong with delicate floral notes over the top. The tea is chocablock full with jasmine buds and small chunks of orange peel, but the rolled up Tieguanyin leaves still predominate.

This one brewed up a pale greenish yellow, and the aroma has a base of buttery green notes along with a light sweet jasmine. First sip was still a little too hot for me, but I can tell it’s going to be good. Scratch that, this is going to be one of those teas that blows me out of the water. My first impression is that of a buttery jasmine caramel if that flavor combination makes any sense at all. The natural sweetness in this tea is amazing… it’s a light, smooth sweetness like sweet cream butter. Combined with this oolong, the jasmine takes on a totally different character than I’ve ever tried before—warm, rich, sugary, almost herby—but is somehow still distinctly identifiable as jasmine. The orange rind doesn’t really make itself known in the flavor, and I have a feeling that it, like the saffron, is just lending a supporting role to the other notes. As the tea cools it just gets sweeter and sweeter, playing up that buttery sweet jasmine flavor. A++ on this tea, David… it totally rocks!

Ugh… I am currently on some antibiotics which are not kind to one’s stomach, so I was unsure I’d even want any tea today, but I’m doing ok for the moment. Still, I wanted something that might be light and definitely non-upsetting. I chose this new tea, but I forgot what the description was like when I ordered it. Really, Jasmine Lemon doesn’t seem to be the right name for this tea, since it’s really more of a bouquet of all kinds of florals. The tea is full of flower petals and buds of all kinds along with fairly long green and white tea leaves. The aroma is a slightly worrisome artificial sweet-tart fruit candy scent, but I’ve smelled that aroma in dry leaves before and it doesn’t always turn out poorly.

After brewing my tea is a pale yellow with some dusty bits; they are likely small pieces from all of the whole flowers in the leaf. The scent is much more subdued, but still with the same general profile. This tea does taste familiar, but I can’t place it. It’s definitely sweet-tart and slightly fruity in a very floral way. I don’t, however, get any distinct notes; no jasmine, and definitely no lemon. This is the second tea from this company that I’ve tried, and though I’m pretty sure they don’t blend in-house, the teas definitely err on the side of lots of somewhat artificial flavoring that pretty much obliterates any flavors from the tea itself.

ARGH. I just figured out where I know this tea from. It appears to be identical, minus the sencha, to the Macabeo tea from ESP Emporium that I have had and not really enjoyed. A sniff test of both teas confirms that they have the same aroma profile. Interestingly, I do seem to enjoy this one better than the ESP version, but only slightly. Curses! Foiled by a new, tempting name. This is exactly why I wish I knew where the tea was coming from in these places… now I have 2 more ounces of a tea I never would have bought if I had known what it really was.

And with that ringing endorsement, does anyone want any of this? Free to a good home; I have way too much tea right now to have this one languishing in my cupboard.

I ordered a bunch of samples of Dancong from DeRen Tea because it’s a type of oolong I have yet to explore. I’ve only tried the Dan Cong from thepuritea, sent to me a while ago by QuiltGuppy, but I enjoyed the flavors in that one so wanted to try others of the type to see if it’s for me!

I prepared this tea “western” style, with 4g of leaves in a 12oz mug, because I don’t have a gongfu setup and probably won’t until I go to China next spring. The leaves are long, dark and twisted, and when brewed some are greener than others. The aroma of the steeped tea is really nice… roasty grains, like a dark oolong, but also sweet and floral like a green one.

The floral note is the first one in the flavor, but it’s quickly taken over by the roasty notes. I’m acutally getting a slight bitterness in the aftertaste, but I’m hesitant to dock the tea for that because I feel like it’s likely an issue with one of my parameters. Other than the lingering hint of bitter, I do like the combo of the floral plus roasted flavors. I’m not sure that I like them more than the pure fresh floral flavor of some green oolongs, but I have a number of other dancongs to try as well!

I have tons of new teas to try, but this morning I wasn’t feeling great so I decided I needed to fall back on my lemon ginger green. I could go for even more ginger in this one, but I love ginger, and this is after all primarily a lemon tea. Still very tasty and nicely soothing for the stomach.

When I got home tonight, there was an extra large package sitting on my doorstep. See, I was expecting a package from Monterey Bay Spice Company, from a groupon I had bought a while ago, but I had just ordered a bunch of samples of a lot of their teas, and this package was way too heavy to just be samples. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up to find a full pound of this tea in there! I looked at my receipt and the sample for this tea doesn’t have the same type of item number as the rest of the samples, which is probably the source of the mix-up, but I did only pay $1 for it. I had been kind of miffed that the shipping for this company is a flat $13, which seems high to me, but I suppose I got my money’s worth anyway.

