Kusmi Tea

What’s this? A new Kusmi? Where did that come from, how did this happen?

Well, actually I do know what happened. See, I was walking home from work this afternoon. The distance between the hospital where I work and the train station is short enough that I can conveniently walk and long enough that it actually feels like taking a proper walk to do so. As I was passing this department store, I heard this tiny metallic voice.

“Halp, halp!”

Puzzled, I decided to go and investigate. After all, it sounded like someone was in trouble. I went inside and followed the tinny little voice.

“Halp!” through the perfume and makeup section.

“Halp!” through the ladies’ undies and shoes.

“Halp!” past the chocolatiers’ counters.

“Halp, halp!” as I finally reached the shelves with the store’s Kusmi selection. It was definitely coming from around here. And then I saw it. A 125g tin of smoky earl grey, bouncing up and down among the other tins. “I iz here! I iz here!”

That’s the first time a tea tin has ever spoken to me! So I went closer, wondering what was going on here. “Are you talking to me?” I asked it stupidly.

“Da odda tins, dey’s meen to me! U haz to buy me!” it begged. “Pwease! I can haz outta here? I gives u mah tea leafs!”

A talking tea tin. I’ve never seen anything like it. Obviously, I couldn’t just leave it there all alone being bullied by the other larger tins. I had to help it out. I’m sure you all would have done the same. So I decided right then and there that I would rescue this poor tin. I would even have done so without the payment of its tea leaves, but it wouldn’t hear of it.

Truth be told, I’m not really all that fond of Earl Grey. It’s okay if it’s all I can get, but it’s not something I otherwise seek out. This does have the advantage of also being smoky, which is definitely something I do seek out. Perhaps the smoke might actually save the otherwise not very attractive bergamot for me.

The leaves as well as the steeped tea have a pretty strong aroma or equal parts smoke and bergamot. These two things are actually blended really well, and while I can detect both of them in the aroma, I can pick it apart and say ‘this is smoke’ or ‘this is bergamot’. They really are completely melted together.

I’ve had this one before, actually, last year when the boyfriend and I were in Paris visiting friends who lived there at the time. I wasn’t in a position then to pay that much attention to the cup, though, but I remembered the fact that it existed and I did apparently pay sufficient attention to it to decide to give it a more thorough go later on if ever I got the chance. So I’ve been on the lookout for it ever since.

The bergamot and the smoke works really well together in the aroma, but in the flavour it comes across as a bit strange. Again I can pick out both flavours, but they’re not as well meshed here as in the aroma. I’m put in mind of some sort of smoked citrusfruit if you can imagine that. Bizarre, isn’t it?

There is definitely a whole lot of bergamot in this, but it’s surprisingly smooth. Usually, with strongly flavoured Earl Greys (and regular ones as well, often) I don’t find the bergamot very pleasant. For me bergamot has a tendency to taste extremely dusty. Imagine sweeping a floor that hasn’t seen a broom in years. The sort of task where you wear something protective over your clothes and a face mask because it’s so incredibly dusty. That’s the sort of dust I’m talking about here, and I can’t for the life of my understand how anybody can find that so wonderful when there are so many other better teas to choose from.

Smoke on the other hand is right up my alley. Lapsang Souchong is one of my favourites, not just because of the smokyness, but also because of the fruity sweetness that almost always accompanies the smoke. A smoky tea is just not the same without that, and even with the heavy-handed bergamot in this one, the sweet note is actually still there. Amazing, isn’t it?

So a combination then of sweetness, bergamot and smoke. It turns into a really rather fresh sort of flavour. Almost sort of pseudo-minty, weirdly, although you will probably relieved that it isn’t actually mint, but it sort of leads the mind in the direction of some kind of minty smoke. Oh, I know what it reminds me of! Have you ever had a cup of LS shortly after brushing your teeth? That’s the sort of thing.

That didn’t make it sound any less bizarre, did it?

It is a bit weird, but surprisingly it’s also quite nice. If I’m to drink Earl Grey this is the one I want. My perfect Earl Grey, apparently, is apparently not a real Earl Grey. I can’t say that I’m surprised that it would turn out to be a smoky one. Perfect Earl Grey or not, though, it still isn’t something I would necessarily choose over my established favourites.

At any rate, drinking this is hardly a chore when combined with the fact that I rescued the little tin from all the other meanie tins.

(I swear that’s really what happened! No, really!)

This tea is said to make you eliminate toxins and clean your sistem, iN MY PARTICULAR CASE i NOTED NO DIFFERENCE, it is very herbal and strongly citrused, It needs to be very hot, so you can steep it correcty, otherwise it makes a weak tea, It was a present and I love it, overall is a nice tasting tea ….. very very lemony and green tea is very present in this one.

