sophistre

This is the first time I can remember that the flavors described on a tea have represented almost perfectly the flavors that I get when I sip it. I know that the gap between what’s suggested and what I sense comes, probably most of the time, from my uneducated palate…and let’s face it, I love, love, love spicy food, and am pretty unwilling to give it up to create a palate that’s fine-tuned, the way food tasters do.

I haven’t had even a moment’s trouble with this one. Everything they describe is there. The hardest thing for me to locate was the orange blossom, but it IS there…and that much to my delight; having lived in Florida (and even spent some time in working groves, long story), that smell is among my favorites of all time. I had some guacamole earlier, and I suspect that the garlic and onion in the guac sort of battered my taste buds, and that the floral note would be easier to pick out than the nutty note (rather than vice versa) had I not been snacking a little while ago.

The more oolong I have, the more I love it. So many flavors. So full-bodied. This one is pretty tasty.

This tea reminds me of the Golden Spring from Adagio that I like so much, with a slightly darker, slightly less savory flavor profile, but definitely more fruit, and a lot of depth to the fruit flavors you can detect. It has a lovely aroma. In terms of taste the ‘ripe cherry’ quality they tout is not difficult to find at all. Neither is the prune, though there isn’t as much here of that flavor as I’ve noticed in other blacks, perhaps because the malt quotient here is slightly less. There’s something else here in the flavor that I’m trying to identify and having a difficult time placing a name too. It isn’t bread…oh, what is it? It drives me a little bit nuts when I can’t place a subtle flavor with its analogue! Something roasty.

I like it quite a bit. There’s enough savory sweetness to the cup that I could easily drink this all of the time. In fact, if I hadn’t ordered quite a bit of Golden Spring, I would probably be content to consider making this my default Easy Drinking Black for a while.

I’m not sure how I feel about this one, which is in all probability unsurprising as I have a long, long history of disliking licorice. I suspect that this probably deserves a much better rating than I’m giving it, in fact, but I’m having trouble hopping over the mental hurdle of ‘oh no, licorice’.

I was more worried before I opened the packet than I was afterward, actually. The smell wasn’t so strong that it punched me in the face, but it was still strong enough to leave me wondering why I was going to pour hot water on top of it at all. I sort of dumped the entire packet into my glass infuser cup, and watching it brew I realized that there are a ton of twigs in this blend. It’s not a very pretty blend at all, and there are more than a few fannings drifting around the bottom of my cup right now. Assuming that’s the non-tea stuff, though.

I was pretty gratified to find that the tea, once brewed, stayed soft and unassuming on the licorice front. The taste of the white tea — which brews to a pretty silvery-gold — reminds me of the silver needle I have from Adagio. Every sip has a little bit of licorice, but it’s…very mellow, and reminds me more of the background note of licorice you can sometimes get from bagged ‘medicinal’ teas, like the Yogi teas, for instance…it’s drinkable even for someone who viscerally rejects the strong scent of licorice. It does create a sort of weird feeling on my tongue and soft palate, though; not numbness, per se, and not a coolness like mint, but something that makes me think of both of those things on a much smaller scale.

I confess that I’m sort of baffled as to where to rate this. The rating should probably be considered very soft.

Sadly, there’s not any better place for this, so I’m just going to write about it here.
This cup is so win: http://www.teavana.com/Tea-Products/Tea-Cups-Mugs/Glass-Tea-Cups/Yves-Glass-Tea-Infuser-Mug.axd
There are only two points of potential annoyance: the first is that stuff sometimes gets stuck in the little glass vents. I find that a toothbrush and about a second-and-a-half of effort are enough to take care of that…I never spend any time standing around struggling to get them cleared out. The second is that occasionally you have to pause your pour to allow the water to vent through when the tea is small enough to clump against said vents, but again…10 extra seconds doesn’t really bother me. Your mileage may vary. I use this thing constantly. I definitely use it more often than my iron teapot; almost every cup of tea I make is a new flavor, so I feel like there’s less fussing, and it means I get to see the tea brew…and they get nearly the whole cup to unfurl in. The lid that comes with it flips over to make a pretty good infuser-saucer between steeps. Plus, it’s all glass, so it doesn’t retain any smells or flavors and I don’t have to worry about chemicals leeching out of plastic bits into my hot water. Not a bad deal for 15 bucks. I like it so much that I ordered two more.

True, it ain’t no sorapot (where the heck is my sorapot, btw? It still hasn’t come in!), but for 16 oz. of tea brewed for a steep-voyeurist and a minimum of effort it’s a good choice.

So…RELIEVED.

I was so afraid that brewing this was going to make my house smell like cigarette ashes. I don’t smoke. I can’t stand the smell of it. More than that, I’m actually allergic to nicotine, so it weirds me out on a totally different level than I think just finding the smell unpleasant would weird me out. Thank HEAVENS that isn’t what this brewing produced. To me, this is campfire. Campfire and the pungent, tart scent and flavor of pine sap. I don’t have any trouble whatsoever locating the pine in this, which is…really quite the unusual sensory experience. It’s a completely independent flavor from the smoke. I can even taste the tea after I swallow each sip.

