Moorish Mint

Another wonderful sample from Takgoti. Mmmm…I love it! And my cats seem to love it too. Both Sarge and Mr. Mouse had their little heads hovering above my cup. They were doing that odd open mouth smelling thing that cats tend to do when they really dig a smell. It’s cute. My husband and I make the Predator sound if we see them doing the open mouth smell. You know that mix of snarl/snore that the Predator aliens make? Riiight…I’m guessing not. Just a small glimpse into my life.

On to the tea. It’s great. No…it’s Wonderful for a mint tea. And fairly complex. The obvious peppermint taste, then the cardamom and ginger take hold. Mmmm! All held together by a simple, tasty green tea. It’s yum. It’s just YUM! I highly encourage everyone to try it. Especially if you like mint teas. I’m feeling perfectly well (knock on wood) but if I was feeling ill, I would want this on standby. Go Samovar!

It’s yum! :)

What an enticingly introspective blend from Samovar! Ala takgoti, of course, and her wonderful tea swapping choices.

I was out in the cold today because a few friends and myself decided to take a trip to the Brooklyn Brewery (http://www.brooklynbrewery.com/) for a tour. BB is a pretty popular microbrewery and we just sat around, tasted lots of varieties of beer (I liked the Weisse and the Cookie Jar Porter myself). I’m not a beer person, though, so I was happy to get home to some tea.

I pulled this out because I’ve been chilly all day, and mint, while refreshing, is always such a warming and comforting thing to me. Like most of the Samovar blends, this one smells ridiculously complex. Lots of warmth from the cardamom and ginger, mixed with a spicy, minty aroma. The leaves are similarly intriguing, with the yellows and greens blending together in very pretty ways.

So I steeped this one up, and let me tell you, the steam that came off the wet leaves when I opened the top of my pot could have given me a facial. The mint and pepper combination was so strong that I could literally taste it and feel it in my eyes. The vapors!

The cup was a pretty orange-yellow, and the smell of it gave me pause. It’s rather herbal-like and woody. A bit medicinal. But the flavor profile? Boy is it exotic.

And sophisticated. That’s the word that just keeps coming to my head with Samovar. It’s not child’s play. This is real tea, blended very seriously. And it completely works. It’s grown-up tea. I’m not a big spice person, so I can’t pick out individual flavors, but I can taste just the tiniest of zings from the black pepper each time I take a sip. Leave it on your tongue for a while, and it builds up. The taste of the body is very ginger-like and rich, extremely smooth and supple on the tongue. There’s just a hint of a Chinese green vegetal note, which sort of holds the entire thing together seamlessly. I’m getting lots of sweetness (more than likely from the fennel?) on the swallow, which is followed by a rush of peppermint. It’s less about the flavor of the mint itself, but more about that feeling right after you’ve brushed your teeth of refreshing awesomeness.

The tea gets even sweeter as it cools, so I probably prefer it at its highest heat setting. I’m really enjoying the zing of the pepper. This is the first tea I’ve had that includes pepper as an ingredient that I can really pick it out of.

Samovar just feels luxe. takgoti sent me so much of their stuff. I really am so thankful for that, because I’m pretty sure at this point that they’re my favorite tea company. And I haven’t even had some of the greater, higher-rated stuff yet! This is one of the best mint teas I’ve had – and I love mint tea. It’s so complex and interesting that I can’t help but take sip after sip, working my way through all of the flavors and intricacies. Fun and WIN.

DH isn’t feeling well – his sinuses are attempting to secede – and I wanted tea, so I thought I’d combine tea-ness with being the good wifey. Takgoti sent me some of this and it is currently the only mint I have and mint is friendly to sinuses so I thought this would be a perfect time to try this out.

The dry leaf smells a bit like a chai so I was nervous I was about to fry DH’s sinuses instead of help them, but I went ahead. While I was pouring, I got a fantastic whiff of mint. But not plain ole mint. Refreshing mint. Mint with that fantastic feeling of cold whoosh.

