meliorate

This time I used almost a whole (level) teaspoonful for one mug and what do you know, the taste is stronger! 1/4 of a teaspoon my foot. The water I used was slightly too hot but it’s made the tea react like just a normal green tea, slightly scalded and slightly astringent/acidic, but in this case it doesn’t spoil the matcha too much. Nicely dry on the tongue and deeply vegetal and fresh.

Not a matcha I think I’ll be coming back to for personal use, but an interesting forage!

While matcha lattes have started to catch on in the cafés of Canterbury and London, I don’t have any matcha of my own to try. At least, I didn’t until the Teapigs twitter account started giving away sample packs of this, so I opted in. After all, their matcha lattes (which, incidentially, I always order without the latte) seemed pretty good! Let’s give this a whirl!

And… uh… hm. Naturally, having tried a proper, tea-ceremony style matcha before my hopes for this were already quite high… But having used the 1/4 teaspoon amount of tea as recommended, the flavour is rather weak. There’s the slight dryness and some of the vegetal earthiness in the scent has made its way into the taste, but not by much.

I imagine this needs to have more matcha powder, or maybe it’s just tasteless…

Trying this sneakily as I bought it for my housemate over the summer to replace his Lady Londonderry tea (our favourite local stockist no longer does it!! I’ve managed to source it somewhere else, nonetheless… a tragic loss!) – it’s not exactly the same, obviously, this has vanilla and caramel and more berries, but I’m intrigued.

This tasting is off a mug brewed to a deep orange, although I tried it a clear pale orange in a teacup last night. It smells intensely floral even though the flavours are mainly fruit – is this a Dammann Freres feature? In the first sip there is very little actual floral taste, however, and the first fruit to jump out is… cherry, with a hint of caramel, and a vanilla aftertaste.

Despite being brewed so strongly this isn’t as dry as other black teas. The further I get into the mug, the more raspberry comes out, too… It’s all delightfully sweet, I wouldn’t mind a splash of milk or drop of lemon in this!

From experience, Whittard’s rose teas tend to lack something… rose flavour. There’s one rose tea by Demmers Teahouse which is unspeakably amazing, though, but I’ve not had any good rose tea in between the two! So this is a try of the next tea up from English Rose.

The scent is appropriately… black with a strong hint of rose. A good start, because I’m getting a little tired of teas with only a weak flavour in them from this company! And, yes, the rose is definitely noticeable in this one! Not in any overwhelmingly perfumey way, just a “hello! I’m flowery!” in the cup. There’s a nicely sweet lingering aftertaste too which in itself seems slightly more floral than the first taste on the tongue. It’s a little dry, but good… Seems like it might go well with a hint of honey!

My Milky Oolong, how I’ve missed you. It’s been absolute agony to be wrenched apart from you for so long… but now you’ve returned to me, 100g of you, twice as good as the original 50g that hardly tided me over half a year.

Suffice to say I’ve decided this is now a tea to remain a staple in my collection! Lately it’s been tempting to switch my morning sencha with this (just because it tastes so fab that it starts off my day perfectly); the other day I took a 0.5l flask of this to the library with me while I studied. I am utterly in love with this tea.

Today’s tasting is of a half-mug, leaves directly in the mug as they unfold so large I can just scoop them out with a spoon. Just the scent of the leaves is amazing and… I can’t even think of an english word for this, so “gourmand” will have to work instead! And the aroma of the brew, so rich and milky without being dairy- that’s what I love about this tea.

This time round it’s been left to brew a little longer than usual so the butteriness is washing off and turning it into a greener oolong; fresh and ever so slightly astringent with a sweet end to every sip. Needless to say I love this tea in all its forms… Maybe once I run out of this I’ll try a different company’s milky oolong. For now, I have enough of this to last me a while :D

Drinking this right now before bed with a chocolate yoghurt! On Monday I’m doing a shop in London (Covent Garden again, yay!) since I happen to be visiting for other reasons, so hopefully I’ll get some new, intriguing flavours to try. For now, an all-time favourite.

First thing I noticed about this before buying it is the distinct scent of strawberry laces from the rooibos itself, before brewing. I kid you not, it smells EXACTLY like strawberry laces sweets. If that’s what you’re riding on then you may be a little disappointed to find that it does not in fact taste as sweet as a strawberry lace, but if you’re like me and are very keen on finding great fruity combos with rooibos, this is one for you.