This is another one of those teas that brings to mind instantaneous memories for me, all of them connected to cabins and wood stoves, most of these enjoyed alongside a feeling of utter boneless exhaustion at the tail end of long day of snowboarding. It makes me think offhandedly of the trips I took to Mesa Verde when I was living in Colorado; some of the old Anasazi cliff-dwelling areas still have fire pits that seem as though they’re going to be stained forever with this sort of scent, where the red rocks have been blackened for all time.

I didn’t expect to like this, but I hoped that I would. I definitely do. I don’t know how much of it I would find myself wanting, but I could easily see myself adding this to my order. It’s so…cozy. So curl-up-on-a-futon-in-front-of-a-fire cozy.

Now that I’m getting halfway through the mug and it’s cooling slightly, it’s becoming surprisingly sweet on the finish! I really didn’t expect that. I thought I was going to have to add milk and sugar to this at the very least, and I haven’t added either, because I’ve been too interested in the flavors to risk covering them up. That’s a good sign.

Yeah. Yummy. Quite believably not for everyone, but I think most tea-ites recognize that lapsang souchong is a love it or hate it affair. I can’t even say that I like it broadly yet; for all I know I might just like this one…but I do like this one. Hallelujah.

Chai remains one of the most delicious parts of my morning routine. I had wanted to save the chai that came in my sampler order for a moment when I wouldn’t just be relying on it to function properly, but I’m still wrestling with my sleep schedule, and a premature waking-up at 3am this morning necessitated breaking from that plan for the sake of something soothing and bracing at the same time.

Cardamom is the star in this blend. Opening the packet to take a sniff it was the first spice that coasted out to meet my nose, and a glance inside explained why: there were two fat cardamom pods sitting right on the top. Paired with milk and made into a latte, it immediately put me in mind of various Indian desserts. Cloves are the second note, with cinnamon trailing a distant third. The tea, needless to say, is little more than a backdrop for so many forceful flavors…which is alright, in a latte. I’m not certain I would enjoy this as a straight tea, but then I’m not certain about that when it comes to virtually any chai.

It’s good. Basic. Probably very forgiving of being blended with other things. Cozy. It’s doing what I needed it to do this morning.

To me, the very idea of a rose tea is slightly strange, and yet I really don’t have any good reasons for why that should be so. I don’t eat rose petals, therefore I shouldn’t be drinking them in liquid form, perhaps? Even that reason doesn’t hold up, ultimately; some of my favorite black teas are my favorites because they remind me of hay in a hot barn. It isn’t as though I’ve ever sat down to have a big heaping helping of alfalfa.

Anyway, the scent is delightfully, definitely ‘rose’. That does not change over the course of the brewing. It still struck me as strange. Like…sipping on potpourri or those little sachets of dried roses that mothers and grandmothers seem to like tucking away in various drawers of clothing, irrevoccably tying the scent of dried rose petals to the little private and forgotten places within spaces belonging to the older women in my life. (And this is not wholly true; I think my mother has preferred lavender and cedar over time, but I smell the aroma of roses emanating from this cup and my memory still jingles to the tune of sachets and drawers).

I suppose I had forgotten about Turkish delight. One sip and I remember; that beautiful pink jelly that I seem to only ever eat dressed in chocolate, wrapped in shiny pink wrappers and made by Fry’s (though I can’t for the life of me remember ever eating anything else made by that company). The quality of the rose flavor is approximate, occasionally providing a flash of something sweet on the parting of the sip. I have a very minor astringency in the back of my throat, but it’s pretty mild.

Definitely not a tea that I see myself craving, but I wouldn’t send it back to the kitchen, either. If rose tickles your fancy or you happen to be a rabid fan of Turkish delight, I suppose this might be right up your alley.

I chose this tea to be my reward for staying on track with this Couch to 5k program, whee. I wanted something sweet. I may have to go and paw through the other samples for more sweet teas after this. As for this one?

Fruity!

Seriously, where am I getting that from? Of all of the things that I expected when I lifted my steeped cup of light, yellow-amber, canary-colored tea up to my nose, fruit was seriously not on the list. And yet, that’s sort of what it smells like, to me — like someone caramelized some sugar and added it to some kind of fruit. My cup is still pretty hot. Maybe that’s going to lessen as I sit here and sip on it. I’m not even sure how to describe what kind of fruit I’m smelling. The more I sit and sniff, the more I think it’s reminding me of the bananas-in-bananas-foster smell…which I guess makes sense, given all of the ingredients in a bananas foster and the sauce…all of that hot sugar. In fact, now that I’ve said that, ‘bananas foster’ is definitely sticking around.

It’s not a very punchy flavor in the cup. Not nearly the strength of the coconut pouchong. I don’t know if I’m pleased or disappointed by that. I’m also not sure that I know enough about oolongs yet to properly evaluate the one they used here; all I know is that it isn’t the kind of oolong that makes me salivate from the rich, nutty, buttery smell. This is merely an echo of that flavor profile, a ghostly reference to those stronger qualities, lacking the brothy fullness in the mouth.

