New Tasting Notes

This is one of the most amazing teas I have ever tasted. I picked this one up out of curiosity and was completely surprised – it is not at all what you expect. The smell is sweet and floral and almost too strong; but after steeping the tea is simply phenomenal. Delightfully floral, a tad fruity, with just a little heat from the chili. The rooibos base is sweet and marries the all the flavors together with perfection. Simply wonderful! I would drink it at any time of day.

I seem to be one of the first few to try this one! Stacy kindly sent me some samples of a few Butiki teas I REALLY wanted to try, but this was a new one that was also included. thank you so much for the samples! I can’t say that enough since Butiki’s teas are the blends I love to try the most. Info isn’t even on the site yet, the blend is so new… I almost didn’t want to try this one until I heard the story behind it. (Like the name?! What’s that about?) But I wanted a green tea at the moment so this was the one I went for. There are some HUGE strawberries in this blend. One piece was about 1/3 of a big strawberry! The green tea is bright. After a two and a half minute steep, the color of the cup is almost clear — a very pale yellow. The dry blend strawberries sure scented the room with a nice sweet fragrance and the flavor is just the same. Very sweet strawberries on a buttery fresh base. I think the ginger gives it a bit of a tang… I’m not really a fan of ginger and I’m not sure why it is even here. There is also supposed to be some toffee pieces and if there is, I don’t see many in the blend. But I think more toffee here would be amazing with the strawberry and buttery green tea (though not so much the ginger.) I really like this one! I can’t wait to read the info about it and I’ll have some more of my sample to try.

Thanks Sil for the surprise sample!

I really enjoy the tart cranberries and the sweet pears, but I don’t really taste the black teas. I… I guess I’ll take their word on it! It’s pretty tasty as an herbal though!

Didn’t get too far with the sipdowns today but i DID manage my one for the day and get some quality time in the sun, so i can’t really complain :) Still really enjoy this one from The Persimmon Tree – though it’s not a hell of a lot of “berry.” it’s more of a vanilla creamy chocolate (white) tea with a hint of berry. But i’m ok with that, because i like it. :)

My son, my godson, and my son’s girlfriend all came to stay for the weekend, and my son asked if he could grill and invite a friend he knew from church. The friend asked to bring several family members and it ended up being a really fun day with some really nice folks.

Hubby does not eat cow because he doesn’t like the texture of beef, so I was pretty happy that my son was grilling portobello mushrooms to serve like burgers. They were delicious!

While we were waiting for the food to be ready, I started talking to the two young ladies, who turned out to be very curious about TEA! Yay! We talked and talked and talked about tea, and when they said they were adventurous and had never heard of puerh, I decided we had time for a gong fu session with this lovely tea.

The first steeps were inky black, because I like my puerh strong! I did not rinse and we started with one minute steeps or perhaps a little longer. They said they could detect the aroma of mushrooms, and had a lot of fun experiencing the changes in color and taste of the tea. We got seven good steeps before the color and flavor had weakened too much to enjoy.

I have invited them back since they were interested in lots of different types of tea. I hope they will take me up on the offer!

I don’t smoke but was in the mood for liquid cigarettes.

I’m going to choose to reserve judgement on this one. I like how it tastes, I think the blend of spices is good. There is enough flavor, it’s not weak or watery. It has that “suck all the moisture out of your mouth” sensation going on. I don’t like that.
I may have over leafed a bit. The steeping instructions were 3-5 min in boiling water, that’s pretty vague. I thought you can’t really mess that up. Not sure what happened, but I have hopes for this one yet.

Thanks scribbles for sending me this sample.

Edit: I had the rest of this tonight. MUCH better. I think I abused it the first time around. I really like the flavors in this, and like it even more now that I’ve lost that “suck your mouth dry feeling”.

SIPDOWN! 233! I had the last of this sample from shmiracles cold brewed to see how it fared and man it’s pretty darn delicious. Maybe it’s because we were out in the sun this afternoon but it’s tyeh perfect tea after spending the afternoon out. Sweet without sweetner and just a little tartness to eek through. Again. not so much with the kiwi but the strawberry taste is yummy!

I got this in the recent 5 for $5 sale, and it may have turned out to be an expensive bargain, since I don’t know if I can live without this tea.

I steeped multiple times with 3.0 grams of tea at 1 minute per steep. Complex, and delicious. Not only is the taste good but there is a huge, complex finish that goes on forever. 2nd (60s): still very big and rich. Slightly sweet, with hints of caramel and berry. Raised score from 92 to 94. 4th (3m): Finally ran out of steam; nice but weak.

I really like oolong teas, and this one was just tremendous. I’m a tough grader, but this is one of my all-time favorites.

I almost forgot I had this tea this morning. It was somewhat interrupted as we had a mini dissertation crisis this morning (all I can say is, thank god the boyfriend and I are not defending at the same time), but fortunately I still got to drink it while it was warm.

