Craft Revival Hand Tied Jasmine

This is one of the Verdant Tea of the Month Reserve selections for February! It is a beautiful hand crafted tea, sage green with streaks of tan, with the heady aroma of jasmine…aahhhhh!

Damp it smells of moss & key lime.

The first 2 steepings had me lying in the forest on a bed of moss. The flavor is lightly floral & vegetative, with what I can only describe as a mossy texture, & a lingering jasmine sweetness in the back of the throat.

3 & 4: mmmmmm, creamy & sweet, with a hint of astringency & a fuzzy tongue sensation. These were my favorite.

5 & 6: I steeped the hand-twisted tea in a glass gaiwan (even though it always gets ridiculously hot & burns my fingers) so that I could watch them unfold. At this point they are fully unraveled & beautiful. The tea from these steepings has a taste & mouth-feel of key lime (I actually compared it to one of the limes on my mini-tree), with a clear & bright sensation, a lingering bitterness on the tongue, & sweet jasmine in the back of the throat.

7 & 8: The lime & moss aromas are gone, now I just smell the jasmine in the wet leaf. The flavor is still bright, but the bitterness of lime peel is gone. Now I have a fine, clear jasmine tea.

This is a luxurious treat!

So I’m not rating this tea, given that this is from the perspective of someone who is NOT a fan of jasmine (actually i’m pretty sure it gives me a headache).

That being said, i saw Bonnie’s tasting note tonight and it inspired me to try this for several reasons. 1 – there is someone out there in tea land who would LOVE to try this but couldn’t afford to pick some up and 2 – there’s a pretty good chance id never open it of my own free will if i didn’t just jump at the chance!

So seize it I did. The first thing i have to say, this is a BEAUTIFUL tea. The hand tied little bundles are just beautiful. They remind me of the bundles of herbs that hang to dry in some shops….or when people with wonderfully long hair braid their hair and twist it up into a loop. Really. Just so pretty.

And that’s about where my love for this tea ended. I went through a few steepings to get a sense of the different aromas and tastes (1-2 sips per steeping at most). This might be the one jasmine tea that i could love…if i could ever love jasmine. there is a delicate balance here between the flavour and the tea. There is also a hint of a citrus like taste/flavour that eluded me because of the jasmine. I have trouble getting anything else when jasmine is around, even if i try really hard. So, this is technically a sipdown. I’m hoping that the home this is going to will love and cherish it like i never could :) I’m still happy to have tried it though.

Joe at Happy Lucky’s and I shared 2 small pieces of this exquisite tea placed in a little white gaiwan.
The small pieces were the size of the tip of my little finger and amazingly fragrant.

We leaned towards the vessel, eyes lit with a glow that you see in the eyes of children when they’re about to blow out the candles on their birthday cake.

POOF! Our small gaiwan was ready to pour tea in a flash.

The first sip unfurled like a flower at the back of my throat, spicy and sweet. Lingering….

Cool, sweet, buttery jasmine and fresh rain.

Smooth and rich in my mouth…every steep drenched with sweet floral juice as though I had squeezed citrus.

The aroma was curious. Yellow delicious apple? Pineapple Mango?
Possibly a combination of both with the floral jasmine.

Mind wandering:
On very warm Summer evenings, I used to like to walk around the neighborhood right before sunset. I’d listen to the sounds of dogs barking and people making noises. Lawn mowers would turn off and mothers would be calling children in to dinner.
The air was warm enough to lift the scent of jasmine as I passed by the many scrubs common to my city. I loved that aroma and would breathe in deeply….ah! It gave me the same feeling of comfort as pulling the covers up over me on a Saturday morning and going back to sleep.

Jasmine has always smelled like PIE!

If those 2 small braided pieces of jasmine tasted so splendid, what would 4 pieces taste like?! I can’t imagine, but another time…I’ll try, and I’ll be back with more notes!

Thanks to Sil for this one.

The dry tea leaves are beautifully twisted in to small braids. There is a strong sweet floral jasmine fragrance.

The tea tastes like a slightly sweet jasmine tea on a base of mildly creamy green tea. Very delicious jasmine tea.

I steeped for one minute. The jasmine braids only slightly unfurled. Many more steeps to come of this one.

The scent of the dry leaves is heavenly. I was enjoying their smell so much so that I almost didn’t want to brew it- it is sweet and fresh like the finest jasmine perfume and not cloying at all.

The wet leaf also smells great. I smell the jasmine, some pleasant vegetal note (I’m almost entirely pulling this out of my asterisk, but I will say bok choy), and (seriously) banana cream pie.

The smoothest jasmine tea I ever tried. It is amazing that I even like it because I absolutely hate jasmine usually! So sad tehre is so little of this :(