So I have a lot of this tea. Is it any good? I didn’t even mean to order the decaf version! I decided to brew up a pot tonight to see. Fortunately, it’s definitely drinkable. It’s very, very orangey, with a somewhat more subtle spice compliment. Cinnamon, definitely, but also the kind of warm autumn spices that often accompany it, and none of them is very overpowering. The decaf black tea is inoffensive and hardly present in the flavor, but at least it’s not chemically (at least, not to me). Would I choose this tea to get a pound of normally? Probably not, but you can bet I was relieved when I took a sip and it was pleasant enough.

I have so many new oolong samples right now it’s really hard to choose one to try, but today I was wanting something extra floral, so I chose this one which will certainly deliver. This was one of the free samples that I ordered from DeRen Tea, which has a new online store. I was able to get samples of almost all of their oolongs for basically just the cost of shipping, so I couldn’t resist. Thanks DeRen, for the samples!

Somehow I’ve never tried a jasmine oolong, though I totally love other floral scented oolongs. The dry leaf on this one smells very very jasminey, and includes jasmine petals as well. I might have expected the leaves to be rolled, which seems to be common with green oolongs, but this tea looked more a standard green, with slightly twisted leaves. Brewed, the liquor is a deep golden yellow, and the aroma is all jasmine, sweet and floral with a slight greenish undertone, which makes it smell fresh. I’m realizing that it’s been a while since I had a jasmine tea, and I’ve missed it!

The flavor is very pleasant. It’s very much like a plain jasmine green, but without the grassiness of the green tea. The oolong flavor is slightly vegetal, but in a warm, not bright, way. The jasmine lacks the honeysuckle sweetness of jasmine pearls, but it’s definitely a strong jasmine… people who dislike strong florals beware! There is a very slight bitterness to the edge of this tea, which makes me think that I should drop the steeping time a little next time. I’m enjoying this tea, but honestly there’s not much more to the flavor that would make me reach for this over a jasmine green, and it certainly isn’t replacing jasmine pearls for me. As the tea has cooled almost to room temp, a light sweetness comes out that makes me think that this one would be great iced.

Back to the daily grind! I have fully recovered from my illness that took me out all last week. That, combined with my extended trip, makes getting back into the old routines kind of weird feeling. But my morning tea at work is one of those routines, so I’m easing back in with something familiar and yet new… this Earl Grey from Verdant Tea’s new Alchemy Blended line. I finally got around to ordering from Verdant Tea, which I had been meaning to do for a while, and I was excited to see their new line of flavored teas, which David kindly gave me a free sample of two of them (and I ordered an ounce of another!). Looks like I’ll be the first to rate any of them on Steepster.

The dry leaf on this is composed of very high quality looking Yunnan Golden Buds along with a smattering of orange rind and a few shards of lemongrass, but the black tea is by far the main component here. It smells very citrusy-bergamotty in an utterly delicious way. I steeped it for 3 minutes this time since I do that with all blacks the first time around, and the liquor is a dark reddish-amber. The golden buds have definitely come out in the aroma now… the tea has a rich, honeyed aroma, slighly caramely, like some of the other “golden” teas I’ve tried, with a bright slightly citrusy earl grey note that is really secondary to the tea, but still present.

In the taste, first I get a bright bergamot note that opens up into a honey-caramel golden bud tea taste, and it all finishes with an aftertaste that combines the two nicely. The bergamot is bright and bordering on astringency, not very tempered by the orange and lemongrass, though I think they do make it a decidedly citrusy bergamot as opposed to a floral one. It’s bold without being strong, if that makes any sense, because it doesn’t overwhelm the golden buds, but it also is no shrinking violet in the flavor. I’m really digging this Earl Grey blend, which is pretty different from other Earl’s I’ve tried before, mostly because I don’t think I’ve seen an EG made exclusively from golden buds! Definitely a winner, and one I think I will likely have to keep around!

I had a groupon for this tea company that was expiring in about a month, so I went ahead and bought the tea while I was already buying tea from other places. So expect a lot of new teas here for a while, because I have a ton of stuff to try!

