Maitri

Well if this doesn’t beat all, and I’m perfectly willing to admit when I am wrong or perhaps make an observation about tea tasting.

I have 2 vanilla teas here with practically the same name and I couldn’t remember which was which. I’d written the above embarrassing review above and then when I had the Mighty Leaf Vanilla black raved about it. It just goes to show that unless you really hate a tea it might bear trying more than once before reviewing especially before leaving a bad review. This is the first time, if memory serves, that my first and second pots of the same tea danced so differently on my palette.

So rather sheepish and with my tail between my proverbial legs I will admit to liking this tea, finding it mellower and more aromatic than the first go-round. I shall now take my tea and slink out of the room, but I didn’t feel it fair not to come back and leave the second comment.

Slink, slink, slink…

Maitri

I think that 52 Teas is fast becoming one of my favorite tea companies. They may not have the widest selection but their special blends are a particular delight. As I’m working on writing a tea book and talking about specific teas and contact info. for the companies I can guarantee you that this company will be in the book!

Now, I m 56 years old and while I, like so many others, hole up at home with our Netflix movies these days, as a movie struck teenager and young woman I lived in movie theaters and the 2 things I always loved to buy for the movie were Milk Duds and Raisenettes. SO, when I read a review here for this tea I thought, “Surely, there’s no way it could be THAT good.” BOY, was I wrong!

My daughter came over and we snooped around in the teas and both decided we had to try this tea. We opened the pouch and both went “Oooooooooooooh, Ahhhhhhhhh.” and it smelled exactly like the favorite movie candy. We brewed it with great expectation and it smelled as good in the cup. The only thing that I will say, because it is a delicious, delightful tea, is that I always seem to be disappointed when something smells divine in the pouch and then the cup but doesn’t quite hold up when drinking it. I brewed it the maximum recommended time and the liquor looked lovely and not weak but the flavor itself, while pleasant, just tasted too weak too me. Tasty, yes, but as full bodied and flavorful as I would have liked, not so much.

Maybe it’s just me. I have long searched for the perfect (for me) chocolate tea and while many of them smell divine in the pouch they always taste too weak to me and don’t have enough really toothy chocolate flavor in them (Again, for me, I’m sure many others would disagree!). I don’t know what the answer is. I find that some teas that don’t quite hold up flavor-wise, for me, with black leaves — and black flavored teas are some of my favorite teas — but some of the most delicious flavored teas that really seem to hold the wonderful heady taste that match the aroma wafting up from the pouch are rooibos based and I wonder if the rooibos itself has more holding power with some of the flavors that need a little oomph? And rooibos teas are perfect night-time teas.

In any event, this tea smells divine and is a lovely cup of tea but I’d like a more full-bodied flavor. Definitely worth trying and I know I’ll enjoy the rest of the rest of the pouch. :o)

When I read about 52 teas here I nearly swooned reading just the names in some cases and the reviews made me really want to order from them. I was disappointed when I went to the site to realize that some of the yummy teas I wanted to try were not available, that they mix up special blends and only have them for a brief period of time. I hope they bring a couple back.

Ok, when you open the pouch for this tea I’m telling you my knees buckled and I think I pushed my nose down into the leaves! Coconut Cream Pie is one of my favorite pies and the air was redolent with that creamy coconut aroma. I will caution you about one thing. I am always careful about steeping and rarely ever over-brew a tea, but I let this go for 5 minutes (It suggested 4-5 and I don’t like weak tea…) but WOW was that strong. I couldn’t even drink it. I poured half of it in another cup and added more water from the tea kettle and did a second infusion of the leaves which looked lovely and lighter and I poured it into a pot for iced tea today. With the over-strong tea in the cup and more hot water added the tea gentled down to a lovely flavor. So this was not the tea’s fault, but mine. Again, I caution you to brew for 4 instead of 5 minutes which I will do next time.

Once the above situation was worked out I had a really lovely cup of tea. Even too strong the coconut aroma was wonderful and finally the right strength it was just a delicious tea. I would definitely recommend it to coconut lovers and I think a little tea pouch of this would make a wonderful stocking stuffer for your tea drinkers in the family. Most of the companies have small sample sizes so I’m ordering a number of those to tuck in.

I hope you are all having wonderful teas and a happy holiday season ahead!

