New Tasting Notes

This will be my fourth cup of flavoured Pu Erh today. The snow has stopped falling but a few inches have settled, for how long is anybodies guess. The snow is beautiful to look at but it’s cold and dangerous. Last year it snowed on my birthday but it doesn’t look like there is much chance of that happening this year, it’s arrived too early. (My birthday is 6th February).

The tea whilst raw is dark brown with small red strawberry pieces and it smells absolutely amazing! It’s real strawberry and it smells so sweet and juicy, very natural like and thankfully not the leaf. I’m licking my lips due to the smell alone which for the record is quite potent.

Once the tea has steeped it’s dark brown in colour and smells just as strong, fresh and naturally delicious as it’s raw form.

Wowzers this tastes as lovely as the smell! The first few sips reveal sweet strawberry which is then followed by a rich and smooth Pu Erh after taste. The strawberry is slightly more dominant but with it being so sweet and fresh I put that as being a positive thing. Besides I can taste the Pu Erh fairly well despite being overtaken. This is another blend that reminds me of sweets.

Earlier I drank Mother of Pearl- Della Terra and noted that was mostly strawberry flavoured (and Pu Erh based) and I think any fan of that tea would love this. This tea is stronger than MOP and sweeter without having to add anything extra.

I think this tea alone would be worth placing another order from NBT for but considering I also love their Orange Pu Erh and Orange Black I’m thinking I should do so sooner rather than later.

In a few words this tea is … Tantalizingly strawberry tastic!

Sending the rest to Azzrian

My daughter chose our tea this morning. After digging through my stash she decided on this one, but she looked worried that there was so little left. I had to pinky swear that I would buy more before we could sit down and enjoy our tea. I think I may have her hooked. Or rather this tea has her hooked. The strawberry is spot on, and while this definitely taste like a treat it’s not overly sweet or heavy. It’s just good – really, really good.

I really like this tea – very yummy! I like that its a blend of green and rooibos teas. This is my first tea of the day during the week at work. I don’t really taste the juniper berries too much but perhaps it’s because of the lemon flavoring. I will always have a stash of this tasty tea at work!

Ok so I’m guilty of loving Teavana’s herbal dessert teas. I’ve been checking back with my local Teavana to see if they’ve gotten this in yet and yesterday they finally had it!! I ordered 2 oz and when the manager said “For this 4.5 oz you would only pay $18” I said “I don’t know if I like it yet, 2 is good.”

Now I’m almost through the 2 oz because the chunks in the tea are large, there are pieces of dried bananas that really complete the flavor but there aren’t a ton of them. The first cup I had I brewed a little too long for my taste, it was very sweet and tangy, to me it was really similar to Azteca Fire, which I love. The second cup I made sure to get some banana pieces and BAM…delicious. I brewed it for less time, probably 5 minutes, and it was still sweet but the tangy tartness wasn’t there and I could taste the caramel and chocolate as well.

Banana lovers or dessert tea lovers, try this! It’s not like out of this world good but since I love dessert teas, and this is an herbal, I can drink it at night in my bath without worrying about being up for all hours!

Slightly acidic aftertaste. Good post lunch tea

Very mild flavour, sweet and soft, and good to drink at any time of the day.

“If you are cold, tea will warm you;
if you are too heated, it will cool you;
If you are depressed, it will cheer you;
If you are excited, it will calm you.”
― William Ewart Gladstone
Maybe that is why I love tea?

Following my next cup with another flavoured Pu Erh after catching the Pu Erh bug today. Well it is hard for any tea to follow after a delicious cup of Pu Erh after all. The snow is still falling and after walking (carefully) through it a moment ago to post jewellery to my wonderful customers at my local Post Office I am cold and in desperate need of being warmed up. The exotic part of this sounds nice right about now (shivers).

While raw this tea is a mixture of brown, yellow and blue in colour with a refreshing woody and orange scent. Not quite as exotic as I had imagined.

Once steeped the tea is dark brown in colour with the usual woody and earthy Pu Erh scent. I can’t pick up the fruit by smell alone which is a shame.

There is a hint of orange in the flavour but the Pu Erh is much stronger than the fruitiness meaning the balance is not quite right. It says their are raspberry pieces in this tea but I can’t taste anything remotely berry like, just the waxy orange and thick woody Pu Erh.