There is a temperature somewhere between ‘just shy of boiling’ and ‘tepid’ when the cup is hot but no longer needs as much caution in the sipping, and I’m starting to believe that this magical temperature window is where amazing things happen to the flavor of certain teas. Since hitting that mark, the tea seems to better represent the scent it throws off. It’s still not nearly as intense, but it’s stronger. Somehow I feel as though a little bit of sweetener in here to bring the sweetness you can smell up to the level of the sweetness your tongue gets might help to round out and smooth the flavor. It doesn’t need the sugar, but it might make the sweet-tooth itch the cup aims to scratch a little bit easier to satisfy.

Not a bad tea. Pretty drinkable. Not sure I can see myself craving it, though, so I probably won’t buy any, but it was interesting to try.

Reading the reviews about this had me pretty excited to try it, despite my trepidation — the last pear-flavored tea I tried was Teavana’s white pear tea, and it sort of chased me off.

I think the strong smell coming out of the brewed cup was a little bit frightening. It was cloying and heavy and dark, more like honey-stewed fruit than fresh pear. The taste is better than that, thankfully; it reminds me of the flavor of those straw-like plastic tubes of honey you can buy at certain candy stores, combined with an obvious pear flavor. That shouldn’t really be too daunting, but somehow it is. I’ll finish the cup, but I can’t picture myself craving this, out of all of the teas that I could select.

I do like pears and I certainly love honey, but maybe the pair of them together and hot are just not my bag of tea, so to speak. Maybe it’s just ‘hot pear’ that gets overwhelming. This one might redeem itself for me over ice, where the perfumey honey-sweetness is more expected. In fact, I’m guessing that’s almost true for a certainty, as the more the cup cools the sweeter the flavor gets, balancing out the stewed-fruit taste to replace it with a more alluring sugary aftertaste. I’m curious enough that I might try it that way. Maybe I should try Teavana’s white pear that way, too, since I haven’t even touched the stuff since that first ill-fated cup.

It’s alright. It’s very basic. It is rather broken, and a lot of small slivers wanted to escape my glass infuser and get into my cup. The actual tea is greenish-yellow and fairly light. I’m not having as much trouble getting flavor out of this as some other people did, but what I’m getting is basic green tea. It smells better than it delivers — the same problem I had with Adagio’s, honestly. It smells like green veggies cooked in butter, and it tastes like the kind of green tea I could get literally anywhere, without quality control.

In short, it’s not undrinkable but it’s not exciting.

Edit: The more it cooled, the more astringent it became. I don’t know whether to blame this on the pieces that escaped into the cup and were languishing on the bottom or the tea itself, but either way…not so appetizing.

Heavenly.

Unfortunately, I can’t really write a full tasting note here, because I don’t have ANY CLUE what temperature I brewed this to. I was too impatient to cool my Zojirushi and too wary of overheating the leaves to chance it, so I added room-temperature water to water I had cooled slightly in a glass…goodness only knows what temperature it was. It sort of breaks my heart that I may have under-done it, but I’m hoping that just means I can get another really good steep out of it.

I’ve mentioned before that I really dislike overdone flavored teas. They frighten me. They tend toward artificiality. Strong flavors in tea make me wary.

Nevertheless, I spent a good minute and a half standing in my kitchen, huffing the smell that came out of the sampler bag and thinking…oh my god, it’s like someone vaporized macaroons. It really is. The buttery quality of the oolong and the coconut make me feel like I’m sipping on subtle macaroons, without the heaviness in the mouth that would come from all of that sugar (and without the heaviness in my a** that would come from the same thing, heh).

I’ve never had pouchong before, but I’ve already mentioned this week that I think I’m a huge fan of oolongs, generally — the bready, starchy, buttery, chewy and delicious sort — and this tea is managing to combine that allure with coconut. It’s oolong and coconut, but it’s also macaroons and buttered kettlecorn.

This one is going on my shopping list. I’ll grant you it’s probably not the sort of thing I could drink 24/7, but I could see myself drinking it often. It’s the kind of tea that makes me want to plan a menu and throw a dinner party.

My GM sampler came in the mail. I confess to having mixed feelings about this event. I’m excited, but I’m also simultaneously overwhelmed, intimidated, and concerned for my health. Overwhelmed because there are SO MANY TEAS to choose from, intimidated because the sample size is enough to permit me one infusion at full strength and if I screw it up I’m in big trouble, and concerned for my health because I am not sure I have the personal reserves of strength not to brew cup after cup after cup of tea, and I may very well wind up consuming so much caffeine so quickly that the top of my skull actually comes flying off, which is the sort of thing that really puts a damper on a girl’s day.

