JustJames Send Message

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY

i taste fresh marzipan, not amaretto.someone wearing a broad woven sun hat as they pick over the choice almonds in the moonlight because that’s when they taste best. distant spices and hints of fruit are carried aromatically everytime i breath in. this music is an excellent metaphor… seamless, smooth, swirling. the scent of the dry blend lingers even after the water is added and a lingual note harmonizes with the olfactory; distinctly separate, but always waltzing in lockstep.

thank you ysaurella. the de lune is still my favourite so far, but this one was lovely. je comprends avec un clarite grave pourquoi tu es la fille d’une ‘pleine lune’.

i will begin by thanking ysaurella.

this is not a tea i would normally buy, but i really must rank it highly because of what it accomplishes!

have you ever been around bees? not like when a wasp is dive bombing you while you’re driving on the highway, or when you feel a sharp sting at a picnic…. but observed a hive? or spent time around an apiary?

there are very strong, smiling elements of clumsy, fat honey bees in this tea. i always found that bumble bees had an odd warm smell to them, as though heat generated by all of their busy work. the blend has the same warm, velvet honey flavour to it. very reminiscent of fresh honeycomb that is sold at the farmer’s markets every weekend.

the orange is very subtle… not remotely astringent or sharp. not bitterness from the pith. much more like a honey derived from orange blossoms.

a beautiful pairing. i am beginning to conclude that french tea blenders do not simply create a tea, nor is that their goal… nor is it their goal (for the most part) to be purist as their asian counterparts. they are monet and degas…. they see a pastoral scene— maybe bees working in a field, maybe blueberry shrubs crowding around a single rose bush, and they try to capture its essence. in a tea. for my cup.

ingenious. impressive.

today has been an ysaurella day. i rooted about in the magical envelope she sent me…. and pulled out the myrtille sauvage blend.

i ran the kettle, i measured the tea, i added the water, set the timer and walked away. suddenly i heard edith http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFtGfyruroU from the kitchen. she was wearing an old fashioned apron and chasing me about with an oversized wooden spoon!

‘sortez vous de ma cuisine!’ she shrieked…. it’s not like i had much choice! i knew that if that spoon connected it would pack quite a whallop.

i ducked behind the couch and spied covertly. she crashed through the disorganization that is our kitchen.
’we’re renovating,’ i called out in justification of the mess.

it was a mistake, i had interrupted again. a serving fork flew narrowly missing my head.

i smelled jam. jam? i was tempted to look but was still vaguely terrified.

bluberries, but not only. i smelled raspberries? maybe huckleberries? and then cookies?? i took a chance and poked my head up silently. sugar cookies! ysaurella had packed edith piaf in an envelope and sent her to make jam and cookies in our disorganized kitchen? that’s a lady with connections!

edith elegantly placed a cookie on a plate, spooned the warm jam over top and put it next to my steeping tea.

following my nose i found the plate gone, but my jam covered cookie happily steeped in my tea cup.

a refrain called out to me very distantly and i barked laughter, ‘non, je regrette rien…’

a quick note on the fly here.

i stuffed this entire immense sample into my steeping basket. it was excellent!!! lychee notes, bamboo notes, very smooth.

lovely clear steep, tiny bit of sugar added. will buy for sure…. and back into the craziness i go. (haven’t even had a cup of tea yet today!!!)

this was a very nice sample by the ever generous angel at teavivre.

this is a very smooth, warm blend. i think it’s impressive when the taste of a tea is warm over and above the temperature. has a decidedly black essence, but with a less heavy more rosy evolution.

lovely curled black gold yields a medium hued steep. lovely with cream and a bit of sugar.

i plan to buy this in future.

i will never be the same. i will NOT list the beautiful sample that Ysaurella sent me among my teas and no one can make me! because if i did someone might ask me to share and i would look like a selfish jerk when i replied ‘no’.

this blend makes me feel very north american. the finesse of taste carried the weight of years in history before canada was colonized. this tea was not just a continent apart but an entire world.

if you’re asking yourself whether tea from paris would taste better the answer is a hearty HELL YES!

i taste blackberries and smell a gentle unnamed flower. i taste blue and watercolour heather purple. i see peacock feathers drifting in the basket…. this is a dreamer’s tea. i have never had a tea in which i tasted colour.

