Carolyn Send Message

I’m so excited that I get to try this Hawaiian tea! Thanks so much to takgoti for sending it to me. I’ve read about it in books and online and daydreamed about lazy afternoons spent drinking Hawaiian teas, but had no idea where to find it. Once she sent it to me I’ve looked and looked at it and longed to try it. But there was never a moment when I was healthy enough to taste it properly, had time to dedicate to it, was not running to a meeting, had a thermometer, and hadn’t had my taste buds corrupted by other teas previously. But today is the day!

The leaves are beautiful, big, full leaves wrinkled into variegated colors of green, dark green, and brown.The tea itself brews into a golden liquid that smells like flowers along with some sort of dark flower. Here in Memphis there are flowers that scent the air at night. This tea’s fragrance is reminiscent of walking through a Memphis summer in the moist flower-fragranced night. There is a slight undernote of resin as well.

The taste is light and flowered as well with a sweetness that doesn’t cloy. This is a really nice oolong with none of the strange boiled vegetable taste that some oolongs have. There is a very slight grassiness, a brief flirt with the taste of green tea, but not strong enough or lasting enough to be anything other than a tease. Mostly I taste flowers and a whisper of honey. It is splendid!

Felt like a bold chocolate blend today and this is a great one. The fragrance is of chocolate. The taste combines chocolate, a distinct flowery tea taste, and a strong firm taste of something else (almost a coffee note), probably the pu-erh. It doesn’t taste much like the classic pu-erhs I’ve had, which works well in this tea. The tea itself has that wicked black color that I usually see in pu-erhs.

I felt like something sweet this morning, which I typically don’t in the morning. But today my desires drove me to Honey Pear tea, which is one of the sweetest teas I have. The delightfully sweet smell of succulent ripe pears rises from the cup and fills the room with sweetness. The honey smell and taste is somewhat overwhelmed by the pear taste, but notes are there. The black tea at the base is a good non-bitter, non-astringent black. Nice.

What can I say except yum! It’s a wonderful lychee-fragranced black tea that chimes my bells.

This is really nice. A beautiful green (of course) with a slight vegetal, nuttiness, and sweetness. It is truly calming as well. I’m really impressed. I need to have my own tea ceremony just to savor this tea.

It brews up into a pretty brown tea with a sweet cranberry fragrance. Surprisingly, the tea taste is paramount and the cranberry and fruit tags along to add flavors, but they’re just side dishes. I can definitely see serving this on Thanksgiving with the pie.

The dry leaves and flowers are beautiful and they smell like old fashioned orange rind candy. The chamomile adds a honeyed note. It is not all that different in the cup. It brews up into light liquor with a sweet citrus smell. It tastes strongly of orange with notes of chamomile peeking through. There is a very slight hibiscus note, but I wouldn’t have noticed it unless I was looking for it. I can’t say that it makes me sleepy, but it is a nice relaxing cup of kindness before bed.

It’s an interesting looking tea. You can really see the different components: the long green leaves, the short brown ones, and the tiny dark brown leaves. Once wet it looks like fall leaves in my strainer.

It brews up into a red-brown liquor with a pleasantly sweet mixed with a lightly smoky fragrance. The taste begins with the light smokiness of an English Breakfast tea with the addition of a floral aftertaste and a slight toastiness. It is a surprisingly complex tea but without any astringency or bitterness. Very nice. Much thanks to takgoti!

This was one of the first teas I tried before I learned that time and temperature were important. As a result I steeped it for a long time in boiling water and I hated it.

I decided to try it again. It has a pleasant sweet fruit smell like warm fruit punch and light sweet taste. There is a slight amount of astringency but no bitterness. The liquor is golden with small suspended particles. I like it now. What a difference time and temperature make!

In all honesty, it’s difficult to find a Genmaicha with Matcha I don’t like. I love the toasty smell and taste, the sweetness of the matcha, the cloudy green color. This one is slightly better than Holy Mountain’s and Upton Tea’s but only slightly. In fact, I’m not even sure it isn’t exactly the same. Clearly I need to do a Genmaicha taste test and comparison. But that will have to wait until after NaNoWriMo. Meanwhile, I’ll just say “Mmmmm! Genmaicha with matcha!”