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This is Chinese (?) Sencha with orange peel, natural flavorings and a specific broccoli seed extract. I enjoy pungent broccoli sprouts, and green tea, and oranges. Why not give this a try?

Color: more orange than a tan or light brown liquor from some green teas.

Aroma: two components. The stronger note is essence of orange; a fainter note is the smell from when greens are off after sitting in the fridge too long. The second note is faint enough to not put me off.

Taste: the sip starts with a soft orange essence flavor, but this doesn’t last long. It gives way to some vegetal flavors and something else I haven’t tasted before. It’s almost like the spoiled greens smell, but not quite. Then the orange comes back with a very short flash of orange creamsicle flavor. Interesting. There are bitter flavors in there, too, but covered up by everything else.

The sip ends with a decent dryness in the back of the palate. A faint bitter and faintly sweet aftertaste remains, as expected for green tea. After a few sips, it is starting to dry my whole mouth.

Kudos to whoever blended this. I like the idea, after reading about broccoli sprout tea being used in some studies on broccoli and health benefits. If I’m tasting the broccoli extract, I think I’m only barely tasting it. However, this is not quite tasty enough as an orange flavored green tea for me to buy again. I think I’ll drink other green teas and get my broccoli compounds from sprouts.

This is the tea I wanted to try second most in the black tea sampler from this company. After smelling the leaves, I felt like tossing this into the samovar, but I don’t have one, so no zavarka as suggested on the Samovar website. I steeped two well-rounded teaspoons for 5 min at 205F in a 12 oz cup instead.

The dry leaves are in longish pieces and dark in color. The aroma of the tea in the pouch is smoky, reminds me of new shoes in the box, and hints at anonymous fruit.

The aroma over the dark liquor (on the red side of black coffee in color) is sweet and strongly smoky (to me, but this is my first smoked tea), but not like hickory BBQ. The smoke is like a piney wildfire smoke.

I brace myself, nose above cup, for a powerful cup of smoke. The taste is instead silky and out of proportion with the smoky aroma. The sip tastes of bitterness in the back, in balance with up front flavors that include a strong sweetness, a tongue-tickling bitterness, and some smoky sweetness or sweet smokiness. This taste reminds me more of hickory smoke than the aroma. The sip finishes with a smoky, lingering sweetness aftertaste. The sip is moderately astringent.

As the cup cooled, the flavors seemed to soften. The sweet flavor became more fruity.

The smoke breath I experienced after this cup is exciting, but I’m not sure whether I like it.

This strikes boldly and then follows up with subtlety. An intriguing cup of tea.
I want to try it with lemon and try multiple steeps.

The aroma of the cup reminds me of the tea base of Zhena’s Gypsy Rose, but with a light fruit aroma in place of the sharp, floral rose of the rose tea. The tea aroma is spicy. From this aroma, I am expecting a taste from the tea that is biting.

I am surprised to taste a so-smooth, and more importantly, soft tea flavor. By this I mean that the bitterness is soft and faint (sides of the tongue, nothing in the back, no sharpness up front), and there is no astringency to speak of. I get some malty and sweet flavors from the tea.

The lychee flavor is there, but it is so light it is like a reminder of a flavor that reminds me of lychee. Lychee is not one of the most commanding flavors in the fruit world, so this light tea is a great match. The whole package is quite relaxed.

The aftertaste is, surprisingly (to me), of the tea flavor, with some stronger lychee flavor, not a bitter or sweet aftertaste.

I shared a small pot of this. One of us thought this was the cat’s pajamas.

I tested a rinsing steep on these tea bags today. I put the bag in a cup of boiling water for about 10 seconds, poured it out, and then did a 5 min steep in boiling water.

I like it this way. Some of the flavors that were fleeting before were more well defined in this cup. Most notably, there was a sides of the tongue sweetness that was more prominent. The cup was less astringent. The bitter, sweet, and leathery flavors were in good balance, with the previously noted smokey flavor quite absent. The color was still dark, but more of a dark, dark rose than coffee-colored.

I’m impressed by a mass-produced, bagged tea with such versatility.

