15695 Tasting Notes
Sipdown (124)!
This sipdown is a long time coming; after getting so much of it two Christmases ago from both family and friends who didn’t realize I’d bought some for myself I’ve finally finished off what was probably close to 250g worth. Though honestly it’s only happened so fast because last time Robyn hung out here she mentioned that she’s been stealing cups of this one from her roommate’s tin of it but that she had to stop ‘cause the tin was getting low – I probably gave her like 40g of it from my tin because I knew it’d take FOREVER to finish it, and she’s one of the few people who does like it, so…
Finished this as a cold brew; I think it’s the first time I’ve cold brewed it – though I know I have done it as a slush before. Based on this experience, I’m confidant I would’ve remembered having prepared it as a cold brew before.
It was just so sweet; way too sweet! I swear all that licorice root that I normally like with this one must have migrated to the bottom of the tin ‘cause like 90% of the flavour was HARSH licorice root, with the rest being a sort of roasty, borderline bitter chocolate and coffee cross. I was gagging a little bit; it was that sweet. I could have tried diluting it, I suppose, but honestly this hasn’t aged too well and I’ve gone through so much at this point that I’m just really sick of it. So instead I saved self some time and just dumped it.
I stay true to the sentiment I’ve echoed in several tasting notes now; I honestly really thought that this was a good tea. But you can have too much of a good thing; and now I’m over this one almost entirely. I’ll be perfectly content if I never have it again, but I’m going to choose to remember it fondly!
Non-tea related; my sister is here! Hooray! They showed up at about eleven this morning, and we exchanged Easter baskets – the one they got for me is AMAZING; instead of the ‘traditional’ pastel coloured weaved wicker basket it’s Spiderman! I LOVE SPIDERMAN! And then, they also gave my some of those tea filled Easter eggs from DT. They’ve got Chocolate Macaroon, Read my Lips, and Forever Nuts in them so I wasn’t really excited for the tea at all (though I think I faked it pretty well) but the little tins are cute as hell.
I gave the Forever Nuts one to Tre to give to his friend/“romantic interest” Kaitlin for Easter while I think she’ll enjoy, and he’ll get some good points for – and Read My Lips is cold brewing right now so it’ll soon be gone (I’ve had that one before and disliked it but it’s been so long I thought revisiting wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea). Not really a big fan of Chocolate Macaroon but I realized it’d probably taste pretty good with my Cinnabon creamer so I’m holding on to that one…
They also got me one of the colour changing Nordic mugs from the Spring collection. I’d kind of dismissed it myself, but honestly the pictures on the DT site don’t do it justice – it’s beautiful in person! Tre, of course, was kinda pissed because we don’t really have room in the kitchen for it…
But yeah; that was my morning!
Sipdown (123)!
Hooray! Last tea of the night, so last tasting note of the night!
I got sick of the idea of having to drink nearly forty more grams of this stupid tea, so I bagged all but one cup worth of it up and brought it in to work. I dumped it all, metaphorically not literally, on Chef Darcy who seemed happy enough to have it. It’s nice that I now have people in close proximity I can pass super shitty tea on to instead of slowly parceling it out into swaps.
I’m having this last cup hot in a timolino and, if nothing else, it’s drinkable. The usual annoying, cloying and clashing flavour has transformed into something that tastes almost entirely like nana mint with a bit of fennel undertones. If every cup I’d had of this one had come off this way I would have found it boring but drinkable and wouldn’t have passed it on to someone else.
PS. I had a lovely time talking to Veck and Wuyi-Wolf in the chat tonight! I didn’t except anyone to be around so late at night/early in the morning but it was a wonderful surprise and definitely kept me motivated while writing all of these tasting notes!
This was my daily cold brew!
I found myself craving guayusa last night, but at 10PM making a cup certainly wasn’t an option so I did the next best thing – set up some for the morning. It’s a shame that I drank most of it on the way home from work though, and not on the way too work when I needed the caffeine the most. It feels like it’s just kicking in now though, at 1 in the fucking morning. AGH! I need to sleep so I’m well rested for Easter/Brenna tomorrow!
This tasted really damp, mossy and earthy today with some major petrichor notes softened by the raw, unsweetened apricot. It was a tiny bit like drinking unwashed fruit straight from the garden – though I’m aware that apricots grow on trees so the metaphor doesn’t totally work, but you get the idea.
