Mark T. Wendell

I decided to get all my Christmas cards done this morning.
Got the cards out and found my address book, and then went to fill up my tea kettle.
No water. What!??!
Apparently, my landlord came to fix some issues with our well and turned off the water.
Well, thought I, it should not take long, I will just get at these cards.
After a bit, when my card stack grew and my hand had a cramp in it, I thought surely they must be done.
It had been two hours and he was still out there.
I was starting to have a full on panic. You know…when you realize you have no water, suddenly the things you want to do most involve water usage.
Anyway, here it is, edging onto 1:30 pm and I am finally having my first cuppa of the day.
All my cards are written up and addressed and ready for the mailbox.
I have not had a genmachia in awhile, and when I placed an order with this company I realized I had a real hankering for Genmaicha, and I had not tried Mark T. Wendell’s as of yet.
Genmaicha is not a tea I drink every day, and sometimes a week or two will go by with me not even thinking twice about it, but I like to keep it on hand, because when I want some, I do not like to be without.
Mmmmm. When I poured the water over the leaves that cozy, toasty, nutty odor enveloped my nostrils.
Gosh, I missed this stuff.
Taste is more delicate than some of the genmaicha’s I have tried.
And the green tea is more sweet than a bit of a bite at the end, like in the others.
Tea color is a bright yellow.
Overall, very happy to have some of this tea in my cupboard as well as most of all in my cup:)
Will drink this more and see if it grows on me, at this point there is some other genmaicha’s I have tried that I enjoyed a little better than this one. This is still quite good though.
Happy Monday, Ya’all!

I am currently eating carrot sticks in the attempt to remind my body of a food besides the carbs I have been ingesting the last 24 hours and drinking this tea because…well, just because! I don’t need a reason to drink tea.
I am also browsing through a book I bought on my tablet called ‘How to speak like Jane Austen and Live like Elizabeth Bennet’ by Kaelyn Caldwell.
Its quite a delightful and fun little read.
Anywho, the name of this tea brought pine-y loveliness to mind and since its winter time and I live in the land of no trees (seriously) I had visions of snow covered pine trees in my head.
Well, I could have read the full description before my hurried purchase and I might have known that vision was incorrect.
However, despite all that, this tea is very tasty.
It’s smell reminds me very much of a Milk Oolong.
It smells creamy and nutty.
I am getting a bit of sugared nuts and whipped cream, with a roasted veggie note…perhaps parsnips?
Taste will remind you that this is an oolong, a nice sweet, bright vegetal taste cuts through the creamy aroma, rounding off to just a dash of dryness at the back of the tongue.
A lovely tea, indeed!
Perfect companion to a bit of reading and for tagging along to the workshop for a woodcraft project this afternoon.
Have a Happy Day, all you lovely people!

Tea #12 from HHTTB2

Ever had steamed green beans with slivered almonds and just a tiny drizzle of butter?

That is this tea.

Vegetal, slightly nutty, and sweet with a creamy mouthfeel.

Hello, all!
I have been absent as of late because I have been trying to dwindle down my ever growing tea supply.
Quite proud that I am down to approximatively 35 teas.
Since I have been doing so well, I treated myself to a few teas when I made a recent Christmas order.
And this delightful tea was one of those treats.
The dry leaves are dark in color and there is a crisp earthy-ness to the smell.
The tea brews up to a lovely amber orange.
The tea itself smells quite different than the leaves, there is still a earthy type odor, but what comes out more prevalently is warm notes of chocolate and a tinge of spice and bright citrus.
Taste is a milder version of the smell.
A little spicy, slightly citrus, earthy chocolate.
Nice mouth feel.
Really is quite lovely and different Oolong.

This Earl Grey is my benchmark by which I measure other Earl Greys. I’ve found a few different better, I’ve found worse (much worse). I “inherited” a 1 pound tin from a friend who had to swear off caffeine and its kept me going for the past year. Keep it sealed in an airtight container, that’s the secret.
So this tea is a straight-up basic Earl Grey, no fancy citrus bits, no colorful cornflowers, just tea and bergamot. It has a high quality tea base…probably a blend, as I don’t get specific regional notes like Ceylon or Assam.

Tea #9 from the HHTTB

Decent cup of green tea. It smells like it will be bitter, if that makes sense, but it isn’t at all. It’s a bright and sweet green tea. I tend to favor a stronger vegetal flavor, but this is good too.

Mmm, this is quite tasty! Very smooth, with a slight bit of smokiness and a little sweetness, too. Definitely a nice afternoon pick-me-up! Sort of reminds me of a softer version of Cara M’s Sherlock fandom blend (Sherlock being a little spicier and less sweet). I shall have to do a side by side tasting of them at some point.

this is a GOOD jasmine tea!

i put a couple of pearls in my tiny cup and steeped for about a minute and it had unfurled!

jasmine scent is good-strong, not overpowering
jasmine taste is good-strong too. there was an almost imperceptible bitter aftertaste, will have to steep for a shorter time, maybe? still it fared better than the other jasmine i had steeped earlier and gave up on hot-steeping. the other jasmine also had that slight bitter after taste even after cold-steeping :(

this is my first jasmine pearl though so no points of comparison but this is the best jasmine i’ve had! haha

one time, i will have to steep at the same time as my other jasmines.

will update this upon re-steep <3

update: the 2nd steep normalized the flavor and i liked it the best. was able to steep about a couple times more of this goodness :)

Oh hey, this was actually on my shopping list! It caught my eye again on the SWAPs board, thank you momo for sending this to me. I find it amusing that three of the five people reviewing this tea (not including myself) passed it on to each other until it came to me over the last two years. Which explains why as soon as I brewed it I got a familiar odor that I have a very hard time describing but comes from teas that have been passed along or perhaps been in plastic bags too long, no matter if they are green, oolong or black. Sigh.