I tasted this again with a hotter steep, so I thought I should enter a separate note.

I steeped it this time at 175F for 3 min.

The color and aroma are unchanged. The tea flavor has come out more. It is quite a mild green tea flavor. I get some sweetness on the sides of my tongue that I didn’t get from the 165 F steeping. There is little nuttiness either from the tea or the rice, which is disappointing. There is still little bitterness. I get a light sweet aftertaste from this cup.

Funny that this is the Gen Mai Cha that “started it all” for me. A box of this was in the break room at work instead of the regular CS green tea. Now I taste it and wonder what I was so turned on by the last time I had it. I am coming back to it after tasting some other Gen Mai Chas.

I tasted this steeped 3 min at 165F. The color is a like the smily face in the rating bar below, a nice yellow green. The aroma is nutty, and toastier than other bagged Gen Mai Chas I have tasted recently. The nuttiness carried through to the flavor. I would like the tea and toasted rice flavors to both be stronger. No astringency. Smooth (but muted, in my opinion) flavors. Very mild bitterness.

This is one I should probably just leave in the mug instead of steeping only 3 minutes. I’m mild about this tea.

I finished off my sampler of this today. I was about to write down a tasting note and then I noticed how alike my thoughts were to what I wrote down before! I have tasted more teas now, and I still like this. The flavors were three and clear for the first steeping: first nutty, then a vegetal taste and a mild bitterness together. The second steeping saw them all fade. I would buy this again but I am off to seek some other dragonwell samples. I did pick up a faintly sweet aftertaste. Everything about this cup is delicate.

No notes yet.

With half and half, this is good. The aroma over the cup is a fruity cinnamon, but not necessarily apple. The start of this sip is sweet, with apple and cinnamon next. The finish is a sweet, soft cinnamon, with a little cinnamon heat in the throat. Holding it in my mouth allows apple flavor to come out more. The sip leaves a strong drying sensation.

My first impression is of Good Earth tea with apple flavor. I taste a strong but soft cinnamon biggest, then apple, with some slight tartness. It is plenty sweet without any sweetener added. This is relaxing and caffeine free. I look forward to trying it with milk.

I took a break with this between returning from running errands and before coordinating some family activity planning. This tea was again solidly (not excitingly) great. I was glad to see how much of the sample was left in the packet after removing the required teaspoon, looking forward to more cups of this.

This green tea is at once nutty, vegetal, sweet, and has a hint of bitterness. This leaves a moderately sweet aftertaste. It feels creamy. It has everything, and in balance.

I made a second hotter, longer steep which gave some more vegetal flavor and a stronger sweetness.

This is more balanced than some other gen mai cha that I have tasted, and not as balanced as others. I like the quite nutty toasted rice flavor. The green tea comes out a bit more than in the Motoyamamoto gen mai cha I tasted recently. This comes in a green tea bitterness that peeps out a little bit from behind the toasted rice and a very nice sweet aftertaste. I needed a calm-down cup of something warm with dinner after work today. This worked well.

A co-worker gave me a sachet of this in a plastic sandwich bag to take home and try. I put it in my shirt pocket. The rest of the afternoon I kept catching whiffs of a bitter, musty, cocoa smell before remembering the tea. The sachet smelled like dark chocolate and that pungent floral smell that the little rosebuds used in tea blends have. The chocolate aroma is definitely dominant over the rose aroma.

The tea under the chocolate here is a smooth tasting black tea (not a sharp, bright, bitter black tea). The bitterness from the tea and the bitterness from the chocolate seem to trade with each other which one is in control. The floral notes from the roses are hard to find. The chocolate is satisfying. I would buy some of this. The chocolate lover in my house thought this was the cat’s pajamas.

I had a cup of this again today after tasting a sheng puerh over the weekend. I was struck by how fewer the notes or complications of this tea were in comparison. However, I definitely think it offers enough interest and depth to justify the time required for sitting, contemplating, and enjoying.

The aroma of the steeped cup gives dried strawberries and, in the background, the smell that an old canvas tent has. The color is a deep purple-brown.

