Tao Tea Leaf

mmmmm really glad i picked this one up during their boxing day sale. I miss my original sichuan caravan and this is a close enough replacement….puer + ginger. Sure it’s missing all the other good stuff BUT it was just what i wanted in a flavoured tea for today.

i picked this up again in my last Tao Order because i miss having sichuan caravan in my cupboard. This is similar in that it’s ginger and puerh but that’s as close as it gets. Still though, i enjoy ginger teas and this is a really nicely balanced ginger/puerh cup of tea.

I bought this as a sample from tao because my tea sister likes puerh and she likes ginger but she doesn’t usually like flavoured puerh (except sichuan caravan that needs to COME BACK NAAAO). So i figured maybe this would be one that she might enjoy.

As for me? I like this a bunch. It’s not drop everything omg this is the best damn tea ever, but it’s a little ginger-spicy and the base doesn’t get lost. I haven’t yet tried the samples of straight puerhs from tao but so far, these seem like good solid teas. I’m going to enjoy getting through more of these over the weekend (need to get to 200 after all…)

sipdown! that means i’m at 228….so getting to 200 by the end of the weekend should be totally doable as long as my other half doesn’t get my as sick as he is…but if i DO get sick..he’s going to the store to buy me this. this is what i want in a ginger tea…just enough citrus flavour to offset the intense ginger… and it’s caffeine free…AND my other half likes it…so he’s drinking this..and i’ll take the resteep… lol YAY! maybe it will help him get better!

Sample sipdown…it’s been a long day..and i’m still working so i’m having puerh at almost 11pm. yeah, that’s right. Why? because i’m stlil up for another hour or so…. I added in my order that came in while terri and i were competing, so new final count after i write my tasting note for the other tea i’m finishing off tonight.

But this tea? I love it! I picked it up as a sample in my recent tao leaf tea order so that i could try a few more of their teas and this is delicious! Better than expected. The puerh isn’t hiding behind the flavours and the vanilla is cutting through the mint to soften it a little. So even though this is just a little sample packet (tao’s samples are enough for a normal person cup, but most of his teas lend themselves to decent resteeps…) i am really enjoying this. I can only hope that the boring basic vanilla black that i picked up is as good, since that was in a larger quantity. off to a good start with these…

I feel bad.. I had this one sitting under my monitor and forgot to pack it up when I sent the box off, sorry to anyone looking forward to trying it :(

On to the tea though, it’s a really nice black that I could see myself drinking again for sure. I’m on my second steeping and the flavour is really nice. It leaves a lingering sweetness on my palate that leaves me wanting to drink more and more.

Looking forward to seeing how this tea holds up to a few more steeps :)

Edit: Not really sure how to explain this but the tea leaves such a nice smokey bittersweet taste, I’ve never really experienced anything quite like it from a tea I’m really loving this

This hou kui’s leaves are even longer than Teavivre’s (for some reason the pic both here on Steepster and on the vendor website is wrong; it’s a duplicate photo of one of their other green teas), so long and straight and flat they came in their own special packaging and much like dried spaghetti wouldn’t fit in the tea pot until hot water softened it! Awesome. The way HKs look just tickles me.

This is silky smooth, buttery with a wonderful balance between savory satisfaction and gentle sweetness. The texture is really the star here; I love it. So far so good with hou kuis!

This is light and sweet with the first steep, nice but not remarkable, but the second steep has much more flavor and aroma, a sort of springy, musky scent. The third was better still, with an almost lime-y tang. Nice stuff.

Six days have passed since my first visit to Tao Tea Leaf and I have thought of my visit each of the six days. If something was so memorable that you remembered it so fondly for so long you would likely try to recreate the moment, and today I attempted to do just that. I needed a gaiwan and rather than order something online I decided Tao Tea Leaf was just the place. I have my very first gaiwan now, I feel so grown up about tea! :)

Also, I blew through my small amount of Shui Xian Lao Cong so I had to buy more, along with this here tea. I added the info off Tao’s website, to the letter.

This tea smells floral, almost like jasmine, and the wet leaves smell of jasmine too. The liquor is a pale pale yellow, and tastes only slightly floral. I was a little worried at first, needlessly I now know. It is so creamy too.