Before my travels, I was really getting into oolongs, so a lot of my new teas are oolongs. I’ve always wanted to try the Raspberry Oolong from AC Perch’s, which is supposed to be awesome. Funny, that there aren’t very many raspberry oolongs out there from any tea company, but this one happened to have one, so I had to get some. The dry leaf pretty much hits you over the head with berry aroma. Sure, raspberry, but also just tons of all kinds of sweet-tart berries. There doesn’t seem to be any berry pieces in the dry leaf, but there is some kind of pinky-red petal in there… possibly hibiscus or rosehips, which is a bit surprising. Nibbling on a dry petal makes me think hibiscus. There aren’t very many of them in there, so we’ll see how they affect the steeped tea.

The tea brewed up really light yellow (no pinkness), and it smells tart-fruity and a bit floral. There’s also a bit of that green oolongy aroma in there. Despite the light color, the taste is pretty full. I’m enjoying it, but I do think it’s a tea that might not be for everyone. The raspberry flavoring is quite strong, especially as it cools, and it kind of drowns out the oolong itself, though I feel that it’s definitely lending a floral character to the fruit. And I can’t decide whether the flavoring might taste a bit artificial. I don’t get any hibiscus or that it’s too tart from this. Actually the aftertaste is rather sweet. Nevertheless, I am enjoying the pot and I will have no problem drinking up my ounces of this.

I’ve decided that my guts have recuperated enough that I should be able to handle a cup of black tea. I’m putting off trying some of the new samples I have, particularly a bunch of puerhs, until I seem to be at 100%, but I should be able to handle other teas now.

An inti zen mix box of tea bags was one of the packages of tea I picked up in Buenos Aires before I came back. I tried their Earl Grey early on in the trip, and when I saw the mix box I really wanted to try this tea when I saw the list of ingredients, with honey, vanilla and cacao. The tea bag has an intense scent of beeswax-y honey, with a slightly odd herby note. Brewed, the aroma is kind of odd and complex. That beeswaxy honey aroma is still there, but it’s joined by what I guess is a combo vanilla/chocolate note, but it’s hard to separate them.

It tastes ok, but yeah, that honey flavor tastes more like eating a honey beeswax lip balm than actual honey. The tea itself has a bit of a bite (apparently it’s an assam), and it almost seems like there is more spices hidden in the tea; it reminds me of a light chai or something. I don’t get distinct vanilla notes, and the chocolate seems to meld in with the black tea. There’s a slightly musty, hay-like note in the aftertaste. I’m also reminded that I don’t much care for assams. And tea bags make me much more sad then they ever used to… I don’t mind sachets, but tea bags are just always so disappointing. Well I’ll be back to my collection of loose leaf at work next week.

I am feeling a bit better today… the past days I’ve been too sick to even want tea! I’m already tired of my doctor-ordered chicken-noodle-soup and crackers diet, but though I’m feeling a little better I’m definitely not well yet. Sigh.

This one is rooibos with cinnamon and “crunchy” lemon, and I chose it because I thought the lemon would be nice right now. It smells very cinnamony through the bag and very cinnamony when steeped. There’s a faint brightness to the aroma that is likely the lemon, and that slightly nutty note that I get from rooibos. I wish there was a little bit more to the flavor… it’s a little weak, though I suppose I could steep it for longer without any ill effects. Also definitely cinnamon in the taste. I don’t get a lot of lemon, but I guess there’s a brightness. Basically it’s mostly a light cinnamon rooibos tea. I think I’ll brew it longer next time to see how it changes the taste.

Hey looky here, I actually did bring back tea from Argentina! This is a tea that I normally wouldn’t have given a second thought. The combination of flavors—spearmint, verbena, eucalyptus and melon—doesn’t really sound that appealing to me. But I had a bag of it at a friend’s house in Argentina at the end of an evening of a bit too much wine hoping it would help settle my stomach. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it! So I bought a sample box from this tea company that included some other herbals that sounded tasty as well. It is a tea bag, which I normally avoid, but you take what you can get.

Since I’ve been feeling pretty awful lately, and that includes some GI troubles, I thought maybe this infusion would be the tea for me. Mmm, and it’s definitely very nice. A bit herby, melony and sweet, it tastes like delicious fresh sweet canteloupe. The other herbs add some depth and other flavors to the tea, but they don’t overwhelm. I’m often afraid of mint in a tea, especially with fruit, because I often don’t like that combination, but it works. And I think it’s already soothing me a bit. Now I wish I had bought a box of only this tea to have it around!

