Mike Jutan

Well that was pretty excellent.

The best pu-erh I’ve had so far. Generally I’ve found it to be overwhelming, fishy smell, etc. this pu-erh has none of those problems. Smooth and complex with some interesting flavours.

The colour of it is particularly striking, it’s very dark, like coffee. That’s pretty surprising given the comparatively lighter taste and lower caffeine levels. An interesting and nice cup. Enjoyed it!

Well, that was pretty awesome. As usual, Lupicia does a great job again.

One of my first Lupicia teas was their Melon White Tea and this melon-flavoured tea reminded me a bit of it. It is very tasty and has a great, powerful but not overbearing flavour. The green rooibos is excellent as usual, and makes for a very nice cup. Excellent!

Daaaaamnnn this is a smooth beast. I love this tea, it friggin rocks the house. HARD.

When I was down in Buenos Aires I had to check out Tealosophy after a recommendation from a buddy, and man is that place ever awesome. I dropped an easy $100 there in no time at all, and left with a stack of epic tea to last me a while. I bought a few others and a bunch for gifts, but this one remains my favourite by far.

I am partial to the ol flavoured green tea situation, but this combo is particularly awesome. The base Sencha is super high quality, smooth, and none of that crappy tanniny action you get in some green teas. Blended with the smooth base is some really nice tropical fruit vibe, it is really well balanced, tastes like LOVE and I could drink this magic every day (and I pretty much do). It rocks.

Tealosophy, if you start shipping to the USA, I will crush your stock of this stuff. ;)

This is the first time I’ve tried Golden Monkey and it was pretty darn good.

It reminds me a bit of the other bold, malty black tea that I love from China: Yunnan Gold. Very interesting and bold flavour, but still mellow and not bitter or in-your-face. A nice combo. Let the experiments in Black Tea continue!!!!!

This is probably the best friggin tea I’ve ever tasted.

It costs almost literally an arm and a leg ($30 for 3oz), but it tastes like the sweet glorious dream of a simpler time, so I’d say that’s ultimately worth it.

Seriously though, this tastes damn fantastic. I want to high five both Dean AND Deluca (presuming they are people?) for being this awesome and creating this masterpiece.

If you don’t like rose flavors, get out. Also, you’ll hate this possibly. But I am a big rosey dude and this is both a blend of excellent white and green tea with a mild-ish but certainly strongly present smell and taste of rose gardens. This tea could not possibly taste or smell any better than it does.

It cost a pretty penny as all TWG tea tends to cost, but I say it’s well, well, well, welllllll worth it. Pick some up, you won’t be disappointed. And if you are, send it my way and ill kiss your face for making my life better with the best tea of all time. Seriously. I love it. If this tea was a student, honor roll for sure. It would be one of those students that somehow gets MORE than a 4.0 GPA. I didn’t know that was possible, but this tea could do it. It’s put magic.

After trying the rest of the Lapsang options from Upton, I think this one is the best. It has this interesting malty backend which is unexpected in a Lapsang and I think it makes it a lot more interesting than the standard smokey-only flavours you get in other Lapsangs. Very interesting and tasty!

Similar in taste and style to Upton’s Lapsang Souchong Imperial, though maybe a little less spicy. It’s good, a nice solid Lapsang option.

I bought all of their Lapsang variants as samples so I could compare (fun!!!!!) and I think my favourite is the Lapsang Souchong Black Dragon, not just cause the name is friggin’ awesome but also because it was a more interesting twist on Lapsang. This one is very classic flavouring, feels like just a good quality, nice lapsang. But now that I’ve tried a few of them, I think I prefer a bit of a departure from the “normal” Lapsang taste (which is a crazy flavour anyway!) and a bit more of an innovation on top of it. So I’d vote for the Black Dragon being their most interesting one, though this was certainly great quality.

It’s good, a solid tea for sure, but I had higher expectations for it.

As usual the base of the tea from Upton is great, but I found myself hoping for more prominent vanilla flavours, especially because there is vanilla bean in it. I am usually one for more powerful flavouring, so take this with a grain of salt. But I found it was more like a strong base with a mild flavouring on top, as opposed to a straight “flavoured tea”.