The rooibos is very malty and somehow that just works perfectly with the strawberry- rather than overpoweringly sweet the strawberry blends into the rooibos and takes the edge off the original pungency that rooibos tends to have, and the tea definitely makes the strawberry sweetness wind down some. And oh, it’s just so fruity! Leaves a strong taste in your mouth after each sip, and just warms you to the core.

Backlogging this one! Surprised I haven’t done this one yet but then I don’t drink it all that often; being the first tea I bought on my pilgrimage (yes, my cultural, romantic, artistic, linguistic, idealistic pilgrimage) to Paris, and to Mariage Frères beneath the Louvre, I tend to guard it preciously and use it only for special occasions.

Hooowever my manager asked that I complete the last exercise of my tea training workbook today, which involved comparing two teas of different grades, so I compared this one to Whittard of Chelsea’s Afternoon Earl Grey, also with cornflowers. But French Blue will always come out on top, for me!!

Something always tells me not to brew this one for too long but it’s never come out badly for it; the floral scent is consistently amazing without being terribly pungent all through the steeping and, with the leaves carefully measured, never brews to any darker than the richest amber. (I do feel like I’m writing a love letter to this tea.) It’s dry on the tongue but so, so good for it- the bergamot and the china black tea and the cornflowers all come out separately, strongly, and so deliciously, none of this merging of flavours that tends to make the ingredients indistinct from one another. Being able to taste all the different harmonious elements here really works to its advantage.

I’ve had this one with milk before but unless you’re not a fan of the dryness, I’d recommend it black, to be treated as you’d treat a First Flush Darjeeling. This one is such a great classic!

For someone who doesn’t like eating apples or drinking apple juice, I’m a complete sucker for apple tea. Up until my friend gave me this some months ago I’d only known about Turkish apple tea as a myth, but I was surprised to find out it’s not ‘tea’ but an infusion… still, delicious!

Most apple teas I try are usually a sweet, candylike green apple flavour, but this one is much more red apple! Stronger than most apple-based infusions in my opinion, sliiiightly malty, so strong and bold and juicy that it’s not entirely far off from eating an apple… Without the nasty bit where the skin gets stuck between your teeth.

As far as night-time brews go, this is definitely one of the sweeter ones! <3

Feeling like I need something fruity and tasty and mellow, but not weak this afternoon… I went for a black breakfast tea rather than my usual green which was a strange experience, reminded me why I always have a green tea first thing. Ah well! On to the tasting.

I have so little of this tea that using it feels like I really need a good excuse and a long time to savour it. The colour in the cup is bright and golden and the aroma is nothing but cantaloupe, whole and delicious. Despite how soft the flavours are this tea is a tad dry and astringent on the tongue, but I can overlook this for the beautifully smooth fruit flavours. It’s like eating a cantaloupe melon and peaches (the peach isn’t as strong as the melon), it’s nothing but delicious. Another high score!

Hi all! Yet another Whittard tea but this time, because I was looking for something to replace my Milky Oolong, and I had the chance to visit a Whittard of Chelsea in Cambridge that stocked this tea. (The staff there are lovely, I recommend a visit!)

Some months ago the gentleman in the Covent Garden Whittard store gave me some of this to smell and it smelt gorgeous, at the time- alas, I wasn’t looking for another oolong for my collection! The leaves are large, a roasted dark brown, whole; again, it’s difficult measuring out quite how much I need of this when the leaves are like that. This time I gave myself a heaped teaspoonful or so, enough to make an acorn-brown brew. And wow… it smells suspiciously like ho-ji cha. I’ve had some bad run-ins with ho-ji cha, as tasty as it is, so already this makes me a little worried…

And… what do you know, it tastes remarkably like ho-ji cha! Thankfully it’s mellower to the end of the sip, a fruitier finish, but the immediate taste is definitely all from roasting. The further I get into this the more flavours are coming clear (slightly floral more than fruity, a mild earthiness like pu-erh, a warming, soft astringency developing)… Sadly, though, I was expecting something a little lighter and the initial ho-ji cha flavour has stuck. I miss my Milky Oolong dearly— I’ll just have to get some next time I’m in London!

Bought this on impulse today purely because… well, Melissa plant? It’s got my name on it! (spelt differently but! still!)

Melissa or melisse is a lemon balm herb, I think, so named because it attracts honeybees (melissa in Greek) so. . . it’s a herbal tea, that’s about it.

