New Tasting Notes

With my lunch I decided to enjoy a glass of what I brewed last night for iced tea.

Nice, sweet, and refreshing.

I always think it is interesting when you try a new tea and you like it enough, but it doesn’t blow you away….until later on you realize that you are craving that tea, so maybe you like it more than you initially thought. I was really craving this tea last night but it was late and I picked rooibos instead. I woke up today and was considering this tea when I saw wombatgirl drinking this – I knew, it was a sign, I needed to drink this tea!
Today it appears that I used more pearls than yesterday (even though I measured out the same 2 teaspoon serving, maybe I should have weighed it) and I think this is the way to go! The tea has a broth-like feel that almost has a buttery aspect to it without the butter flavor. The jasmine is very smooth and I’m starting to kick myself for not trying jasmine pearls sooner. I think I may need up up the rating, but I will not do so unless:
1) This tea can hold up nicely to several infusions (the more, the better)
2) The next time I have this tea I feel the same way – I don’t want to up the rating if my feelings about it today are a product of my mood or if I can not replicate the brothy fullness I’m getting today.

Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss, my SororiTEA Sister, for sending me this sampling.

The liquor is very fragrant – and smells delightful.

The taste: toasty and with spicy notes. I am getting the hints of vanilla that the description suggests right at the beginning of the sip, in the middle I get a toasty malty taste, and the tea finishes sweet. Nice and complex. Beautiful!

So this morning, I woke up 3 times, first at 5am and then at 6:30 and finally at 7:40 when I realized that I was going to be really late for my lab today unless I took the bus that came in like 15 minutes. So I just dressed in whatever was in sight and picked up my bag and headed out the door in less than 10 minutes from waking up. It was an awful way to wake up. When I got to school, I was desperate for something to drink so I picked this up at the cafe. It was brisk, light, and slightly lemony. It isn’t something I would enjoy in a daily basis though, but hey it had me awake by the time I reached my lab, so it did its job.

First steep

Not much of a smell. Fairly strong jasmine taste. Aftertaste quickly fades away to nothing.

Jasmine teas tend to all be pretty much the same, and this is no different. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad though.

So from other’s suggestion i steeped it longer this time. Almost 10 minutes this time. Still no chocolate taste. Debating on if i should pass this on or not.

Bumping the rating on this. Sweet, no bitterness. The flavors are very subtle. Definitly nutty. And vegital, but I’m not sure what. And, indeed, the leaves do stand up when infused.

It has been awhile Earl, but you have been quite patient with me while I play the field of tea in my cupboard. Don’t worry, my heart will always be with you….(maybe not this GM version, but definitely with the Earl in general.)
Seriously, I quit drinking this because it just wasn’t tasting good to me. After taking a break, it is awesome this morning!

How many citrus fruits can you name? This tea is flavored with damn near every one I can come up with. Which is both fascinating and somewhat intimidating. It seems like it could be really delicious or a total fail. I’m going into this not knowing what to expect.

Right off the bat it gets points for cornflowers, with their adorable blueness among the dark leaves. There is also some citrus peel visible. The fragrance is strongly citrus, pretty heavy on the grapefruit to my nose. Though I’m also getting some of the orangey, tangeriney aspect. There’s a bitterness to it, which I suppose is from the peel.

From the color of the liquor and the aroma, I’m guessing the base here is Ceylon. It has a pretty russet color, and a mild fragrance. There is some definite citrus in the aroma; again I’m getting mostly grapefruit and some orange input. I’m a little worried going into the tasting that the citrus is going to be bitter, as it has that same bitter twinge to it that the dry leaves have.

But fortunately, there’s no bitterness to the taste. It turns out that the citrus is much mellower in taste than in smell. It’s actually almost too mellow for my taste. It doesn’t really make its presence known much at all until the finish, where I get some lemon, and maybe a little of the grapefruit and orange. The rest of the citrus blends together into a sort of single citrusy mish-mash. It’s tasty though. I don’t get a lot of bergamot, so if you’re not a bergamot fan you don’t need to be scared by this one.

I like French teas in general quite a bit, and I haven’t had anything from The O Dor so far that was an outright failure. This one is pleasant, but it doesn’t make me talk to myself under my breath as I’m drinking it. I’m not saying “wow” or “that’s good,” or “mmmm” or such things. By that standard I think it’s something I’ll enjoy drinking but isn’t going to be high on my list to replace when it is gone.

Okay…it’s been a HELLISH Day! So…in short with more reviews later…
DRY smells like fresh cut zucchini and once infused smells like a mellow green or white tea. Taste is REALLY yummy…

COOL (eventho I am drinking HOT), Cucumber-like, nutty, crisp, clean, delightful!!!!

I think this one is excellent when its new but if you keep the pack hanging out for too long, the mint loses its punch

Agreed! A hundred percent! This one is divine. I first discovered chocolate and rooibos with Karma Blends chocolate strawberry tea!

Yummy!

