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It tastes like fake and overripe/almost rotten mango with a base of bitter, low quality green tea. If I felt like manning up, I could probably drink this cup, but I’d be making a face all the way through it so I’m gonna pass.

I figured something out while sipping on this tea: Mariage Freres and Kusmi have very similar tea styles. (Is this a big ole ‘duh’ to everyone but me?) Both have flavorings typically on the more subtle end and that flavor tends to hit most in the smell and then the endnote of each sip. But I think there are two main differences between them for me: Kusmi flavorings, while more subtle than a lot of flavored teas out there, do seem to be a bit stronger than most Mariage Freres teas. And the tea taste that hits towards the front of each sip (where the flavoring is tasted least) is milder and not as decadent feeling in Mariage Freres as they are in the Kusmi teas.

The smell of this tea is lovely – sweet and creamy with a little caramelized something to it. The tasting notes say crème brûlée and I’m not sure I would have gone there on my own, but yeah, I can see that, though there seems to be an additional note of candy-like sweetness in the smell that keeps me from saying “But of course it is!”. Perhaps it because I knew this tea was called “Easter”, but that sweet sugary smell/taste made me think a bit of Easter candies (in a good way). The taste is much milder with the flavors really only coming through in the end. They are quite nice but I think I would have liked it to be slightly more intense. Or for the tea taste to be richer as it felt just a hair thin and not quite as smooth as the tea taste in Troika yesterday. All in all a tasty tea but one that I want to just turn up the volume on just a hair.

ETA: For the second steep I really increased the time – 6 minutes – and added a tiny splash of half & half. Now I’m getting a nice level of flavor. It’s very sweet and Easter-candy-like with lots of vanilla. The tea flavor isn’t as silky as Kusmi seems to be but it doesn’t feel as thin as before. I’m adjusting my rating because I quite like this now. I just have to remember to go for the long steep time.

I brewed this for more like 9 minutes because I was enjoying watching it expand too much. It’s quite pretty. The taste is very sweet and delicately jasmine. It is a very mild tea that didn’t seem to be hurt by the fairly excessive brew time. I can’t say for sure that I would use any blooming tea as a normal, daily-type tea but if I ever wanted to serve tea at a special occasion, I think this one would be a great one to use – attractive and tasty.

I’m trying to learn my lesson about over-caffeinating on the weekends. After two 12oz steeps of Troika, I’m switching to something decaf for a bit so I don’t explode. I’m typically not a huge fan of mint (or rooibos, really). There is an edge to mint that feels raw to me, so for me to enjoy minty things the mint usually needs to be mixed with something to heavily tame it down to a bare fresh tingle.

This tea is pretty much full on mint. I don’t really taste the rooibos except for maybe a hint at the end (and even then it is more of a not-mint undernote than a woody rooibos taste) and I can’t pick out the bergamot at all (which is a little disappointing). Except the mint doesn’t have that mint bite, that rawness, that I dislike in things that are so full on mint. If I have to guess, I’d say that the rooibos (and bergamot) add a little heaviness to the flavor of the mint that prevents it from seeming so thin and prevents that biting raw edge at the end.

I’m still not a huge fan of strongly mint things, but this is pretty good. I imagine that if I were the type to like drinking pure mint tisanes (or even predominately mint tisanes), I would find this very tasty. As it is, I do find it one of the best strong mint tisanes I’ve had.

Even Samovar says that this tea is sweet. Yeah, it is. It’s like a Kasugi peach gummy (http://amzn.to/d6o1Bh) but all grown up. It’s not as sweet and it has a bit more depth to it than the gummy, though – there is a gentle softness (I’m thinking from the jasmine and osthmanthus flowers) and a little tingle of crisp, tingly freshness (I’m thinking from the orange and tangerine). There’s a darker, more savory note of the white tea hiding underneath but the predominant flavor is fruity sweetness. The strong fruitiness of it makes me think a little of an herbal fruit tisane but, just as in the case of the peach gummy, grown up and toned down. Herbal teas usually make me think of Kool-Aid and while this still has a strong fruit flavor, it doesn’t even begin to skirt Kool-Aid territory.

I can taste the floral notes and the tea itself a bit more in the second steep (4 minutes) but it’s still sweet and fruity and clean. And peachy. This is definitely not a tea for those that dislike fruity teas. But personally, I am really enjoying having something so obviously fruity but not sickeningly sweet. I could definitely see myself buying a tin of this.

All day, I’ve been thinking about giving this tea another go. So I did. I did a shorter steep time and that really seems to have decreased the rooibos taste, which has given me the chance to check out the berry flavor closer. It doesn’t say this in the tasting notes, but this tastes like it has rose hips in it to me. I say that because Lupicia’s Rose Hip tea reminds me of spaghetti sauce and I’m getting a hint of that here – not full on spaghetti sauce but more like hints of canned tomatoes. (Of course, Lupicia’s Rose Hip tea also had hibiscus in it, so perhaps hibiscus makes me think of spaghetti sauce.) Anyway, when I sip this tea, I get a flash of berry followed by a quick dip into canned tomato and then lifted back up into dark berries again. As it cools, the dip into tomato becomes shallower to where it almost doesn’t happen. The rooibos wood is pretty much totally gone in this shorter steep which I oddly find I miss a bit. (Not much, mind you. It is still rooibos.)

