Camellia Sinensis

Gongfu!

I don’t even know when the last time I drank a straight Chinese green tea was, let alone a dragonwell, and this might have even been my first made with the bai ye cultivar. They’ve just never been my thing. However, I was at Camellia Sinensis not too long ago picking up some of their new teaware, and I received this as a free sample with that order…

Honestly, it caught me off guard how much I enjoyed this green tea today! It’s lighter with a more buttery taste and mouthfeel. Brown butter, chestnut, and the mild, crispy vegetal taste of something like an uncooked nappa cabbage. It finished really clean, with a fleeting tip of the tongue sweetness. I never would have picked this for myself, so it was so nice to have had it picked for me and turn out to be a wonderfully refreshing change-up from the teas I would normally be drinking!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DT83KYMEgoX/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60×4eW6PPa0

Morning Matcha Round-up!

This is a new (to me) matcha from Camellia Sinensis that I decided to pick up recently. I’ve now tried four matchas that they carry, and based on snap judgement and first impression this might be my favourite? Unsurprisingly, that’s probably because I found it to be the nuttiest of the four. Not, like, smack you in the face sesame/tahini nutty like some of the Yame I adore, but definitely that milky sweet almond note that CS describes in the copy for the matcha. Excited to get to know this one a little better!

You’ll notice that I have baklava on my teacup here, but I actually ate this after finishing the matcha because I wanted to make sure I was tasting the tea unadulterated for this first sampling.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/DT3SQWOCSSz/?img_index=1 (Third Pic)

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-KAyuoxTJA

Gongfu!

Got this pu’erh as a gift recently. The person who picked it out totally nailed it; this tea is right up my alley with basically all my favourite ripe pu’erh tasting notes. Such a thick and immediately dark liquor. Basically jet black, were it not for a sliver of crimson at the water line. Deeply earthy with thick, smokier top notes, a bold backbone of cooling camphor, and a fresh, petrichor finish. Makes me think of a really good, peaty scotch. Smooth but heavy, with tarry notes in the midsip and undertones of leather that crescendo over the session. Maybe even a bit of iodine. It’s so layered and complex, but also so immediately grounding. From the first steeps, I felt pulled down and centered in the moment. What a treat!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTya7xqEm22/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufyND9xfALI

Morning Matcha Round-up!

I think I was in a weirdly subconscious mood for grapefruit this week because I made two matcha drinks that were grapefruit flavoured. This one was this pure/traditional matcha which I then combined with sparkling water and some sliced of bruleed pink grapefruit with had a touch of a caramelized, burnt sugar sweetness and bitterness to them in addition to that citrus note.

I picked this matcha because the more I’ve drank it the more I’ve felt I get this interesting floral violet note, and I thought that would be good with the grapefruit. In practice, though the drink was stunning it wasn’t the most tasty!? It erred more on the bitter side, and also had some astringency. Less the fresh, fruity and floral vibe I was hoping for. But still drinkable! Just not something I’d repeat recipe-wise.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/DT3SQWOCSSz/?img_index=1 (First Pic)

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEqwQARqKkM

Tea Pop!

Even though, like all the matcha I made in the morning this past week, this one also comes from Yame it has quite a different taste profile than the others I tried. To start, it’s very soft and floral with a bit of a natural peony-like sweetness and notes of white chocolate or cocoa butter.

I made it as a “tea pop” by mixing it with sparkling water that had a very light berry flavour in it. Not a La Croix, but kind of similar to that. I found that really elevated the floral notes of this matcha, and the overall drink was incredibly fresh and Spring-like in feeling.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTBoG-pEgXC/?img_index=1 (Sixth Pic)

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb0TvR9pyrM

Dry aroma: Slightly malty and fruity.
Wet aroma: Malty with some earthy cocoa notes
Flavour: Smooth, very low astringency. Some earthy mineral notes that remind me of a Yunnan black.

I don’t know what this tea is trying to be, and that makes it hard for me to decided how I feel about it. Like, the name is essentially “Vanilla Mist” which sets me up to believe this is going to be either a vanilla forward or otherwise creamy tasting tea. But then the product copy focuses so much on carrot cake!? And the ingredients are very spiced with these huge cinnamon rods but then also different nuts and citrus elements. It feels like the tea is having an identity crisis.

And, honestly, it kind of tastes like it too!? The first flavour to hit my palate and register was this cozy, pastry-style cinnamon that kind of fits a carrot cake vibe? But then it was swiftly followed by a sweet candied orange note with a gentle pithy bitterness like orange rind/peel. The finish? REALLY marzipan like. It has winter/holiday vibes, and it’s not unpleasant but it is busy tasting? And not totally aligned with either the name or the flavour description…

It’s another from this new batch of flavoured tea blends where I really wish that Camellia Sinensis had stuck with their usual vibe of giving the tea a more ethereal/romanticized name that doesn’t paint such a strong flavour/ingredient expectation ala Moulin Rouge, One Night In Rio, or some of their other more long-standing flavoured teas…

Cold Brew!