The dry leaf smells better than the wet, the second infusion is better than the first (which I had to toss, so lets just consider it a rinse shall we?) and the tea tastes much better cool than it does hot or warm. If I let it go cold I get a nice powder sugar/tree lichen/mushroom taste/feel that lingers on the tongue and that’s about the only nice thing I can say. I get “mellow brew”, but not the full body or bouquet, there’s a bit of spice and the weird age notes are sharp at times. ::shurg::

Tis not Keemun and has lost the majority of it’s former Formosa oolong mojo that other tea drinkers took note of. So Taiwanese Assam: win, Formosa Keemun: loose. Could be the age but I’m unlikely to acquire a new batch. I also don’t know it this was fine cut to begin with or if I just got the dusty bottom of a bag of full leaf, but tis something to consider. Oh well, thanks for letting me try it momo. The good news? I have two Keemun’s from Butiki to try!

Thanks TeaEqualsBliss!

I’ve had a pretty full day, going to the allergist, mailing stuff, picking up a prescription, eating a $10 lunch (!!! never again), buying a couple dresses for my Halloween costume to only find I might have an even better dress at home already, and then learning that if you walk around Goodwill with a hockey stick, people get the hell out of your way! That’s for my boyfriend’s costume, not me, don’t think it works with a dress. I’m gonna be a Bond girl gone zombie.

And then best of all someone bought SIX lip balms from me, someone I don’t even know!!! YAY the ads work! So that was thrilling.

Now it is tea time. I should have probably got out a regular keemun since I’ve been wanting one for days, and the other day I had one that was more like lapsang because it wasn’t made properly (not by me!). This looks a lot like a Taiwanese oolong instead.

I steeped it in my gaiwan, 3 steeps of 15 seconds, 20 seconds, and 25 seconds and put all those steeps in one mug.

This is…weird.

It doesn’t taste like Keemun at all, it tastes like a roasted oolong. And when it comes to Taiwanese oolongs, I’m just not a fan of those types. Baked wood chips. That’s all I get. I think I’m going to add honey to it.

It’s such a pretty color though. I wish I could paint with it.

Well, honey makes it better but it’s still not my type of flavor underneath it all. I wish I could get into it but I just can’t.

I’ve had this tea for several years, but never wrote a note on it. This tea is full bodied with a nice, light smoke. Truely something I enjoy for “Afternoon Tea”. Brews quickly and can be overdone. Cheese and Crackers with VA, mmmmm.

Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tisane.

It tastes very crisp and minty. Very minty! Cooling and vibrant. This particular Guayusa sold by Mark T. Wendell is a Runa brand. Here’s my full-length review of it: http://sororiteasisters.com/2011/07/23/peppermint-guayusa-from-runa/

I’m glad the review for this one posted when it did … this is perfect for the change of seasons:

http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/2412/tea-review-mark-t-wendell-formosa-keemun-3/

I’m not one of those people that will spend a lot of money on green teas because, case in point, you can get a very satisfying green tea that hits all the notes—sweet, light, pleasingly vegetal—for a very reasonable price, from the always reliable Mark T. Wendell company.

A cool foggy morning, waiting for the sun to shine and enjoying a gut-warming cup of one of my faves. My new favorite band, The Futurebirds streaming on Spotify and the kids off with my wife for an hour—a bit of calm plucked from what promises to be a busy afternoon of yard maintenance.

The smell of wood smoke ignites some primal pavlovian need inside of me, especially on this bone-chilling day. The beautiful red hue of this tea begs for a glass mug and the deep, mellow taste never disappoints. This will always be a part of my inner circle of teas.

One of my go-to teas. Very smoky but always mellow—never bitter, which attests to the quality of the base leaf Hu Kwa is made from. The red liquor always sparkles.

I’m not sure how to rate this one yet – might have to spend some more time with it. I guess one could say it’s dew-like – there is more to it – just can’t put my finger on it…

Taking a break from household reconstruction to flit online and discovered this review is posted: http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/2213/tea-review-mark-t-wendell-hu-kwa-lapsang-souchong-2/

Incidentally, the cup in the profile picture survived the storm; it’s handle didn’t. :(

Picked up a pouch for future review at www.itsallabouttheleaf.com. I am not a lapsang fan by any means, but this one taught me that not all lapsang souchong blends taste like burnt bacon, either. Nice substitute for a crackling fireplace on a cloudy afternoon with the remains of a blizzard on the ground.

The smokiness is something you learn to love or hate, but this tea is smoother with more balanced briskness than other lapsang souchongs. Join an online tasting of this tea: http://walkerteareview.com/?p=2373