I don’t doubt I’m going to be rating a bunch of teas in the immediate future, so I’m going to try to be more concise than usual (ha, ha, ha). This one is sweet. Before I took a sip, before I even sniffed my cup of brewed tea, I took a sniff of the wet leaves and knew I was going to like this. They were sweet and honeyed and still maintained that hay-like quality I love in black tea, though the hay clippings in this cup would be fresh, not quite cured. The scent is there — in the leaves — but there isn’t much of it in the flavor. I find it every now and then, a little background note of uncommonly bright malt, and I suppose this is the reason that I expected this tea to be an assam rather than ceylon (though to be perfectly fair, I haven’t spent a lot of time sipping on different kinds of ceylon tea intentionally, so what do I know? I’ve always thought of it as being the ubiquitous, universal, and understandably unexciting baseline flavor of black tea). After I take a sip and let myself sit a moment, I get a sudden flash of unexpected sweetness. I’m getting it more now that the cup isn’t blazing hot, but I anticipate that I might lose it again once the cup stopped being hot at all.

Curious about this second steep. I’ll update in a bit.

Edit: The second steep just earned this tea a big bump in rating. The first one is good, don’t get me wrong; brisk and tasty. It’s not so strong that it needs milk, but it probably would manage well enough with a drop or two (too much would probably be overkill). The second one, though, has a liquid-sugar quality that I can see myself finding incredibly addictive. De-lish.

Reading my first tasting note for this tea, I am forced to wonder why I didn’t mention the smoked flavor more than I did. I don’t have a hard time finding it at all, now. Not even a little bit! So strange.

This tea is delicious in the mornings. I like to pair it with a little bit of milk and sugar, contrary to my usual habits, because it brings out the smoky side just that little bit more. I know there must be better smoky keemuns out there, and I will find them eventually, but for now this seems to work just fine.

Still absolutely, without a doubt completely delicious.

And yes, it still smells like baked potato to me. I realize that’s the ‘nutty’ note, but something about it just screams ‘I am full of delicious starches’ to my nose, and it makes my palate incredibly happy. I’m backlogging this from earlier today. Presently, my teapot is full of Adagio’s Ali Shan, and I enjoy both of these so much (and they share enough qualities between them, in my mind) that I thought it was probably worthwhile for me to do another tasting note here despite the hour contributing to a total lack of brainpower or interest in being clever.

I think I’m torn between the two. On the one hand, the Ali Shan produces a cup of tea with an aroma that is utterly to die for. Buttery and fruity and floral, it’s leaving me with a strong sweetness and very faint, tingly coolness on the finish that I can’t remember getting from it before, which means one of two things:

a) my palate is still hinkey from my wisdom-teeth extractions or
b) my palate is improving.

Equal odds on that, really. But the Ali Shan seems to have a dryness and astringency that the Ti Kuan Yin really does not…and that baked-potato nutty smell almost makes me salivate. It’s not as ‘omg what is that I can only remove my nose from my cup long enough to take a sip’ as this Ali Shan, but the flavor is a little bit smoother. Maybe the long steep time is responsible for the dryness?

Regardless of my nitpicks between the two, they’re both so good that I’m eager to try more oolongs similar to them…full-bodied and chewy ones. If any of you oolong pros have recommendations, I could use them right about now. I’m running low on both of these and would prefer to branch out rather than just reordering from Adagio again, at least for now.

I’m discovering that I really, really like oolongs. I suspect I’ll like most all of them, but I’m finding I particularly like the ones that produce a cup of tea you feel as though you could chew on…the kind that smell as though they could be a meal, and a carbohydrate-laden meal, at that.

I’m actually backlogging this from last night, so this note is destined to be a short one. The dry leaves are large and seem somehow ashen to me, which is appropriate given the smoky flavor. Smoke and starch, peanut-y and roast-y. It’s an earthy tea, and the tasting note that referenced a rainy day in the mountains seemed to be spot on. It’s not the best oolong I’ve had, but it’s pretty tasty. A little bit dry toward the last, but not to any unpleasant degree. I’m curious as to how Auggy pulled the pineapple note out of it and interested in trying to get it to do the same for me. Having read that shorter steep times do funny things to oolongs, maybe that’s the way to go? I only wish I’d been awake long enough to try to steep the leaves a second time.

I made a huge mistake when I made this tea. Not because it’s terrible but because I’ve been trying to reset my vampire-like schedule for days now. Yesterday, I finally managed to stay up all night and throughout the day, until 7pm or so, and then I went to sleep…only to wake up suddenly and completely at 1am and be unable to get back to sleep. Ugh. I was going to lie there and try to stick it out, but then I remembered that I bought a bunch of herbal and caffeine free tea samples from Tea Guys to try, since I’m not usually adventurous about fruity and flavored blends…and that I had some Peruvian leftovers in my fridge. That sort of decided me, so I figured that I would brew up one of them. In a state of half-consciousness I waffled and eventually chose this one. Ginger. Peach. It sounded sweet but kind of cozy.

Unfortunately…I did not read the little packet and realize that there was black tea in this. Of all of the blends I chose, I magically picked the one with caffeine in it and then poured four cups of hot water on top of two tablespoons of it, which is almost but not quite the whole sample. Ugh. I suppose today is round two of staying awake all day.

