New Tasting Notes

I like this one. I find though that its different every time I have it. The first cup I had iced at davids was really sweet, and minty.. the second cup was more creamy and coconutty.. I like it.. but I am curious as to which is actually the way the blend is supposed to come out.

This is the new love of my life. I went through two iced tea packs of it, and part of a tin already, only making single serve ones. I’m trying to be careful so I don’t make myself super sick of it.. but its hard because its so freakin tasty! :) I really like the lightness of this.. it reminds me of pink flamingo but it doesn’t have the tartness (which I think is partially because of the eucalyptus in that blend).. this one, the passionfruit is the main flavour…. which is nice because its not often that a passionfruit is dominant amongst several ingredients. I have only tried this one iced and cold steeped… good both ways :)

Since finishing the Harney & Sons Vanilla Comorro, I have tried several varieties of Vanilla-flavoured teas looking for my new favourite. The Mlesna tea didn’t particularly impress me. I had brewed some more of the Mlesna last night and I’ve decided I’m going to write it off and continue my search for the perfect cup of vanilla tea. After all, life is too short to drink bad tea.

After thirty years of drinking artificially flavoured ‘vanilla’ drinks and sweets, I have started to re-assess what vanilla actually tastes like. Perhaps I am expecting my vanilla tea to taste like the ‘vanilla’ in vanilla coke or ice cream and the natural extract may be nothing of the sort much like the artificially flavour of “liquorice” or aniseed sweets would give a false impression of chewing on a liquorice root or real aniseed. Wikipedia informs me that vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron – which would explain the proliferation of adulterated or artificially flavoured extracts – and should have somewhat floral, spicy aroma and savoury taste which I detected in the H&S Vanilla Comorro.

This afternoon, I have picked up a number of two-cup samples from Adore Tea in Chatswood including their black tea with vanilla. On a side note, I really wish T2 and The Tea Centre would provide samplers; although T2 has a handful of free teas in their shop, the smallest size available is 100gm and while the Tea Centre has 50gm sizes available, they charge a whooping $4-$5.00 to try a pot of one of their teas in the Sydney CBD store.

My first cup was served with soy milk and medium strong, served in my lovely Royal Doulton Moonlight Rose cup and saucer that I am obsessed with. The tea base is fine – reasonable quality leaf with a nice malty flavour. It takes a few sips for the vanilla flavour to develop but is somewhat muted by the soy milk.

The second cup is served black. The colour is a reddish-brown which is not overly inviting. I am unable to smell this “floral bouquet” that I am promised as the fragrance of the black tea is quite strong. At a guess, I would say a mix of Ceylon tea with maybe an Assam and/or a standard Chinese black tea. As to the flavour, I would characterise it as sweet and slightly spicy and ‘tingling’ like a dark chocolate tea, with a smooth if astringent texture, but perhaps overwhelmed by the tea base. The tannins in the tea are evident, but I wouldn’t describe it as bitter or unpleasant. I have noticed that just this two-cup sampler has produced a fair bit of sediment and dust.

The weakness of this tea is that the vanilla can’t stand up to the brisk tea base. I wouldn’t imagine that playing around with the quantities or brewing times would really change this, so the search for that elusive cup continues.

For the first time in years, however, I am craving a can of Vanilla Coke.

This is good. I’d forgotten what I’d taken in my thermos today and drank it, I tasted maple and pudding strongly :) easy to guess what tea it was.

Ok, so I just went outside with a flashlight and picked a whole bunch of honeysuckle for use in tea blends. I’m having this amber oolong with honeysuckle and it’s awesome!!

This. And a liquid diet. Day 3.

I’m SO hungry! (Doing better so may attempt solid food tonight, depending)

Sil, I hope to get to the post office today. Right now things seem stable so I might brave it. (Don’t worry, it shouldn’t be contagious. Not unless you ate the same thing I shouldn’t have eaten. I washed my hands carefully before packing anyway.)