I tried the other fruitier green tea blend from CS as a cold brew so I figured I’d so the same with this one too. I’m not totally sure what they were going for with this one, but I like it. It’s such a strange and hard to describe flavour though. At some points I was getting creamy vanilla with floral undertones, and at others more of a banana or juicy pear kind of vibe. Strangely, at no point did I really think of quince even though that’s what the flavour actually is. Regardless, I quite enjoyed the taste!

Cold Brew!

Eventually I’ll try this tea hot, but I’m starting with cold brew because I thought the juicier red fruit and orange aroma of the dry leaf seemed like it would be well suited for this steeping method. It’s a fairly strongly flavoured tea in the sense that the cranberry and citrus notes mask the green tea more than you’d expect looking at the visual, but it’s smooth and well balanced without a whole lot of acidity and sweetness to distract from those really well defined fruit notes with their floral undertones.

I’m not quite sure how else to say it, but something about the profile does borderline feel incomplete to me? It’s almost like the tea wants to have a spice note in it. Like, just a little bit of cinnamon would be SO interesting in this tea. It’s already kind of autumnal feeling because of the fruit combination, and this would just push it ever so slightly into that mulled kind of territory. But I suppose that’s an ingredient I could also easily add myself.

Cold Brew!

I’m gonna reserve judgement on this one until I try it hot. It’s not so much that it was too sencha-y for me as a not-so-huge lover of sencha, but I just thought the yuzu was sooo delicate to the point where I barely tasted it against the unctuous, buttery nori and umami of the green tea. I guess it added a bit of brightness. I’m just not sure how I feel about it overall since the yuzu is for sure the selling point of the blend…

It was bothering me that my morning matcha round-ups were falling on Friday each week (on IG), so we’re doing a bit of a soft reset this week…

This still isn’t my favourite matcha, but I love how vibrant the colour is. Taste wise it’s just much more vegetal than I prefer, though I appreciate how smooth and naturally sweet it is despite that. Lots of fresh garden pea notes. I ended up adding a bit of a lavender creamer to this one, and that was surprisingly very complimentary.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/DURhhUvCah7/?img_index=1 (First Pic)

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elv2MK4tQgk

Iced Latte!

Cold whisked this up with using a new vanilla protein milk from what I typically use. I don’t know if I like this new milk though, it has a very gross lingering sweet aftertaste. But this is a good matcha to use with it, I suppose, as it’s also a matcha I’m not super crazy about. Very vegetal tasting. I would have been a bit upset if I’d used one of my really nice nutty Yame matchas with this milk…

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSnvqLJkpxz/?img_index=1 (First Pic)

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ry0MmABz5g

I made a Camellia Sinensis order not long ago for their new flavoured blends, and I ended up adding a tin of this matcha to help me meet the free shipping minimum. I had it as usucha earlier this week and thought it was pleasant. Just a touch of bitterness, but no astringency. The flavour leans a bit more crisp and vegetal with notes of garden peas to go alongside a more buttery finish with notes of steamed milk.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/DRDcxN_EidZ/?img_index=1 (Fourth Pic)

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqP5vu7BMQ

Steeped this one up a few nights back when I wanted something a bit more decadent with some fruit notes, but not necessarily super sweet. The pudding-like and caramelized notes of peach in this blend definitely achieve that. Interestingly, I felt like I was getting the slightest roasted and coffee or chicory root-like top notes in this blend and that was a bit strange though not unpleasant. This tea continues to be a sort of enigma to me. It’s tasty enough, but not at all like what it’s named for.

Camellia Sinensis recently released a bunch of new flavoured tea blends which is, honestly, kind of weird behaviour for them. Like, they carry a few blends but they’re really much more well known for their straight/traditional teas and the amount they just released is more in a one week span than they’ve rolled out in the last three or four years combined. It’s curious…

Of course, I wanted to try all of them so I placed an order for all four newbies and one that was released maybe a year or so ago that I just hadn’t gotten around to trying. I was a bit frustrated because the day after my order the released one last new blend. I’m not going to go out of my way to order/visit the store again for the one tea, but just annoying that they didn’t cluster the launch together (the drops were less than a week apart). I’ll get to it eventually though, I’m sure!