Didn’t brew it for as long as I should have done but then I have this terrible habit of judging a brew by its colour. I tend to freak out if my peppermint tea starts getting brown in colour so I popped the teabag out after maybe three minutes…

It tastes a little… well, herb-y? But also earthy in a way that reminds me of pu-erh. Earthy, with a mellow, warm tea-y taste, and a little bit of citrus. I think it must smell more lemony than it tastes.

Interesting to try my namesake, nonetheless!

Another tasting note for work… Are you sick of this yet? :’D

The other day I made this with a big pinch of the leaves directly into the cup but neglected to consider the fact it, uh, gets stronger the longer you leave it so it was gradually turning hazel in the cup… The leaves are wonderfully whole and quality-looking (with a stray twig here and there- is this intentional?) so it tends to be fairly easy to pick just the right amount for a mugful, though I’ve found it takes practice getting it perfect!

It’s brewed to a light, slightly toasted sunny gold in the cup, and is giving off the loveliest fruity/smoky aroma. I love the smell of white tea so much. And that scent is very telling of the taste, very pleasant although much weaker than the aroma – or rather, fruitier than the aroma! It’s slightly dry on the tongue but the body is mellow, tasty, some toasty notes in there to round off a wholesome slightly smoky sip. I could drink this all day if only I figured out how to re-brew the leaves!

Sadly don’t have many other white needle teas to compare this to, but it’s delicious nonetheless!

Again, giving this a try for work “training guide” purposes. I have until the end of the month to complete my tea and coffee workbooks so I am tasting at breakneck speed! For a little while (until next weekend or so, when I’m planning on getting something more interesting) it’ll be this standard Whittard range of loose-leaf tea.

(I have to say, Ysaurella’s Dammann Freres posts make me want to go back to France and try something delicious…)

Onwards! Just a plain and simple tasting like the Sencha the other day. I’ve brewed this Gunpowder several times, at work, and at Tea Society at uni and each time it’s been a marvel to see just how large the leaves unfurl to be in the teapot. They are big! It’s really a great quality gunpowder, and just over a level teaspoon gives this lovely dark gold-hinting-at-orange colour in the cup. Smells a little smoky, too.

It’s smooth, a little fruity, teeny bit floral with just the bare minimum of astringency following the first sip. There’s half of that grassiness that comes with green teas like sencha but thankfully it’s not nearly as strong as that, stopping just to slope off into this mild, again, slightly smoky flavour. I know gunpowder isn’t named after the taste but I have to wonder if this is intentional, sometimes!

All in all, it’s a pleasant gunpowder. Always feel like it should be a staple in anyone’s collection…

A while ago I gave this a try in its teabag form- 50 teabags to one box, basically gave me 50 unsavoury, terrible tea experiences. However I’m hearing good things about the loose leaf version and I’m always willing to give teas another shot, so I caved and got the loose-leaf Sencha yesterday, thinking I could use this for breakfast.

Steeped to the pale gold colour the packet recommends (the leaves look… unimpressive, to say the least, like bancha rather than anything of a higher grade), it still has this foreboding, sharply tangy aroma to it. Part of this fresh citrus-y scent is what makes Japanese green teas so unique, of course, but too much of that gave me an entirely bitter experience last time I tried this tea. And onto the first sip…

Much better! Smoother, softer over the palate and nothing as astringent as how it smells or how the teabag tea tasted! I understand the main difference between this tea and the teabag version is the teabag version uses Sri Lankan tea leaf fannings, whereas this, as whole-leaf Japanese tea, is more delicate. I’d used about a level teaspoonful— I’d say the flavour, being so easily spoilt, is absolutely based on the quantity of tea used. In a teabag there’s simply too much to make one pleasant mugful…

As I’m getting through the cup the citrus astringency is slowly beginning to settle in, but not unpleasantly. It reminds me of drinking tea and eating maple-leaf dorayaki in the ryokan in Miyajima… definitely making me crave red bean paste, anyway. I had to take quite a bit of care with letting the boiled water cool before pouring it but I think I’ll make this part of my morning routine from now on. ♥

A dearest friend got me this for Christmas last year, and although the best before date on the bottom indicates to use it by this December… I hope I’ll be using this a little longer. ♥

Today I had this in a teacup, hence the short steeping time, although really in my opinion this one doesn’t need a very long steep time as it doesn’t brew all that strongly. Previously I’ve used more than your average teaspoonful to achieve a darker brew just so I can put milk in it but this is best appreciated black and light usually! The leaves are fairly large, great quality, and they don’t open up so much that you need a larger strainer for extra leaves. They also smell dry quite similarly to how the tea tastes once brewed!