Fortunately, the tea isn’t bad. I mean…I’m going to be honest here…I really don’t have a lot of experiences with similar teas to compare it to. Yes, I’ve been drinking flavored tea (mostly iced, when it’s flavored) all of my life…I’m southern, we do that. (We also tend to add enough sugar to give a small country of people insulin issues, but regardless…) But that doesn’t mean I was paying attention to them beyond their ability to be consumed as a beverage during a meal!

That said, I had no trouble finding the peach or the ginger in this, so it seems to be basically just what was advertised. When it was very hot in the cup, the peach flavor came across a bit oddly. It reminded me of baby food…you know that nutty stewed smell from peaches in baby food? It was sort of like that. Not bad, but not ‘fresh peach’, not tangy…more mellow. The ginger is definitely a stronger flavor, but not overwhelming. Then again, I’m one of those people who buys chunks of crystallized ginger to snack on, so obviously it’s a flavor I’m pretty fond of. I even like the aftertaste of this tea; that’s where the ginger seems to come out most — what I now think of as an exhale-note, something I taste most when I exhale, clear my throat, or cough. Vanilla is like that for me, along with certain other sweeteners. What I really want to do is try this iced and see if the flavors are still as strong. This seems like it would be an outstanding summertime iced tea. I haven’t sweetened this at all, but I’m guessing it’d be delicious with honey particularly. There’s a part of me that wonders if it wouldn’t be particularly good over ice, sweetened, and with just a tiny bit of milk…as strange as that might sound.

I first set the rating for this tea somewhere down around 50, but I think I’m going to push it up a little bit closer to happy-face. I’d rate it higher save that I don’t really have any ratings for flavored blends, so I suppose some conservative caution is in order. Also, I need to stop rating things right on top of one another. The more tick-marks I add to this rating bar, the less easy it is to choose where a new one should go.

Of note…my sample says Ginger Peach, but the tea blend on the website says Ginger Darjeeling Peach. I assume it’s the same blend though. The ingredients look exactly the same.

I wasn’t looking to add a tasting note when I decided to make this. The downside of my Zojirushi is that once my temp is set to 175, I really have a hard time justifying bumping it up to 205 for one cup of black tea, because it takes what seems like ages for the temperature to go down again…so I wind up looking for other teas I can drink at a lower heat setting. I hadn’t had this one before, and it sounded like a good, mellow choice for a cup of tea to watch the sun come up with (on the tail end of a long stretch of consciousness, having been up all night).

It’s good. I like it. The other notes have said virtually everything that I could say about it — sweet, vegetal, light — with the exception of the fact that I got a slightly smoky scent at one point that made me wonder if I was losing my mind. Of course I think it’s not smoky in the least — it’s just the vegetal note — and for one odd moment my tongue misreferenced. Strange. It seems to combine good, basic green tea flavor with some qualities of white tea that I like, so while I doubt I’ll ever be ranting or raving about it, it surprised me with how much I liked it. Enough to write this very unambitious tasting note, at least! Perpetually drinkable.

The cup brews to a rather pretty light yellow. First steep was sweeter, second steep is still good. I’m not sure how many more I would take it to, though.

Well, gosh. Now I’m stumped.

I came home expecting to give this tea its walking-papers. I enjoyed the morning mate so much, I felt sure there was no way this tea was going to compare. I go to the cupboard, open it up, pull out the basically fresh batch of this I’d reordered, sigh, open and sniff it…

…and decide that it still SMELLS good. …am I really getting rid of it? Maybe I’d better have some and make sure I want to do that…so I brew it up as a latte, intending to brew the other tea alongside in some grand conflagration of caffeine intake because clearly I need to compare the two. Only somewhere along the way I get distracted by how I’m enjoying THIS cup, and wouldn’t it be delicious-awesome as a treat if I threw in a tiny piece of Scharffen Berger milk chocolate bar to melt in it instead of sweetener? So I do, and it IS delicious-awesome.

At that point I realized I might need to re-evaluate my plans to ditch this tea. At some point I’ll do a side-by-side, it’s just a pain in the neck with lattes. Maybe tomorrow. For now…mmm. Tasty.

Steep time only reflects water portion of brewing.

Well…alright, then.

This is going to be a long one.

I have finally had my cup of Ryokucha. It was one of the first tea tasting notes I saw passingly (before I even knew what a takgoti WAS ;) ) that interested me, and for the longest time they were out of stock, so my curiosity had to remain unassuaged.

I will admit that the instructions on the tin (which is pretty slick-looking, actually; it’s not fancy but it is black and fully labeled and why I expected it to be anything else I don’t know, exactly, but there you have it) made me quirk an eyebrow. A tablespoon? A whole one? The leaves were such tiny little slips of greenery, there seemed to be so much matcha…that was going to be one dense tablespoon. A whole lot different from a tablespoon of wiry, fat-leafed black or white tea. It occurs to me as I write this that my skepticism is probably symptomatic of the real problem here, which is that at this point I may need a scale instead of a tablespoon.

