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Had a cup of this with a chocolate muffin from my favourite bakery, diet be damned, while my mam and I watched the last three episodes of How I Met Your Mother, which we started probably close to a year ago, if not more. This is an age for me in TV-time, but my mam is not a seasoned binge-watcher like myself. This tea was a huge comfort as I sobbed and hiccuped my way through the last 2 1/2 episodes.

300th TASTING NOTE!!!

I know 300 isn’t exactly a huge milestone to be celebrating, but it’s my third Steepster birthday/anniversary in three days, and after one really long break and several shorter ones, I didn’t think I’d make it. But here I am! I was only on 150 notes a couple of months back, and I’ve managed to average it out to 100 notes a year before the 5th, which was my secret stretch ambition when I came back. It wasn’t too much hard work, because as it turns out, tea is really easy to fall back in love with.

This is my favourite tea, my celebratory tea, and it’s just as delicious as it ever was. I used the recommended 1.5 tsps of leaf this time for the first time, since I usually just use 1, and luckily for me now that it’s a limited supply I think I actually preferred it with less leaf. It was still nutty mapley goodness though, and I treasured every sip.

Sipdown! (75/393) – Yes, it’s gone up again. Don’t judge me, I needed a couple more caffeine-free options. I swear, I’m tempted to just buy 7 more teas and make it an even 400 to sip down in total… Tea addict logic.

January’s Butiki drink-a-thon went well, so I’m trying to stick with manageable monthly resolutions which contribute to my overall tea resolutions for the year. February’s is to get my cupboard to under 400 teas before the end of the month, which – with my two new teas included – will mean sipping down a minimum of 20 teas in the next month. In theory, it should be more doable than the January Butikifest, so I’m feeling optimistic. I’m sure a lot of you got sick of me posting so many Butiki-related tasting notes last month, so apologies for that! This one should be less noticeable, since I’ll be going back to posting many varied tasting notes, only hopefully with a lot of sipdowns amongst them.

Anyway, on to the tea! This is the first of many planned sipdowns this month, and one which sort of snuck up on me. I’d only drank it once since I bought it, and had recently moved it into my focus box where apparently I gravitated towards it fairly often, since it was only there a week or so before being sipped down. Granted it was a 0.5oz sample size, but there was almost the whole thing left and I have around 20-30 teas in my focus box to choose from so it still went down surprisingly quickly. It was nice! All of the flavours are there – pumpkin, apple, and banana bread – and all are things I love, so it’s not such a big surprise that I liked this tea a lot. The pumpkin in this blend reminds me a lot of Adagio’s; more reminiscent of actual pumpkin than pumpkin spice (big bonus points from me) and with a sweet, baked sort of quality to it rather than raw or savoury pumpkin. The apple is not really as noticeable as the other flavours until sugar is added. Then it really pops, turning more into a baked apple tart sort of flavour. I was wary of the word ‘banana’ in the name of the tea since bananas and I are mortal enemies (unless the bananas are fairly under-ripe, in which case we get along pretty well), but luckily the word ‘bread’ which follows makes all the difference. Whilst I’m not a fan of actual bananas, nor banana flavoured things, I bizarrely love banana bread. This tea definitely tastes more like banana bread than bananas, which makes me very happy. In fact, it really does taste like someone just cooked a banana bread with pumpkin and apple added to it. Not that I’ve had that before, but how I imagine it would taste. I can’t fault it! Astringency is very mild, and even though I added milk I don’t feel like it was necessary, and have drank it black in the past which I think I enjoyed more. This may be one of my favourite of Frank’s 52teas blends. I wonder if Anne has considered a reblend…

And finally, with a cup of my favourite Butiki tea (besides Maple Pecan Oolong, which doesn’t count since I already had written up tasting notes on it), my Butiki drink-a-thon comes to a close. It’s been a long, but thoroughly enjoyable month, and I’m glad I did it. Now even if the flavours fade, I will know that I have at least one good tasting note on each of my Butiki teas. It also marks the start of a New Year’s resolution I intend to keep – to make a new, smaller-goal tea resolution each month and stick to it! I’m stubbornly ignoring the fact that it’s almost 2:30am now so technically the last couple of my Butiki teas were reviewed after the end of January, because it doesn’t make too much difference, except to my pride, and I’ve always counted the day as ending whenever I go to bed rather than at midnight, anyway.

Funnily enough, this will likely be my least detailed of my recent tasting notes – I’m totally exhausted and tasting-note’d out for now. If it weren’t the last day of my challenge I would have left this ‘til tomorrow. Still, I can pretty much guarantee there’ll be plenty more tasting notes on this in the future, because I really do adore it. I love how fragrant this tea is, and how flavourful yet delicate at the same time. It makes total sense that it was inspired by a perfume. It’s floral, but creamy and sensual, and truly aromatic. The main flavours that always stand out to me are coconut and lemongrass, and as a result it has a Thai sort of connotation to me. It’s also one of the absolute prettiest teas I’ve ever seen. When brewing this cup I realised I’ve always drank this plain, and never had even the slightest inclination to add any sweetener, even though I’ve drank it often enough. I tried it, just in the name of fairness, and it brings out the creamy side of the coconut much more. It’s more dessert-like this way, but I don’t know if I’d say I prefer one way or another. Mostly it’s just different.