Sipdown! Thanks to Raritea for a sample of this one.

This basically tastes like a standard coconut green. So fairly tasty, but not really a tea I’d go for too often. However, I think it would be great cold-brewed and sweetened. Since it tastes much like the coconut green I just got in my Amoda tea box, I think I’ll have to try it with that one soon!

Allergy attack! Throat hurts like crap and my sense of smell just walked out the door thanks to runny nose barging in. This tea seems appropriate for, I don’t know, colds and stuff in general so here’s to hoping it helps some.

The dry tea…smells very potent. The ginger and lemongrass is strong to the point it makes me want to sneeze. I never had honeybush so I’m not sure what it smells like, but anyway it seems to be covered by the ginger and lemongrass.

The brew has a slight honey smell thats similar to when you add honey to hot water. I’m getting more hopeful by the second here…

The flavor is surprisingly milder than expected. The ginger is soft, unlike the smell, and only has a slight sting/burn to it. I’m also getting the lemony taste from the lemongrass here, and it sort of freshens things up a bit, making this taste lighter. The honeybush…I’m not sure what that is supposed to taste like but I’m getting a sweetness here which I’m assuming is the honeybush.

After drinking this, my throat has become slightly better and I can actually breathe through my nose again. Really soothing tisane, great for stuffy noses and sore throats. It’s now my official go-to cold tea!

I find that I don’t like this one quite as much as the traditional Jasmine Green tea from Ito En [in the round bottle]. This one is noticeably lighter in color and flavor and the ascorbic acid gives it an off taste that I don’t notice as much in the traditional variety. I find that I generally notice the ascorbic acid more in the Teas’ Tea varieties for some reason, I’m not sure why. I do like the design of the bottle better because I can fit more of them in my cooler.

While this certainly doesn’t compete with loose leaf this is hands down the best pre-bottled jasmine green tea I’ve ever had. When I’m traveling I like to stop by Whole Foods and pick up a few bottles to keep in the cooler. It has a very strong floral flavor and scent to it that I like and I find it very refreshing. It is unsweetened and I think it is perfect that way, but I have added honey on occasion when I’m craving something a little sweeter. This is nice at room temperature or iced but I do tend to find this a little more astringent when it is room temperature.

The scent is pleasant, but hard to smell unless poured into a glass. For some reason my bottle of tea smells like maple syrup and this is really messing with my head every time I go to take a drink because it makes me crave pancakes. It also keeps me from smelling the wonderful jasmine scent from my tea.

Thanks Sil! This one smells pretty great. I had enough for two brews: one hot and one cold. The hot tea was enjoyable. It had q nice cotton candy sweetness to it. But the cold brew is where it’s at. The flavor comes out a bit more. The black tea base is the dominant flavor and the sweet cotton candy lingers in the after taste. It’s quite delicious :)

I’m beginning to think that I will compare all cinnamon blend rooibos teas to Good Earth’s Sweet and Spicy. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up with Sweet and Spicy and still have some on hand and like it. The problem occurs when these loose blends are shown up by it.

Reading the description of this, I was expecting a spicy, coconut cinnamon rooibos, maybe a little bit like Davids’ Coco Chai Rooibos, which I loved. Wrong! I didn’t find this spicy at all, no matter how long I infused it. The coconut is very faint – the real star is the vanilla and cinnamon. But it’s not a spicy cinnamon. This is pleasant enough, but just not a wow.

And I think that is because it basically tastes like a very weak steep of Sweet and Spicy, making it super difficult for me to get over the price differential.

I have so many awesome teas here to choose from, many which I haven’t sipped in quite some time, & yet I found myself wanting this one again today. I sipped my way through several Gaiwans full over the course of the afternoon, sharing some with a student who appreciates fine tea.