Now, because this is ultimately being made for DH, I did add about a quarter teaspoon of sugar in there. Because, unless it is TheraFlu, I feel that any drink taken for medicinal purposes must be sweetened at least a little bit. I blame Mary Poppins. Normally, I would add honey but I’m really to lazy to do that right now.

Oh the taste! Minty and refreshing and wonderful. But better than plain mint. The spices give it a great full flavor without making me feel like I’m drinking a chai. I can’t pick out the individuals spices – they aren’t as strong tasting as the dry tea smells like they will be – but they combine with the mint to give this wonderful fresh feeling/taste without being obnoxious.

This is by far the best mint tea I’ve ever had. I rarely drink mint (I’m anti-peppermint as a general rule) but I definitely think I’m going to have to get some of this to have on hand because it is quite awesome. DH actually finished his cup before I did which is pretty much unheard of in this house. He did request I brew it a little stronger next time. I think that will be no problem. Initially I was hesitant to brew too long because of the spices involved, but after seeing how the flavors combine, I think a longer brew time will be happy-making.

Another sample from the order I received last week.

In reading the ingredients, one might think that this is kind of like a green chai tea with peppermint, but, it doesn’t taste like a chai to me. The peppermint is the strongest flavor here, and the other spices in the blend act more as an enhancement or an accent for the peppermint than as the basis for a chai blend.

Either way, it’s quite tasty. I like the ginger in this blend especially, it has a pleasant, peppery kick to it – a nice contrast with the crisp, vibrant flavor of the peppermint. The green tea base really is just that – a base, but not much definition to it.

Overall, though, a pleasant and soothing cup.

Oh. Oh wow.
Seriously.
I’ve had mint teas before, you know, the run of the mill altoid dissolved in water, or 1 part listerine 3 parts water. Those sorts of mint teas. Then I opened my sample back of this stuff from Samovar and WOA. Hold up. It’s Christmas all over again.

I heated my water, steeped the stuff for 3 minutes and plunged my head into my cup. I wanted to live in there. I also stuck my nose into my infuser.. the combination of mint and steam lit my nostrils on fire. Not a pretty sight.

From the second I took my first sip, I knew this was the good stuff. The peppermint was so powerful, but yet so complex. Okay, the peppermint was there. Candy canes, yes, check those off. Then what was this other taste? It seemed so familiar. It wasn’t a licorice taste that reminded me of Twizzlers.. no. It was reminiscent of an earthy licorice. Ah yes. Fennel. And I happen to love chewing on the stuff.

And the aftertaste… oh well I think that’s the best part. Sweet, yet with a strong minty taste. It’s still lingering. I found it amazing that I was able to get such a tingley feel on my tongue, like I just finished eating an actual peppermint. Did I mention sweet?

But seriously, this is one of the best teas I’ve had. Reordering… now!

I have the zorijushi on 175 tonight so thought it was a good time to try my sample of this. I almost didn’t bother to write a note because there’s not much more that can be said about this than has already been said, but I wanted to add my voice to the chorus of YES! about this one. I’m surprised to find that despite not being a tisane, it has vaulted to the number one spot in my personal mint pantheon.

Complexity. Yes, that’s what crossed my mind as well. But complexity not just for the sake of complexity. I get the feeling with some multiple ingredient blends that the people making them just throw things together because the combination sounds cool or like something they think no one else has done before, but however well-intentioned the flavors either aren’t balanced, don’t go well together, or otherwise were just a bad idea in the first place. I taste them and wonder: did the people making these blends taste them? Did they have testers? And did they and their testers really like them or were they just up against some sort of tea-making equivalent of a Black Friday shipping deadline without the time or inclination to go back and refine their blends.

The ingredients here could easily have generated such an experience. When I read them, I was skeptical, even though I thought it unlikely so many tea lovers could be wrong. Ginger? Strong flavor. Peppermint? Also a strong flavor. Cardomom? Yet another strong flavor. Fennel? Cloves? BLACK PEPPER? (and I saw something in there that looked suspiciously like anise seed, though it isn’t listed among the ingredients). Ye gods! And then there’s that green tea ingredient somewhere in the middle, and generally not a strong flavor or at least not strong enough to compete with this crowd. And yet….

