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This is one of the most interesting teas I’ve ever tasted, so much so that I don’t really trust my score. Normally, I take a few sips, and I have a pretty good idea of what the tea is going to be like, what to expect from the rest of the mug…y’know? But this tea kept me guessing ’til the very end.

The first thing I smelled when I cut open the packet was cinnamon. Bleh, I don’t like cinnamon. But the very next time I inhaled, I hardly smelled any cinnamon at all. This time, it was cardamom. Meh, I’m not a fan of cardamom, either. But again I couldn’t write the tea off, because it changed again! This time what I got was almost fruity in nature, but more fruit punch, not the “smooth citrusy bouquet” the packet claims.

Steeped, the tea’s flavour was just as variable as its fragrance. One sip tasted all cinnamon-y, another tasted kinded of fruity, another tasted a little earthy (eh?), another a little like…rooibos (whaaa…?). It all tasted good, but more than that, it was just…interesting! The sample wasn’t nearly enough to figure out this tea. I’ve added it to the shopping list for further study.

This is kind of a middle of the road jasmine green tea. The fragrance is heavenly, and it’s one of those teas that makes me want to strap the packet to my nose. The jasmine is spot on: not subtle, not perfume-y, not overwhelming, not artificial. Really, really nice.

Given its fragrance, I was hoping for a nice, bold flavour to do it justice. That’s not the case here, though: the tea is a little on the weak side. To its credit, however, I didn’t get any bitterness or dry mouth from it.

OMNOMNOM. I really need to drink more black tea, because I really can’t tell the difference between them. I swear, every time I drink a new black tea, I think, “Yes! THIS is it! THIS is what I mean when I think of black tea! The fragrance, the flavour, this, this, this!”

Until the next cup of a different black tea. [Sigh.]

So ya. This. THIS smells just like the chai Mum made every day, even without the milk and sugar. THIS tastes just like that tea, even without the milk and the cardamom and ginger. More accurately, it tastes just like the black tea base of that tea, before the milk and the cardamom and the ginger were added.

At least, I think it does. Until the next cup of black tea I drink. I obviously cannot be trusted.

It’s yummy, though. And it’s comforting. I needed something “safe” today, as I’ve been a bit too adventurous of late and just wasn’t up to evaluating a new flavour. I didn’t get any bitterness or dry mouth, which is always nice. It’s not as, I dunno, flavourful? bold? oomphy? as some other black teas I’ve recently tried, for which I docked it a few points. But it’s very nice.

Bonus: Just like every time I eat a clementine, I pranced around the kitchen singing, “Oh, m’darlin’, O m’darlin’, O m’daaaarlin’ Darjeeling, I will steep you, I will sip you, o m’darlin’, Darjeeling” ♬ while this was steeping. (Note that the clementine variant is "I will peel you, I will eat you, o m’darlin’, clementine. ♬)

I made this tea for a little experiment inspired by the “offbeat uses for tea” thread1. Before I used it for that purpose, though, I tried it, both unsweetened and sweetened.

I’ve read that our olfactory sense is the one most strongly tied to memory. There’s a hookah joint in NYC called Sultana2, a wonderful place where I’ve spent many an hour sipping iced hibiscus tea and chatting with friends. This herbal “tea” smells just like that place. It’s quite nice.

If you generally like “tropical” concoctions, things with pineapple and coconut and things of that nature, you will probably like this. While I love (non-alcoholic) piña coladas, I’m not a big fan of that mish-mash of flavours that falls under the (mini) umbrella of “tropical.” As such, this isn’t really my thing. The tin says there’s rose in here, and hibiscus, but I didn’t get any floral fragrance or flavour. There’s also orange peel in here, but nothing citrusy stands out. Finally, there’s no actual tea in here, which I rather like in my…tea. =] All that said, it does have that very typical tropical vibe to it, and a nice enough flavour.

1 http://steepster.com/discuss/3374-lets-find-some-offbeat-new-uses-for-tea#forum_post_51847

2 http://yelp.com/biz/sultana-new-york

My nose acknowledges four classes of rose: the flower, the perfume, the essence (as in rose water), and the soap/lotion. We use a lot of rose essence/rose water in our cooking in India, so I’m most familiar with the variety of tastes created by adding that to a beverage or dish. As well, when I was little I used to munch on rose petals. I like rose. A lot.

I was very happy with the fragrance of the dry leaves. Of the four recognised classes, this tea fell squarely in the “flower” one: the fragrance was fresh, pure, not artificial. Not even remotely subtle, and really lovely. The wet leaves and the steeped tea didn’t smell as strongly like a fresh flower, which was good, because it let the black tea come through a little more.

The flavour is where things just went all pear-shaped. The flavour, my friends, is neither essence nor flower, but lotion. Lotion! It’s wrong. So, so, wrong. To make matters worse, my first sip of the unsweetened tea hit the back of my throat with a distinct bitterness, which immediately shattered my resolve to wean myself off sugar/sweeteners in my tea. Straightaway, I added some sugar.

