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It’s that time again. Sample Cleanup. It started with Prince Vladimir, and will continue with St. Petersburg, but I took a break and used up the rest of this sample first. I still REALLY like it. I’ll have to look into putting an order in with GTC. There seems to be a lot of good things said about them, and this is just a really delcious, deserty, sweet coconut tea. Vanilla, coconut, almond, leaves a sweet aftertaste on the tip of my tongue. Mmm.

Removing it from my cupboard and adding it to my shopping list.

ROOT BEER.

The sample was only for two cups. Just finished it off with said second cup. Nice, sweet—don’t know if I’d get it, though.

I am officially OUT of this tea. I hate a few dustings left in the can that I couldn’t bare to part with, but they’re gone now. Wasn’t even enough for a full cup. I should have just poured the fannings into my LAST cup.

Quite nice. I’ve had good days and bad days with this earl grey. I don’t always love it, but sometimes I make a cup of earl grey and realize I’m not in the mood for it. And I find that bergamot is oddly sensitive to temperatures and steep times, like the tea itself. So I have days where the bergamot just seems unenjoyably bitter on its own.

I never liked this earl grey as much as Hazo’s, but I do like the two for very different reasons. This is certainly a very nice, fruity grey. Today’s cup turned out perfect.

I don’t know what I am going to do with the tin now. Obviously I could still use it for other teas—it’s a perfect little tin—but I can’t bring myself to rip off the tag, and I certainly wouldn’t put ANOTHER company’s earl grey in there. I want to keep the tins as a set. Hum.

Drinking this in the morning because one, I drink tea any time of day regardless of its intended timing and two, I don’t for one moment believe that it is “low in caffeine” as the label reads, because as far as teas go, unless it was chemically decaffeinated, those are flimsy, inaccurate statements!

Dry leaf smells quite nice. Keemun’s in there, and I saw a few smaller, rounder chunky leaves that I thought might be a rather dark darjeeling, perhaps.

I plan to drink this as I download a few scientific papers off of the internet. I’m in the process of looking for one in particular, from the Geological Survey of Canada, but it’s proving tricky to locate. I might actually have to go downtown and into my nearest branch.

Brewed, it smells… A bit more like assam, actually. A bit of a honey scent as well.

I’m getting a darjeeling taste mixed in with darker teas. It’s mellow otherwise, and rather nice to sip and work on the computer with, although it’s getting slightly more astringent as it cools. Not unpleasantly so.

The second sample.

I’m not going to lie, but dried it smelt a bit like liquorish, and brewed it smells a bit like root beer.

Sipping… I’m not getting much of a taste other than from the tea. Getting a bit of sweetness, but nothing specific like vanilla. Seriously though, root beer smell.

I make two-hour-long trips downtown for tea. And I did so again this time, for this little House Decoration store that I learned (through the internet) also sold Kusmi teas. I was planning on buying a bunch of their Russian blends (maybe even the whole Russian giftset), but she was mostly out of them. The ones she WASN’T out of, she had sold out of the tiny tins and only had the HUMONGOUS tins left. So she gave me samples of two, and I bought a third little tin.

This is one of the samples. Although she only gave me two teaspoons, so in order to conserve, I used a level teaspoon full, and 6 ounces of water.

It smells like bergamot and caramel, it tastes like red berries and vanilla. I’m also getting caramel on the tip of my tongue. I think this would benefit from a bit of sugar, as JacquelineM said, but I haven’t any and don’t feel like going upstairs to fetch some. Otherwise, the flavours are very subtle, but still very enjoyable.

I think I will have to get a tin of this, when they come back in stock.

Second steep has a stronger caramel note, followed by the fruit.

Rather enjoying this this morning. Warm and cocoay-earthy. Good for book-reading, I think. Even though I never quite know whether or not I TRULY like this tea, I think I’ll be rather sad when I run out. Especially since the Simple Leaf shut down. There were so many other teas from them I wanted to try! I should have bought an ounce of each one the first time around, instead of just planning to do it in batches of three. If only I’d known.

I don’t think there will ever be a Single Estate tea company as wonderful as them. It’s all the awesome companies that go under, sadly. I’m almost out of the ti guan yin I got from the Jade Teapot too.

It had a pleasant, roasted taste. A bit cocoay, actually—reminded me of Dawn.

Packaging said boiling, five minutes, even though this’ is a green tea, but I didn’t have access to the internet when I made it initially, so I figured maybe the roasted nature of it allowed you to brew it at boiling. So I did, and got no bitterness.

I’m not sure if I actually like it or not, but it was certainly a very DIFFERENT tasting tea.

I’ve been gone for over two weeks, due to internet problems. We were switching providers. …Didn’t work out too well, so we ended up without internet for a time. But it’s all good now.

In that time, I ran out of one tea and picked up two new ones. Both from the organic market near my work. I love that place. It’s got such a wide selection of teas. Mostly all bagged, but still good!

I rather like this one. Brewed, it smells strongly of assam, but sipping it—it’s assam, but not as strong, tempered very well with a bit of ceylon, so it’s bright and bold and quite nice. Would probably hold up very well to tea, I figure.

Once a term at college we have a little Marketplace Setup where local shops sell their wares here. This time around a loose-leaf tea shop set up a booth—the first Canadian storefront for an, apparently, very popular European boutique tea company (Forsman Teas). Although about 90% of the teas contained rose petals (blurg), there were some very good ones in there. But I resisted buying any, because I’d just gotten two teas already (if I’d known a tea company was set to come, I would have held off on this tea and the other one I got!). I regretted it though, because they had some VERY unique flavour combinations (all of their years are flavoured blacks or greens or black/greens; their 1001 Nights is quite different from any I’ve ever seen before). I wanted to try Northern Lights, which is blueberry and mint black. Very interesting!

Back to THIS tea, though—I like it. From what I understand, they company sells loose leaf as well, but there were none at the place I went. Just these bagged. But they’ve got bagged Russian Caravan! How interesting. I want to pick a box up after I run out, just to try.

Also found a shop downtown that carries Kusmi teas. I plan to make a run there at some point—haven’t made any exact plans when, although I’m starting to drown in teas, so I think I’ll hold off until I finish off a few more of what I’ve got. I’m starting to run low on a few, so it shouldn’t take long.

Didn’t mean to let the water cool this much before steeping it, but it does bring the grenadine flavour forward much more. Very fruity. I’m actually starting to get low on this, and it makes me sad because although I’d like to get more, I’d rather try some from a different company. I still strongly dislike Tea Desire’s flavoured blacks base.

Still, finding this enjoyable.