Luthien

There’s nothing really wrong with this tea. It’s a perfectly adequate peppermint green tea. The effect of the rose petals on the taste is negligible.

Apart from that, there’s not really a lot to say about this tea, which is its main problem: it’s not very memorable and really pretty dull. I have more than one other peppermint blend in my tea cupboard that easily out-does this one.

I’ve been intending to review this tea for over a week now. I’ve tried it more than once during that time, so maybe now I can finally get my thoughts about it sorted out.

I ruined this tea the first time I brewed it. I got called away partway through making it and so it ended up steeping for four minutes. NOT a good move. Some oolongs, even good ones, can cope with that sort of steeping time. Not this one. It turned out astringent to the point of being undrinkable, so I poured it down the sink and tried again.

Now that I’ve come to know this tea slightly better, I’ve found that 2 minutes is about right for the steeping time. The packet says to use boiling water but, well, ignore that. My default temperature for oolong is 90C – roughly, the temperature you end up with after leaving the lid open on the kettle for a minute after boiling the water – and this oolong seemed to like that, too.

As for the taste? My immediate reaction, once I tried it minus the accidental added bitterness, was that this oolong was okay, but there was nothing about it that really wowed me. But somehow I kept coming back to it, and not only because I still hadn’t managed to write this review yet. g

It’s a good oolong. Not spectacular, but good. And it is actually slightly milky to the taste. This makes it very easy to drink, and to keep drinking. It’s not one of those exquisitely complex teas that makes you think about every mouthful as you’re drinking, but if you’re not in the mood for that sort of tea and just want something with a good taste to drink while you’re busy working, this one works really well.

This is not your typical Taiwan oolong at all. The leaves are significantly more oxidised than the majority of oolongs, and produce a brownish/coppery liquor. The flavour is quite individual. It’s not delicate, but also not without subtlety. The initial flavour is quite strong, but it really made me sit up and take notice of it. There are definitely some honey notes in there, and also a little woodiness. The aftertaste is sharper and doesn’t fade quickly.

This actually reminds me more of a Darjeeling than of the sorts of Taiwan oolongs I’m familiar with. Really interesting tea!

Currently up to the third steeping of one of my favourite comfort teas as I attempt to get all my financial stuff together for my date with the accountant tomorrow. The tea is about the only good feature of the whole process.

Two teaspoons of tea, steeped for one minute rather than the minute and a half suggested on the packet, because I’ve learnt to be very, very careful with Gyokuro. But actually, now that I’ve tried it I think this one might stand to be steeped for a minute and a half. It would be interesting to find out if the extra time would make it a teensy bit stronger without ruining it, anyway.

This is a very soft, muted sort of gyokuro. It produces the typical pale green liquor and the taste is vegetal, of course, but not overly so. It’s very soft and gentle on the surface, but isn’t as silky/smooth in the mouth as that softness might lead you to expect. The aftertaste is really, really interesting. There’s a little bit of saltiness to it, and a very slight sharpness that’s so subtle that I’m hesitant to go as far as calling it astringent.

This is the sort of tea that makes you want to sip it slowly and consider every drop. I’ve just finished my first cup and I already want to try it again.

So often, fruit teas disappoint me, but occasionally they work brilliantly. This one? It’s one of my two favourite fruit-flavoured teas. Just a terrific balance of pineapple and oolong.

I was browsing Lupicia’s site last night (outcome: seven new teas. Oops!) when I saw this one and realised I hadn’t had it all year! I rectified that sad state of affairs. Now to try to work out what to drink tonight while I wait for the Lupicia order to arrive…

This is one of my favourite minty teas. The spearmint dominates, but doesn’t overwhelm, and while you can’t really pick out the other ingredients individually you definitely notice their effect in preventing this tea from tasting like just another mint tea.

When I’m in the mood for a mint tea, I just keep coming back to this one. It has a permanent place in my tea cupboard.

The leaves look more likely to be a Chinese green rather than a Japanese, I’d guess, but I could be wrong. The flavour of the tea isn’t a major issue, though, since the orange dominates pretty much everything I’m tasting here. I would have liked this to be just a teensy bit sweeter, but it’s certainly not as sharp as the lemon and lime flavoured green teas I’ve tried before. That’s definitely orange I’m tasting in this, rather than a more generic citrus flavour.

This really isn’t bad at all; it’s just mainly not the tea I was really in the mood for this afternoon so it’s pleasing me less than it probably would on some other day. I think it would be worth trying with a little honey added next time. I’ll keep experimenting with it.

resurfaces

I haven’t posted any tea reviews for a couple of weeks because… I haven’t been drinking much tea. hangs head in shame

Anyway, I’m back home now, and drinking tea again, so… here we go!

This is one of the teas I got when I was in Queensland. It tastes like… green tea with dill. g

Actually, it’s pretty good. It has that aniseed/licorice sort of edge to it that you’d expect if you’re familiar with the flavour of dill, plus something lurking around the edge that’s almost minty. The dill flavour doesn’t overpower the flavour of the tea because they’ve used the seeds instead of the plant – definitely a good move, since the flavour of the seeds is softer and more subtle.

All in all, this tea balances out the competing flavours nicely. I’ll definitely be drinking more of this.

No notes yet.

I’m staying with my parents for the next couple of weeks. Since I’m nearly 1000km away from my usual haunts and I don’t know this area very well, just about every place I go is a new discovery. Today I went to a large weekend market that my father wanted to check out. Most of the stalls didn’t interest me much, until I spotted: tea! My parents watched, bemused, as I sorted through the teas on offer and ended up with nine little tins.

“No one buys that many teas at once!” said my mother.