Somehow, organically out of this mix of individually strong flavors, grows an amazingly gentle, subtle, mellow, smooth and harmonious blend. It’s like the best of a cappella choral groups, a true ensemble without any single one sticking out and calling attention all to itself. I think of the ingredients that have stuck out to the exclusion of other flavors and led me to give other blends less than stellar marks. Ginger. Licorice. Cloves. Black pepper. How the heck did Samovar make this work? Is it just sheer genius? (I’m going to have to try more of their stuff immediately.) I’m intrigued by how they did it, but however they did it doesn’t really matter as long as they can keep doing it for the rest of my natural life.

The most charming part of the whole experience is that through it all I can actually still taste the green tea, which must be responsible for the sweetness, and perhaps is what absorbs some of the more potentially offensive aspects of the other strong flavors. The sweetness lingers, along with the coolness of the peppermint and the tiny little kick of the pepper, ginger and cardomom combo right where the tongue presses up against the palate.

In a word, exquisite. I am placing an order for more as soon as I post this!

Very impressive tea. I’ve brewed this blend about 4 or 5 times now, with multiple infusions each time. Really getting used to the multitude of flavors associated with this particular herbal/green. The first time I brewed this tea, I deliberately made the batch a bit stronger than usual to really get a sense of the punch this tea can muster. I was really impressed with the strong mint aftertaste and the hints of fennel, ginger, and black pepper that I’ve really come to enjoy. Each infusion releases different aspects of the tea that were hiding before. One may be particularly strong in cardamom or fennel, while other infusions are more subdued, and tend to exhibit more minty, earthy, and sweet flavor characteristics. Great tea. Samovar continues to deliver on quality and tase.

This is really delicious. It’s very minty, and very sweet. I checked the ingredients list thinking there must be sugar or stevia or something in here, but no. The spices are quite spicey and warming. Sorry, nothing sensible to say. It seems to be putting me to sleep. Delicious.

(Backlogging) This was the third tea I served at my Murder Mystery Tea Party. It was served right after the “murder” because I felt that the mint-ish flavor would help calm everyone’s nerves.

Yes! Delicious! This one reminds me a bit of Aveda’s Comfort Tea, but is still very good in its own right. I really like licorice tea! (Anyone else love the Licorice Tea demos by Jump Little Children?) Yay for another Samovar winner!

Goes well with Hendricks but probably have to cold brew it. Use minimal ice.

Definitely minty – I’m liking it. For all the heavy mint aroma it actually has a very light flavor. Also, it right when the water hits it, it smells exactly like pot. Weird.

I love this as a sort of dessert / after dinner tea. It’s even good chilled.

This tea is soo good, when you drink it it’s like you’ve never had mint tea before. Be warned, after tasting this tea you will throw out all your other mint tea.

Just got around to my sample packets of this tea. Very pleased with it. Loved the Fennel in it…and the minty finish.

YUM!

I LOVE mint leaves! And I’ve always had a thing for Moroccan mint tea. My favorite thing about this tea is how it opens up my nasal passages while drinking. This is the best mint tea I’ve had that doesn’t use fresh mint leaves.

Moorish Mint actually has a nice backbone to it, unlike many other mint teas which are either liquid Altoids or simply greenish water.

A nice balance of simplicity and flavor.

I’ve grown to really enjoy mint tea for its refreshing qualities, so I was really excited when this one came in the mail and it didn’t disappoint. [I swear, I don’t work for Samovar, it just looks like I do.] The sweet aftertaste that I’m guessing comes from the cardamom and the fennel intensifies deliciously when you take a deep breath after taking a sip.

I can only imagine what this would taste like with some flourless chocolate cake.

Damn, now I’m hungry.

My best herbal infusion so far, from Samovar.