Well, I have returned from Argentina, and brought with me some kind of cold/flu bug. Bleh. I don’t have a huge selection of teas at home, but I chose this one because it includes ginger, which would be good right now I think. I got this one a while ago as a free sample from Utopia, but I kind of put off trying it becasue I’m not the biggest fan of strawberry flavoring, and I didn’t much like peppercorn in another tea that I had, so we’ll see. I’m glad I came here before I steeped it; I’m not sure what kind of tea I thought it was, but it definitely wasn’t a Green/White blend. Fortunately I was able to wait for my water to cool a bit and not oversteep.

Steeped, the liquor is a kind of odd tan color, and it has the light aroma of strawberries with a hint of pepperiness. The flavor is slightly weird to me, and a bit difficult to suss out all the parts. There’s definitely some strawberry, which thankfully doesn’t taste like artificial strawberry flavoring. That seems to come out primarily at the tail of the sip, bright and sweet and fruity after a warm ginger/pepper note. It’s not distinctly gingery, per se, more just that pepperiness that ginger has, no doubt brought out by the peppercorns. I’m also thankfull though that it’s not super peppercorn-y; they don’t overwhelm the flavor like they did in the other tea I had that had peppercorns. There’s just a warmth to it. Overally I was pleasantly surprised by this tea; I didn’t expect to like it all that much, but I am enjoying it. Thanks again to Utopia for the sample!

Usually I don’t try to steep a sachet of this in a single cup of hot water, but I had had it with crappy tea lately so I did it anyway. That combined with a 5 minute steep was too much for this tea, and it got bitter. The second steep was better. I think I’ll have to do a few short steeps in the small (6oz?) cup to use the sachet, but I really need my tea. Only about a week until I’m back to the states and my cupboard full of goodies!

Wow, way backlog on this one. I just kept forgetting to log it. Mainly I wanted to say that this tea made me believe that the other Wally’s Tea that I had (the chocolate mint) was in part just really stale. This one had a fresh and juicy orange flavor, but sadly I didn’t find any notes of dulce de leche. Not one that I would go back for, but much nicer to drink than the last one.

At some point on this trip, I regained my taste for plain black tea. What I mean is, when traveling, whether on an airplane, bus, or train, or at the included breakfast at a hotel/hostel, one is often given the choice for coffee or tea, and the tea that comes is a plain black tea bag. This was one that I had at my hotel in San Juan, Argentina today. Earlier this year, I pretty much couldn’t drink this tea. I had been able to before, but at some point I couldn’t stand the taste of it. Even slightly higher quality English Breakfast teas were completely unpalatable to me. This trip, I started out declining such tea when offered… but then one morning I decided I needed a caffeine boost (and I absolutely don’t do coffee), so I got the tea bag and dumped tons of sugar into it and drank it. Now I add less sugar, but sometimes I feel like I need sugar to make it taste like anything. As it is usually I find them way too weak and steep them for a long time. Sometimes when I order tea I use my own tea sachet that I have brought with me this trip, but only when I get a small pot of hot water; a teacup of hot water would be way too little for a whole sachet.

Anyway, I’m glad I can drink them again, because even crappy tea is better than no tea at all, for me. Now so far it’s only been tea produced in Argentina, and maybe they don’t use some variety of black tea that others do that I dislike. But maybe the world of unflavored blacks is opening up to me once more!

Edit: I also wanted to add that Argentines apparently do not like Earl Grey. I have seen one Earl Grey offered anywhere since I’ve been here! Glad I brought my own…

Another early early morning in the bus station, another cup of Tower of London. I think I’m down to three sachets for the rest of the trip!

My choices are pretty limited: this or Tower of London, and I have less of Tower of London so I want to save it a bit. I don’t mind, though. When I’m at home I almost never drink the same tea every day, so while I might think “oh I could drink this every day” when reviewing a tea, it’s never put to the test. But you can’t go wrong with a pleasant Earl Grey for an afternoon tea (at least in my mind!)

Mm, afternoon tea. I’m not disappointed that I bought this Earl Grey to bring with me, because it’s quite tasty. When I go through these sachets, I might have to consider picking up some of the loose version of this tea. Very smooth, nicely bergamotty, tasty tea base. It goes without saying that this is much nicer than some of the tasteless teabags I’ve been having lately!