Can tea be art? I think so. I’d go so far as to call this beautiful, both visually and in flavour. It’s one I really savour, each time I drink it taking tiny sips and waiting for the lingering aftertaste to fade before I take the next. I’ve been known to make a single cup stretch out over a whole three-hour-long modernist film, and I almost never reach the bottom of my cup before it goes cold. But that’s okay, because it’s just as delicious freezing as it is just-brewed. This is a wonderful tea to end on. I think it perfectly illustrates Stacy’s artistry as a tea blender/alchemist, and why we all miss her presence so much within the tea-drinking community. There will never be another quite like Butiki.

Oh, I am so mad about how much I love this tea. It’s magic in a cup. I’m also surprised and a little sad to see that I seem to be in the minority here, not too many rave reviews of this on Steepster.

This doesn’t smell like much to begin with, in the dry leaf nor in the brewed liquor, but I’d much rather have a tea taste amazing than smell amazing, anyway. Plain, it is incredibly nutty on first sip. Is there any nut flavouring? Is that just from the Gui Fei?? Surely it can’t be… but I think it is! It’s incredible. It tastes just like those roasted candied nut pieces you get from the cinema as an ice cream topper, and I love those. The caramel is present along with the nuttiness too, creating a praline-like impression, and the apple is noticeable as a back note which builds the more you sip. Soooo much happy whirly deliciousness. I added half a teaspoon of sugar, and the nuttiness becomes not so dominant any more, the apple and caramel notes seem to take over more this way. This is the way it tastes most like a caramel apple, and though the nuttiness is still there in the background and mainly the aftertaste, I find myself wishing they were more present still. As it cools down I get my wish – the nuttiness grows increasingly present once again! Only now the caramel and apple notes stay prominent, no more taking a back seat for them. Caramel-dipped apple rolled in toasted nuts. That’s exactly what this is and I am crazy for it. I could drink this forever but I only have a few more cups’ worth left. Still, the Gui Fei barely opened up at all with this steep, so I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to get at least a couple more delicious steeps out of this particular leaf before I throw it out. Oh, how I love good oolongs!

Side note: In case anyone was wondering, this probably makes my top 5 Butiki teas. That’s how much I love it.

I wanted to try Butiki’s White Rhino for a long while, but never managed to pick any of it up, and couldn’t find any other companies that sold it (at the time – What-Cha carries one now that I’m probably going to pick up after I end my no-buy), so I was thrilled and relieved that I managed to pick up some of the last of this on the original White Rhino base just before Stacy ran out. In fact, if I remember rightly I think it might have been this tea that finally convinced me to place a Butiki order (which was quickly followed by two more). I was convinced I was going to love it, and while for the most part I was right, it doesn’t quite blow me away like I expected it to.

The boiling steeping suggestion on this terrifies me, but I took a deep breath and went for it, and surprisingly-but-not-really-all-that-surprisingly, it paid off! Man that White Rhino can take a beating! The flavour is predominantly butterscotch, and whilst I do love butterscotch I find it quite sickly as strong as it is here after a large mugful. I may stick to smaller amounts in the future, but at least I know it’s good for taking care of a sweet craving! I didn’t add any sugar because of how sweet it was on its own. It smells absolutely divine, really truly like liquid butterscotch toffee in a mug. I don’t pick up on much of anything else in the scent apart from the incredibly rich buttery toffee, and this is reflected in the flavour though the other notes do come through a little more. A bitter chocolate note comes through at the end of the sip and helps to counter the sweet butterscotch, as does the coffee note. There is a mild, lingering nuttiness which I wouldn’t specifically attribute to hazelnut, but it contributes a nice roundness to the blend all in all, adding a little complexity and just that something extra to give it dimension.

While not my absolute favourite of the final Butiki bunch, it’s certainly up there, and I’m very happy to have managed to pick some up. This is a special occasion tea for sure.

This tea took me by surprise, and I’m not sure how I’m going to write about it accurately. It’s so different to anything I’ve had before, but definitely in a good way. To me, it doesn’t really taste much like coffee, but I can see where the comparison comes from. It has a thick, rich mouthfeel and a robust, roasted nuttiness about it which is similar, though there’s no actual coffee note to my mind at least. I can more easily see the comparison with roasted chestnuts, only this is darker and more savoury. I don’t get any of the notes I typically associate with puerh – sheng or shou – except for some tobacco-like notes at the end of the sip. It’s quite heavily malty and does have a rice note which I find interesting, and I think it’s like a black tea in some respects, only incredibly strong but also very smooth at the same time.