I was expecting more apricot than I got though, but I can’t complain because I adore the taste of straight guayusa (especially’s Butiki’s) and whenever it crosses into that petrichor territory I get a little weak in the knees. That’s my favourite smell in the world, period. Whenever it translates into tea I just lose myself in the cuppa.
Mmm!
In my timolino!
I did a complete cupboard shuffle while drinking this one; I’ve got an entire closet dedicated to tea tins and now teaware, and it was definitely time for a new system because things were starting to look awfully cluttered, and the tea type groupings weren’t very easy to see anymore. Very happy with how it looks now though!
This tasted absolutely delicious; such creamy, silky pear notes with faint cranberry tartness underneath. I picked up a few coconut notes as well; but that’s definitely from the lat thing I made in the timolino – cold shaken coconut matcha. I guess I didn’t do the most fantastic job washing this one out. Welp. But it all went together anyway.
Sadly, it felt like I was drinking it so out of season! I’ve never thought about myself as someone who has ‘seasonal interests’, when it comes to tea or anything else. But this spring is proving to be completely opposite of that.
Gonna have to see if I can come up with a way to make this seem like more of a Spring tea; if not, it may be a few months before I get back to drinking this one regularly again.
Unexpected Sipdown (124)!
Like stated – I went to make a mug of this while packing my lunch for work and, much to my surprise, this is the last of the tin! I knew I was low, I just didn’t realize how low I guess. It’s sorta perfect timing though – I was just trying to figure out which tea I could easily sipdown to clear out some tin space for DT’s Elderflower Spritz tea which I want to stock up on. Since I don’t plan on restocking on this one until next fall/winter this conveniently clears up some tea space! Hooray!
Taste wise, I thought that the first half of the mug came off fairly watery with some blander cinnamon and almond notes, but the last half of the mug after it had started to cool was significantly stronger with some seriously sweet and tart apple notes – like a Granny Smith, almost? The cinnamon backdrop reminded me of cider a bit.
I like this one, but it’s just not really the season anymore. Happy to be (temporarily) out of it. And, this is one of DT’s most popular blends, if not THE most popular blend so I’m confidant it’s not going to be leaving the store any time soon.
Sipdown (125)!
Thank you MissB for the sample!
This is another tea from her travels abroad, and it’s perfect for spring; it’s light, fruity and floral which is all of the things that’ve been hitting the spot this last week with my daily cold brews. I’m sad to report that I made a bit of a mistake measuring it out though; by which I mean I sneezed as I was pouring, and half the sample fell on the floor. NOOO! So, my cold brew was very small compared to the typical 25 oz. I usually make.
Dry, this smells amazingly fresh with super intense and realistic raspberry notes; definitely reminded me of picking raspberries from my Grandma’s garden as a child. We’d get stuck with the thorns from the seemingly endless raspberry patch, but it was all worth it to lick that sweet, sticky red juice from our grubby fingertips after collecting an icecream pail worth of berries for the night’s dessert. I don’t smell the violet in the blend; but this is already earning ‘nostalgia’ points. The liquor is a really pretty almost lime-y green, but with a bit more of a yellow tinge to it. It smells very fresh, and very fruity.
The taste is spot on; I taste the raspberry first and foremost and it’s everything I’m remembering from those vacations at Grandma’s. The green base cuts through it a little bit and it a touch grassy with a little bit of the chlorophyll/fresh cut lawn taste. Both flavours compliment one another quite well though; it makes the whole ‘garden’ imagery I’ve got going on significantly stronger. And at last the violet in the blend is making an impression! While it IS present throughout the entire sip way down underneath the raspberry and base, it comes through the strongest near the end of the sip after the initial sweetness of the raspberry has started to subside. I don’t think it’s necessarily distinctly violet; but it is nice and very natural. Floral things seem to get chemical tasting quickly, even when they aren’t artificial but this stays away from that. Finally, I think there are some extra notes in here that are a little softer and sweeter; my initial impression was something like sugar cane but by the end of the cup I was definitely leaning more towards honey.
So all in all, I was very impressed by this tea! I just wish that I’d been able to steep up more of it because it was fresh, and juicy with that sweet sensation of nostalgia and all the elements necessary to invoke the imagery of a Spring time garden!
