New Tasting Notes

Continuing the Denny’s of the world tour, this time with even more lemon and honey.

Fitting start for a foggy pacific coast morning.

(having trouble getting my tasting notes to save lately!)

Can’t believe I had not reviewed this one before! I also didn’t even have it in my cupboard! When did I get so lax on that? I have had this tea for a long time.
I love this tea.
It has the sweet / sour cherry flavor with the minty coolness behind it that is subtle yet present enough to give that cooling sensation in the mouth.
A great morning wake up tea!
The cherry flavor lingers nicely and leaves a delicate sweetness on the lips.
Its a romantic tea. What I mean by that is I could see this being a tea to serve at a valentine’s day tea party, or in a beautiful garden setting, a “ladies tea” if you will. Not to be sexist lol.
Its has a floral element to it as well.
I know this tea gets a lot of mixed reviews but I just adore it.
Its excellent as it cools too!
This is a stash keeper!

A decently flavored green tea that has notes of rose/cherry. It’s a nicely balanced tea, if you over steep the green tea does become bitter.

Sipdown!
I am done with this today and I will miss it, I should have gotten more in my last order from Mandala. I was impatient and had to have more of the Xiaguan FT Flame Raw before it sold out.

Anyway this tea is rich and indeed almost chocolatey, I like it when there’s soymilk added to it also. Will definitely pick up some more in the future. :) See previous notes for more info.

This drinking experience did not start off as love at first sip. It took a little half and half, plus sweetener to get this to be amazing. I really enjoyed that there seemed to be rooibos with a hint of citrus. Both flavors played really nice with one another. There was a little something extra on the finish with this one and I’m guessing it was the blue cornflower. I might have to pick up more than just a sample the next time I visit.

I’ve about finished my first tin of this tea. It’s a fine Darjeeling with all the qualities I love in a Darjeeling. I like it with a tea spoon of sugar to mellow out the woodiness. It’s brisk, but not too brisk that it would need milk. It has the light Darjeeling like floral notes that I associate with first flushes. As it turns out there is some first flush in the blend. I could drink this one on a regular basis.

Finished up this one today. Steeped approximately 3 minutes at 80 degrees (because I remembered there is green tea!) it was quite nice. This is one of those ones that I enjoy, but get annoyed about because DT recommends boiling water on the label, but that makes it bitter and gross because of the green. It is lightly fruity and flowery, with decent black and green teas behind it. If I ever get my tea stash pared down to 1/4 of it’s size, I would consider keeping this as permanent stock. There is nothing else in my collection that is similar. Glad to have a sipdown though!

First time having this tea after a summer of being off teaching in Massachusetts. (Living out of a suitcase and being needed for 16 hours a day is not terribly conducive to gongfu times…) I’m back home at St. Olaf and everything is so right. Including this tea…the lightly caramelized, burnt raisin taste, the centering aroma, the rhythm of making cup after cup, celebrating the fact that my 5 oz glass teapot (thanks Garret!) is out of hibernation.

Some things will always be there.

This has been my basic go-to tea for a while now. Making it in this dratted hot pot in my new house, which doesn’t have a stove… Temperature is a complete guess, as I’ve figured out a method to keep it from getting too hot and steeping too long/getting bitter, but it’s not a precise method.

I mixed this with Gyokuro Imperial. I steeped it for only a minute and a half, because I didn’t want to over-steep the green tea. The Silver Yin subdued the flavor of gyokuro a bit, and it gave the cup a smoother and fuller taste.

I added it with Silver Yin Zen Pearls. The natural taste seems subdued and the tea is smoother. I prefer it unmixed.
I only steeped it a little over the amount of time for the Gyokuro, and Silver Yin requires about 3 more minutes than that, so maybe I didn’t get enough of the two flavors together.

Well I don’t have to be anywhere for a few days (school starts on the 6th) so I have lots of time to enjoy tea :D

This tea has a definite apple taste to it, but you really have to look for the cinnamon flavor. One nice thing is you can actually taste the black tea base. It is a rich black tea flavor, the scent actually reminds me of pipe tobacco in a pleasant way. This is a great morning tea. Nothing too fancy but good for those who like their flavored black teas.