Still nice quality, but I think I’m gonna move onto some more of the 30 samples I just got from Upton :)

This was very good, and I didn’t actually realize it was a Darjeeling until after reading these reviews! I got it free in a Lupicia mail order and it was a very interesting taste.

I actually usually shy away from Darjeeling, I don’t know why, it usually tastes too light and acidic or something to me, and I often go much heavier and maltier (i.e. Assam or Yunnan Gold) when picking a Black tea. But this was really quite good, I had it without milk and it was quite a powerful taste. At first the colour and texture made me think it was actually a Pu-Erh!! It is a bit woodsy. Maybe there is some mix in here. In any case it’s a great blend of some sort, and I enjoyed it a lot more than a straight Darjeeling.

Hollllllllllly craaaaaaaap this is amazing.

This is a fantastic, extremely rose heavy fragrant green oolong, it is totally awesome. I am generally a big rose fan (I love rose water, for example) so heads up that it’s pretty potent, but I thought it totally rocked. Great punch to it, and excellent flavour, really fantastic.

I found this tasty but definitely not the best lapsang I’ve had by a longshot. It was pretty run-of-the-mill, not bad, but not really a whole lot better (or may just as good) as the standard Twinings Lapsang Souchong tea bags. It sure was smokey, but not with a lot of other flavours. I prefer Upton’s Lapsang Black Dragon which had some more malty flavours and interesting backend to it. This one is a lot of sizzle, but not a lot of steak.

This was great. I just recently tried a Korean Green Tea for the first time and it was excellent (though a much higher grade than this particular one). This tea though was really good too, had a nice hefty green tea flavour without any tannins or negative qualities. It also was hefty without being too bold! So that was great, I prefer more mild and chill green teas than the very punchy flavoured ones, and this was right there.

I agree with other folks here, this one is pretty subtle. Nice flavour and you can tell it is good quality, but the interesting boldness is just not there. I prefer something like the other White Tea options from Upton (eg. Pai Mu Tan Special Grade Organic ZW58) which are more fragrant and flavoursome. This was pretty solid, but reminded me a bit of their Moonlight White Tea, pretty subtle and not in-your-face. Good, but there are better options.

We all know that Teavana’s business practices are painfully annoying and their staff are trained to be insanely in-your-face and just horrifically keen to upsell you to metal tins (I have my own, thank you) and trying to sell you 1lb of tea at a time (I have 200 teas in my cupboard at home, and also, that’ll be like $75, so… no thank you).

Despite Teavana in general getting some sort of terrible management training right from the top which makes the shopping experience next-to-terrible, I do really like going in if not just to try their free samples and buy one thing and get the heck outta there.

This one in particular is amazing. I am a bit fan of white tea and also of fruit and citrus-y things, and this one has it all. The flavour is fantastic and would probably rock very hard as an iced tea. I brewed only for 3 min, but actually next time I will probably brew a little bit longer. The tea is very much more herbal and fruit-based than white tea-based, but that really works well. The blend of these 2 goes super well together and I love the taste. I had a cup of this a while back but put a fair bit more of the tea in (maybe 2 teaspoons) for a cup and it came out stronger which I like more. Next time I will brew it longer and put a bit more in. This is a GREAT tea (though is probably really more like a tisane). The only issue now is, if Teavana really wanted to sell more of this and their other great teas, they’d re-train their staff like NOW.

Brews up a nice red colour and has a nice strong taste to it.

It reminds me a bit of the Teavivre Gongfu tea that I tried a while back, malty, a bit strong, and kindof a “heavy” taste. It’s good, but definitely cut it with some milk to chill it out a bit. Not one you’d want all the time as it’s a bit more intense than say, you’re average Assam or PG Tips, but it’s good and an interesting flavour that is memorable.

Wow, this was fantastic.

The official description calls it a “Fireside” tea which is very fitting. That mulled-wine style vibe of cinnamon, orange peel and cloves is right there for the taking. It’s kindof like a Black Chai Spiced tea, but a lighter version of that. Not overwhelming, just very well balanced. I really liked this.

Fantastic and tasty tea. Malty and smoky, this Lapsang is less smoky than the usual and comes along with this interesting backend flavour that is interesting and chill, but also has interesting Lapsang notes to it. Very nice.

Very nice. I often find unflavored white teas can verge on the bland side
And you just wish there was more flavor there- not so with this tea.

