gmathis

This was one of those unusual almost-March mornings where it was warmer outside when I woke up than when I went to bed. So the tea o’the a.m. needed to be springy. After prowling through the light stuff that migrated to the back of the cabinet, I pulled this out and I’m glad I did.

Wonderfully sweet aroma, gently salad-y taste with a little Cheerios hint in the background. Ahh…I hear birds chirping! (I really do…come on, spring!!)

Stuck my nose in a bin of this at my favorite herb & health food place and it just smelled too good not to try. (I’m all for cheap luxury!) The dry mix looks like meadow-gold potpourri with a wonderful peachy-apricot whiffle.

The apricot-itude disappears a little once it’s steeped about 3 minutes. Yellowy as it is, it turns surprisingly dark red—there’s the hibiscus in action—but the other ingredients cut the tartness down to just a hint. (Which is good; I’m generally not a hibiscus fan.)

Hey, for a mere $1.50 an ounce locally, it made for a nice springy “vacation” from a cold, dreary day.

Co worker passed along … reminds me of Adagio Foxtrot without the peppermint. I’m not getting any of the fruity stuff, but it’s not bad.

Full review’s now up:

http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/1671/tea-review-mark-t-wendell-victorian-afternoon-3/

…though it’s not one of my better ones, writing-stylewise; it has come to my attention that I’ve used the “pork rinds” metaphor to describe lapsang souchong perhaps one too many times. Mike was kind to post the review anyway. In the meantime, I’ll work on honing my adjectival vocabulary.

I’m going to go ahead and post my comments here, although my sample is labeled Thurbo FTGFOP 1 CH (SPL) EX4 (Experts, I know FTGFOP, but can you help interpret the rest of the alphabet soup)?

I’ll have a longer review later also, like Jillian, but this is really good stuff. My favorite feature is the aroma of the steeped tea—-smells like the tray of communion cups at my church, or the inside of a Welch’s unsweetened grape juice bottle. This Darjeeling has personality!

Continuing to enjoy the fact that a) I can actually find this inexpensively and loose leaf locally and b) You cannot ruin this tea, not by understeeping, oversteeping, being chintzy with the dry leaves, or spiking with condensed milk that’s just short of questionable expiration. It’s all good.

When I added this to the database, I clicked pu-erh as the variety because it’s listed on the “Pu-erh and Yunnan White” page, but please correct me if I’m wrong—I still have lots to learn!

Anyway, this is a lot different than I expected from a tea that comes in a sheng—a cake, right? It steeps up a nice golden brown, and does not have a potting-soil taste at all. Has a green tea taste without the spinach. It’s sweeter, even a little floral in the background and dances around on your tongue before and after you swallow.

(Actually, I don’t know that any of the descriptive copy in the previous paragraph are doing it justice, but it’s really, really nice!) Second steep and it’s still going strong. Thanks, Gingko, for the opportunity to experience this one!

Nice big leaves; nice sweet taste; first adjective that registered in the brain when I tasted it was “cereal!” (Cereal is a noun, I know…but I wasn’t awake enough to add ly to make it ceareally.)

Updating: new review at http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/1665/tea-review-golden-moon-tea-english-breakfast/. (If you’ve ever been to Branson, Missouri from October to December you’ll get the reference…I hope….)

Several ounces of this were in my Valentine treat bag from hubby—he’s started a pattern of getting me several ounces of blendable herbs for special occasions. Very nice and clean and lemon-limey on its own.

However, my first blending experiment wasn’t one I’ll repeat … I paired it with dark Zimbabwe, thinking the light would balance out the heavy. I’m drinking it on principle, but they’re way too different to combine well. (Blending disasters…there’s a discussion thread…hmm….)

An update now that the full review is up: http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/1642/tea-review-grace-tea-company-connoisseur-master-blend-2/

I am certain that the extra strawberry pieces I ladled into my cup, coupled with the “real fruit juice” in the box of Sunkist Fruit Gems my husband got me for Valentines’ Day, constitute a nutritious breakfast.

(However, I’m running out of strawberry pieces—-must ration this carefully so the flavor doesn’t get lopsided. This is still a nice flavored tea!)

Previous descriptions of this one have pretty much summed it up: olive green in color, a little leaf crunch, nicely sweet but it definitely has the green tea thing going for it. Not one I’d consume by the pound (which, left to myself, I can easily do with a Whitman’s Sampler), but definitely a nice little one-square treat to accompany a genteel cuppa.

Happy to report that this retains a lot of character in subsequent steeps - it’s really too light for an a.m. tea, but I left the leaves overnight and brewed a rerun this morning. Has lost very little of its velvety texture.

My general opinion of white tea has not been very kind in the past—usually I think it’s too insipid. This one (thanks, Gingko from lifeinteacup.com!) was a surprise! The leaves are monster huge and it’s a beautiful golden maple color. Flavor is subtle, which you’d expect from a white tea, but leaves this wonderful sweet, biscuity aftertaste. Like drinking liquid suede.

The lifeinteacup website says I can expect to get seven steeps out of this one … it’s a little late in the evening for me to attempt that feat, but I’m looking forward to seeing what an encore cup is like.

Savannah Tea Company lists this only by name, so I couldn’t get a product description—looks to be rooibos with a lot of cardamom. A LOT of cardamom, but it mostly hits the nose instead of the taste buds. Otherwise, it was pretty meh on its own. A spot of honey helped it a bit.

-5 F in our neck of the woods; perhaps a little spice will kick up the internal temps, anyway. This may well be one of the first flavored teas I ever drank, and one of the few husband asks for by name when it gets this cold, so there’s some snuggly nostalgia that improves the flavor :)

Have always enjoyed this because it tastes like cinnamon-roll cinnamon; not red hot cinnamon.

Desperately in need of sunshine in a cup, since it’s not in the sky. This helps. Got to chatting and left it in a bit too long, so the white tea went a little bitter, but it’s still a good, inexpensive tropical option.

Picked up a pouch for future review at www.itsallabouttheleaf.com. I am not a lapsang fan by any means, but this one taught me that not all lapsang souchong blends taste like burnt bacon, either. Nice substitute for a crackling fireplace on a cloudy afternoon with the remains of a blizzard on the ground.

Cold, ice, snow, and mid-winter blahs have also influenced my tea preferences, so I’m not wasting good tea on a bad attitude. Just hot basic leaf. Today’s quote on the bag tag: I cannot live without books—Thomas Jefferson.

There is hope … just praying I can dig it out from under a foot of thawed and re-frozen bleccccccch!

Full review is up at http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/1639/tea-review-lochan-tea-satrupa-tgfop-first-flush-2010/

The 95-degree-afternoon mentioned in said review was several months ago! We’re UP to a blistering 5 degrees today. Wish I had more of this to enjoy from the depths of my favorite blankie.

More than 18" of snow with drifts half again that high; wicked wind chill; it’s still falling; legs and hips already aching just thinking about the shoveling that’ll have to take place once it stops tomorrow: just needed something hot, dark, cheap, and no-nonsense. Sometimes it’s just too cold to be subtle.

Still haven’t unearthed the brand of this nice (and wonderfully inexpensive!) bulk tea from favorite local store, though I see big ol’ 25-pound bags on their shelves with characters I can’t deciper. It looks a little leafy and woody and stemmy dry, but is still a good pantry staple, especially on days when you want to be tugged awake instead of booted out the door.

Regretfully sipping my last sample of this one. Besides being a good quality blend, it just smells great—clove-y, maybe.