The brine scent was silvery and at the forefront of the smell of the dry mixture, shining high and not quite sharp on top of a foundation of toasted carbohydrates. It made for a strange mix. I admit that the smell of the brewing wet leaves was cause for some more quirking, as the ‘toasted’ scent became very heavy…less like popcorn and more like popcorn on the ‘uh oh’ side of done. Some part of me felt like a little kid again, and it was saying, ‘this smells like Honey Smacks!’ while the adult bit of me stood off to the side going…but…I didn’t like Honey Smacks. Or Corn Pops, either (and then I remember that I ate both of them by the boxfull when I went away to school). I began to worry.

And then, sitting and sniffing and anxiously waiting, it made a connection for me that merely reading the words ‘toasted rice’ had not.

I have had this flavor before, and it isn’t Honey Smacks or Corn Pops or even popcorn to me, either.

Suddenly I am in Japan again.

At the time of this triggered memory I’ve been there for almost two weeks, which is not even a fraction of the time that someone needs to experience Japan, but has already felt like a lifetime…because only the girl whose family I’m staying with, my roommate from school, speaks any English. No one else does. (In hindsight, this was probably a good thing. It was better for me to be more quiet, do more listening, than I would have been or done otherwise.) It isn’t conversation that’s most difficult, strangely; her mother and I, one afternoon, managed to fold origami together — she taught me some patterns — despite the fact that we understood not a single word the other was saying. The difficult thing was ordering food off of menus. Poor Eiko had to gamble at every meal on what I might like or not like, and even ‘safe’ dishes — like pasta — occasionally arrived with a surprise twist (as with the night that there was a whole octopus gorgeously arrayed on top of the noodles as though it were still alive, and I was faced with a horrifying decision: to send it back when it was so beautifully prepared and offend, or to…urp…eat it). Combine this hit-and-miss ordering with my growing teen years and the fact that Japanese eat far smaller portions than we get accustomed to eating, and I was often more than a little bit peckish.

One afternoon, we travel to see the Daibutsu (giant Buddha) at Kamakura. Afterward we wandered through the little market stalls set up off to one side to look at Japanese historical merchandise of dubious quality (katanas, tsubas and netsukes, oh my!), stopping where someone was cooking little rice cakes — sembei. They had all sorts of different flavors, soy sauce most common. The fresh ones were fantastic, but…lo and behold…they sold them pre-packaged, too. I enjoyed the fresh sembei so much that my hosts from that point forward saw to it that I had a pretty overwhelming supply of the packaged ones, and my vexing food issue was finally solved.

That is what this tastes like, to me. Not popcorn or cereal, though I can readily find that there, it makes utter sense, and probably would have gone to that flavor had my tongue not had this other experience…but sembei. Of course now that I’ve found it, I can’t escape it. That’s what I smell as it brews, too — those cruchy, slightly sticky, sweet-on-the-tail-end, savory snacks that I practically lived on for the last leg of my trip, and which Eiko was forever afterward bringing back to school with her from trips home, just for me.

Why does this surprise me so much? It really shouldn’t. Toasted rice, toasted rice cakes. Logic prevails. I had just not expected to discover it again. It’s entirely possible that other people will have had it without even knowing it; I gather that there are trail mixes that like to toss in chunks of stuff that taste almost just like sembei.

And this is already way, way too long now, so it’s time to abandon memory lane and get back to the tea that I’m now working on my second cup of. First cup I brewed for two and a half minutes and added just shy of the full tablespoon of, afraid that it looked awfully potent, wary of overdoing it. This cup I added the full tablespoon and went for the full four minutes, and I think I prefer this one…the sweetness is so much stronger, and it seems to come not just from the rice but also from the tea this time…two different types of sweet, with the tea sweetness softer and the rice sweetness higher. In the mouth the tea is thick and I find it easy to think ‘creamy’ without any objections from my tongue. It’s like creamy tea without the mouth-sticky that comes from actual dairy.

I’ve lost the brine. I think the reason for this may be that eating soy-sauce sembei has irrevoccably connected salty and savory together with the rice in my palate’s memory…so what I think of isn’t the ocean, but instead that giant, beautiful Buddha gently putting on a green patina just south of Tokyo.

I think this one can stay.

Edit: Worth a mention: a nice honey flavor toward the end of the second cup, lukewarm, especially evident on an exhale or cleared throat. Yum.

I am so, so, so happy to be home after a month away.

If someone had asked me several months ago whether or not I was likely to come to love any appliance almost as much as the super-fancy-awesome food processor I got last year, I would’ve found that very difficult to believe (I’m certain as I type this that reserving affectionate emotions for things like appliances means I must be officially old now, whee). Nevertheless…

I am so happy to have access to my Zojirushi again. Good grief.

I wanted to celebrate my return home by ripping into various samples that have been waiting for me since my departure, the Ryokucha not least among them, but the lateness of the hour, my aching jaws and my exhaustion after a day of travel delays all-together seemed to suggest that I err on the side of responsibility and save them for tomorrow, sticking with something caffeine-free tonight.