But what about this tea!? Well, it’s also very curious. Mostly because the flavours in the ingredient list are ones I would certainly not typically associate with creme brulee. But sometimes flavour combine together in weird ways and are able to paint a flavour picture very different from how they taste in isolation. So, I went into the mug pretty open minded. With that said, am I tasting creme brulee? …eh…

Okay, here’s what it is like…

The black tea is full bodied and rich with an almost chocolate-like undertone to it. I appreciate that is has a strong fullness to it, without being really brisk and astringent because I don’t think those qualities would suit the sort of decadence that CS is leaning towards here. It’s also very creamy, but more in a pudding or flan-like way with a sort of light caramelization and vanilla note to it. You could argue that kind of describes the custard portion of a creme brulee, but it’s just striking me as in the right wheelhouse but different enough that I wouldn’t blindly jump to creme brulee. Maybe because it’s not a “pure” enough vanilla custard note or because it’s caramel-like but not pushed to the point of having that sharper, crisp burnt sugar taste.

And the peach. Yup, I totally taste that peach flavouring. It’s smooth and silky with some floral undertones but it is definitely peach. I’m less familiar with naranjilla, which is the other flavouring, so I don’t know how much of this soft, creamy and delicate fruity profile is also coming from that flavouring. I actually think it taste quite wonderful, but there’s not really anything about it that evokes creme brulee for me in the slightest. With the creaminess I’d almost think a Peach Creamsicle first.

So, overall, I think it’s a very interesting tea with a lovely delicate sweetness and a unique and appealing intersection of soft fruits and really creamy caramel. I really wish that CS had gone for a more ethereal name in the vain of some of their other teas like Moulin Rouge or One Night In Rio instead of something with such a literal flavour. I don’t think it’s set this blend up very well to meet the expectations the name they chose promises…

Once again, I wildly overbought green tea this year so I could do some educational comparison sessions. This time, I’m focusing on three kinds of Anji Bai Cha, two from Seven Cups and one from Camellia Sinensis.

Tea bush: Bai Ye
Location: Zhejiang Province
Picking date: April 12, 2025
Price in USD/g: $0.46

For the side-by-side comparison, I steeped 2.4 g of leaf in 120 ml of 185F water for 4 minutes, resteeping as needed until the tea faded. I also did a more normal session with 3 g of leaf in 250 ml of 185F water, with times as above.

The dry aroma had notes of green beans, asparagus, cut grass, honey, and magnolia. In the side-by-side session, the first steep featured green beans, cut grass, asparagus, heady magnolia, kale, lemon, and orange. Later on, I tasted green beans, grass, asparagus, kale, and magnolia, with the florals persisting until the end of the session.

With my regular setup, the first steep had notes of green beans, asparagus, white sugar, lemon, orange, and magnolia. Later steeps lost this complexity and focused on green beans, asparagus, grass, and faint magnolia. The end of the session was grassy and vegetal.

This tea was sharper and grassier than the Seven Cups offerings. It had a heady, almost perfumey magnolia aroma and flavour through most of the session, as well as a good amount of citrus. It also had the sweetness of the other Anji Bai Cha, though to a lesser extent in later steeps. If I hadn’t done a side-by-side comparison with the Anji from Seven Cups, I’d say this was a perfectly nice green tea, and it’s still great for the price.

So, like last year, I’m doing a “Mugtober” challenge where I’m featuring a different mug from my collection in my stories every day this month. Last year there was simultaneously a tea challenge being run by another IG tea friend so I was picking mugs/teas based on that challenge.

This year I’m just choosing the mugs based on why I want to highlight, but I am secretly (ie. I haven’t officially said this on IG) trying to pair up a tea to each mug I choose. The first day I did the Chinese Matcha from Bitterleaf that I just reviewed with a mug with green gloops on it. This was the tea for October 2nd, and I picked it out because the mug was shark themed. So, tropical tea inspired by a country with sharks. You get the idea, hopefully.

The tea itself was pretty nice! Definitely has an oiliness in mouthfeel from the fat that’s steeped out of the coconut pieces, but it didn’t really bother me. The taste is a little bright and sharp before those creamier coconut notes really hit. Definitely a punch of tropical mango, but not necessarily in tandem with sweetness. Don’t worry, though, the sweetness does eventually come in the after taste in the form of a heavy, lingering and mouth coating licorice root note. Not a favourite flavour of mine, and not super well integrated into the rest of the profile IMO.

The rooibos is also pretty strong, with a distinct woody character. I like rooibos, but because it’s so prominent I probably wouldn’t recommend this blend to someone more sensitive to those mineral notes of red rooibos.

It’s not a bad blend at all, but there’s just some qualities that I found a touch rough around the edges. Personally, I would reach for DT’s Mango Sunset over this one since both are mango and coconut rooibos blends. I just think the green rooibos in the DT blend is less abrasive and though the DT blend is certainly much sweeter overall I do think that sweetness is better integrated. Obviously I have a HUGE bias, though.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW4EfjBI4bk

Gongfu!