Gave this a whirl when my girlfriend and I popped into Yumchaa Soho for tea the other day – neither of us had tried it before. Yumchaa have a tendency to put little tea in the one-person teapots so that it doesn’t oversteep, which usually works rather well, but on this occasion I think I might have preferred it a little stronger! The blueberry and gentle vanilla tastes are definitely there, and for once I was surprised that the fruit flavour overcame the floral notes— a little stronger would have been perfect, but as it is, it made for a sweet, well-rounded cup.

There are much better Bulangs to be had

A very relaxing tea with a taste similar to that of a good Dragon well, but milder yet more complex and sweet. Creates a very light silverish liquid. Steeped 3 times.

I drink darjeeling too seldom and I seem to forget how much I enjoy it. There something enchanting in that flowery and malty aroma.

1) I just had an old tasting note jump to the top of my feed. What?
2) My stomach is giving me crap for the pizza I ate tonight, and so I am having this. And it just does not work as well as New Delhi Delight, which makes me sad. I will have to pick up the other soon.
3) No other comments because I had booze at a party tonight and I don’t want to have to erase shit in the morning.

Oh my wow.
This is one of the few flavored teas I’ve tried that actually tastes as I expected. It’s delicious! The caramel and cheesecake flavors are perfectly balanced and do not taste artificial.
I’m in love.

Finally finally finally, I’ve found a glass pitcher with a lid for iced tea. It’s a Labour Day Weekend MIRACLE.

I’ve had this cold-steeping for over three hours and it’s already quite strong. I just poured my second class, and after each one, would just refill the jug again, and it just keeps on going. The liquor is such a rich, dark amber.

As soon as I ripped open the packet to get out the tea bag, I was hit with a cloud of neapolitan ice cream. The taste is very heavy on the black tea though, kind of the same I got with the cotton candy loose leaf. But it’s heavy in a good way. It means business.

Can’t pick out any chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry. Just that same sugary undertone, again, from Cotton Candy, which gives me the impression that the strawberry is the strongest flavour of the three, seeing that pink cotton candy tends to be slightly berryish.

This tea bag is an iced tea making machine. I’m going to keep on going until the colour of the liquor turns substantially paler.

Unlike a lot of people, it seems, I really adore licorice! I think I was probably expecting more of that anise flavor with this one, especially because it has such a strong, pleasant smell in the package.

I’m hitting it with all the allowed re-steepings though. On the subsequent ones, I found the liquorice smell was more noticeable, but the taste of it still isn’t so strong. What I am tasting is nicely sweet on it’s own, and mildly grassy like the other white teas I’ve tasted. Overall, it’s a very light and comforting tea, but the smell does leave me wanting something stronger.

I had been saving this sample for towards the end of my sample stash because I tend to save the best things for last. But I’m having a really hard time right now and I need to calm down and treat myself.

I was a little confused about how much to use for my teapot with 200ml of water. Teavivre’s site says 1tsp and equates that to 7g, and that’s not right. Others here have mentioned using 1tsp. Most notes though haven’t said outright how much they used, but hinted that they used the whole sample pack of 7g. I hedged my bets and used 3.5g, which turned out to be exactly my tea scoop that is 1.5tsp! With that amount I did Teavivre’s recommendation of 1, 2, and 3min steeps.

1st steep: On opening the pack, I was met, no, I was virtually mugged by sweet jasmine. But mugged in a good way, of course. Behind that was a subtle woody scent. After the steep, the pearls were only starting to open, and the woody scent seemed to be in the middle of the jasmine now, making me picture a swirling ball of jasmine with a small, central core of the woody-ness. It was just like being able to smell the flower and its stem. Tomato lovers know that a tomato smells best when it still has some vine attached, and this is the same; you get a fuller sensation. In the cup it was just the same, and all the heady aromas really filled my mouth and nose.
2nd steep: The pearls were most unfurled now, but they still kept the general pearl shape in the centers. This was very much like the first cup, but the woody scent in the wet leaf was now much more like green tree sap, a bit richer and deeper. I wouldn’t have expected to pick up on that. Rather proud of myself there.
3rd steep: I’m surprised that there still seems to be some centers of pearls mostly together. Looks like I could get another steep from this, but it’s getting late. I’ll have to try getting to four steeps next time. It’s also not noticeably different from the previous cup.

This is so smooth and velvety that it is almost creamy as someone else here mentioned. I haven’t tried the lower-priced Premium Jasmine Dragon Pearls, but based on everything I’ve had so far from Teavivre, I can’t imagine they would be a disappointment. But it looks like I’ll be getting one or the other of them for my permanent stash!