Talbott Teas

I’m just not having luck with Talbott Teas. Which is disappointing because I’ve seen some logs about some yummy sounding ones but my track record is abysmal enough with them that I just can’t buy any on the off chance they’ll be tasty. Prior experience is proving they aren’t.

This one is no exception. The smell is woodsy and malty, a lot like a Dalmih Italian Almond Ceylon I had previously (and I think I logged here? I have some catching up to do, I think), though not quite as thick and syrupy smelling. The taste isn’t near as thick, either. It’s starchy, a little flat, woodsy and has a faint tail note of something brightly Darjeeling-ish. And that’s pretty much all it gives me. Honestly, it’s pretty dull.

I suppose that’s my problem. It’s just dull. Cardboardy, but not in a happy way. Flat. Starchy. Woody. They all tie back to cardboard and that’s just not sexy. It’s boring. Sigh. Oh well, at least I’m out of this one.

Tea of the morning…..

Now I am on to the last tea of my Talbott’s gift box. This one is still good, but again, not as good as the Chocolate Almond Allure. Definitely notes of strawberry and dark chocolate on Talbott’s rich tea base. I may even try milk with these at some point. I think the base can handle it well.

I have been pondering if I thought the regular price of the gift set would be worth it to me…… That is a tough one. I think if I had to pay full price for these, I would pick just the favorite of them and get a single tin if shipping were not an issue. However, for such a good deal (as the three tin gift set on clearance!), it is great that I have three teas that are good and enjoyable. Am I likely to repurchase any of the three? Probably not, unless the stars align for me again.

Usual mug method.

Tea of the morning…..

I am trying to decide what to cut and what to keep, and have a few that I need to try again as it has been so long. While I doubt I will try much more from Talbott, this is definitely drinkable, and even enjoyable. Smooth black tea base that does not fight the flavors, light caramel flavor with a hint of chocolate. Pretty sure it is not quite hefty enough to stand up to milk or cream. I don’t think it is worth the price for what they charge regular price for a tin of this, but if you can score it in a gift set on sale, it is worth it.

Usual teapot method.

Tea of the afternoon……

I was almost going to de-stash this one. However, I am needing a source of indulgence that won’t kill me in calories. This actually works very well. I think I need to bump up the rating a little! Notes of cream and caramel, and maybe a little chocolate on a cocoa-ey tea base. Yummy!

Usual teapot method.

Second tea of the afternoon……

What can I say? I had to try this one today, too. I don’t like it quite as well as the Chocolate Almond Allure, but it is still pretty good. Notes of dark chocolate and caramel. The thing I do like about Talbott’s tea base: It is rich and deep tasting. It has made the chocolate notes in the two I have tried so far seem very much like the dark chocolate variety. Since the base is so flavorful, the added flavors can be light and make a very relaxing tea. They definitely are not overdone, or underdone. Just right.

Usual mug method.

Tea of the afternoon…..

Another long one. If you just want to read about the tea, you are more than welcomed to skip to the end………

In reading reviews of this tea, I knew it was one I wanted to try. I perused Talbott Teas website, and saw this was $12 a 2.25 oz tin. I was not shocked, yet, until shipping calculated out to be about $9 to get to me. Then I started looking for places that sold Talbott’s Teas near me. And I was in luck because Dillard’s (a local-ish department store) sells them. I knew I would be heading to the mall in about a month from that time to help set up for a Girl Scout Mall Overnight, and figured I would check then. (And I need a good perk to get me through this scout activity…the girls love it, but I don’t like the mall much on a normal day….)

I was really lucky! It turns out that this is sold at Dillard’s in a gift set containing a tea spoon, honey sticks, 35 fillable paper filters, and three chocolate teas. Chocolate Almond Allure, Caramel Sundae Escape, and Chocolate Strawberry Temptation are the teas. The retail cost of the set is $40, but it is on clearance. I scored it for $16 and some change. So, being the weakling that I am, I bought 2 sets. (I also scored three awesome LeCreuset Stoneware baking dishes at near 75% off…so incredibly thrilled about them…..almost more than the tea, if that is possible!)