So now I’m drinking non-bitter rose lotion. Because I like rose so much, I’m reluctant to dump the tea, so it’s sitting here, and every so often I forget how disappointed I am and reach for another sip or two. What I’m finding is that as it sits (it’s just sitting, not really cooling, thanks to my super duper mug), the flavour is transitioning from lotion to flower, more like what I expected when I first cut open the packet.

In the end, I’m glad that I didn’t pour the tea down the drain. I still feel that there is a slightly lotion-y aftertaste, but to be fair, it is possible that this is mostly psychological. I’ll be okay getting through this mug, but unfortunately this isn’t a tea I’ll be stocking in the future. That said, I’d now really like to find a bold, rose tea that I would like to keep stocked. I tried a white rose that I really liked, but it was subtle. I’d like something more like this, with a nice, bold flavour, but with a rose infusion that’s more to my liking. I’ll keep trying, I’m sure I’ll find something. =)

I love licorice. But I’m pretty sceptical of licorice in tea, because it tends to coat my tongue in a really unpleasant, icky way. Pre-steep, these dry leaves smell like licorice and tea, instead of just licorice. In fact, the licorice was pretty subtle. It came out more post-steep, but still wasn’t really strong.

If you’re kind of on the fence about licorice, you might like this one. The tea has a pretty balanced flavour, and it does a respectable job of not coating your tongue in that icky way. I think I would’ve liked it more with a touch of sugar, but I’m trying to wean myself off sugar/sweeteners (sadpanda), so I left it out. To its credit, I can actually drink this one without sugar; normally, I can’t tolerate more than a few sips of unsweetened tea.

I love jasmine, and this tea smells wonderful, so I had high hopes. By wonderful I mean that the jasmine is not subtle. I like bold, full flavours and this really smells like jasmine. Additionally, it’s a very pure fragrance, not like perfume.

But in the end, it doesn’t measure up to jasmine greens I’ve had in the past. With a recommended steep for four minutes at water “just below the boiling point,” I figured I’d be perfectly safe with 175°, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. There was some bitterness, right from the start, that only increased as the tea cooled. As well, the dry mouth factor here is pretty high.

That said, I’ve still got the empty packet next to me so I can sniff it every once in a while. It really does smell lovely. =)

Double honey pear honey honey. I’ve only ever had one pear tea before, and I hated it, so I was really kind of reluctant to try this one. In the end, I’m a bit torn about it, and not for the reasons I expected.

The dry leaves smell really strongly of pear. It’s a heady, fruity, very slightly floral (honey?) fragrance. Just lovely, lovely stuff. At this point, I was still really hesitant, but also a bit hopeful: surely something that smells soooo good couldn’t taste bad, right? The tea smells a lot more like honey and a lot less like pear. Given my prior experience, this was actually encouraging to me, alleviating some of my anxiety.

The first (unsweetened) sip was okay. The honey and pear were there (honey honey pear honey), but so were some bitterness and astringency, of which I’m not a fan. I added my sugar and settled in to enjoy my mug.

Happiness: this tea has replaced my awful pear tea experience. Sadness: Too much honey, not enough pear. This was what surprised me—I actually wanted more pear. Happiness: It’s a pretty pleasant tea, one that I would put in the dessert category. Sadness: the bitterness, while not present throughout, randomly pops up now and again; it’s jarring and mars an otherwise nice experience. Further sadness: this tea’s dry mouth factor is higher than I anticipated. Do not like.

The great thing that came out of this is that I am now willing and looking forward to trying more pear-flavoured teas.

It’s become apparent to me that I can’t really tell one black tea from another. Not yet, anyway. This isn’t the best cup of black tea I’ve had, but it’s very nice. Its fragrance is comforting, as the tea smells exactly like what I think when I think black tea. This is a very humble, unassuming tea; it just ambles along, dum dee dum, doing its thing. It’s that A- student that gets her grades by keeping her head down and getting her work done, not by wriggling in her seat with her hand in the air every time the teacher asks a question.

I think this is one of those tea types that you will either love or hate. I don’t think that there’s a lot of room for somewhere in between, here. I am in the latter camp. So far, this is the worst tea I’ve ever had.

I was excited about the prospect of trying a completely different, new-to-me kind of tea, and I am still very happy that I got to try it. I’m even happier that I didn’t go out on one of my tea-buying adventures and spend a bunch of money on this; the Golden Moon sampler was more than enough.

I put the water to boil, took out my kitchen scissors, and snipped the end off the packet. There was no need to stick my prodigious proboscis in the packet and inhale deeply—it was like the aroma was just waiting to escape, and within a matter of moments my whole kitchen smelled like a smokehouse. Having no knowledge of lapsang souchong, I was quite taken aback and rather sceptical. Instead of adding my customary demerara sugar to the tea, I actually felt like adding salt. The whole thing was a very strange experience, and I hadn’t even tasted the tea yet.

Well, things only rolled further downhill from there. I took one (unsweetened) sip of the tea and the flavour accurately matched the aroma. I didn’t like it, but I thought I would give it a chance, so I tried a few more sips. In my mind, I was drinking water that had been poured into a mug by way of a bed of coals. This might be the first mug of tea that I couldn’t finish because it made me physically ill. Lesson learned: I do not like lapsang souchong. =)