Smooth and mellow, as the description says. A not-unpleasant hint of corn on the palate. Some very mild tannins. Pretty good, but unremarkable.

I am having a hard time writing this review. This tea makes me think of nothing more than sitting outside on a sunny day in the short grass. Sun is shining on your face, and the sweet scent of the lawn washing over you. There even may be a hammock involved. All of that in just a little cup of tea. Bliss. It’s a lovely image, and a really nice cup of tea. Very mellow, smooth, just a hint of astringency at the finish, just making you want to take that next sip all the sooner. It has a hint of sweetness in the aroma – I can see where Rishi finds the “sweetly toasted chestnut” from it’s product description. There are no stand-out notes in this tea for me – just a blended mellowness that I’m really enjoying. I have a feeling that drinking this on a cold, snowy December might instantly transport you to a very spring-like place.

Unfortunately for this review – outside it’s a beautiful sunny day, and there actually is a hammock. Both the cup of tea next to me, and the entire back yard are telling me I need to take this tea outside and sit and enjoy it in the sunshine. I don’t think I can hold out any longer.

(originally posted at http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/553/tea-review-rishi-tea-jade-cloud-organic-fair-trade-green-tea/)

Finishing up my sample. A nice, typical Jasmine Pearl. Very enjoyable.

I’m sticking with green teas today – Japanese in the morning and Chinese in the afternoon. Don’t know if it was coincidence or subconscious, but both of them feature nutty/roasty flavors in significant measure, so it’s been nice to contrast them on the same day. I think I may have had the water a touch too hot for this though – it was noticeably more bitter than the last time I had it. Still enjoyable, but I’ll be more careful next time.

I was sick for a couple of weeks starting about three weeks ago, and guess what. The 4 year old now has what I had. He’s getting better; today’s the first time in four days he hasn’t had fever. But as a result of his being home sick, and me just now being well after a pretty nasty bug, I’m pretty emotionally spent. I’ve been trying to work from home while attending to him, but I haven’t been exercising or paying attention to what I eat and I feel bloated and my energy level is like, nowhere, man. I haven’t even felt like making tea. Though if someone made some for me I’d drink it.

I thought this might be a good choice to break me back in since Kusmi tends to be fairly mild. I have a little sample tin of this, and they fill these to the brim. When I stick the spoon into these little tins I always feel somehow like I’m loading a pipe with tobacco. I have to use the fingers of the non-spoon hand to keep the tea in the spoon while I’m trying to get it out of the tin without boosting tea over the edge and onto the counter.

In the tin, the leaves have that spidery, Ceylon look to them. They smell slightly smoky, and mysteriously, slightly sharp like an oolong or a darjeeling. There’s no maltiness that I can detect.

The tea’s aroma, though, does have some maltiness. I’m guessing there’s some Assam in here. It also has a fruity smell, slightly berry-ish. But also some stone fruit notes? It doesn’t quite steep to the Ceylon red/orange color that’s so gorgeous, but it just needs a drop or too more red to get there.

The flavor is fairly mild, fairly smooth, and fairly evenly distributed between a sweet-ish malty note, a smoky note and a sharp fruity note. I wonder if there is oolong in this? This isn’t called “Russian Caravan” but the Russian nomenclature makes me wonder if that is where the sharp fruity note is coming from. The smokiness isn’t enough to seem like it comes from lapsang. It might be from Keemun instead.

The tea is medium-light bodied with a clean feel to it. I’m liking this just fine as a late breakfast blend. I really don’t know what to do about the breakfast blend problem, though. I like so many of them, I really no longer have any excuse to keep adding to the list. I have to come up with some way to differentiate between them and zero in on a few true favorites. Sigh.

finally brewed up a cup today. The sample has been tempting me for awhile, but today was the day!

It’s a very nice honeybush… it has the flavor I expect, but also an unknown fruityness to it. Unfortunately, I got occupied, and my cup cooled, but it’s still good. Will do a second steep!

Having also tasted the apple pie a la mode from 52Teas, I can state that the 52Teas IS better… but this one is not bad. I can taste the apple and cinnamon, and the black tea base gives it a bit of a baked flavor, lending itself to the apple pie concept well. I do miss the crust though, but, I’m thinking I can remedy that myself with a couple of shortbread cookies.

Ahh… pecan shortbread cookies from McTavish (a local company that makes to-die-for cookies!) to the rescue.

Yep. That did the trick. Now, I’ve got my crust and my apple pie in a teacup. Yeah, I like this.

This is part grassy green and part slight-smoke. It’s alright. Glad I got to try it. Probably wouldn’t buy in large quantities but would drink on occasion.

Last bit, finished the 4 oz tin. good to the last bit. ’nuff said.

Drinking the last that I have of this tea… it’s a decent Earl Grey. I found that by brewing it less time, the flavor is a bit smoother, it’s less astringent, and there is an interesting citrusy tart note in the finish that I don’t remember previously.