This is really good! Dark chocolate notes with a touch of almond. Really worth what I paid for it, and I can’t wait to try the others! Such a happy tea day!

Usual mug method.

Smells like Chamomile toned down by a very gentle mint.It’s pleasant enough just not in the same category as Talbott Teas other offerings…I find it completely different from their trade marked styles. I have been “sitting on this one for a while” and see they didn’t add it to their catalog. I think I agree with that decision. It’s not bad – it’s just not memorable either.

Today is not going my way. My notices page won’t open (and not being able to clear the little red 20 is annoying the piss out of me), my house smells of grain mash (the husband is making beer – the smell in itself isn’t bad, but after three plus hours, it gets a little (okay, a lot) overwhelming), one of my kitties is stoned out of her mind because she has a very bad bladder infection (apparently she didn’t respond to antibiotic number one, but I still feel like a bad mommy for letting it get so bad) and I feel bored and fidgety. I need tea.

Sadly, I think I picked the wrong one with this one because apparently The Soho Earl wears a lot of perfume. Or uses a lot of citrus-scented cleaning products. The scent of this alone makes it somewhat difficult for me to drink. It just smells so artificial and wrong. Getting past the smell into the actual taste, though, and it’s okayish. Sweet, almost candied citrus with some orange peel bitterness thrown in (too much, actually, but at least the bitterness is realistic, unlike the rest of the flavor). It has a very noticeable orange-ish flavor. I say orange-ish, not bergamot, because bergamot seems a bit darker of a citrus flavor than this. This is more candy orange/citrus than sophisticated bergamot/citrus. Not quite those orange gummy slices you get at the gas station orange flavored. And now I’m thinking of those circus peanuts my parents used to always get at the gas station. I don’t think it tastes like those either, but for some reason my mind is screaming at me, “CIRCUS PEANUTS!!!! THEY’RE ORANGE!!! LIKE THIS TEA TASTES!!! CIRCUS PEANUTS!!!”

Must reign in my brain a bit….

Okay, this actually makes me think of Constant Comment, when I make it for iced tea for the husband. I don’t ever drink it, but this tea still reminds me of the smell. I can’t say I’m a fan of this one. Maybe the husband will like it enough to drink the rest.

This is superb. Cocoa and almonds aside, the tea itself is very excellent, now add in the perfect amount of cocoa and almonds. The cocoa is extremely mild and smooth- this doesn’t really taste like chocolate as much as you’d think. The almonds are very subtle and are merely there for miniscule nuances as a high note- nothing more, nothing less.

All in all, the tea leaves are ultra superb, the cocoa and almonds are in excellent ratio- what more can I possibly ask for? Nothing. Instant 100.

More random tea that is newly available in my grocery store. This one came in a Talbott Tea sampler box with six different teas, two teabags of each. The teabags are quite alright – they remind me a lot of Lupicia’s but they don’t seem quite as silky. They do have about as much tea per bag as Lupicia’s though. 3.1g for this one. Good job Talbott.

The smell reminds me of ROT’s Strawberry Chocolate herbal. I don’t think that one is a great tea, but I like it enough to buy it from the grocery store when I need something herbal-y so it’s decent enough. I suppose there are worse things to smell like.

Hmm. I think the ROT tastes better. At least it tastes more chocolate strawberry. This is mostly tea with a faint (super-faint) note of strawberry towards the end. The aftertaste has a sort of musty sock thing going on that, if you tilt your head and squint, might be considered somewhere in the chocolate family. Not a good part of the chocolate family but still, I’m feeling generous so I’ll count it.

The tea itself isn’t offensive or anything. It’s smooth and a little silky and mild with no astringency or bitterness. That’s nice. As it cools, almost to room temperature, more of the strawberry and chocolate flavors come out but it’s still not overly noticeable.