This was a delightful option. The color to which it brews is fragile and barely-there, and so is the flavor…or at least, that was the case for me. After a long day of airport hustle and on-the-go food, that’s probably to be expected (to say nothing of my still-recovering mouth). Sipping it slowly as it cooled was an interesting experience, and the flavor gradually seemed to sweeten, and what had seemed to be a foundation of gently-steamed-greens (of the edible type; I can see where Auggy picked up her green bean note, though it’s thankfully subtle) mixed with warm fruit gave way to sweeter, more nectar-like white tea and the honeysuckle finally came through. I smell it more than I taste it even now, but the balance of the cup is good even on resteep. Nibbling a white-chocolate-and-strawberry chocolate bar and finishing off this second steep has made for a winning way to end a very long day. I can’t wait to try this again when my mouth isn’t so baffled by this long roster of various pills and pains.

Argh! My review got eaten. x.x Take two!

I really enjoyed this, and I definitely did not expect to.

The dry leaf smell was very strong. Heavily nutty and very strong. I tend to be easily off-put by the idea that something will be overdone when it’s flavored, or that the flavor will be in some way artificial. I tend toward wanting a certain purity in the tea that I drink…or perhaps the word I want is ‘cleanliness’. I want a flavor that’s a clear note; I want flavor that knows where it’s going and feels pulled-together. Rich is fine, but over-assertive — especially with anything that runs the risk of seeming artificial — makes me wary.

My first sip surprised me, though, and I was delighted. Keep in mind that this may be due to any number of factors, such as
a) not having had much tea in the last week,
b) my mouth still healing after having my wisdom teeth out, and
c) the probability that most things taste good as a latte,

but with that said, I’m able to say that I plan on having another cup of this after I finish writing this note, so there you go.

I made it the same way that I make my chai. 1:1 water to milk, simmering the water in a pot on the stove, adding rock sugar, adding the tea, simmering a few minutes, adding the milk, heating, removing from heat to sit, strain and serve. I did add a little dash of light cream when it looked as though the nearly-no-fat milk I was using wasn’t quite creamy enough for my tastes.

As it was simmering, I was giving the pot funny looks. ‘You smell like black tea,’ I thought. ‘You say that you are a mate. Are you both? I bet you’re both. If you’re both I can’t simmer you for as long. How long have you been on the stove? Crap. I’m adding the milk before you get bitter. …now you DEFINITELY smell like black tea. I bet you’re going to be bitter, ugh.’

The flavor was warm chocolate milk with hazelnut, black tea, and an exhaled aftertaste of the aroma of coffee beans. When it was hot I had a vague sense of something like rosewater, but right now I don’t really trust my palate.

Without a doubt the aftertaste is my least favorite part of this concoction, and I’m not certain to what I should be attributing it. It’s a very slight tang of something. Fruity? Sour? Floral? The source of my rosewater impression? Not quite any of those things, but definitely there. I’m not sure if the yunnan in there was angry at me for subjecting it to so much heat, or if mate has a tangy aftertaste. I suppose I should pick up some plain mate sometime to find out, eh?

In all, this tea seems to fill the niche that my Chocolate Delight from Tea Guys filled, only it fills it in a much more satisfying way. Sad to say, I think the aforementioned blend may have seen its last days in my cupboard (which is extra-sad because I have basically a new batch of that at home. If anybody wants some, let me know…but be advised I’m dispensing it not because it’s tremendously good but because otherwise it will probably wind up wasted!).

I missed you, Steepster.

And really, I’m not back yet. I’m still down south, where I’ve been since the 22nd (and somehow it’s still absolutely freezing outside…why do I feel cheated?). I was totally incommunicado for the holidays, which were lovely, mellow, and full of accidentally oversteeped cups of tea brewed at random temperatures…and then I was tea free for the last week, because I had my wisdom teeth out, and hot liquids were a no-no (to say nothing of the fact that caffeine and vicodin make poor bedpartners).

Today I actually got to brew myself a half-cup of chai. It was as though the pill-filled universe I’ve been existing in flickered for a moment on a faulty circuit, and normalcy was briefly restored. I may escape the matrix yet! With a flight home Monday to look forward to, things are looking up (though I may very well be shredded into a thousand tiny pieces by two very angry, lonely cats when I walk through that front door. The possibility exists that I may not survive how glad they will be to see me).

Despite my inability to drink any tea, I did get to buy some tea the day before my extractions. There’s a Teavana nearby. I loaded upon Samurai mate and splurged on a little bit of their Golden Monkey, as I sort of like Adagio’s, and I’m a huge fan of the Golden Spring. Why not, right? Fujian tea and I seem to get along pretty well.

