New Tasting Notes

Personal message to Frank: I propose you create a tea blend called Dirty Tortuga Chai. Read below for a description and why I think you should create this wonderful blend.

I love what I call Dirty Tortuga Chais (yes an espresso drink, but read this tasting note on how you can enjoy this beverage in an all tea version). Tortuga is Spanish for turtle- what the combination of chocolate and caramel is often called. A DTC for me, until about 2 years ago, had always been a caramel mocha latte w/ chai bags. Then I found Dr. Tea’s Coffee Oolong. SCORE! I love this oolong because the flavor comes from the process, not the addition of flavors. Upon this discovery, my DTC became an all tea beverage- equal parts of Coffee Oolong, a caramel flavored black tea, a chocolate flavored black tea, and a chai. Then I found a Creme Caramel Oolong. And THEN I found and fell in love w/ Mayan Chocolate Chai. The new formula (Equal parts MCC, Coffee Oolong, and Creme Caramel Oolong) was improved w/ the addition of almonds and cayenne, making my DTC much more authentic. Dr. Tea must have heard my prayers for an even better blend because he created Caramel LaTEA by adding caramel to his Coffee Oolong. That is the blend I am drinking today. 1/2TB each MCC and Caramel LaTEA, one cup each water and Fat Free Smart Balance milk. Now on to my cuppa…

This blend is divine… chocolately, yet sweet from the caramel… spicey, yet more subdued due to the the reduced amount of cayenne as well as the extra flavors. A richness is given by the Coffee Oolong, yet it does not contain the acidic burn that espresso often has.

But… yes… but… Yes I know. I had you all drooling over this cuppa, wishing you had some. But. BUT! It could be better!

Frank,
This blend, while wonderful, needs tweaking. Tweaking only you can do. You see, only so much blending can be done w/ two teas. It needs more- more coffee, more cayenne, more chai spices, more chocolate, more caramel. I propose 1 tea. One tea that is better than the some of this tea’s parts. I propose a tea much like your already wonderful Mayan Chocolate Chai, but with a few changes. I suggest roasting a black or oolong tea like Dr. Tea has to create the coffee flavor w/o the need to add coffee itself and using that as the base for the chai. The only other addition I suggest is the addition of caramel. These 2 changes would make the PERFECT chai. This tea would make coffee drinkers all over the world go “Star….who?!” Dr. Tea is grabbing the attention of coffee drinkers and you need to show them what REALLY can be done w/ tea!

Any other chai, mocha, and/or caramel latte drinkers out there with me? I used to say “I love drinking tea all day, but I also love my coffee”, but if I could grab this perfect tea for my daily chai habit (I go thru a 2oz pouch in less than a week), I promise I will never drink coffee again.

First of all I don’t drink very much green tea. That being said I really like this tea. This tea is mellow and nutty tasting. I like Adagio’s much better, but I bought this for use in a hotel room during vacation.

Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending me a sample of this tea!

It smells yummy! LOTS of huge cardamom pods in this blend.

Wow! All I can say right now is it’s a really good thing that I love licorice because this tea has a strong licorice flavor and it is YUM. There is a lot of complexity and depth to this tea.

A very pleasing chai tea.

Liking this a lot iced today. I used 1 tsp tea in the little 4oz oolong pot from Samovar, and poured the first two steeps over ice to make about 12oz iced tea. It’s very sweet, tasting of jasmine, vanilla, and a little bit caramel to me. I know flavored oolongs are a bit overkill, but this one really works for me!

I use slightly cooled water for this, since there’s some green tea in the blend.

Time seems to move so slowly at work. That may be why my tea oversteeped. Despite its bitterness, it still has a vegetal almost woody taste.

A pretty tasty rooibos blend that I’ve leaned on many a time when drinking teas from the library tea bar this summer. Today I feel as though I’m coming down with something, so I am pounding back the tea, and trying to avoid taking in any more dehydrating caffeine than is absolutely necessary to keep myself vertical and studying for a test I have tomorrow (test plus sick = terrible combination! Am doing my best.) Wow, was that the worst run-on sentence ever? Did I mention I don’t feel well?

Anyway, this is nicely fruity and bright- sweet, but not too sweet. It’s like a mild cocktail and might be amazing iced. Either way, this makes for a really good summer blend. It may be the blorgie talking, but I think I taste a kind of peach-nectarine and a touch of coconut.

Meh. Rather heavy, for a white tea, and a bit bitter, for a sweetened tea. Won’t buy again.