The taste has sweetness, but is not cloyingly sweet. Mostly, it is a tart, dried berry flavor with banana aftertaste. Some hibiscus tartness is here, but it is a lighter note here. The chicory is there, too, also a light note. I can’t taste banana or coconut explicitly.

This has a surprisingly more velvety mouth feel than other CS herbal fruit blends.

I have had this steeped by sitting in a pitcher in the fridge recently, and I like it hot. I had two cups today.

My first taste of a Sheng. I steeped 1/2 tablespoon leaves in 4 oz water, and each steep was 205F and for 3 min.

I took Spoonvonstup’s recommendation to start trying some teas in smaller steeping volumes with this one.

These almost whole, brown-black leaves with some iridescent, green-black leaves, twigs, and a few yellow buds are loosely pressed and come apart easily. The dry leaves smell of dried hay, strongly sweet, and a faint bit like leather. I also smell dried apricots.

1st steeping. The leaves unfurled and became greener with re-hydration. The liquor is a an orange-tan and transparent. Aroma is earthy, smoky, cedar. The first taste is delicate and smoky, smooth and some faint powdery bitterness, but very faint. As the cup cooled and I got to the bottom, I got some stronger bitterness and sweetness, giving over to bitter and leathery/barnyard at the end of each sip. Lingering sweet aftertaste.

2nd steep. This has a decidedly smokier aroma than last cup, then hay aroma; the color is the same. Smokey and sweet flavors at the start of the sip, with bitter strongest. There are aromatic floral flavors here. A sharper bitter comes in only at the end of the sip, and astringency is now here at the end of the sip, too, that was totally absent in the last cup. The powdery feeling is gone. The sweet aftertaste has a twinge of dried fruit — current? — then goes floral.

3rd steep. I smell hay and leather aromas over the cup. The steeps are getting more orange in color. This is smooth, without a hint of bitterness and without much astringency. It is still sweet. What are the flavors here? I get more feelings than flavors. Some part of what made up the leathery flavors is still here, and there is some sweet, lip-smacking velvety feel. There is a cooling feeling in my mouth. Oops, I ran out of this steep trying to get the flavors down. The aftertaste is strongly sweet and floral.

4th steep. This is light red-orange in color. The leathery aroma is almost gone. This has some vegetal, bean pod flavor. The cooling sensation is stronger. The sweet aftertaste is strong. The floral notes, smoke, and cedar all seem to be gone, but the strong, sweet aftertaste remains.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. I’m not sure sheng is my thing if this one is a particularly smooth and tasty one, but I did have a lot of fun and enjoy tasting it.

I’m ambivalent about the idea of puerh in a bag. Plus one for convenience, but is there something of what makes this kind of tea special lost when it’s put in a bag and available in my grocery store? I suppose it’s just tea leaves, so why not? Anyway, it’s fun to see it at the grocery store and I had to try it.

The dry tea smells like black tea; I don’t notice peaty or loamy aromas others have mentioned.

During the steep, the color was a rose-brown for about 1.5 minutes. At this time, the leaves released their magic. The liquor started turning opaque brown in a flash. There are rose red colors where the top of the liquor meets the sides of the cup.

The aroma over the steeped cup has a strong leathery note and some faint hay smell, some fainter smoke.

The first sip has a smooth mouth feel. There are dry, powdery, leathery flavors and some back of the throat bitterness. The sip goes like this: first an up-front sweetness, then soft bitters along the side of the tongue, then smoky leather flavors, then a soft back of the throat bitterness, and anything left of these giving over to a strong and long lasting sweetness. There is drying astringency.

There are no vegetal or hay flavors, which I expected from the aroma. The leathery flavors recede and the sips get sweeter as I make my way to the bottom of the cup.

This was an unexpectedly complex cup of tea from a bag. What fun! I look forward to drinking more cups of this.

I think this must be shu?

I drank several more cups of this over the last two days, 5 min steep in 205F water, taken with milk. My main complaint before was that the bitter was out of balance—too strong. Hot, and especially with milk, the bitter is strong but I can enjoy it. There is no noticeable maltiness, and only faint sweetness. Every cup has a hint of cinnamon flavor and a faint rose aroma.