I can’t help but think that this wants to be a plus-chocolate type Marco Polo but it just doesn’t make it up there. Once it cools down quite a bit it’s closer in taste to the flavor of the ROT, but 1) honestly, that’s not something to aspire to and 2) the aftertaste still makes me think of wet socks. Not wet dirty socks, but still, wet socks.

So yeah, nice try but for once I think I prefer an herbal.

Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending some of this tea my way.

This has a lovely peach fragrance, although the peach flavor takes a few sips to really develop. The floral notes are very nice here and add a pleasant depth to the cup. The sencha is sweet, crisp and lightly astringent. Overall, a nice cuppa!

I feel like my taste buds are finally functioning properly again. And that makes me very happy, because now I can really taste the caramel and chocolate of this tea. And it tastes fantastic!

The tea is the strongest flavor, but the caramel and chocolate are not shy. It is smooth, rich and creamy. YUMMY!!!

ETA: I forgot to thank TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tea. Thanks!!!

I’ve tried this both hot and iced, and I have to say that neither blew me away. Yes, there’s hibiscus, a tiny bit of something that wants to be blueberry and a bit of peach. On a positive note, the dry leaf is quite nice. Small pieces of fruit and flower petals make it very pretty to look at! Thanks to TeaEqualsBliss for a sample!

This is just an okay tea. I thought that it sounded delicious in its description, but I’m honestly just tasting hibiscus.. rooibos with a whole lot of TART flavor! The sweetness that I’m wanting is mostly in the scent and a tiny bit at the tail end of the sip. I’ll finish the cup, but I’m not crazy about this tea. Thanks, TeaEqualsBliss!

I’m a sucker for tea with a fun twist. I love caramel and cacao but cacao overpowered the caramel that I wanted to savor so badly. (Can you tell I’m crazy about desserts). However, a good tea; like it best with vanilla Silk Soymilk.

This is one of the teas that Talbott is taste testing for possible addition down the road…

I can taste sunflower first followed by mint then some green tea and then other flower notes. It’s alright…a gently flavored green tea, I suppose…nothing overly memorable but it’s not too shabby either.

This is pretty good, despite the hibiscus in it. I added some sugar to it to offset the tartness of the hibiscus and it makes for a sweet yet tasty cup. I like the creaminess of the vanilla together with the strawberry taste.

It’s a nice cup, not my favorite from Talbott Teas but not terrible either.

This is one that Talbott is ‘testing’ and I will say I really like it! It’s a great tasting peppermint – plain and simple. I hope they add it to their line!!

I’m not going to lie: I’ve been avoiding Steepster. I’m just not having the fun with it that I used to. There’s a lot of nonfunctionality, and a lot of people complaining about nonfunctionality. That and I’m just not as tea-obsessed as I once was. I hardly looked at it over the holidays. Sorry if I missed anything major. I did come back to find that the cupboard sort feature is working again, so that’s awesome.

I did come back because I promised myself that I would do a taste-through of my cupboard from oldest tea to youngest. It helps me assess whether some old teas still have enough flavor to keep around, and also reminds me of everything in my cupboard, some of which I rarely get around to drinking. I am going to log notes on them to keep track. I did this at the beginning of last year, and it was fun (it also took me a really long time). The oldest tea in my cupboard this year is the same as it was last year, though looking back at my notes there are definitely a lot of old ones I sipped down last year.

So here it is, the oldest tea in my cupboard (#106). It’s probably… 3 years old? It’s hard to say. It still smells amazing while it’s brewing. It tastes pretty good. Not as good as it did when it was young, but pretty good. I have a decent amount of this at home still, and I will have to remember to brew it strong with milk and sugar, I think, to really get some flavor out of it. The almond-chocolate-caramel of this was always delicious, although I obviously don’t reach for it as frequently as I should if it was going to be a restock/cupboard staple.