I actually just had this tea after lunch, so this isn’t even much of a backlog! This one came from the collection of one of my gracious hosts. I don’t know that I’ve ever tried a chocolate mint tea, mostly because while I like chocolate mint as a flavor, I rarely want anything minty. It’s just not something I reach for often, but it was one of the more appealing choices today, so I went for it. The tea bag smelled pretty chocolate-minty, but once brewed I feel like the flavor kind of disappeared. It was bland and a little dusty tasting, with a hint of mint and no chocolate. So I did something I rarely do and dumped a small spoonful of sugar into the cup, which made it emminently more drinkable. The sugar brought out the chocolate and mint flavors and masked any weird staleness. Not a tea I’d go for again, but I did enjoy the chocolate mint tea flavor combo.

Yesterday morning I was pretty exhausted, so I had another cup of tea not long after I had the Tower of London. This time I chose a local tea, and went with this orange flavored one. It’s not the most awe-inspiring tea in the world, but it was very orangey, and it never got bitter. The orange flavor was just that: orange flavor, and it didn’t really have that fresh squeezed orange juice flavor you get from some orange teas, but it was smooth and pretty easy to drink.

I have had very inconsistant internet access for the past couple of days, so I’m doing a bit of a backlog. I’ve been running around Argentina like crazy, and I’m happy to sit in one place for a few days! I had a cup of this from my stash that I brought with me yesterday morning at the bus station. I brewed it for a while because I needed a good strong cup of tea to keep me awake! It’s comforting to have something familiar like this tea when you’re traveling so much, and far from home.

First an earthquake. Then a hurricane. Now a volcano?!?! Ok, so the Chilean volcano has been erupting for months now, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t just cancel my flight from Buenos Aires to Trelew, Argentina. Sigh. Now I’m booked on an overnight bus, and I’m chilling at a cafe with wifi in the bus terminal until it leaves. What to do but have a cup of tea? I brought sachets of this tea with me to Argentina to have when my tea options were thin. I already had one pot of flavorless argentine black tea earlier today, so I busted out one of these for one. I haven’t tried a lot of the bagged teas in the supermarket, so I took a gamble and grabbed this one.

I’d say it turned out pretty well. It’s a pretty nice basic Earl Grey that satisfies the craving. The black tea base is nice and smooth (Ceylon, my favorite for an EG), slightly malty, and it pairs well with the bright, citrusy bergamot. The bergamot in this isn’t bitter or astringent, but it’s also not shrinking into the background either. This is an EG that I could easily drink regularly, which is good because I have the rest of a box of it!

Greetings from Argentina! My most recent world travels have brought me to Buenos Aires, and then on to a number of small towns throughout the country. I ended up being delayed a day in my arrival because of Hurricane Irene (no damage to our house, but we still don’t have power!), so today was a crazy day of trying to make up lost time. Tonight I went to one of the big malls here to get a sim card for my cell phone, and spied a cafe where people were sitting with tea pots. Score!

I chose this one, which was intriguingly labled as Inca Rose, subtitle “Italian Bergamot Black Tea” and then later Earl Grey scented with Rose Petals. I was shocked to see it here on Steepster already! It’s apparently an Argentine tea company.

I brewed this one for 4 minutes, then left the tea bag in the pot for the second cup for an extra minute. I’m pretty sure the water wasn’t boiling when I got it. The tea bag smelled strongly of rose with a hint of bright bergamot, and that was born out in the tea itself. This tea was really primarily rose scented black, but that was fine with me because it was very tasty. It was definitely a sweet rose flavor. With the second cup, brewed 5 minutes, and as it cooled, the bergamot made itself known in a subtle way… it added a brightness to the end of the sip, and a hint of citrusy flavor. All in all, a very tasty tea, especially for a bagged tea, and I want to try and find more of their teas while I’m here. And here I thought I wouldn’t find much selection besides maté!

Last dark oolong sample from China Cha Dao! I really appreciate the opportunity to sample all of these teas, it’s been very educational. While I’m not head over heels for Wuyi dark oolongs, I have definitely come to appreciate them through this little experience. Thanks again to Jerry Ma for the samples!

Anyway, this one brewed up dark! One of the darker ones from the sample, it’s a deep slightly reddish brown. It smells, not shockingly, very roasted… this is definitely one of the more toasty varieties. Definite erring on the side of burnt/charcoal. There’s also a distinct sweet smell behind the roastiness, but it’s kind of shy and fleeting. There’s another kind of odd aroma that I can’t quite place, and it’s only getting stronger as the tea cools. It shows up in the taste as well, and it’s almost coffeeish, actually. Yup, definitely getting coffee flavors from this one, along with a smokiness.

I’d have to say that I’m not really taken with this one, primarily because of those coffee/smoky notes, but I can see how they would appeal to others with different sensabilities!