The first word that comes to mind is definitely “toasty” on the first sip of this; it’s more prominent as it gets cooler so I wonder if this might make a tasty iced tea? It’s certainly dry and astringent and the Darjeeling is rather prominent here too, muscat-y and oaky with a partial but not full smoothing-out of that astringency with the other black teas blended in.

As far as afternoon teas go, this is something I reserve for the guests who’ll appreciate a lighter brew and a delicate but powerful aftertaste. My favourite part is how strong the Darjeeling is— all too often that takes a backseat behind the Ceylon!

Absolutely one of my favourites… As a classics student and overall nerd anything named after Alexander the Great is going to appeal to me!! :D Somehow I remember the blend being different a couple of years ago when I went to Paris, the last time before I went this year, and it had spearmint and things I didn’t like… So to find it to be a green tea with violets (never had a tea with violets before!) in it was quite the pleasant surprise. And so, I have a tin of it to accompany my delicate rose tea. You can’t have one without the other…

The scent from both the leaves and the brew are beautifully fragrant and sweet, like they used an essential oil in it as well as the flowers. To me it smells exactly like parma violets… probably because I’ve only eaten two things with violet flavouring in before, parma violet sweets and crystallised violets chocolate. This is very much like that— sweetened as well as naturally sweet. And the colour of the tea is lovely! A pale green rather than the yellow you might normally expect from a sencha or bancha (which is what the leaves look like)!

The first sip is always surprisingly overwhelming in its fragrance and sweetness, just because, although I know green tea takes floral flavours rather well, I never expect it to take it THIS well. If it wasn’t for the mellowness of the liquor and the slight, pleasant astringency at the end of a sip I would think I was just drinking violets without the tea. But the slight roastiness of the tea is there, like a backup to the violets, and gives it maybe a second little kick to renew the sweetness in the mouth. And the taste is so clean and pleasant… I can’t find any drawbacks on this tea at all; you asked for violets, you got violets. It’s certainly unique, and very simple- can’t help but wonder how an extra couple of flavours might taste in this. Vanilla? Cream?

This is beeeeauuuutiful. One of the first rooibos infusions I got from work, the loose tea itself smells like— wait for it— strawberry laces! It’s an amazingly sweet scent, as rooibos takes scents and flavours very well, but of course doesn’t have the same flavour as this incredible first smell.

It’s labelled ‘Strawberry’ but this particular product, I’ve seen, has also been labelled as ‘Strawberries & Cream’ although if there is any creaminess other than the natural rooibos heaviness and body, it’s not getting to me as much as the Vanilla version did. The strawberries complement this in a way I’d never thought possible; very well-rounded, a little dry, completely fresh and fruity and, best of all, naturally sweet; unexpected from a malty rooibos base, to be honest!

One of my favourites, definitely. Always drinking this without milk.

Hi all! Disappeared for a bit, but then I haven’t gotten any new teas lately.

Thanks to some sleuthing and a nice attendant in a Yogi Teas distributor shop, I managed to get me some of those glass mugs I was after! Hurrah! There was a deal on in the store where if you bought 2 Yogi Teas you got a mug for free… So I got another. This is one of those two.

First off, I had a brush with this before, and both times I noticed how thick and creamy and delicious the chocolate aroma is — like a hot chocolate! But the taste in comparison to that sweetness is a tad disappointing. Something about the weakness in flavour makes me wonder if the water I used for it was overboiled or not filtered properly, but I’m only getting cinnamon and ginger out of this, and very weakly, at that.

Going to give it a couple more tries before I rate this badly, I think, but it’s worth trying!

Quietly nicking a spoonful of this from my housemate while he’s away… It’s too good to resist.

Unfortunately today I have some cold symptoms so the taste is affected quite a bit, especially considering it’s something as light as a TGFOP darjeeling, but it turned out delicious nonetheless! Recently, also, Twinings UK put up a guide to professional tea tasting on their website: http://twinings.co.uk/about-our-tea/how-to-taste-tea As I have to taste teas for work I’m going to try using this kind of vocabulary and guide from here on out. So with my inability-to-smell-handicap, here are my thoughts today:

This darjeeling brews very very light. A good teaspoonful with boiling water didn’t brew to an amber for quite some time, remaining golden for a few minutes (I tend to judge when a tea is ready by its colour- perhaps something I should avoid doing in future after this?), and having left it has possibly made it more astringent and dry than is normal for this tea. It’s toasty and light without that heavy roasted taste of many black teas, due to its quality I should think, and the toastiness comes towards a floral flavour, even very slightly hops-like and edging into wood flavours. It is really, however, very dry and bitter towards the end.