“Oh, I know a few people who would,” I assured her, thinking of steepster. g

In the end, they offered to take me to the town of Tamborine, where Tamborine Teas is based, later in the week, so I may end up with a few more of their teas by the time I go home again. (As it is, I’ll be going home with more teas in my bag than when I arrived, which surprises me – though probably it shouldn’t. g)

This is a mix of oolong and green tea, with a little added spearmint and safflowers. It’s really not bad at all. The spearmint is there, but it doesn’t dominate the flavour as much as I expected. It provides more a refreshing edge to the tea and let the flavours of the tea come through. It reminds me a bit of Moroccan Mint, though more oolong-y (is that a word?) than green.

I liked this tea quite a lot, and now I’m really looking forward to trying the other teas I got from Tamborine Teas.

This week I finished up with work, finished writing the story I’ve been working on (six hours before deadline), flew north yesterday – and now I finally have the time to sit down and relax with one of the teas I brought with me. My bag had packets of tea tucked into every available nook and cranny. g

I’ve been so looking forward to a quiet cup of really good tea, and this is it. Not as sweet or floral as some Taiwan oolongs, not at all astringent, and smooth but not bland.

Ahhhh. I don’t know another tea that’s so beautifully floral in both the aroma and flavour as this one, and all while never straying in the direction of being sickeningly overly floral.

I remember distinctly the first time I tried this tea. It was a revelation. I’d never drunk a tea like it before. Now, of course, I’m a lot more familiar with Taiwan oolongs, and I’ve tried some really good ones which are as wonderfully smooth and silky as this tea, but none of them quite matches this one for the floral notes. This tea is up there with the best Taiwan oolongs I’ve tried, and yet it costs a fraction of the price. I’m not complaining. If I had to choose a single favourite tea, this one would be a strong contender.

I’ve been drinking a lot of this the past few days. I’ve been in the mood for something sweet-ish, and this really delivers. This is easily my favourite flavoured white tea, and I don’t think I’m going to get tired of it any time soon. The black version of this tea regularly tops the list of the Tea Centre’s most popular teas, so apparently I’m not alone in liking this blend of flavours.

This oolong is a little earthy. It’s nothing like as richly earthy as wuyi shui xian, but it still brews up a little darker than your average oolong, and the earthiness is there in both the smell of the dry leaves and the taste of the tea. I was in the mood for this sort of taste tonight, and this tea delivers without hitting you over the head with the flavour.

And there were a few fortifying cups of this consumed in the midst of everything else I’m trying to get done this week. Of course there were. :-)

Backlogging.

This tea arrived in the middle of the latest round of insane busy-ness earlier in the week. I don’t remember my detailed impressions because they’re lost in the blur, but this tea didn’t disappoint even in those circumstances. It’s everything you’d hope – and expect – a high altitude Alishan oolong to be. I’m so relieved that the usually reliable teas.com.au has started stocking this, and that it’s turned out to be just as good as it’s supposed to be, because my previous main source of Alishan is no more.

I couldn’t survive without at least a small supply of this in the house!

I was so pleased to see this tea arrive. I wasn’t sure whether it would get through Customs, and they did open the package to check it – but they let it through. Double yay, because as it turns out, I’m really glad I got to try this tea.

The description sounded intriguing, so I was really, really hoping the taste wouldn’t be a let-down, as happens to me too often with flavoured teas. First impression was good, though: the dry leaves don’t just smell like mint, they smell like a peppermint cream! And then there was the flavour… I love the blend of the mint and the lime, with that added extra something that must be the hint of champagne. There’s nothing weak or lacking about the flavours, but they’re not too much, either, and all in all I have to say that it’s a really well balanced blend. All of the flavours are present in the aroma, too, so you breathe it in at the same time as you’re drinking it.

Love this tea. I’m so very glad it got here safely!

I felt like something sweeter after the sharp flavour of the Green Darjeeling, so I had some of this. This tea comes closer to being a guilty pleasure than any other in my cupboard, mainly because its slightly creamy, slightly toffee sweetness goes perfectly with a Tim Tam, so that’s what I usually have with it. And that’s what I’m doing tonight.

Mmm-mm.

This is a really interesting green tea, mainly because it doesn’t really taste all that much like a green tea. The flavour is more like the lightest of black teas, or perhaps the strongest of white teas. There’s a definite thread of astringency running through it, though, so it’s important to treat it as the green tea that it is when you brew it.

This is a really individual tea. I can’t think of another green tea that’s anything much like it at all.

I’m still liking this tea a lot. I’d say the plum is mostly in the aroma, except that there’s something about the taste of the tea that makes it feel rich and full in the mouth, a particular sort of texture that’s very distinctive. Great stuff.

The first steeping brewed up quite light, a pale green-ish yellow, so I left the second steeping for two minutes instead of one and it worked out much more the sort of flavour that I was after. The colour of the liquor was still quite light compared with other oolongs, which isn’t surprising considering that baozhong/pouchong is the least oxidised of all oolongs.

The smell of this tea right after you pour the water on the leaves is distinctly vegetal, and yet there isn’t a lot of that in the taste. It’s very smooth to the taste at first, almost bland, but the further you get through the cup the stronger the character of this tea, without ever being astringent. The aftertaste is distinctive, quite strong and a not quite sharp mix of floral notes and… not quite sure how to describe the rest. About the best I can do is: strong (proportionally, considering the light nature of this tea) but not bitter.

I was only going to have two cups of this tonight, but writing this review has really put me in the mood for a third, so now I’m going off to put on the kettle!

Backlogging. This tea has got me through a lot of hard weeks over the years, and it did that again this week.

A friend of mine had a bad reaction to eating spicy food on an empty stomach when she was visiting me the other day, so we both ended up drinking three or four cups of this. I thought that since the mint dominates the flavour of this it might be gentle to the stomach, and I was right. It’s also just generally a pleasant, easy-drinking sort of tea.