That being said, I think I kind of like this. Even with the shorter steep time, the berry flavor is pretty strong so I do wish that could be mellowed out more, making the first steep more like the second. If a black tea tasted like this, I probably wouldn’t love it, but for a rooibos, this isn’t bad.

PS – I did the second steep at five minutes and it’s really quite lovely. No tomato, just mild and pleasant dark berries and a whiff of the lattice they are growing on.

De-cupboarding this one – yay! A confession: this tea? Two years old. Eep! But honestly, it’s mellowed out in that time to be a much smoother smoky tea. There’s an obvious sweetness that is like light honey. It’s honestly not a bad tea at all – I’d buy it again if I had no Keemuns and there was a world Keemun shortage with this as the only one available (whereas with Rishi Keemun I’ve had, I’d rather go without). It’s not the best but it certainly isn’t the worst. Especially after two years mellowing in my pantry.
(PS – Am I the only one that has a fear of typos when typing the word “pantry”? I’m always afraid I’ll end up talking about the tea’s place in my panty.)
(And speaking of typos, I initially submitted this log with the above line reading “tea’s play in my panty.” Oy.)

I might have to spend a little bit more time with this tea to properly peg it. The dry not-leaves and even the brewed tea smell like these (really tasty) fruit gummies I get at Costco. Oh, sure, they are called ‘fruit mini-bites’ but they are gummies. http://www.sunrypeusa.com/viewproduct_us.php?line=9&group=1 And that’s what this tea smells like. Which is pretty awesome.

The taste was much more… exotic, however. Not as sweet and with a woody follow up (hello rooibos!). The rooibos in this isn’t bad though – it’s not sickeningly sweet like so many rooibos. This one just tastes of dry, clean, nicely sanded wood planks. Covered in berry preserves. There’s a tang that isn’t quite tartness but it really brings to mind the taste of dark berries. Boysenberries, blueberries, grapes, blackcurrants…

I was missing the sweetness from the smell though so I tried it with a little sugar. The woody rooibos pretty much disappeared but the berry flavor was much more… normal. Kind of dull, like any old herbal tea and I think the sugar accentuated the tartness a little. So I tried at second steep (7 minutes) with no sugar.

I think the second steep was my favorite. Still berry-y and a tiny, minuscule hint of wood, but it wasn’t as overpoweringly flavored as the first cup, which was so strong it made me thirsty for some good ole water. I’m going to have to revisit this tea before I can fully judge it, perhaps with a slightly shorter steep time on the first steep. Right now, though, I could see potentially picking some up to expand my painfully thin decaf tea selection.

Mate scares me. I’ve had a total of two sips of it in my life. Not a fan. But this is Samovar and they kind of make me like wacky things. So I will give it a shot.

It smells like dusty hay but without the sweetness of my grandparents’ old barn. There’s a little sweetness in there but it isn’t hay sweetness, it’s the anise. Which honestly made me think of peppermint on my first sniff, but I figured it out on my second. When the hot water hits the not-leaves, there is a whoosh that smells of dirt and sweet almost-mint . It makes me think of the smell pu-erh would give off if you set it on fire (but without quite so much lapsang souchong burning).

The liquid is… not so appetizing. Murky and kind of brackish-looking green. I am attempting to stare the tea down (instead of drinking it) but darn it, it hasn’t blinked yet. Totoro has nerves of steel. Okay, must buck up and drink.

Huh. It’s really not bad. Tastes very herbal and has a sweetness that reminds me of chamomile but the anise give it a little tingle/sting down my throat. There is hay and sweet and dry and tingly and a fresh, sweet, herbal-y aftertaste with a hint of anise feeling. It’s the love child resulting from a secret pu-erh and herbal tisane affair.

This is so different from my norm, I’m not sure what I think about this yet. Which could be good since I had to do that with Ryokucha and I’m fairly addicted to that now. I don’t think I will develop an addiction for this yerba mate, but then I wouldn’t have imagined it with Ryokucha either, so I suppose only time will tell. That and the crack Samovar adds.

Anyone know why this is called “Opium Hill” other than the whole is being grown where poppies used to grow? I mean, is it supposed to have any poppy-like notes? Because honestly, I have zero clue what a poppy note would taste like (unless something made me think of a lemon poppy seed muffin which, yeah, probably not).

Anyway, poppies or not, this is clean and sweet tasting. I’m reminded me of this really tasty TKY dark roast takgoti sent to me in a swap ages ago. (I need to figure out what that was because it was really tasty.) Anyway, I know this shouldn’t remind me of a heavily roasted TKY because this is a very green oolong. And it isn’t so much the roastiness but a similar sweet note that I can’t figure out how else to identify. All I know is that I like it. Lots.

2nd steep: 3 minutes. Wow. So sweet. I’m getting nectar and flowers and the note of sweet roasty from the first steep. Really tasty.

3rd steep: 4 minutes. A little mellower than the second steep but still sweet. Now I’m thinking of a dan cong and tropical fruits. Guava? Banana? Something. The taste flattens out a little as it cools but that just means I should drink it quickly. I’m a-okay with that.

4th steep: 6 minutes. I confess to eating a bit of pungent cheese in between steeps three and four so that could be affecting my taste buds but now I’m getting floral notes that make me think of nectar and lavender.
3.1g/6oz