Choicest Tea

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Recent Tasting Notes

5

This tea is AWFUL. I was looking for a simple afternoon black tea, but what I got was something that tasted like bonito flakes and seaweed. Some people might be into that, but not me.

Flavors: Hot Hay, Seaweed

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 4 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 6 OZ / 177 ML

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95

Lichee tea is amongst my favorite black teas. It’s robust, loaded with caffeine, earthy, and just a plain great tea.

Today was cold and snowy. Before starting my car this morning, I wanted to make a good strong cup of tea (and something with a caffeine kick), so I grabbed this. I figured that it’d be a nice way to begin the morning, and was a good re-steep for an afternoon pick-me-up.

Flavors: Earth

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 3 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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1
drank Golden Dragon by Choicest Tea
14 tasting notes

I was very disappointed by this tea as the pu’er had an unpleasant rotting taste and tons of stems. I found that it would serve better as a flower pot with its pretty metal container.

Flavors: Earth

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99
drank Lichee Black by Choicest Tea
7 tasting notes

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99
drank Lichee Black by Choicest Tea
7 tasting notes

I am lucky enough to live close to an asian super market and shop there consatanty so running into this was inevitable. This is the first loose black tea I tasted that was almost 7 years ago and I still love this stuff especialy on a cold day.

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drank Lichee Black by Choicest Tea
2887 tasting notes

Working on a sipdown of this one … it gets props for taking abuse. Dumped some water in my trusty Hot Shot, forgot that I had done so until it cooled, and tried a three minute steep in almost tepid water. It was still fresh and a touch fruity.

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drank Lichee Black by Choicest Tea
2887 tasting notes

What’s left of this little packet from Michelle had sifted down to the realm of half-packages in my big black tea basket aand looked lonely.

As is the fate of plastic packets that have been canoodling with other lonely plastic packets, this one has likely lost a little strength from its heyday. So I still can’t isolate what gives lichee it’s licheness. Getting sort of a pleasant fruit cocktail afterglow as I drink. The black tea base is nicely balanced, too.

With all that said, this is good stuff! (Good stuff is often defined by the fact that the entire tumbler is gone before my five-minute commute is over.)
One that’s comfortable for “heavy drinking,” not just sipping.

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drank Lichee Black by Choicest Tea
2887 tasting notes

Got to treat myself to a lingering morning cuppa (took a couple hours off to be supervisory parent at our first college bookstore run—-but don’t get me started) and this was my tea o’choice.

I’m still trying to figure out what I’m tasting in the lychee that makes it lychee; but it’s sweet and light and balanced nicely by whatever black base the Choicest folks chose to match it with.

(OK…I have to say it: do we really need three purchased textbooks for “The University Experience” required freshman orientation course? I learned how to study for free. There. I said it.)

Bonnie

AMEN! 3 books for Orientation?! You jest?! So who’s complaining about the price of tea in comparison with the price of education?!

mpierce87

I hate how universities in general like to pile on the textbook requirements. I had a grad course last semester that required 4 different, and not cheap, books. Madness!

Bonnie

Let’s all write textbooks and get rich!

ashmanra

Just drove middle daughter through the campus to show her where to park, where to buy her books, etc. Infuriating that they are FORCED to take a course called Study Success Skills and pay for it, when they learned all of that when they wrote their ninth grade research paper. And the price of books! Ay yi yi!

Alphakitty

My professors got around that by just scanning sections of the books if we didn’t need the whole thing, it was pretty nice! Textbooks can be killer, they $200-500 a semester for me and on a tight student budget that’s brutal.

gmathis

Thankfully, they have a rental program, which I know saves a bundle, but there are still “mandatory purchase titles.” I think that’s my beef with the orientation thing - you learn to be a student by being a student, yes?

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drank Lichee Black by Choicest Tea
2887 tasting notes

I couldn’t find this one, but if it’s listed/spelled differently, I’ll be happy to correct.

Living in the largely rural Midwest, our “exotic” fruit section in the produce area isn’t, and I wouldn’t know a lychee if you conked me on the head with it. So I wasn’t sure what to sniff out or taste for in this nice sample from Michelle.

What I am getting is a pleasant black tea base with a little honey-ish sweetness. I erred on the side of caution and used just a rounded teaspoon to a 12-ounce tumbler, so it may just not be prepared strongly enough to get a good lychee vibe, whatever that may be.

Fortunately, there’s more in the pouch to experiment with, and regardless, I like the way this tastes!

Michelle

Glad you like it! I’m not a huge fan, so if you want the rest of the tin, it’s yours :)

gmathis

Cool! No hurry at all.

Michelle

I’ll send it your way then. I got it myself in a swap, so I’m just passing the love on :)

gmathis

Just for the record, Steepsters are some of my favorite people on the planet (sorry, family and my fifth graders bump you for first and second ;). Sometimes long-term sites and social connections degenerate into a bunch of contentious and cranky backbiters. I certainly haven’t seen evidence of it here.

Michelle

:) It’s so true, though. I can honestly say that I’ve never met a community so welcoming and friendly as this one! Tea people really are the best kinds of people.

ashmanra

I tried lychee that my daughter brought home from the Asian market and it tastes like bathroom cleaner to me. And looks like de-orbed eyeballs. But I tried Harney’s Lychee Black Tea and it was delicious! I thought the fruit in it tasted more like roses than anything, and it certainly didn’t evoke cleaning fluid at all! :)

K S

@ashmanra, lol you sure make this sound frightening!

Emilie

A lot of Asian markets have these little jelly cups that are lychee flavored, they’re really good!

ashmanra

K S: LOL! It isn’t just me! My daughter still calls it eyeball fruit. She tossed it out the back door at my mother’s house where she lived for a while after my mom died. The people who came to look at the house to buy it were momentarily horrified by the sight of the shriveled eyeballs on the back lawn. Ha ha! They figured out what it was fairly quickly. GMathis should get some and scatter them around the zombie bunny! :)

K S

We have gmathis exotic food aisle. Having never seen lychee, I can only imagine the horror of walking into that back yard! Eeek.

gmathis

I have seen the funky little jelly cups at our Asian/import/health food place.

For the record, we are still terrified of getting rid of the zombie bunny. He has been moved to the carport, and the bucket of whatever perennial grass he was in is now stone dead. Looks more threatening than ever!

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99

I bought this tin of tea from my local asian supermarket. Trying new teas is so much fun and I couldn’t pass up the cute pink unique tin. I hope this is the same one you tried, because on the tin it says both “Choicest Tea” and also “Whole Dragon”. But it says “LICHEE CHINA BLACK TEA” on the front all the same.

This is my favorite “go-to” tea. Perfect for those times when I just need a quick cup of tea without a lot of extra bells and whistles. It’s dark enough to wake me up in the morning but the flavor is light with a hint of sweet from the lychee.

Both the smell and the taste of the tea is very clean and light. Sometimes I add some cream as I do with most of my black teas and though it isn’t necessary, it’s really good!

The flavors of the tea can be enhanced by adding more leaves. It definitely brings out the darker flavors if you do it this way. Just have fun with it.

Preparation
3 min, 0 sec

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