laurenpressley

After the weirdness with the French Breakfast tea this morning, I wanted to give a full cup of something a try. So, I made a cup of this.

I bought this maybe six months ago on an Ikea outing. My husband loves rhubarb, so I thought it might convert him to tea. Since we hadn’t opened it until this morning, my plan obviously didn’t work. :) It’s a nice cup. The vanilla stands out more than the rhubarb. I added a bit of agave nectar, which really rounded out the flavors.

It has a “best by” date of a few weeks from now, so I doubt I’ll be able to finish it all. But I’ll certainly be trying to get a few more cups in before then. I might even try this to make a pitcher of sweet tea now that we’re entering warmer weather….

Another weekend, another Golden Moon Tea! See pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauren_pressley/tags/frenchbreakfast/show/

This was a good black tea! It’s lighter than English Breakfast (in taste and color), has a hint of something floral to it, and kindof reminds me of yesterday’s Darjeeling.

Unfortunately there was a little speck of turquoise something in it, which I pulled out prior to steeping, but it kept me from fully enjoying the tea. Maybe I’ll give it another go in the future. Despite that, the part that I tasted was quite good.

I’d not paid attention to if I’d had a darjeeling tea before, so I figured I’d get a cup of this with lunch to see if I could note anything of interest. Luckily, the place that I had lunch at is skilled in the ways of tea making, and actually uses a timer to make sure things steep correctly before serving it!

The tea was good. Lighter than other black teas, floral notes, mild, with very little astringency. I know Adagio offers several darjeelings, so I’d like to try samples of the different ones at some point to learn what the commonalities are between darjeelings. That, and I want to try samples of other black teas to learn more about regions, etc, and to know more about a black tea by taste. All that is to come in the future, though….

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

This tea is growing on me. The coconut is the thing that puts it over the edge, I think. I made a large cup (I think the mug really holds two cups), and used 2.5 teaspoons of tea. Delicious tea for an afternoon meeting!

Had a teabag of this left over from a trip we took to New Mexico. It was exactly what I expected it to be.

No notes yet.

And with that, I’ve finished another sample. I really like the decaf ceylon… it’s nearly like real tea, but I can drink a lot of it! Since I was finishing off the sample, I sweetened it up for an evening of web browsing and reading, and it’s serving me well. So long, decaf ceylon!

This feels like a formal, girly cup of tea. It’s nice, but more proper than this morning calls for. :)

Just had a cup of this with soymilk at a local coffee shop/cafe. It was a lovely iced treat for the beginnings of spring!

No notes yet.

I kicked off the morning with this one. As it was steeping, I began to realize I smelled something an awful lot like children’s cough syrup. Oh right… the grenadine! When sipping the really hot tea, I couldn’t get past the smell. Then… I had a granola bar with chocolate chips in it. As I sipped the really warm tea between bites, it became a really good cup of tea! Then, once the bar was gone, it was a bit off again. So, lesson learned: always have chocolate with this tea. That’s a win-win-win for me! :)

Around 2:00 today my energy totally faded. So, I had a cup of this. I love it. The toasted rice, the extra green quality, the matcha… it’s comfort in a cup!

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

This is the coziest tasting tea in my cupboard. Every sip is part tea, part earl grey, and part comfort. I especially like that though there’s strong flavoring to this tea, it’s still clearly tea. A lovely way to kick off this week!

Update: The baby might love this tea, too, as he’s kicking around a lot more than is typical at this time of day. That, or he hates it. I’m going to go with love, though. :)

Another Update: This tea is best pretty hot. As it cools to the temperature which I normally prefer my tea, it’s a bit bitter.

No notes yet.

Yay! I finally tried a cup of this today when visiting my friend Kate. It was Fabulous! However, drinking this tea just made me want to get it for my own cupboard, so that I could try it with different steeping parameters and add ins…. so now the big question is: should the next order be from Mariage Freres or from Samovar?!

No notes yet.

Since this was featured on Steepster Select yesterday, I figured today was the day to give it a try. You can see pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauren_pressley/tags/sinharaja/show/

It’s an amazing tea for a ceylon… which seems to be the consensus. I’ve been less and less interested in ceylons lately (probably because a decaf ceylon is the base of most of the tea I’ve been drinking, and all of that is less than inspiring). However, this might bring me back. It was a bit sweeter than I would have expected, and I got almost a floral note. That floral quality could have come from the raisins I had just before hand, though. :)

So, a solid tea. Not one of the Golden Moons going on my shopping list, but one I’m going to keep in mind in case I want to stock up on some ceylon!

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

And I finished another sample!! It’s a good no caffeine option; which I guess would be obvious since it’s the only herbal one I’ve finished up at this point. It’s still berry-licious! :)