ETA: Now that I think about it, this tea has got to be closer to 4 years old, or at least 3 and a half. I’ve got some ooooold teas.

Isn’t it satisfying when you go back to one of the teas you loved really early in your tea career, and it is still amazingly delicious? That is true of this tea. Just lucky to stumble across a good one early, I guess. This is so tasty: nutty and chocolatey in a really awesome way, with a light sweet caramel underneath. A chocolate tea that does it without chocolate chips! I love that. And even if this is an older tea, it is still very flavorful and aging well.

ETA: Wow, the first part of this tasting note must not have copied when I had to resubmit it. There was another paragraph! Anyway, that one basically said: This is the oldest tea in my cupboard, or at least the oldest continuous tea in my cupboard. I actually have two tins of it, and neither are the original that I got years ago.

Today is a lot cooler than it was forecasted to be, and a bit rainy, so I am hanging out at home, catching up on all the tasting notes I missed during the time period where I couldn’t “see more” notes. I rarely drink tea on the weekends for some reason, and certianly it is rare in the warm weather because I don’t have air conditioning.

But today I got home from birding this morning and I just really felt like having a pot of tea. I have two tins of this so I keep one at home and one with the rest of my stash. I really haven’t been drinking a lot of flavored tea lately. I had a disappointing cup of rose black tea yesterday that I didn’t even log because I’m not quite sure why it was so disappointing… possibly it was just old, possibly some of my tastes are changing and I just wasn’t as impressed with the base tea anymore.

I am glad to say that this one is still a favorite. I think the base tea on this is very well done, with perfect complimentary chocolate, caramel and almond flavors. Delicious and comforting.

The good news is that my jet lag seems to be subsiding. The bad news is that I seem to have picked up a cold bug on the plane. I have felt swollen tonsils and a cough since my second flight Monday, but it wasn’t very bad and I was hoping it would just go away. But this morning wasn’t very pleasant and I actually almost fainted at one point! So I am staying home today. Luckily I have a spare tin of this for home, so I have an nice pot of tea for the morning. One of my faves, and it’s comforting when I feel crappy.

Whenever I have to get up really early in the morning, I often feel wide awake when I first get up, but then a cLille of hours later I’ll crash and feel exhausted. Definitely happening this morning. I’m hoping my travel mug full of this tea will wake me up and get me ready for standing at the endless line at the Chinese consulate to pick up my visa.

Apparently I didn’t do a great job cleaning out this travel mug after the last time I used it with Todd&Holland Double Bergamot Earl Grey. Fortunately I like the flavors together and this reminds me that I wanted to try blending my own chocolate Earl (I’d use this tea [which would actually make it chocolate almond Earl] or the Tea Spot’s Organic Chocolate “O” for the chocolate part) since I wasn’t impressed with Upton’s. The bergamot left over in the travel mug didn’t last long, though, and for the most part this was just the tasty tea I rely on.

Another tea I have little to say about at this point. I love it, it’s one of my faves, and you can see other tasting notes to see why. Short story is that it’s chocolatey, almondy, caramelly, and has a nice black tea base that plays well with the flavors.

I feel like I’ve been leaning toward black teas lately, especially my favorite flavoreds, and today I realized that it might be because in a few weeks I will be in China and I subconciously think this will mean no more black tea. Of course it will likely not because I am going to try to pick up a couple teas including a gongfu black right when I get there so I can have them for my 3 week stay in Beijing. True, I won’t have flavored teas except for florals. I am glad I’m at a much better place in my tea journey than if I was taking this trip last year… at this time last year I didn’t like (nor was I interested in) any unflavored teas at all, really, and a trip to China would have just resulted in lots and lots of jasmine teas. Fortunately that’s no longer the case, and that’s definitely due to swaps on Steepster and Teavivres samples, which have been like a mini course in Chinese teas. Now my biggest problem is fitting it all in my luggage…