2036 Tasting Notes
I feel like it’s time to revisit the rating on this.
I bought a huge bag of this. I’m not sure what possessed me. It might have been the only size available when I ordered, or something like that. But really, it is huge.
I’ve been whittling away at it little by little. It’s pretty much my go to for night time these days because I have so much of it.
I have two additional things to say about it after having had it so much.
First, I don’t remember the sample having such a dusty aspect. The chamomile in this, in particular, doesn’t really seem to be the whole flowers with the buds so much as a lot of straw-like fragments.
Which would be fine, if it wasn’t for item 2. It doesn’t have that creamy, sweet aspect that the chamomiles I’ve found less objectionable have. In my initial notes, I thought it did and that perhaps that came from the lavender tempering the sour aspects of the chamomile. And perhaps it has something to do with age, as I’ve had this for a while.
But while it isn’t awful, and is still better than a lot of chamomile blends I’ve had, it just isn’t as nice as I remembered.
After having it a lot lately, I don’t think it deserves the rating I gave it a while back. Bumping it down.
So it turns out that I had another of the Red Blossom Phoenix oolongs in my collection. Cool.
In the packet it has a sharp, dark oolong smell that has some roasty-toasty elements but also a metallic/rock one.
Gaiwan. Rinse. 195F, 15 seconds plus five for each subsequent steep.
It’s an apricot color and clear, and definitely has honey notes in the aroma and flavor. I also get something that’s a little like rice? On the first couple of steeps I don’t get anything particularly floral, but there is something fruity. When I first saw someone else’s note about passion fruit I was skeptical, but it actually could be that!
Also, there are hints of something nutty in the later steeps.
It’s a very interesting and complex little tea. I can imagine it being the sort of thing you can taste differences in depending upon when you drink it, whether you’ve had other teas or food earlier in the day, and other factors.
Rating it the same as the almond version. It is different — more subtle, more complex — but I like them about the same.
Flavors: Honey, Metallic, Nutty, Passion Fruit, Rice, Roasted, Toasty, Wet Rocks
Preparation
Another Lupicia impulse purchase.
The tea in the packet has the most wonderful gingery smell!
The tea steeps cloudy and its red-russet color makes me wonder if the base is the same used in the Cassis and Blueberry. I don’t get the same maltiness or cocoa note, though.
The ginger aroma after steeping is far milder than it was in the packet, and the flavor is also quite mild. While the base doesn’t completely overpower the ginger, it’s not 50-50 even. More like 70-30 base flavor to ginger.
I would love more ginger, as others have said. But I also wonder how much is the randomness of how many ginger chips are in a given spoon. It also may be that it’s not possible to get a more gingery flavor without too much spice or bitterness in the absence of some other flavoring agents.
I noticed that there’s a bit of a zing on the tongue from just the amount of ginger in the cup I had this morning, which is what made me think more might end up being a blending problem. I also noticed that the ginger flavor becomes stronger as the tea cools.
In any case, I like it better than the Orange Chocolat of yesterday and not quite as much as the Cassis and Blueberry of this morning. But I still quite like it.
Flavors: Ginger
Preparation
Another of my impulse buys in the Lupicia panic order.
What I find interesting about this one is the mix of Indian and Vietnamese black teas in the base. I noticed a commercial on TV the other day with African tea growers in it. I just find it very interesting how many other geographies support tea cultivation.
Anyway, this tea has a very strong and sharp blueberry note in the packet. It makes a clear, very red-russet tea that is clear and smells exactly like it’s name, with a sort of a malty cocoa note underneath.
The flavor has those notes as well. It’s unfortunate there’s not a “cassis” flavor, or even a liqueur flavor — I had to resort to alcohol in the options, and to black currants.
I find this a very nice balance among the flavors and the underlying tea. I’m again puzzled by the relative lack of love for this one as I’m quite enjoying it this morning.
Flavors: Alcohol, Black Currant, Blueberry, Cocoa, Malt
Preparation
I wonder if it depends on how much you get in a given sample of tea — mine seemed pretty well balanced this morning.
Dammit. I hit the wrong thing and lost the note I wrote on this. I’ll try to recreate.
I started by saying something self-deprecating about how I was still drinking tea even though I said I was going to stop given the hour. It’s a rainy, cold day that begs for curling up with something to warm your hands and your chest. So I am cheating. I hope I don’t stay up all night as a result.
Then I’d said that I found nothing really different about the smell of the dry leaf, which is roasty-toasty and has a sharp note like a lot of other dark oolongs I’ve had.
But then, I said, that all changed in the steeping. Gaiwan. Rinse. 195F starting at 15 seconds and adding 5 seconds for each subsequent steep.
The tea is a rich amber and clear. The first steep brought out a surprising cherry note, and a cinnamon note, that I did not expect. Really interesting change up from other teas of this type.
The second steep brought out caramel-toffee notes, as additions, not as notes that supplanted the others. The cinnamon note was in the fore in steep 3.
Reading some of the negative notes about this I feel as though I was tasting a completely different tea than they describe. My experience was awesome.Flavors: Caramel, Cherry, Cinnamon, Roasted, Toasty, Toffee
Preparation
This was a total impulse purchase — I saw it when I was placing my Lupicia-is-closing-oh-shit order and since I really love orange and chocolate together, I dropped some in the cart.
In the packet, the smell of orange is very strong, like an orange liqueur. I get almost no chocolate smell.
That changes after steeping. The orange is milder, and I do get just the slightest bit of chocolate in the aroma. The tea is a mahogany color and clear.