I’m rounding this off with a little unsweetened soy milk as the tannins are proving too much for me at the end of a tiring day, but lighter, with an afternoon tea, I think this tea could be taken black perfectly!

I have a little loose-leaf tin of this tucked away, and it has the sweetest, most wonderful strawberry smell. However as it typical of fruit-flavoured black teas, the flavour doesn’t copy over exactly! After making this iced earlier today I had a little hot tea left over for a tasting; and, black, brewed strong, it has a lot of astringency to get past before finding the fresh, malty fruit notes in this. It’s unlike a fruit tea where the fruit is just an afterthought; it definitely works alongside the black tea, although that might take a strong brew to discover.

Gave this a whirl when my girlfriend and I popped into Yumchaa Soho for tea the other day – neither of us had tried it before. Yumchaa have a tendency to put little tea in the one-person teapots so that it doesn’t oversteep, which usually works rather well, but on this occasion I think I might have preferred it a little stronger! The blueberry and gentle vanilla tastes are definitely there, and for once I was surprised that the fruit flavour overcame the floral notes— a little stronger would have been perfect, but as it is, it made for a sweet, well-rounded cup.

Tasting this one for the first time since bringing it back from France! Since it promises marzipan and biscuit flavours I’m holding off on a treat on the side of this one in case it interferes with the tea ;D

The aroma is really complex, slightly fruity or floral but there’s a hint of something else in there— likely the poppy as I’ve never tried a tea with poppy in before. On the first sip it’s really quite floral. Cornflowers and peonies and what might be the poppy are wonderfully bold on the first sip, and beyond that… rich vanilla and a stubborn almond aftertaste on the tongue! The more you drink the more the floral flavours give way and settle into the cakiness instead, and with a touch of milk, it’s like a luxurious dessert.

The marzipan and biscuit aren’t as strong as the flowers, as advertised, but it’s a wonderful cup nonetheless! Next time I’ll try to get fewer flowers in the cup to see how it compares…

And speaking of strawberries and cream teas; here’s a new one from Whittards in the revamped range of herbal and fruit infusions.

I was expecting this to be strong, bold, fruity and sweet the way the loose Strawberry Rooibos I already have is. Rooibos tends to work well with wholesome red fruit like this, and it was pleasantly sweet, but this time round I think I may have oversteeped it (3~7 minutes on the packet is a little too wide a scope!).

Bizarrely the vanilla was what let down the overall harmony of strawberry and rooibos by making it sickly instead. It tastes artificial and pungent rather than natural and sweet, the way Twinings does it in their strawberry & vanilla rooibos— I even added milk to the brew to try to cancel it out, but no to avail. I think it might even have made the vanilla worse. More than a touch of vanilla, it’s an unfortunate swamping in an otherwise brilliant combination. Well, I gave it a go, but I’ll stick to the non-vanilla version!

It slipped my mind to review this the first however many times I tried this; so this last tasting’s from memory!

There’s a little bit of a story behind how I came across this. After I realised I could use my staff discount at /any/ Whittard store I came back to London, to the Covent Garden branch specifically, for some loose-leaf tea shopping (loose-leaf tea caddies aren’t available at our branch). A certain gentleman working the desk on the first floor named Adam served me as I was looking for the strawberries and cream pu-erh they have on the website— and don’t sell in the shops, unfortunately— but instead recommended me this oolong. Later he revealed he drinks it as his breakfast tea with a croissant.

Thing is, it’s called milky but it’s much more /buttery/, so it would complement a buttery croissant very well in my view— not that I’ve tried that combination yet! Brewed lightly, it runs thick and smooth and wholesome through the mouth, brewed more strongly, it’s more akin to green tea with notes of that creaminess in the fresh taste. The scent is incredible, too, plus the leaves are rolled up in such a way that they unfold spectacularly large when brewed and are good for a couple more top-ups.

Last time I had this it turned out more green-y— I have yet to perfect my brewing times for this one!