Good lord, people. I have been bound and bleeding determined to get the perfect steep out of this, to get as close as humanly possible to making the delicious scent of this tea match the actual taste of it. I kept getting cups that just weren’t cutting it.

I finally went out and bought a tea thermometer to make sure I had the temperature just right. I’ve also been fiddling with the right steeping device – my regular strainers kept letting bits of tea through that I could never quite strain out, so they kept steeping and soured the cup, but the disposable filters didn’t let the tea expand properly. So this morning I basically combined the best of the two – I tucked an open tea ball (well, an acorn-shaped strainer) into a reusable bamboo filter bag, so the tea could expand without any bits escaping. I put the tea in at 160 degrees and gave it exactly three minutes.

After all that, I’m calling this a success! I’m definitely getting the most almond flavor out of this of any prior steep. It’s still definitely more of a green tea flavor than I was hoping for, given that the scent suggests you’ll be drowning in marzipan. The almond is there, though. I think I just keep expecting that teas will be naturally sweet and then I’m put off when they’re not. Maybe I just need to admit defeat and start adding sugar already.

It pains me to admit the success of this green tea steeping method (open tea ball + reusable filter bag) because it’s such a pain in the butt, but I think it genuinely does allow for the best cup since the leaves get to expand properly but there are no bits left floating around to keep steeping. Green tea, thou art the cruelest mistress!

This is a tea that I’ve wanted to try for the longest time! Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending me a sampling!

Yum! This is good. The chocolate and spice are in good balance – not too spicy, not even as spicy as I thought it would be, but, I like the level of spiciness here. It would be nice if there was more chocolate (there is never enough chocolate!) but it is fairly strong.

Have you ever had a “wall” that you just can’t get past?
I heard about writerblocks etc. but I never heard about a tea"wall". You know, like suddenly losing the strength to drink tea. Yup I had the tea “wall” or “block”. For like a month … or two. Maybe three, I lost count.

But today I took some tea with me to school. Among them ANASTASIA. I took my first sip of tea today and the only sentence that went through my head was:“Welcome back color”.
(It’s a name on a album by Tina Dickow). I don’t like the song or the lyrics, but the title is fitting for that little moment of tea for the first time in months.

I don’t remember writing a note for this tea so let me tell you about it:
It’s a black tea, smell’s of bergamot and other spices… But it taste exactly like Earl Grey. Just a bit sweeter and bitter. If you had to pick one of the two – then pick this one just for the can. It’s prettier.

I’m always nervous trying green teas, but this one is really awesome. It’s really light and is not overpowering. Steep for 2 minutes and there is no need to add anything to it.

Though this is a tasty green tea, I don’t taste the almond at all.
Beautiful packaging, but unfortunately, tastes like a rather average green tea.

Was thinking of something light for my post-dinner work… I was looking for Green St. Petersburg but then I realized there was this Rose Green Tea in my cupboard! It was exactly what I wanted because it’s really really light… the steeped tea was almost a clear liquid! The green tea was deliciously refreshing, though I wish the floral note could be stronger.

One of the less impressive Kusmi Teas. The dry leaves smell wonderfully citric and fruity, yet after steeping there is nothing really remarkable about the flavour… I am puzzled, really. Overall I won’t say it’s a bad tea – but I did have high hopes because it’s from Kusmi Tea!

This is my other Kusmi purchase from yesterday. The caramel being the first one, in case anybody hadn’t noticed. JacquelineM voiced the optimistic hope that the appearance of the Kusmi caramel post meant that the missing package had shown up, but alas. I have, however, found a place where they have a large selection so I went in and bought the bare necessity (caramel) and a curiousity (this one).

I’ve actually seen this one a long time ago when I was looking for a strawberry tea. The problem then was that what I wanted was a plain strawberry black and as I had never had a strawberry green before I had the hardest time imagening that. And even so, you can’t really make that substitution between blacks and greens. Two entirely different beasts.

But then Jillian shared a strawberry green with me from … uh … I can’t actually remember where it was from now, but I found it surprisingly pleasant and it brought me back to the thought of this one and finally made me want to try it.

The green base is a chinese sencha which seems to be a more or less standard green for flavouring. It seems like that’s the one most flavoured greens (that actually reveal the base) are based on. I can’t say I have any complaints there. I’ve come to the conclusion that sencha is my preferred green. I haven’t met my perfect plain sencha yet, but we’ll get to that later.