Take this with not just one but several grains of salt: my mouth is not completely normal right now, for one thing, and for another I have no ability to gauge temperature here, but…

I’m just not that excited about this tea. Malty, yes. Bitter? Yeah. Not just bitter but a bit sour on the aftertaste. I’m sure I can lessen this by backing the temperature off, so this rating is just tentative. It certainly seems to have the thick, brothy mouthfeel that I liked so much in my Golden Spring, but the flavor seems so forward. There are elements of that prune/raisin sweetness in there, but they’re outdone by the bitter malty flavor. I guess I’ll have to try it again another time. Glad I only bought a small amount, though.

Hopefully it at least fuels me through reading the insane amount of updates from you guys that I now have to parse through! I’m excited to see what everybody was trying over the holidays, and I cannot wait to get home…home, where my Samovar and Teafrog orders from pre-Christmas are patiently waiting for me to pick them up from the front desk…

I’m pushing the rating on this up. I’m pushing it up OVER NINE THOUS—

Errr, over ninety. It’s true I’m only pushing it up to 91, but I think I’m going to reserve a special place in tea-cupboard heaven for anything that gets up past the 90 mark.

It’s not as though this is an amazingly genius blend of ingredients. It’s not as though this is an incredibly astonishing combination of unorthodox flavors. It’s not as though it’s an exceptionally small-yield, exceptionally high-quality leaf the likes of which we have never seen, nor find ourselves like to ever see again.

It’s just really, really good. That’s my opinion, anyway. I’ve taken a cup or two out of the many, many tins that resulted from my Adagio sampler order (green, oolong, AND black…of both ‘tiers’)…but this one?

This one is almost gone.

That seems pretty telling, to me. I can drink pot after pot of this. It smells so delicious in the tin…sweet but not cloying. It produces a completely satisfying cup of tea…for me. I add nothing to it. I usually try to stay away from additives unless they’re needed (like with EG…which I love, admittedly, with milk and sugar). This has been fueling my writing for the last week, and is probably the first tea I know for a certainty I need to reorder, while the rest will remain pending until I’ve sampled more iterations of their kind from other vendors.

On a completely unrelated note, here’s a little mood music for those of us who got whitewashed last night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev-uQdnezPM (completely work-safe).

Tea Guys. I know you guys. You’re all about your flavors and your blends, aren’t you? Why did I feel the need to order a straight bag of yunnan tea from you when there are other places that don’t make so many wacky blends that might have a better track record with tea that relies on nothing but its own leaves to succeed?

This tea seems to brew to a rich, dark reddish hue, which surprised me. It smelled exceptionally robust for a yunnan. I think I’ve gotten accustomed to yunnan jig and yunnan gold from Adagio, from my samplers. The latter even reminds me of their Fujian tea Golden Spring, which I drank no less than four cups of yesterday, and have grown really fond of.

This reminds me of no such thing. There’s a watery foundation that doesn’t seem to make sense beneath such a forceful scent and forward flavor, and as the tea has cooled there’s a bitter sharpness that emerges and leaves me with the impression of something faintly sour that lingers in the aftertaste. Against my better judgement, I’m going to toss out the remaining half of this cup and resteep, and see if that improves matters. I may have oversteeped by a minute on the first cup. What I really want, of course, is to tackle the rest of my samples and rinse this taste out of my mouth, but let’s give the tea the benefit of the doubt.

…

Okay, it’s better. It’s nothing to write home about, but better. I don’t know if the shorter steep time (on steep two? What the heck?) or second steeping overall were responsible, but at least it’s not SOUR. Maybe next time I’ll cut back the amount of tea in the first steep, too. I think this issue is 1/2 user error and 1/2 mediocre tea.

It’s not undrinkable, as a bottom line…it’s just nothing special. With milk, it’d wake me up. Then again? So would just about any black tea. I think I reserve the right to be more discriminating than that.

Edit: Last few sips of steep two had a nice, slightly smoky note worth mentioning.

Still pretty sure I wouldn’t order this again.

Mixed results with this one this m— errr, afternoon, but I think that most of that is on me, rather than on the tea. It’s very cold this morning. Something smoky and hot to sip while I chowed down on an empanada left over from yesterday seemed like the ticket. I thought this would be perfect.

First cup was pretty good, too, save for the fact that the empanada I had just finished seemed to be more moist than the cup of tea. I don’t know why it dried my mouth out the way it did. Maybe it just felt that way because I was still involved in that long, slow climb to proper consciousness for the day and what I really wanted was something juicy to hydrate me, but there you have it. The smoky flavor, at least, was good, and I had no trouble enjoying the background fullness of the green tea’s ‘saute this green stuff with some butter’ flavor.

The second steep…

Not so good. I probably won’t even finish it. Something about the smoke note lessening has reduced it from a rich smoke flavor to the suggestion of cigars. I’m not certain whether this is problematic for all time or just the mental result of having read the disappointing results of Teaplz’s first go at a Lapsang Souchong (and the suggestion of ashes in a cup, gross), so I’m going to rate it based on the first cup rather than the second, and just try it again another day. The dryness is unfortunate. I think I like the chewy, buttery, savory greens better, but can see myself opting for at least the first steep of this from time to time.