This tasting note is much shorter than it deserves, but quite honestly this tea is just so unique that I don’t really know where to begin. I’m almost surprised I managed to get anything written down at all! Hopefully the words will come with time, and I will eventually, after many more cups, be able to confidently write a tasting note on this without it feeling like a daunting task that I’m not quite up to.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would! I didn’t expect the flavour to translate as well as it did, but I’m not sure why since Butiki has rarely (if ever) disappointed me. The honeybush is not entirely invisible, but it doesn’t disrupt the coffee ice cream flavour so I barely noticed it. The coffee is mild but present, and it’s the good kind of coffee too, like freshly ground Italian espresso, not cheap instant coffee. Working in an Italian restaurant where I make the coffees may have turned me into a slight coffee snob. There’s a hint of vanilla but the ice cream mostly comes from an unexpected creaminess which makes me want to drink this in big gulps. Together it’s delicious, and if it were still available I’d drink it frequently on a night time, ideally while reading in bed, which is how I drank this cup. If anyone cares, I’m currently reading The Joy Luck Club, and I am enjoying it but I wish it jumped around the stories less, because it always switches just as I’m getting invested in a particular tale. Anyway, this was a nice tea to drink while reading it, and I’m a much bigger fan than I expected to be.

Busy, exhausting days! My tasting notes have been slipping. Typical of me, I’m taking it down to the wire and writing up all of my remaining tasting notes for the drink-a-thon tomorrow. It’s the first day off I’ve had in a while, so I’ll be able to spend a decent amount of time on them, and I can’t wait. I’ve spent the last few days in a fog of exhaustion, but happy to be working good hours again, and just haven’t had the time I’d like to for tea.

This one I drank the other morning when I had a couple of hours going spare to drink a few cups of tea. I had it plain first, then with a pinch of (smoked) rock salt, and then finally a third time with a pinch of sugar, for good measure. It’s amazing how much it changes! Plain, the starchy potato and sweet apple and cinnamon notes are both equally present, and make for a tasty – if slightly confusing – cup of tea. Potato with sweet things seems very weird to me, as a non-American, but the potato here doesn’t seem overtly savoury so it doesn’t bother me too much. The base tea was hardly noticeable in any of the cups I had, which didn’t really surprise me after seeing that my dry leaf was over 50% potato and apple pieces. It was probably most noticeable here, but I had almost no tea leaves at all in my second cup so that might be why. Overall I find the balance to be intriguing, and would have liked to have tried it with a little salt and sweetener at the same time as per somebody else’s suggestion, but I didn’t have the time nor the patience to have yet another cup of this tea just then. I will probably try it like this eventually. With the rock salt added, only a little and not enough to make the tea actually taste salty, it was just as Stacy suggested – enhanced potato notes, diminished apple and cinnamon notes. The tea had a very brothy feel this time around, which I quite enjoyed. It almost reminded me of chips or ready salted crisps, but the cinnamon was still a quiet lingering note which stopped this from being completely savoury. On the flip side, I had a separate cup with added sugar and the potato note became much less noticeable, and the cinnamon and apple notes were brought out more. Similarly to the savoury cup, the potato was still present enough that the tea wasn’t completely sweet.

Each way I tried it, this tea was quite different. I could still tell that it was the same tea each time, and yet it tasted drastically different so as that three cups in a row wouldn’t seem like three cups of the same tea in a row. None of them were particular stand-outs, though all decently tasty, and the potato chunks really do make strainers a bitch to clean, but I’m still happy to have this tea in my collection for the sheer novelty factor.

When I first got this it was my favourite oolong, but my tastebuds have shifted a little since then and it’s been ousted by the Fu Shou Shan. It’s creamy more than buttery to me, with light sweet/savoury vegetal notes which remind me of pea shoots and a delicate floral note (this might be what others pick up on as orchid, but I can’t say I’ve ever eaten one). The light roasted quality comes through at the end of the sip in a warming, bready note, which is finally followed by a return of that floral note and some fairly noticeable pear, right down to the texture. I think for my current tastes it’s just a little bit too indecisive – not quite roasted, but slightly too roasted to be called green. I really enjoy both, but I find myself wishing it was one or the other. I think perhaps when I first tried this it was the first ‘roasted’ oolong I’d had, and therefore my mind was blown by the new flavour profile and I became enamoured. Now that I’ve tried more roasted oolongs I find that this just lacks the toastiness I want from it, and I’d prefer it to just be a little more green. Having said all that, don’t get me wrong, I still do really enjoy this. I do! I have just about enough leaf left to have a lovely gongfu afternoon session with this one day for the perfect send-off, but for now I think I’ll get a few more steeps out of these leaves.