ysaurella, i must admit, at several points i didn’t want to drink it. i was completely entranced by the dry blend smell…. i sniffed it so much i’m surprised there was any scent or taste left. i was stopped again as it steeped with beautifully scented vapour roiling.

comme c’est beau….. les gens qui dites ‘ca ne vaux pa la peine d’etre beau’ ne connaissent pas cette the.

thanks much to jamie at mandala for this great sample.

i would say that green teas are the ones i am least familiar with so really this was an excellent sample to send.

to me this is a complicated simple tea, lol. very mild smelling, quite beautiful to look at— as though jamie had it pressed just before shipping it off! the flavour is where it becomes far more complex.

steeps very light. a nice natural sweetness. i found no cling with this tea…. not from caffeine or from any aspect of the taste profile. it left my tongue clear. there is a taste coming from the green side of nature that is neither grassy, nor vegetal nor floral… honestly, i think the closest approximation may be comparing it to the scent of fresh bamboo. there is the merest suggested marine note…. like the smell of warm dried nori, but not overpowering and absolutely not fishy.

very nice! i’ll take your challenge jamie, i’ll go green with mandala.

very nice indeed.

and thanks, did my first test at school today and i’m fairly certain i aced it! i won’t be trying any of the other teas from my mandala order until all of my other teas have been halved….. but samples don’t count, do they? this was better than cake =0)i’ll be getting into my mandala treats right around midterms as i see it!

this was included in my first mandala order by jamie, thanks so much!

i kept trying to place my order but the checkout system refused to acknowledge me as canadian! lol. i wound up calling and talking to jamie who said he’d sort it out for me which he did while including some lovely samples as well.

lately i’ve had some odd experiences with puerh…. off beat sweetness or an overpowering mossy taste leaving the sense of having been whacked in the tongue by something good tasting but somehow fluffy; a heavy feather pillow to mouth. that is not the case with this puerh.

it steeps up to be very light, very mild smelling: hints of grass and a baseline earth tone. natural sweetness!!! this puerh has also given me insight as to what i appreciate in a puerh… a mild astringency to cut through the fuzz. the good tasting fluff is still present in this puerh, but it is balanced with a very clever astringency that is neither bitter nor acrid— just the tiniest bit sharp.

excellent. i can imagine buddhist monks drinking this to boost clarity, lol. i just had the most awesomely ridiculous image: a room at some immense altitude of orange garbed monks, all sitting cross legged and speaking the mantra in one great voice, ‘teaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.’

very nice. a savvy sample indeed, jamie! next time i’ll buy…

oh wow.

i really have no idea how tao tea leaf did this. a pure, high quality, elegant black. no smoke. no acid. a beautiful black base for a pristine wild tasting pink rose…. why pink? because i am convinced that red would taste stronger and yellow would be too mild…. this is the taste of a wild pink tea rose, one of the ones with spikes in place of thorns, lol.

the rose essence is perfectly balanced…. it’s not so aggressive that i feel like drinking a spiky milkshake, and not so subtle that i think i’m drinking a weak tea.

this is… a subtly robust authentically rose (in other words not even remotely fake) tea. somewhere on tao’s website i believe they make reference to this as an imperial/royal blend. hurrah! i agree in every way.

full marks. um, do you sell in bulk? by chance?

2nd steep: not as nice as the first go round, but it was so superlative in the fist cup i haven’t the heart reduce it from it’s original score. YES it’s THAT good! =0)

smells like a tieguanyin but with a deeper warm roundness to it. it steeped up very light and clear…. BUT. sigh. sometimes there is a but.

my ‘but’ is this: i don’t like this for the same reason i didn’t like turkey before i was allergic and lobster… there is a disconcerting sweetness that hits at just the wrong time.

it’s the tip of the tongue that detects sweetness. an argument could be made that i swallow in a strange manner and that’s why it hits at the time it does, or it could be down to individual physiology. there’s simply no way to know.

i will keep trying. i can tell you that verdant’s golden buds puerh is the most brilliant i’ve ever had if that explains anything to any budding tongue-ologists out there (couldn’t resist the pun).

nitty gritty: light, mild, sweet and smooth… just not for me (though i will keep trying).