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Still quite tasty, red hot cinnamon goodness. Thinking about upping the rating.

So, this is my first lapsang souchong. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and wasn’t sure I’d like it… but at the Upton price, it was totally worth trying out a sample.

Brewing this tea really caused the house to smell like a campfire. Quite pungent. I could smell it upstairs, easily.

The taste is smoky, and just that – all I taste is the smokiness. What’s funny, it doesn’t taste bad, necessarily… but it just tastes like someone put a drop of liquid smoke in my warm water. If I let it sit in my mouth for a bit, I can kind of rationalize the smoke away, and begin to taste a little bit of the tea itself… but it is truly hidden by the smoke flavor.

But, let me add that the smoke doesn’t make it taste unpleasant, which is probably a sign that the smoke isn’t overdone. It just doesn’t seem to have any other depth to the flavor. Just doesn’t really work for me. Can’t see myself buying more of this.

Laying in bed, sneaking in my last reviews of the night using my tablet.

Ordered this one on a whim from Upton. There are really a lot of things I will try for a one or two dollar sample, and a billion different Earl Grey blends definitely qualify.

I’m not sure if my nose is just getting more sensitive, but this is another in a growing list of teas that has really smelled overpowering straight out of the bag. It’s a little odd, considering the number of jokes that my sister and I have historically made about my poor sense of smell.

Long story short, the grapefruit smell of this tea was quite strong.

And so was the grapefruit flavor! I’m not sure if St. Isaac was the patron saint of grapefruit or not, but that is where he is going to live in my head. This tea is very strong in it’s grapefruityness, with only a shred of lemony other citrus at the end of the sip. The tea aftertaste was very smooth, with a light malt, but I’m definitely not tasting any smoke.

This isn’t a bad tea, but it isn’t going to find much of a place in my tea closet. Citrus teas seem to be done much better by about every other citrus than grapefruit, so I’ll stick with one (or all!) of those.

This was the last sample from our exchange with the always wonderful Krystaleyn!

Although this isn’t something I’d normally pick out on my own, I’m glad I got a chance to try it. It may just be the years of being a “counter-culture” nerd, but I’d probably immediately gloss over something labelled as “Organic Power Fruit Tea”. It’s just too many trendy buzzwords at once… instantly puts me back in the shoes of being an angsty teenager who hated anything popular. I’ve grown past that, I swear.

The star of the show on this tea is definitely the blueberry, with a little bit of pomegranate flavoring, and a little of what may be acai. In all honesty, if it didn’t say it had green tea in it, I would have thought this was just a fruit infusion. Not that this would be a bad thing.

The tea is sweet with just a little bit of a tang, but not too much, just enough to round out the flavor. Done a little bit differently, I could really enjoy this tea. Oooh, I bet it’s good iced!

Approaching the end of the samples I received from Teavivre for the Facebook promotion… thanks again to Angel and the team!

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this at the beginning. The aroma is really dark and earthy, like new soil. Almost like fresh leather. It has really similar smells to the pu’erh cake we have sitting in the tea cupboard… just… not offensive.

The taste is very dark, strong, and smoky. I actually asked Missy to make sure this was the Keemun from Teavivre, and not the Lapsang I had ordered from Upton!

There is a power to this tea’s flavor. It has a really strong bite to the tea, with a smooth malty undertone, and then that smokiness is just heavenly. This is superb. It’s like I’m getting a blend, and it’s one lone tea. This is really the flavors I expected from the Baker Street blend that I got from Upton, which has both Keemun and Lapsang (along with Darjeeling) but somehow is significantly less smokey. Although, I did brew the Baker Street at work… I really should give it another chance at home (i.e. have Missy make it instead of me… she’s better at it).

Anyway, this tea is splendid. I honestly want to rate it higher, but something in the back of my mind is telling me that I have to leave room for the next two tiers of quality on this tea that Teavivre offers.

I want to rate this tea a 90, and it’s the lowest of three qualities that Teavivre offers. This boggles my mind.

Missy decided that today we need to have the epic battle royale deathmatch between our two Earl Grey Creme’s to determine the winner. Mad Hat vs Upton.

The most negatively weighing factor of the Mad Hat tea is the really just brazenly floral scent of this tea. When I first opened the bag of this tea, it really struck me strongly. After sitting in a tin for a few weeks, it almost takes your breath away for a minute.