I really enjoyed the strong-for-a-white tea vibe and would definitely have this one again.
Brews up just like a light green tea, tasted fantastic. Prob one of my favorite unflavored white teas yet.

Not bad but was hoping for stronger fruity or citrusy flavours. It smells good but when brewed I got the same vibe I get from some black flavored teas sometimes- lots of good base tea flavor but not enough fruit, overpowered somewhat by a strong tea base. Good, but not over the top flavoursome.

Oh damnnnn that’s good. I’ve got a runny nose tonight and this is just the tea to get me back up on my feet. Green Rooibos is a new thing for me but I am really enjoying it in general. This reminds me a bit of the epic Adagio grapefruit-flavored tea from Lupicia, similar smooth and tasty base with an interesting fruit flavour on top. sneeze! whew!!!! This tea is really what I need tonight. A nice warmup. Great flavour. I’m pouring a 2nd cup :)

Not too bad. I agree with this other review that I’ve had better Jasmine Silver Needles before. The first time I tried it was from Adagio and I was blown away. Imperial Tea Court makes an excellent one too. This one is fine, but not my favorite. I think the blending on other jasmine white needles is better. Imperial Tea Court probably takes the cake on this by a long shot.

I’ve been meaning to try Matcha again for quite a long time and this is my first foray back into it… it was well worth it. I traveled to Japan in 2009 and unknowingly had Matcha several times at random sushi restaurants, etc. It was interesting there but I just figured it was a normal green tea, nothing special right? Oh man, was I wrong! This stuff really is something to pay attention to, and the different flavor and health benefits possible with matcha are well beyond any standard green tea. This is really a fascinating beverage and I am excited to get back into it.
Before this, I had never tried a flavoured matcha, in fact I had no idea such a thing could exist! Red Leaf pulls off the flavoured matcha with grace and skill, and offers a wild and impressive set of expected (vanilla bean, caramel, etc.) flavours and some wildly crazy and epic sounding ones (Coca Cola Matcha?!!!!) I am gonna have to try that one.
I bought the Red Leaf Starter (Basic Grade), Delicate flavouring of Caramel Matcha. This is available on their site here: http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/caramel-matcha.html
Since I am a bit of a matcha newbie, I had to read their site about how to prepare it. It was very helpful. I got a whisk from Japantown and used a Chashaku (Bamboo Scoop) to measure out the matcha. I used 2 scoops and my first cup used the suggested amount, 3 oz of 80C water. I whisked it, poured it from the bowl to a mug and drank it from a mug, no extra water added. This was my previous experience with matcha in general, quite thick and vegetal. It was good.
In fact it was so good, I found myself going back to the kitchen to make a 2nd cup of it not 1 hr later!! This time I decided to change it up a bit, using only 1 scoop of matcha this time and a little less water, and then after whisking, adding a fair bit more water to reduce the thickness and make a larger drink. I think I actually enjoyed this better, it was a little sweeter this way and also allowed for a more tea-like experience (rather than a sort of “tea shot” like I had earlier). This was very tasty!
These are the only ways I have prepared it so far but I think it might be wiser (for my unrefined palate!) to buy the “Distinctive” flavouring next time so that I can get a stronger flavor. This one is subtle, but I tend to enjoy stronger more bold flavourings in my tea, so I think the next one I get from Red Leaf I will pay just a little extra to get more flavouring. Excited to follow this new tasty and healthy habit!

An interesting combination of green tea and green rooibos. I don’t like it quite as much as the Tokio tea from Lupicia but it is still very nice. The green tea and green rooibos go nicely together, and I often enjoy those kind of combo teas. This tastes like something I tried from a cheaper company a while back, but much better. Very high quality tea as always from Lupicia, nice and smooth. Peachy flavour hits you right at the start of the sip. Aftertaste is fruity and floral without any of that terrible astringent overpowering green tea taste you can get from some green teas. Very nice cup.

Wow this is fantastic. I smelled some of the recent featured Green Teas at Lupicia and this one was very striking. The fruity flavour goes very nicely with a smooth and chilled out green tea base – it is not strong and overpowering like some green teas can be. This is one of the nicer green teas I’ve had in a while… very awesome. Well done as always, Lupicia! They are always so good with their fruit-flavoured teas. Awesome stuff!