I am surprised that this tea has such low ratings. I didn’t find it bitter when steeping 3 minutes, and though neither the chocolate or orange are particularly sweet, that’s ok with me. There is more orange in the sip than chocolate, and more chocolate in the aftertaste than orange. I don’t get any weird waxiness or any of the other things people mentioned.
It’s been a while since I had a tea with these flavors so I am rating this a bit in a vacuum — but it seems I like it quite a bit more than most people or at least I’m willing to cut it more slack. LOL.
Flavors: Chocolate, Orange
Preparation
1800th tasting note!
Sipdown no. 13 of 2019 (no. 501 total).
I put the rest of this into a cold brew. I needed a couple of additional spoons to make a full pitcher, so I used the Oolong Sapphire Handunugoda from Dammann Freres.
The saddest part of this sipdown is that it reminds me that The Simple Leaf is no more. While this wasn’t one of my favorite oolongs, I still have some really awesome black teas of theirs that I am hoarding.
It made a very tasty cold tea. Interestingly, I think if I didn’t know it was oolong I would think the cold version is a black tea. Hmmm.
Getting a very late start to the morning.
The family wanted to eat dinner before going to the concert last night, which resulted in us having to rush on the other end to find parking. Who knew there were so many parking lots around the SAP center? Anyway, after finally finding parking we had to hustle to walk what seemed like about half a mile to the venue.
We were walking down the stairs to ours seats when Bennie and the Jets started. The usher kind of gestured us to where we were supposed to go with the result that we ended up in the wrong seats — we were actually supposed to be several rows forward of where we were, which we found out during All the Girls Love Alice. So the entry was a bit chaotic. I had wanted to get there early enough to get drinks and maybe a T shirt, but c’est la vie. I was so thirsty by the end of the concert I bought four bottles of water from a street vendor and drank two of them on the walk back to the car.
By the way, we forgot where we parked. So we wandered around a bit before finding a kindly police officer who gave us some suggestions. We finally got home around 12:30.
Anyway, not sure I’ll drink much tea this morning since it’s almost noon.
But this one is very mellow and nice. The dry leaves have a rice-like aroma in the packet along with a very green note. The leaves are green to yellowish green and tightly balled.
Gaiwan. 195F. Rinse. 15 seconds +5 through four steeps.
This is really lovely. A gentle, primarily floral aroma and flavor. Along with the floral, there’s a surprisingly pleasing vegetal flavor (spinach?). The wet leaves smell like spinach.
The tea is a rather deep yellow and clear. Later steeps have a quality that is brothy, not savory, just satisfying in a way that feels nourishing on a cold rainy day.
Flavors: Broth, Floral, Green, Spinach, Vegetal
Preparation
Last weekend when I had a terrible cough, I pretty much stayed in bed binge watching stuff all weekend. I did taste a couple of oolongs I hadn’t written notes about before, but I completely skipped the pu erhs.
Since I’m no longer pressuring myself to “get through all my teas a first time and write notes about them,” I almost skipped a pu erh today. But I wasn’t done with tea for the day so I forged ahead.
This one’s dry leaf has a deep, leather and whiskey smell. Not at all fishy, and not particularly earthy/mushroomy either.
I rinsed this at boiling and then steeped in the gaiwan at 10/10/20/30/40/60/120/240/300/360
The first few steeps were lovely. A deep flavor, sweet like molasses, with a smell and flavor of leather and whiskey and a cognac color.
The third steep brought out a earthy note, and the sweetness started to fade after this and a not quite cocoa note tried to appear.
By the sixth steep, both color and flavor were well on the wane. The seventh steep brought out a weak tobacco note.
It’s unfortunate that this didn’t have more staying power. If it had managed to keep its richness and flavor longer I might have rated it higher.
In the early steeps, I liked it as much or more than the Rose Tuocha from The Tao of Tea, which I rated higher than I’m inclined to rate this one. So I’m lowering the rating on that one.
Flavors: Leather, Molasses, Tobacco, Whiskey
Preparation
Red Blossom’s site has some interesting info about Phoenix Oolongs and how they are from single groves grown to emulate the flavor or fragrance of a particular fruit or flower. This one is “almond,” and so of course I was looking for the almond fragrance when I stuck my nose into the freshly opened packet.
And yeah, it’s there. It’s in and around the roasty-toasty, sharp, dark oolong dry leaf fragrance and to some extent overpowered by that aspect, but it’s there. The leaves are dark brown, twisty, and after a rinse look a little like birds nest material.
Gaiwan. 195F. Rinse. 15 seconds + 5 for each subsequent steep.
The tea is a light amber color and clear. It definitely has an almond note in the aroma and the flavor, which fascinates me. Having had a lot of almond flavored teas, that a tea can have this sort of flavor naturally is really cool.
The tea is fairly mild compared to what I was expecting from the sharp note of the dry leaves. That sharpness is filed off in the flavor, leaving a smooth roastiness.
I’m finding it a comforting tea for a winter morning. It didn’t change for me over four steeps, other than to become a bit stronger and rounder in flavor after the first steep, but the almond note sets is apart from other darker oolongs I’ve had. It makes me want to try the other Phoenix oolongs on Red Blossom’s site and see if they all do justice to the fruits or flowers they are meant to emulate.
Flavors: Almond, Roasted, Toast
A whole flower vs broken/dust makes a huge difference to me in chamomile teas. It would be such a bummer to receive a big bag of broken ones. I feel your pain.
:-)