All the strengths of this tea are still there. It’s very creamy and sweet. The bergamot and other citrusy flavors are very tasty and well proportioned. The tea is smooth but light. The smell is much more wonderful in a brewed cup than out of the tin. I don’t think you’d ever go wrong with this tea, really. It would definitely be a crowd pleaser. I’m not going to be disappointed while I finish this tea off. But, now that the Upton SPEGCV has come into my life… I don’t think I’ll get more…

I posted my first review of this on the non ’Season’s Pick’ version of this tea. I don’t think there’s a difference, just a name change, but it’s still probably more appropriate that my review goes here.

And I’m going to cheat, and just copy the review, because I’m drinking it again, and not much has changed :)

Upon opening the bag, I get a powerful smell of lime. Now, my only other previous Earl Grey Creme expereince also reminded me of lime. I’m not sure if it’s just me, or maybe this is truly what the combination of Bergamot and Creme smells like. I’m not sure. I suppose the only real way to tell would be to take a standard EG, or possibly even a double bergamot EG, and add some cream. I may have to try this. For science, of course, not for my own personal enjoyment, heavens forbid!

Brewed, the SPEGCV gives off a delightful smell. All at once it is sweet, and vanilla, but also tart smelling. It really is a very, very lovely aroma. I think that’s part of my love with EGs in general; as polarizing as the aroma may be, it is very distinct.

The taste has a very similar profile to the smell. At first, the creamy, vanilla flavor sort of smoothly glides over your tongue, with the tangy citrus flavor in tow. The flavors are really smoothly mingled over a fairly subtle tea base. The tea is lost a little bit at first, but once the up front vanilla flavor fades a bit, the flavor finishes off as a fairly straightforward EG. The tea and bergamot just lolligagging at the end of the sip to remind you where this tea comes from.

This is sweet and dreamy. It reminds me of what I’ve always wanted key lime pie to taste like, but it’s never really lived up to. But in a tea. It’s really quite good. I am definitely going to enjoy drinking my way through this tea. And at the absurdly low price of $7 for 8 oz, it’s both supremely good and supremely cheap. Who could ask for more?

Not as fond of this one as I feel like I should be. Withholding rating for now. Will give the sample another chance in the future :)

One of my new samples from Upton!

This tea is pretty much everything it says it is… a black chai with a heavy cinnamon flavor. The cinnamon is more of the red-hot style cinnamon flavoring, which I am perfectly okay with. It isn’t as overwhelming as the cinnamon in MarketSpice, or probably any of the ‘hot’ cinnamon teas. It’s the same style of cinnamon, just not the same intensity, if that makes any sense whatsoever.

The other chai spices are an afternote, at best. The clove is really the only one that’s still readily noticeable in the flavor, everything else is just kind of lost in the tea.

So, to recap:

Big cinnamon.
Small clove.
Smooth ceylon.

Not too shabby, really. I think I might keep this one around, as it would go really, really well with just about anything else where I wanted to kick up the cinnamon. Missy mentioned mixing it with SerendipiTea’s Colonille Vanilla, and I think I agree that would make a delightful little brew. Unless you happen to dislike both Vanilla and Cinnamon :P

I’m not a big green tea drinker, or at least I never used to be. Black tea was always ‘tea’ in my head. Part of it just has to do with repetition. When you order black tea, you just ask for tea. If you want green tea, you typically have to specify. Or, taken a different way… if a restaurant only has iced tea, it will probably be iced black tea (or ‘sweet tea’).

Long story short, I don’t have a lot of green experience, and it’s all very new and a little weird. I had a somewhat disparaging experience with the Golden Moon Sencha, which served to entrench my belief in the dominance of black tea in a not-insignificant way.

So, bring in the samples from Teavivre! This one was sent to Missy actually (although, she told Angel that we’d both be drinking it… and I think they definitely upped the amount of tea they sent us because of that… so a big thank you to Angel and the Teavivre team!

Opening the bag on this tea… I was a little shocked. The leaves are huge, roughly four inches long (stop giggling). Depending on the size of your teapot and your infuser, you could really have trouble brewing this.

Then we brewed the tea. It smells a little vegetal, but the aroma isn’t strong or overwhelming. Just lightly like stewed plants.

The first sip… wow. There is a really noticeable sweetness to this green tea. It’s a very smooth, buttery, steamed vegetable flavor. It’s very pleasant, I’m not sure if it’s the sweetness or the complete lack of any bitter, seawater kind of flavor. It is a very, very good green tea.

More offerings like this could definitely make me a green tea drinker. Well, not as often as ‘real’ tea, but you know what I mean. For those of you that are really fond of green tea, I would definitely give this one a try.

Thanks again to Angel and the Teavivre team! This tea was delightful.