The mouthfeel on this oolong is so smooth and buttery, with a velvety fullness that suits the highly aromatic mix of creamy white florals, coconut oil, vanilla, candied lilac blossoms, and hint of sweetgrass. Quite naturally sweet, and the kind of oolong that pulls you in and has you brewing the next infusion before you’ve finished sipping on the one in front of you!

This teacup was part of this recent Camellia Sinensis order, and I could not stop staring at it during this session. I mean, the tea liquor practically had a golden glow to it what with all those yellow and brown earth-tones from the interior of the cup bouncing around in it! Makiko’s work is always breathtaking, and I’m stoked to have another of her pieces in my teaware collection!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DPKVVG8EnqG/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ERH52dK5L8

Gongfu!

I stopped by Parcours Ceramique this weekend and picked up this gorgeous kyusu from Chao Ceramica and teacup from Natanya Nerenberg – even though they have different finishes, I think they work pretty well together as a set!! For my first time brewing with both, I’m steeping up a session of Gyokuro Asanoka (from a recent tea order) paired with some fresh figs, white chocolate with different embedded fruits and nuts, & some red wine infused goat cheese!

I’ve been a lot more exploratory with gyokuro lately, and this was probably one of the best I’ve tasted. It was really rich and unctuous with such strong, well-defined notes of sweet corn, hazelnut oil, and fresh summer peaches with an overarching brothy, umami top note. With the expansion of the green tea, the pot ended up being the PERFECT size for this cup, and all of my little treats made such good nibbles between each steep. Goat cheese and gyokuro is one of my favourite tea and cheese pairings because of how it draws out the buttery notes of the tea, and I found the white chocolate and assorted nuts only doubled down on that aspect!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DPMvXrdEod7/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrXzvVQBRMo

I’m still finishing off the ridiculous amount of green tea I bought this spring. Camellia Sinensis had two versions of Meng Ding Gan Lu this year, this being the first. The product description matched the one on this page almost exactly, so I’m including my tasting note here. I steeped 3 g of leaf in 250 ml of 185F water for 4 minutes, resteeping as needed until the tea faded.

The dry aroma is of nuts, bread, sweet corn, and flowers. The first steep has notes of hazelnut, bread, corn, kale, spinach, butter, and faint florals. This tea is fairly vegetal right off the bat. Further steeps reveal slightly more florals, plus grass, minerals, and what Togo calls lime. The tea is rather drying. The final steeps are grassy, nutty, mineral, and vegetal.

This is a nice enough green tea, but it gets too drying and vegetal to be a favourite. The hints of citrus and florals are fun, though.

This is the first Jin Jun Mei from Meng Ding I’ve come across, and I was curious enough to add 25 g to my last order. At around $20 CAD, it was much cheaper than the Zheng Shan Tang Jin Jun Mei from Lapsangstore I’ve had on my bucket list for a while, which comes in at an eye-watering US$155 for 50 g. I steeped 6 g of this much more humble tea in 120 ml of 195F water for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma of these black and gold fuzzy leaves is of heady roses, dark chocolate, and malt. The first steep features heady, realistic rose backed by bread, malt, dark chocolate, and brown sugar. I get more dark chocolate and some tannins in round two. The rose persists through the next couple steeps, with the addition of honey in the background. In steeps five and six, the rose starts to fade, leaving a tea with notes of bread, dark chocolate, malt, honey, and minerals. The tea is also a bit drying. By the eighth steep, the florals are evident but not specifically rosy. The final few steeps feature bread, malt, honey, earth, minerals, wood, and tannins.

As someone who enjoys floral teas, I was quite happy with this nontraditional Jin Jun Mei. The real JJM is supposed to have a strong rose component, and this fits that profile. Most affordable JJM emphasize malt, honey, and chocolate. These flavours can be nice, but there are lots of chocolatey teas out there that aren’t Jin Jun Mei. Though some might find it too perfumey, I like this tea and it seems to be high quality. I need to go through my tea museum to find the two other Jin Jun Mei I bought from this vendor back in 2023 or 2024 to see if they’re as good.

Gongfu!

This heicha is so thick and full-bodied with bold notes of forest undergrowth, incense, beet root, leather, wet potting soil, and petrichor. Undertones of warming and numbing spices, like clove, build as the session progresses, and the finish always hits you with a solid dose of decaying wood and cooling camphor. There’s something cozy and comforting about it, but also this quiet grandness that’s hard to put into words.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSTNv5wkq59/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fqk2DfIkMY