333 Tasting Notes
Having lived near wine country for many years, I was very curious about Vintage Teaworks’s wine-inspired teas. Thanks to beelicious for the opportunity to sample them!
This is a cheerful-looking oolong blend with rose petals and fruit pieces. It has a sweet, dried-fruit aroma, a little peachy. It brews to a fairly light color, with an aroma that is both fruity and mulled-spice-like. The flavor is not initially strong, and tends toward the spice side at first, but develops more with a longer steep. Tropical fruit and floral notes gradually emerge, and the flavor profile becomes more complex. The aftertaste is a little tart and effervescent, and overall it does remind me of a more ripe-tasting chardonnay with fruit notes. After some cooling it develops a slightly earthy finish. A unique and creative blend that is well worth trying!
This one smelled delicious—fresh-cooked oatmeal and raisin just as promised, along with a hearty sprinkling of cinnamon sugar. Upon brewing, these flavors are intact, vibrant, and natural-seeming. It’s like a fresh-baked cookie right out of the oven. Unfortunately, I don’t taste tea base. At all. So it’s like these wonderful flavors got dissolved in hot water.
I’ll troubleshoot this some other time—was it underleafing, or the water not hot enough? Adding sugar might also help. But for now, I’m refraining from rating it. Thanks beelicious for the sample, I’ll try to make something good out of it!
Tried this with a splash of coconut milk this morning, and it’s just divine. This is the combination it was made for!
I have just enough left to make one more serving of this tea. Ever. I’ll probably hang on to it for a long time…
I keep having to remind myself that tea does not keep forever and I should enjoy stuff sooner than later, rather than hoard discontinued favourites. I sipped down the last of Pistachio Cream the other day and it was sad, but I would have been so much more sad if that last cup had lost its flavour or gone stale.
That’s true and definitely something to keep in mind! I hear coconut tends to lose its flavor too…maybe I should find a good occasion to finish this one soon. Give it its own send-off tea party?
This one was on my wishlist for a while, so I tried the sample from the Book of Tea 100 that my family had. I’d forgotten that Lupicia’s honey flavoring and I don’t always get along, though. There’s something too potent about the smell of it, which is the case here. It’s just too rich and also a little stale-seeming. The tea base is also somewhat bitter. That aside, the fruit notes are pleasant, but overall this one isn’t for me.
This one has a welcoming peaches-and-cream aroma, and brews up a smooth mellow cup. I’m often critical of flavored white teas, but this one is quite enjoyable. The tea base has that uniquely white-tea quality, light and sweet, with a delicate collaboration of creamy and tart. In good flavored white tea blends such as those I’ve tried from Butiki, this quality combines with the flavoring to great effect, as is the case here. This is one that I would enjoy drinking again. Thanks to Tealated for the sample!
Today being (supposedly) the last day of a warm spell we’ve been having, I couldn’t resist cold brewing this. I know it’s the last sachet I have, but I just had to try it!
As an iced tea, this one is delectably smooth, with a creamy strawberry undertone. The geen tea itself has a fresh, almost grassy quality to it, in the good sense of the word. There’s a very sunny-afternoon feel to it, I should have brought it to a picnic!
(Increased rating)
Finally digging through the dauntingly large selection of DAVIDsTEA samples from beelicious! This one has a rich, intense nutty aroma that develops into something more coconut-esque after brewing. The flavor is very strongly nutty and coconut-heavy as well. With a splash of coconut milk, it becomes nicely creamy. There are golden raisins visible in the blend, which I had been excited about, but I’m not getting much from them—the two dominant flavors overpower the rest, including the tea base itself, to the extent that the brew tastes a bit coffeeish. If you like rich, strong flavored teas, you may like this one, even if it’s a bit heavy-handed for my personal tastes.
This is the first time I’m trying a tea from Mariage Frères. The muslin sachet is very unique and charming!
This one has a strong rooibos aroma with a touch of vanilla. Initially it brews to a lovely orange color, and after the recommended 6 minutes of steeping, becomes an intimidatingly deep red. The brewed aroma is enchanting—rich and herbal, and softened by the vanilla. The flavor profile of this one is decidedly complex, at turns woodsy and rich, almost spiced-sweet. It has an effervescent, liquor-like undertone that is complemented by the vanilla, and a lingering sweetness like preserved plums. My experience with red rooibos is limited, but this one convinces me that a good rooibos has a complex profile that can be as enjoyable as a black tea, and is more than just a caffeine-free backdrop for other flavors. Thanks to beelicious for this sample as well!
Cold brew. I received a sample of this a long time (years?) ago in the Lupicia newsletter, and really regretted brewing it hot instead of cold at the time, so I’m happy to do so today with a sample from beelicious.
The dry blend smells fruity and sweet, like candied pineapple. After 8 hours cold brewing, the liquor is a light yellow-green with that same tropical-fruity aroma. The tea is perfectly smooth and crisp, and the fruit flavors are sweet and refreshing. I hadn’t realized how tasty a pineapple-flavored tea can be—it isn’t overpowering like a freshly cut fruit, but reminds me more of the mellow sweetness of a Taiwanese pineapple pastry. Tropical green teas might be a dime a dozen, but this is definitely a good one that avoids the usual pitfalls of tasting artificial, too nondescript-fruity, or “not tea enough”.