Blessings,

Maitri

Well, having just left a scathing review about Art of Tea’s Purple Oolong (which I do indeed feel badly about, and can ANYONE tell me how to use the rating scale. You see time come up on the steeping time scale, but no numbers come up when I rate the tea and I always come up with some very bizarre number!) I tossed the latter and made a pot of this Ginger Peach Green Tea from Stash. Ah, now that’s better. Not my favorite to be sure but a gentle, soothing tea. I’m with others here when they write — and this is a mystery to me — that when you sniff the leaves in the bag you really smell a lovely peach, and I smell it when I am sniffing the brewed tea in the cup, but it just tastes like a ginger tea to me. Now, I happen to really like ginger and ginger teas so I don’t mind but I love peach teas and that’s why I bought this because I love both of the flavors and thought they would be wonderful together but I don’t taste a pinch of peach. It is a nice tea however, though I don’t think I’d buy it again. There are other really nice peach greens and oolongs out there…

ACK! I don’t like to write negative reviews but this tea just tastes foul to me, nasty. Now that’s dreadful to say. I just wrote about an oolong last night that I adored and gave a score of 100. I love oolong teas and have many in my cupboard. But this was an expensive tea and reading about the notes of cinnamon and amber, well, as an oolong lover I knew I had to try it and I treated myself to it. Now I have a 3.5 oz tin that I won’t use and it is very disappointing! And the color is not purple, though it says so on the tin and in the description, but a deep brown like other brown teas. I keep wondering if they put the wrong tea in the tin but I know they didn’t because it looks just like the picture. I was careful not to over-steep because it said it was good for many infusions. That says to me “LOOK OUT, THIS TEA IS GOING TO GET STRONG FAST!” but it didn’t taste too strong nor bitter. I feel like I’m at a wine tasting for a new and highly regarded wine with rave reviews and I’m looking sheepishly around the room at everybody applauding it and I want to creep out because I dislike it so. Perhaps it is an acquired taste, but as I said I have and love many oolongs so an oolong taste is familiar to me even though of course they are all different. Here I go to trudge back into the kitchen, throw it out, and brew something else. I really need a good cup of tea. THIS isn’t it!

Good Golly Miss Molly! I have been laid up with an injury and HAVING tea, and some wonderful ones, but just not up to writing here, but I’ve really missed it here and then last night I had a sample of this tea I got with my last Golden Moon order. I am grieving today because I only had a sample and am going to order more tonight. WOWSA. I don’t know when I’ve fallen head over heels in love with a tea like this, I have a lot of good ones, but this just sent me over the moon. I actually steeped it for 7 minutes because the sample was really too small for the infuser but it came out perfect. And there was just enough left to have a small glass of iced tea today and it was superb. This is a tea you WON’T want to miss!

OH-MY-GOD…. I might need some good old fashioned smelling salts to get me up off the ground! I have been searching for a really good pear tea and Mighty Leaf’s Pear Caramel was divine but THIS tea (swooning…), well, as my little old Irish Catholic aunts who lived well into their 90’s would have said, “HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD!!!”

I say!

I just got an order of several tins from The Art of Tea and when I opened this one, well, it was undoubtedly the most incredible tea I have ever had the pleasure of burying my nose in. And it stayed in there awhile. And it didn’t want to come out.

Takogti has written about it so well and I’m shouting Hallelujah’s in agreement with her every word that I don’t need to go on and on here but I am going to order more immediately. I never want to be without this tea. I love Rooibos in a good flavored tea and have had many good ones but this tea is so over the top mere words (And I’m writing a book on tea so I have a lot of words to sling around and through the leaves and their various components…) simply cannot do this tea justice.

Oh, the agony of the leaves…. Oh, the piercing profundity of the empty cup. I think I’m going down in an old fashioned Victorian decline as the last of it is finished…

I’m not sure that I should even be writing this review. I’m not sure this is even LEGAL. Surely it’s an opiate of sorts and should be hidden. I for one am going to hide it in my house. I shan’t share this with a single soul!

Ssshhhhhh……

Wow! This is one of my favorite new teas I have encounterd in some time. It is positively delicious. The black tea is a presence greatly enriched by both very smooth sweet pear and deep rich caramel. Again, I like to taste the tea in stages from very hot through the cooling stages and the more it cools the more you can taste the complexity of the flavors. Bravo Mighty Leaf. This one is perfect, something you will rarely hear me say about a tea.