I have Nothing But Teas Orange Pu Erh and it’s nothing like this tea, this is a much weaker version and not as tasty. It’s a shame that it’s disappointing but it’s still good enough to drink and finish my sample pouch. Still I feel the word exotic is a little misleading..I was sort of thinking pineapple or melon…not just orange and raspberry that I cannot taste.

This tea has a sweet and nutty aroma, with just a hint of smokiness. The combination comes across as a bit buttery. The wet leaves are a dirty green colour, and the liqour was amber, darker than I expected.

I must admit that the aroma made me think this would just be an average green tea, however I was definitely wrong! The taste is something quite different. I’m finding it difficult to describe really. It’s not as nutty as I expected, and although there is a sweetness to it it’s not like the aroma. There is a taste of smoke though. It’s not as in your face as a Lapsang Souchong, more subtle and well balanced. A strange buttery smoke mix that’s surprisingly refreshing.

I did think that I wouldn’t find anything special in this leaf considering the aroma, but was thankfully proved wrong. However, it doesn’t stand out as much as the Royal Ceylon Gunpowder I tried last week. It’s definitely higher on my list than some green teas I’ve had, but it’s never going to compete for top spot.

Tea of the morning…..

I am trying to decide what to cut and what to keep, and have a few that I need to try again as it has been so long. While I doubt I will try much more from Talbott, this is definitely drinkable, and even enjoyable. Smooth black tea base that does not fight the flavors, light caramel flavor with a hint of chocolate. Pretty sure it is not quite hefty enough to stand up to milk or cream. I don’t think it is worth the price for what they charge regular price for a tin of this, but if you can score it in a gift set on sale, it is worth it.

Usual teapot method.

I love Dragonwell.

I dumped the dry leaves in my warmed flowering teapot and it smelled like a peanut butter, except more vegetal! Maybe I shouldn’t have done that but the smell was worth it. Wow!

Drinking the “rinse” and it is equally full of buttery nuttiness. I’ve never had a Dragonwell that is this full of flavour and smell. It’s almost overwhelming.

I get the green granny smith apples on the first steep; it’s sweet, juicy, crisp, and kind of tart, in a way. I can’t believe I taste that. The buttery nut notes linger in the back roof of my mouth, like mushed cashews or soybeans. My second steep is even smoother with that prevailing buttery, nutty sweetness. The unfolding flavours evolve into various items.

I think I’m going to end the note there and just focus on drinking as much of this as possible- this may be my new favourite Dragonwell! I purchased two “Dragonwells”, among other teas, from Verdant but this is the only one I bought in a larger quantity right off the bat. I’m glad I did!

On a side-note: I never felt the full effect that the water taste had on tea until I started short brewing and went from Vancouver to Victoria. Victoria water tastes of algae! It is not my favourite.

What an attractive looking tea this is, all the better to drink you for my dear.

I would usually be at work at this time but because it’s been snowing fairly heavily in the last couple of hours I have been told to stay at home. Having my mother as my boss works out some times. :)

The raw teas smell reminded me of strawberry gummy sweets I used to buy as a kid. It smells very sweet and fruity. Yum.

After steeping for 4 minutes with boiling water the tea soup is now dark brown with a sweet yet slightly astringent strawberry smell (due to the pu erh I believe).

The raw smell was stronger than the steeped smell and the taste is also a weaker version. The pu erh is nice and earthy and the strawberry adds a little sweetness and fruitiness, enough to blend very well together. There are other fruity tones in there too but not as strong as the strawberry and I thankfully cannot taste the rosehip at all.

I think their own description of “perfectly fruity and sweet tea with a slight smoky undertone” is spot on.

What do we want? Flavoured Pu Erh
When do we want it? NOW!!!
Yum yum yum.

Update: After reading people’s reviews and consulting fellow steepsters, I am pretty sure that this tea had somehow gone rancid. Absolutely horrid. As I complained about it at our last tasting, HistoryLaced dumped it in the trash. I cleaned the jar several times and the top still smells like this tea. Absolutely horrible!