The question I have is, I’m getting a slight bitterness as it sits and cools. Is it supposed to? Is it something I did? I guess these are somewhat rhetorical questions but if someone knows an answer, I’d love to know!

As for the visit, I brought my partner with me, we ordered a pot of tea also and sat there, in the tranquility of the shop and enjoyed it together. Met Tao himself who was so helpful, so hospitable. Too bad this store is so far away from where I live, and not “on the way” to anything I frequent. But then maybe my wallet likes that it is so.

I think? this is one of the teas i tried today at tao’s moon cake festival tea tasting thing. On the whole, while it’s a nice silver needle, there just really isn’t much room in my cupboard for white teas unless they blow my mind. this one did not.

Nice to try this one again – thankfully it doesn’t taste like dirt the way past harvest have but it’s still not the delicious tea that it was the first time i had it ages ago. Appreciate the share Evol ving ness

Don’t like this harvest. I’ve tried to drink this version in multiple ways and all I get is dirt. I’m channeling my inner “omgsrsly” i think. Not the end of the world, but i have ZERO desire to drink the rest of this. So i’m not going to. A waste of tea but i am really not a fan of this harvest and i refuse to drink things that i don’t enjoy.

Original version of this was a 91 for me; this year is closer to a 54.

i’ve had this a few times now and it’s just not the same tea that it was. I’m wondering if my taste buds have shifted or if this is just a new harvest from the first time i bought it. Will have to keep playing with it, but if it remains this way, i’m likely to pass this on to someone else as i just don’t love it like i used to.

this wasn’t nearly as delicious last time i had it. i think i need to try again at home or adjust my steeping time..see if that helps :(

love this tea. Still delicious after all this time. I really enjoy the bright fruitiness that this one has, that also has cacao notes running through it…sort of like a harmony with bass :) Yum.

oh how i wish the 2 tea entries for this were merged…another backlog from yesterday as i try to play catch up before bed… still loving this and i have lots now…so nyah!

YAY! this one is finally back in my cupboard after i missed the black friday sale. i had this one last night, but it didn’t taste as i remembered so i’m going to have to try it again at home when i can have it in a travel mug. I really hope my tastes haven’t changed on this one…

mmm packing up teas for a couple swaps and the BBB Box which should be here next week sometime if the mailman cooperates. I am fond of this tea and if there is ever another sale at Tao’s, i will likely pick up more of this. It’s just a tasty, tasty cup.

backlog from yesterday. This was my other morning cup of tea. I still really enjoy this one, though perhaps slightly less than i did the first time i had it. I do enjoy it still, though i often forget to pull it out from my cupboard. I need to stop that :)

YYZ had this a few days and it was a nudge to pull this out and have it again this week. I’ve been trying to drink up older teas, and this doesn’t quite fall into that category since i picked it up in September. it DOES, however, fall into the category of delicious, delicious teas that i love. so there.

I bought some of this after trying it via the canadian travelling tea box. SUPER glad that i did. I really do enjoy this one quite a bit. And yes..i drank it with the other Jin pin because the names are similar…so there.

sipdown! great canadian travelling teabox soooo this tastes similar to laoshan black. Not in an OMG they’re so the same! sort of way, but there are the same sort of notes running through this tea with a little less malt and a little more sweetness/. I don’t get smoke from this at all. Maybe my palate just isn’t as developed as some. This is just a sweet black delicious tea.

I was left to my own devices today regarding entertaining myself. So I went downtown and met a wonderful, knowledgeable woman who shared some tea with me. She brewed this in a gaiwan and I couldn’t believe how good this tea was. Amazing oolong.

Beautiful yellow liquor, so aromatic. I could have sat there the entire afternoon just drinking the tea. I do have to say I have never seen oolong leaves so big. Huge. Good luck measuring with a teaspoon. I can’t wait to have more. Tao Tea Leaf is the bomb. Good thing Dexter3657 talked about it so much or I would have never tried it. I guess I’m falling off the wagon. Where’s that hiatus thread?

If you’re not drinking Tao Tea Leaf you’re missing out. I was.