I love this tea so much that I carry it in my online store, Bon Teavant Market. Red Blossom Tea’s owner knows Taiwanese oolongs like few others do. While they recommend a much longer steeping time than I prefer, this Alishan has a deep smooth, buttery taste that is the hallmark of this rolled oolong. I still have some in stock if anyone cares to try it. The new trend is to process high mt. oolongs a LOT greener (less oxidized), which brings in a bitter bite that I have not been able to resolve with steeping so I’m hanging onto my 2009’s as long as possible. This tea is also good for aging. I have a 15-year-old aged Alishan in my personal stash, and it’s magnificent.

This tea is fabulous, and while FL owner recommends the traditional, I prefer this special roast. This rolled Taiwanese oolong has a very smooth mouth feel, a bit roasty, even sweet, but still floral and aromatic. Owner Shiuwen has a great palate as is clearly in evidence with this fine tea.

Felt like a fruity black tea today, so this was the pick. I was kind of specifically craving cherry, so I probably should’ve gone with Four Red Fruits instead, but this was close enough. Nice summery blend for sure!

This tea was superb. Chocolatey, sweet, aromatic, and full-bodied. Unfortunately, it is now all gone, and Floating Leaves will not be getting more for a while…There is no substitute, so I’ll just have to wait.

After a hectic week of work, studying, late night movies and flinging my beads around till the wee small hours of the morning… I’m in desperate need of some rejuvinating today. This Australian grown CTC (from the looks of it) brews up almost black in color and really holds its own among the array of chai spices, which has a sweet little kick of liquorice root. I’m not sure how rejuvenating this blend truly is, but I definitely feel like I can face the rest of today without keeling over.

I only had a small sample of this so I really need to track down some more, because I know this would be fantastic brewed stovetop in milk!

I like this tea… it’s a warming, comforting tea. It tastes purely like cinnamon hearts, so I wouldn’t say it’s complex, and I definitely am not aware of any carob, cardamom, pepper, etc. It fits the bill sometimes, but I doubt I will buy another box.

I should also note, I usually steep it a lot longer… I can definitely notice a difference. It’s a bit “weak”.

My second infusion of this rosette. Still very flavorful, it is a little smoother in flavor this time around. That might also have something to do with the fact that the pastry-esque flavor inspired me to reach for the last of my cuccidata. Eating the cookie with the tea brought out some of the smoky qualities (although they weren’t strong) in the flavor with the first infusion, and is bringing out some of the baked-sweetness in this infusion. The smoky qualities are softer in this infusion – still there, just softer.

I’m liking this a lot… and I am thinking maybe I should order more cuccidata to go with the other rosettes! haha!

nom nom nom nom. Good flavour and big leaves.

this was the first tea I could get my hands on this morning, so I drank it again. Very tasty and just what I needed. I like darker oolongs, but I also like the greener ones. I love that oolongs have such variety within the category.

Do you remember that chocolate drink – a Yoohoo (do those still exist)?! Anyways, that is what this tastes like… of course I haven’t had a Yoohoo in YEARS, so I may be off, but that is what first pops in my head. Or maybe like Swiss Miss hot chocolate made with only water and no milk, and watered down a bit more. I like this, it’s different though because it is watery and I expected that thicker puerh feel. The water looks like that of black tea, a nice honey color. The taste is smooth and you get more of a sweet coco powder taste than anything else. I am tempted to try this next time with a shot of cream =)~

This is one that I’ve had for quite a while but haven’t tried yet. The aroma is a little smoky, not lapsang souchong smoky (pine-ish), but, still somewhat smoky.

Sweet with a baked quality to it – I definitely am getting the biscuity essence as described in the company description of this tea. But, its more like a somewhat sweet baked pastry essence. I’m not getting a lot of smoky flavor from it which I appreciate.

There is a faint caramel-y note as well. This is really quite good.

I drank it with some skim milk this time which seems to be a good way to go for all of Adagio’s flavoured black teas as it tones down the (rather harsh IMO) Ceylon base Adagio uses and lets the other flavours come out.

From what I can taste, chocolate is still the dominant flavour of this tea, but I’m getting the fruity notes better than when I drank this tea plain. There’s also a hint of floral rose which I couldn’t taste before. I still wish the strawberry flavour were stronger, but I’ve noticed that even Adagio’s plain Strawberry tea is quite weak as well, so it might be a question of quality as opposed to amount in this blend.