Well, I’m sorry not to give this tea a good rating, and SBS Teas is one of my favorite tea companies, but in my last order they sent me a generous sample of this tea and it smelled divine but when I had it it tasted overwhelmingly maple-ish and I honestly could barely even taste the black tea. I like to taste the tea AND the flavoring and while I like flavored teas and really do want to taste to flavor added I don’t want it to overshadow the black tea itself. This tea was just not a good cup of tea for me.

WHAT a treat this tea was after trying Stash’s Vanilla Creme to great disappointment. As soon as I opened the pouch the peach perfumed the whole room. I buried my nose in the pouch and just sniffed and sniffed and swooned a bit. Couldn’t wait to brew it and it didn’t disappoint! Brewed it and sat down for a night of fiber work and drank every bit of it. I have a large Bodum press and that was 3 large mugs (I had to stay up through the night to work that night). It was really delicious and I highly recommend it to peach tea lovers. This one is a real hit and one I’d order again.

I was really surprised and unprepared to dislike this tea so much. I have been craving a really good vanilla tea and when the ingredients say “Select black teas, vanilla beans, and natural flavors of rum, nutcreme and vanilla” I feel I am in for a real treat. It says it also has both Madagascar and Tahitian vanilla beans. I just couldn’t wait for the tea to come in this batch of teas to sample for the tea book I’m writing.

Well, the nose knows first. As when sampling fine wines you want to take in a good long sniff and the complex notes fill your nose, tickling it and making you anxious to taste it. As soon as I opened the pouch I knew that something was wrong. It smelled like plain black tea. Now I was uneasy but I brewed a pot and with the first sip my heart sank. I did not taste ANY vanilla at all much less nutcreme or rum. There was no fragrant bouquet. If I’d wanted plain black tea I’d have brewed it.

I kept the tea pouch next to my computer, opening it and sniffing deeply several times trying to give it another chance and if I’d picked up any scent other than the black tea I’d have given it another try, but no, nothing.

I would not recommend this tea, sadly. I have had very good experience with Stash teas and this one was just such a disappointment I will order with a wary eye from now on.

This tea was an interesting experience. I literally worked through the night last night finishing a piece of fiber art for a show. I was so tired I could barely see and needed some black tea to get me going. This tea had just come and I was very excited to get it so I brewed a pot and sat with it awhile (I had earlier made Stash’s Vanilla Cream and disliked it so much I threw it out. That will be a separate review!).

Well, it’s not that I didn’t like this Golden Moon tea, it had a wonderful minty flavor but I couldn’t taste a bit of vanilla and I ordered it for the combination of vanilla and mint and really wanted to taste the vanilla.

Because I have been researching teas for a book I have a process when tasting tea. I use a large Bodum Press, more than I can drink at one sitting. I have a couple of cups and save the rest for iced tea if appropriate. I never use milk because I really want to taste the tea. I do use a bit of Truvia, the new sweetener made from Stevia but much milder, but that’s all.

Then the stages from hot to lukewarm to cold. Tea tastes markedly different when hot just out of the pot through the various stages as it cools down. I didn’t like it hot. The black tea tasted very strong and the mint was there, but no creamy vanilla taste at all. Not that I could taste. As it cooled to a lukewarm, which I let it do intentionally, the complexity of the flavors started to come forward, a hint of vanilla and something creamy, but barely there. Today — I had saved the rest in the fridge — I tasted it again, after letting it sit out a bit so it was cool but not real cold which also seems to mask the subtleties of the flavors, and I was amazed at how good it really was. The more it cooled the better I liked it.

I will have to give this tea a few more tastings, but it has more to offer than when it was first out of the pot. Sometimes I think you need to give a tea a few tries to see what it really has to offer!

SBS Teas are a staple in my house and this is not only one of my favorite of their teas, but one of my all time favorites ever. I was never really a fan of Earl Grey, but I sampled this while working on my tea book which will be out soon and fell in love with it. I just ordered another 1/2 pound. This one is always in my house, an Earl Grey with the usual bergamot but also vanilla and cream. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted any tea that makes me positively SWOON like this one does and it tastes as good as it smells, perfumes the whole house while steeping! If you’re a fan of Earl Grey you’ll want to try this!

Stash’s Lapsang Souchong is very good. It is one of my favorite teas and as I have been working on a tea book for over 2 years it is one of the teas I try from different tea companies to compare a specific tea, packaging, shipping, etc. This Lapsang Souchong is very good. Deep, dark, smoky taste, smooth, I highly recommend it.