Sipdown!
After visiting the college & running errands, I returned home to teach. I shared the last pot of Ms Li’s Dragonwell (from last year) with a student. Drink up the old, make room for the new! The new version of this is waiting patiently in the TOMC box. Maybe next week I’ll have a green tea drinking day…

Thank you Courtney! This is pretty nice! It’s sooooo creamy and sweet, and I love the vanilla contrasted with the malty notes. It really doesn’t taste like a decaf tea at all! I think I will add this to my shopping list because it’d make an excellent evening tea when I don’t really want another rooibos or honeybush tea. I’m so happy I was able to try it.

I don’t really have a lot of knowledge about H&S’s, but it seems to me that they’re a high quality tea company so maybe I should look at placing an order some day. $6 for 20 tea bags seems pretty reasonable.

Hey Steepsterites!
It’s been a long day. I had to go over to the University for my Harp Student’s end of the semester jury. If you’d like to hear the piece she played, “Clair de Lune sur l’etang du Parc”, by Marcel Tournier, here’s a youtube of someone doing it (not my student)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWvwWHCF11Y
I made a 16 oz go cup of this blend, which is actually pretty nice. There’s just enough Keemun in there to give it a sweet, earthy & slightly smokey leaning.

Holy moly. This tea smells just Phenomenal. I had forgotten the mango/papaya flavors involved. This tea tastes…just amazing. It tastes like I wish working out felt. As someone who hates working out and is trying to lose weight, this is a lovely addition to make myself feel better. I’m realizing I really have come to adore Oolong teas as a whole. So glad I ordered this.

My preference is a strong tea and this Taiwanese Assam did not disappoint. Smooth and earthy.

Yum! It sorta reminds me of bubblegum, but not that super fake bubblegum flavouring. Does that make sense? I think it’s the marshmallow!

It’s sweet and fruity like strawberry and a touch creamy with the marshmallows while the pineapple does something that packages the whole thing up as its own kind of fruit. It’s rather fun and enjoyable for summer, although I don’t think that I’ll be terribly upset once it’s gone.

Also, I finally realized that when I ship these teas to Canada, I’m basically paying $12 for 2oz, and.. that’s pretty damn expensive!

I’ll package some up for Sil and TerriHarpLady as soon as I get a chance!

This has become my go-to bag tea at work when I need an energy boost. Hot, it tastes very woodsy. As it cools slightly, the taste becomes entirely seaweed. Later, the seaweed taste mellows into a nice vegetal flavor. This tea is great for work because it stands up well to oversteeping, has a pleasurable flavor profile without being distracting, and seems to be particularly energizing.

This was an impulse buy at the corner bodega for $3. I haven’t had a ton of experience with cheap bagged green teas, but I dare say this is one of the better ones. Definitely blows Bigelow out of the water.

Geez, I bought this months ago when I was in Washington DC and I evidently forgot to do a tasting note on it until now!

Normally I steer clear of fruit tisanes as they are generally full of hibiscus but this one isn’t. The bag is full of dried fruit and flowers. For a tisane I think this is pretty good, it is slightly on the sour side but I think it’s the strawberries that are making it this way. A little pinch of sugar did remedy the situation. I’m always in the lookout for a good tisane and this is nice, the pear flavor also comes through fairly well. I might be more inspired to try some of their other fruit tisanes as well. I have yet to have a fruit tisane that I really LOVE but I know I will finish this off happily and might even get some more.

I had this iced last year and I remember it was good that way. It would also be nice to mix this with other things like Maria suggested to see what happens.

Also I’m excited I’m going to Portland, Oregon tomorrow and have a few tea shops on my itinerary. :)

Thanks Cavocorax for this one.

This is really reminding me of David’s Santa’s Secret. There is something different though. I’m thinking it’s ever so slightly creamier? I could be wrong. I’d have to try them side-by-side to know for sure.

It’s not too chocolatey, which is lovely. And the mint really comes out in the end. I’m enjoying my cup of this one.

I bought this tea for work and the last two times I had it were enough to show me that I’m not a big fan of it. You think I would be with licorice and orange, but… guess not? It’s my least favourite flavoured pu’erh.