This one has a very strong strawberry aroma. It doesn’t smell synthetic when you open the tin, it smells very real. It’s got that specific sort of tang to the aroma that you also find when you smell a real strawberry and that little bit of astringency when eating one. (That slight astringency manages to surprise me every single time I have fresh strawberries for some reason)

Some of you will perhaps recall a small discussion we had once regarding the flavouring of brands such as Kusmi or Mariage Freres, and how it seemed like they were generally more subtle in their flavouring compared to similarly flavoured brands. We decided it must be a french thing. Do you remember?

The aroma of these leaves, when dry, do NOT have that frenchness. It’s 100% strawberry and a lot of it.

After steeping the aroma turns a little more complex. I can actually smell the sencha now, and the strawberry is more subdued. It’s still there, but it doesn’t scream ’I’M A STRAWBERRY!!!’ quite so much as it did before. It smells more like sweeties now than actual fruit.

Curious taste! There’s a small disclaimer here in that I didn’t really pay attention while steeping so I actually gave it a whole minute rather than just the 30 seconds I usually start a green on. For those who wonder how I can get anything interesting out of such short intervals, I use a lot of leaf.

Anyway, curious. There are strong sencha flavours here. I can find the spinach-y green note and it does indeed come with that same dark pine green colour association that I’m used to from sencha. I wonder if I might not actually rather like this sencha if I had it plain.

But what about the strawberry? It’s there. It has just regained that frenchness I mentioned before. It’s not overwhelming in the taste, but it’s very easy to find. This doesn’t just taste like sweeties or ‘strawberry tea’. It tastes like tea WITH strawberry, and therein lies an enormous difference.

Imagine the flavour of sencha. Imagine it as a sort of networked structure. A large flat expanse of pine green flavour, but with holes and cavities all over. That’s where the strawberry is. At first glance it’ll look nice and uniform, but when you look closer, there are bright red dots all over the place. That’s what it tastes like.

I’m not sure, however, that this is my perfect strawberry flavoured tea. I think it might be my perfect strawberry green tea, but all in all, I don’t really think my perfect strawberry tea isn’t black. I really wish Kusmi would provide me with a plain strawberry black.

These days I’m trying to put some thought into my ‘standard panel’ of teas. The ones that I’ll always have in my cupboard. A C Perch’s Lapsang Souchon and their raspberry oolong, for example. Kusmi’s caramel, Nothing But Tea’s orange pu-erh, TeaSpring’s Tan Yang Te Ji (♥)… And so on and so forth. In spite of the above, this one might be a candidate there as well, but I haven’t decided on that yet.

It’s like Anastasia without the lemon note, which means Earl Grey with a kind of orange/mandarin flavour. An elegant tea that goes great with traditional afternoon tea :)

Love it! A very aromatic and delicate tea. You can clearly taste the rice flavour even though it’s actually quite light. It’s good cos your mouth will not taste of fried rice, as in the case of some stronger genmaicha, after drinking! This tea will definitely go well with the Japanese sweets (wagashi) I bought from Muji!

This was a bit of a letdown. Supposedly a lady grey type, except IMO good old cheap lady grey from a teabag is much better – a more interesting balanced flavour (less bergamot I think) and more intense.

Love the unique lemon/lime scent of this tea, which sets it apart from classic Earl Grey. I’ve always love Kusmi Tea’s russian blends and this is definitely a classic.

It tastes rather like Tea Forte’s Vienna Cinnamon, if my memory serves me right. The notes I get are mainly almond and cinnamon; it doesn’t taste like Christmas cake to me because the vanilla is missing! I am not a fan of spices… but this tea does remind me of Christmas so it’s perfect for my post-holiday depression. :P

Can’t agree more with Angrboda’s review… I instantly thought about St. Petersburg when I first tried Prince Vladimir, but then I was kinda surprised by this association because the 2 teas didn’t really taste THAT similar. The main difference is of course, the spicy and slightly zesty flavour. Compared to St. Petersburg, this is probably a more exciting tea, but I guess I like the fruity flavour of St. Petersburg more ;)

Love this tea. Chocolate and I mean real chocolate tasting not some fake stuff and spice, but just the right amount. This is a tea that I got from the TTB and I have loved it ever since.

Sweet Love’s spicy aroma pulls you closer and your tastebuds anticipate the ginger, cardamom, cinnamon and pink peppercorn setting them ablaze. Yet, the liquorice roots add a smooth and very sweet layer to this chai’s flavor profile that needs no additional sweeteners.

For those chai stalwarts who prefer spicy to sweet, Sweet Love is exactly what its name implies. This black tea pairs excellently with dessert and definitely adds a romantic air to its atmosphere (read: keep used leaves as potpourri).

Usually I’m not a big fan of decafs, but this one is surprisingly nice. It’s very flavored like the non decaf version of Earl Grey. It’s great to accompany it with some milk. And great when you want a strong tea without the loosing sleep at night if you drink it in the evening.