I don’t know what changed, but I have had this twice today and darned if it doesn’t taste just like tea from the pot at the sushi bar. I didn’t measure the water temperature, so my suspicion is that I steeped it hotter than for my initial tasting. I just let the water sit in the kettle for 90 seconds after whistling. Anyway, it wasn’t a significantly different cup of tea, but more as advertised.

Incidentally, I tasted another family member’s cup that had the bag left in for many more minutes (10 minutes?) than mine (same water temperature as mine). It tasted stronger, but not bitter or in any way unpleasant to me. With the price, nice taste, and resistance to steeping time abuse, I could see this as having a semi-permanent home in the cabinet.

I like the green tea I have at the sushi bar and had tried to describe it or ask for something like it at the tea shop before I knew what I know now about tea. I gave that up a long time ago after being sold matcha and kukicha, and neither one was “on.” I bought this at the asian grocery store on a whim, having moved on from searching for “sushi bar tea.”

I steeped this bag for 3 minutes at 170F. The color was light and yellow green, as it should be for “sushi bar tea.” The taste had some vegetal green and some green tea nuttiness (not roasted rice nuttiness). It was not quite what I taste at the sushi bar, but close. Not at all unpleasant, but not very interesting. I will keep some of these in my desk for a simple afternoon green tea mug.

I tried this iced. I steeped the bag for 3 minutes at 175F in 6 oz water and poured over ice. The color is quite light yellow brown. The taste is dominated by a wet cardboard flavor I cannot recommend. The aftertaste is nice and sweet, with some bittersweet. Light astringency is present.

I recently enjoyed afternoon tea with two out of town visitors at Boulder’s Dushanbe Teahouse. This was one of the selections for tea at the table. It is one of the five suggested teas to pair with the afternoon tea fare. I agree.

This was taken with milk and the floral flavors were still stunning. The Earl Grey bergamot comes through the floral flavors clearly. The black tea was harder to identify clearly, but present. The flowers were strong. The description claims jasmine, lavender, and rose. I could identify them all, with the rose and lavender coming out first, sharpest, and most aromatic. The aroma over the cup had bergamot first followed by the floral bouquet.

We picked through the leaves in the strainer (poor form for afternoon tea, I know) out of curiosity. I was surprised that the lavender buds still smelled so strongly of lavender after steeping. There was also what appeared to be a chrysanthemum flower in the top of the steeped leaves. Was this for show?

I plan to buy a tin of this (and another for my Mom) next time I visit this tea house.

I enjoyed this tea at Boulder’s Dushanbe Tea House. I had afternoon tea with two visitors to town who I knew would enjoy the experience. Our table had white linens, a vase of fresh flowers, an assortment of scones (with clotted cream and lemon curd), cucumber sandwiches, and small cakes. We each picked a tea for our individual, small teapots. I chose this one.

It doesn’t appear on their web page’s tea list but was offered on the menu in the tea house.

When the server brought the tea, she noted that she had washed the oolong leaves with a few seconds long steep before putting in the less than boiling water. Appreciated!

Forest green leaves partially unfurled and gave a small pot of yellow brown liquor. This had a moderate oolong aroma. The flavors were delicate, with some light citrus rind and evergreen notes. I didn’t find much smoky flavor. The largest note was some vegetal green tea type flavor. Astringency and bitterness were absent.

This tea was excellent, but maybe too delicate to have with the scones and cakes.

I asked for and received another pot of hot water for a second steep. The second was better. All the flavors were more well-defined. The citrus rind and green tea flavors were stronger and some smokey notes came in. This had a touch of astringency that was absent before. Still, it was quite smooth.

I don’t know why this tastes so different than my previous few cups that I based the earlier note on. This time it was more: more bitter, more vegetal, more flavor. I liked this cup of tea much more. Hotter water? I think it was the same. Longer steep time? I’m pretty sure not. Different altitude? Both cities I made this tea in were at about 5000 feet. Must have been in a better mood this time?