I used to love this tea; early in my tea career it was one of my faves. Now I am not so much a fan of the chocolate flavoring, and I am becoming pickier about my nutty teas. A lot of them just taste off to me for some reason now. I drank this one with milk and sugar this morning, and it was pretty tasty. It’s also pretty old at this point, and I think that Harney’s teas do tend to fade in flavor faster than some other flavored ones I have. Fortunately I have less of this one than I thought, so I should be able to work through it quickly.

Last cup of my little sample. This is thick and rich. Pie.

This tea came my way from a swap with JustJames…thank you JustJames!

The dry smell is deliciously chocolate. I usually am not a huge fan of chocolate tea’s, but his one was pretty good.

For me the significant note of the brewed was nutty, with a lingering cocoa after-taste. I drank it black, but next brew I may bump it with cream and sweetener and see if that pulls out the chocolate more.

A tasty tea that I am grateful to have sampled.

SIPDOWN! I’ve had a little bit of this kicking around for quite some time, and tonight I am finishing it up. I steeped it Western for 2 minutes, after a rinse of 15 s and a second rinse of 25 s. It smells very nice tonight, a fresh almost mushroom scent (what? haha) with some lovely caramel notes. So fresh and clean, perfect for the end of a day of rain on and off.

This tastes very good tonight. So fresh and clean, yet a bit of sweetness as well. I am loving the earthiness in this cup. I will have to try my other shu’s sometime soon, I am enjoying this cup more than I enjoyed previous cups of shu I think. Maybe my palate is changing a bit! See previous notes on this tea :)

Mmm, this was my second gongfu session today. Unlike the aged TGY, this tea epitomizes the floral, green, new-style oolong. This is a beautiful, beautiful tea, and it is exactly my kind of tea. I love these.

The first steeps were sweet and very very floral. The type of flower is most definitely lilac, because it strongly reminded me of some lilac bushes currently blooming outside my office. Slightly buttery, but in a very sweet cream butter way. A bit of peach-flower; almost fruity, but not quite. I feel bad that I got distracted and couldn’t pay attention to the tea toward later steeps, but it was really, really delicious. This is a TGY that I would definitely reorder to keep around, even though I have a pile of TGYs from Verdant, because it’s that awesome (and really, I can never have enough TGYs!)

I like wuyi. Vegetal,strong,and affordable everyday.

Delicately spiced my arse. This tastes like apple cider to me, probably because of all the cinnamon. And wow, is it ever taaaart!!

I really really wanted to like this one. You feel guilty not liking it, what with all the propaganda about helping Haiti and stuff. Who would write bad reviews on this tea? So I won’t. I’ll just say that I can see the coconut but I can’t taste it. As for banana… Where??

Good thing I seem to be in minority.

Dexter3657 darling, you were right. You and I will make the best tea swapping partners, our tastes our almost polar opposites. Hahaha. It’s unbelievable.

Oh and a by the way, my partner seems to like this tea also so I really am the lone wo/man out!

This is a little bit better than I remember it being so I raised the rating slightly. Still I feel the apple flavor is way too artifical tasting and overwhelms everything else.

I realize that most of my reviews (maybe all of them?) are related to food and /or what I did the day I wrote them. Today won’t be any different, sorry!

In the beautiful region of The Laurentians, where I feel so privileged to be living in, there’s a little shop called Le Moulin aux Épices (it means The Spice Mill). I don’t go very often cause it’s a long drive.

Nathalie, the owner, welcomes you in the small cottage style boutique adjacent to her own house. Entering her shop is like walking the ground of the old world Silk Road. It just transports you to exotic lands. Name any spice, she has it.

Along with tea addiction, I suffer from olfactory obsession. The place is not helping me!

I always pick up something that she recommends. This time I came back with some Indonesian long pepper. Shaped as a mini pinecone, this peppercorn exudes perfumes of liquorice and aniseed. I used it tonight in a moroccan Tajine dish. Mmmmm!

What better tea than moroccan mint to end the meal. This is really good, if your a mint lover of course.

I love that Zen Tea is using spearmint instead of peppermint. My all time favourite mint tea consists of adding hot water to a load of freshly cut spearmint. So simple, you just drink and let the vibrant green leaves swirl around. Beautiful to look at and equally tasty.

In this tea, the spearmint provides a natural sweet finish to this fresh combination. I choose to brew it at only 175F. Over that, I find the gunpowder renders a dusty aftertaste that I dislike very much, a taste of dirt almost. I know it doesn’t sound appealing, but trust that it completely goes away when brewed at a very low temperature.

Now this is nowhere near traditional moroccan tea, which is almost unbearably sweet to me since always loaded with sugar. I much prefer these moroccan mint blends, but I wish I had a bottle of orange blossom water handy to make it closer to tradition. That, I really like and I think I might just try it next time!

Oh my God! This truly tastes like a birthday cake. Yay! Exactly what I wanted!

Sweet vanilla notes on red and green Rooibos, fantastic! Love it.

Sorry, I meant LOVVVVVVVEEEEE IIIIITTTT!!! :-D

Just finished this off. I enjoyed this, especially with milk. The coconut added a creamy aspect. However, it was a bit weak for my tastes. I would really like to find a strong coconut chai!