Backlogging: circa 2 months ago. I had nice detailed reviews written out and misplaced them in the boyfriends room! This was before the introduction of a tea journal unfortunately. :S

A sample I received from ZenTea months ago, this was my very first Earl Grey and in retrospect was the best earl grey I have had! The bergamot and citrus are so strong and delicious, with cream and sugar this made the perfect morning blend! The leaves are beautiful and high quality, I have seldom seen a broken leaf from a ZenTea blend. They also resteep very very well- I think I steeped the same bit of this tea 4 times over the course of 3 days, keeping chilled in-between steepings.

I want more more more! I will be buying this tea when I get the chance to do so!

I had a cup of this tea last night before bed and when I awoke this morning I was shown that it had snowed over night. What a strange coincidence :)

The tea was very vanilla and pineapple in smell but I also found it a little soapy, something very familiar but I could just not put my finger on (so to speak). The colour was yellow.

The taste was very creamy pineapple, almost like an ice cream but less sweet. It was also smooth and rather full on flavour to match it’s potent smell.

Overall it was very interesting but in a positive way, still I wish I could think of what it reminds me of. Never mind.

I searched my tea-bag (a medium sized paper department store bag that I’ve filled to the brim with loose leaf tea) to see what rooibos I had left that I hadn’t had in the last few days while convalescing. Tonight I am finishing the last bit of this tea I have with buttered rum seasonings. Yum!

The seasonings really do this delicious rum flavored rooibos justice! My only regret is these painkillers prevent me from adding cinnamon flavored 24K gold schnapps, which would really bring out the warm-and-fuzzies of this tea.

HistoryLaced gave me more tea at our tasting, particularly several packets of oolong (she just hasn’t found one she likes yet. I think my muscat oolong might be of some persuasion to her.) which required me to wash out the preserve (tiny mason jar) container that had that rancid Teavana Ayurvedic chai in it. I bought all these tiny mason jars to lock in my tea flavors, what I didnt expect was the lid to absorb the scent of that rancid tea so much that dousing it in rubbing alcohol did absolutely nothing! Well luckily, those lids come about a dime a dozen- I’ll just replace it. Seriously though, first experience with Teavana and it’s horrifying. :S

Now that I am drinking the last pot of this tea I have, I must ask myself: is this a tea to restock? I think as a cool weather drink, yes it is delicious and I love it; it’s definitely a blend that screams “Comfy!!!” but this is southern California. The weather is beginning to warm up, our rainy season seldom lasts a few weeks and school starts the first week of February. I think “comfy” may be going out of season.

Hopefully I will see this blend in-store next fall/winter right in time for another cool winter break spent indoors with my sweetie. :)

For now though, I think it’s time to stock something bold, spicy and packed with caffeine!

P.S.: I am feeling tons better and can’t wait to be 100% again! I only needed one painkiller at all today. Go me!

Had this earlier this afternoon. Just cuz I have to avoid caffeine doesnt mean I don’t like nice things!

Nice, light and sweet floral tasting tea.

Sigh, another year older! Tick tick tick tick tick! :P

Anyways, although I didn’t drink much tea today, I did have this one, using my adorable new infuser from my boyfriend! As one of my birthday gifts, he gave me a little floating duck infuser, which doesn’t work perfectly (it tips over a bit), but darn is it ever cute! The basket is small, but the mesh is quite fine, so I’m pretty happy with it! Left it at his house so I’ll always have a way to brew tea there! He even cleaned it out for me tonight :D What a sweetie!

This tea, as usual, smelled and tasted like a delicious berry crisp. So tasty. I still am not sure how I didn’t like it the first time, but I guess perhaps I just sucked at steeping teas back then!

I certainly wasn’t expecting this to be as vegetal (reasonably “strong” bok choy note) as it turned out to be. I’m used to [naturally] sweeter white tea’s I suppose. The liquor was very light even when steeped for 3 minutes, like water. Not something I’d keep in stock as I much prefer Teavivre’s Silver Needle, but interesting nonetheless.

Edit: The second steeping of this was way better, for my taste buds anyway. The vegetal flavour is more balanced and a little of the sweetness I’ve come to know with white tea’s has come out. The man (who isn’t a fan of tea…yet!) took his usual cautionary sip, then 3 gulps followed by a sigh and a “I could get used to this”. Hooray for progress!

Edit 2: Third steep was just like drinking hot water – nothing there.