Dug this one out of my cupboard ‘cause it smells exactly like a Terri’s Chocolate Orange and, even though I 100% associate those with Christmas and not Easter, we were selling them at the store with the Easter chocolate/candy and it put me in the mood for one. So, instead of buying one I drank this instead!
I didn’t taste the marshmallow at all in this mug; but the orange was sweet and the chocolate pretty strong with some malt from the base. It was a little bit bitter near the end but I associated that more as a “Baker’s Chocolate” sort of bitter than bitterness from the base itself. A pinch of milk probably wouldn’t have hurt.
And speaking of chocolate, I just finished setting up eggs all over the house for an Easter Egg hunt with Brenna tomorrow – and Tre’s just left his room (for the first time in hours). He saw one of the eggs in the kitchen while making supper (yes; we’re having supper at midnight – don’t judge us) and instantly had to stop what he was doing to find them all. There’s 22 in total – it’s a small house without a lot of good hiding places, and so far he’s found 21 of 22. He can’t find the last one and it just freaking out trying to get it. It’s in the magnetic basket on the fridge next to Fridge Frida Kahlo
It was fun watching him find them though, and it gave me some good ideas on what I needed to change for Brenna; some were way too easy for him to find, and some probably way too challenging.
Cold Brew!
So glad I’ve got lots of this; now that it’s Spring I think I’m gonna be burning through it really quickly again; it’s fun, fruity, and light which just completely goes along with the weather. This brew in particular was really heavy handed with the ripe, sweet strawberry notes and softened a bit by some more mellow, silky vanilla.
So, since Brenna (my sister) is coming up for Easter I took advantage of the holiday to sort of go “All Out” and put together a GIANT Easter Basket filled with all sorts of tooth rotting treats and fun marine biology related ‘swag’ – marine biology is her latest ‘phase’/dream job. It’s amazing; she’s 10 currently and the only jobs she’s ever really wanted to do are super sciencey animal related things. A few years back the big one was being an entomologist (“Bug Scientist” – she had to dumb that one down for me). I don’t even know how she learns those names/terms: while my family has always encouraged these interests we’re not the ones prompting them or teaching her the ‘lingo’. She’s coming up with it on her own!
My siblings and I are so different though; in school I hardcore excelled at English and Arts classes and all things creative, empathetic, and emotion/passion based and, for the longest time, my ‘career path’ was going to be English/Arts teacher or journalist (neither of which happened). Now I’ve found tea…
My brother is very logical and mathematical and excels greatly at all things math and sciences like Physics that rely on formulas. These last few years of highschool he’s done very well with hands on stuff like electrical work or engineering – and right now he says he wants to be an environmental engineer.
And Brenna’s the best of both worlds; she has the sciencey stuff in the bag, but with the emotion driven and empathetic animal tie in – when she gets to highschool she’s gonna kick biology’s ass!
And that’s my random story/rant thing for the night, I guess. I’m just so proud of my siblings!
Sipdown (126)!
Thanks MissB!
Sadly I think I missed something with this tea because it mostly tasted like chamomile to me with maybe a pinch of herbaceous notes and a pinch of something mildly creamy? It wasn’t bad or anything, but I found it kind of bland and unexciting. I definitely didn’t taste juniper, that’s for sure, and that’s what I was most excited about/looking forward to with this blend so I was disappointed by that a bit.
Can anyone tell me if Ondine means anything or is French for anything in particular? I absolutely adore the sound of this one’s name; there’s something very beautiful/graceful about it but all I’m finding with a quick Google search is a movie by the same name. Is that what this is named after?
EDIT: Ok, did a more thorough search and I guess Ondine is a mythological character/character in a play or something? This is straight from Wikipedia, but…
Ondine, the eponymous heroine of Giradoux’s play, tells her future husband Hans, whom she had just met that “I shall be the shoes of your feet … I shall be the breath of your lungs”. Ondine makes a pact with her uncle the King of the Ondines that if Hans ever deceives her he will die. After their honeymoon, Hans is reunited with his first love Princess Bertha and Ondine leaves Hans only to be captured by a fisherman six months later. On meeting Ondine again on the day of his wedding to Bertha, Hans tells her that “all the things my body once did by itself, it does now only by special order … A single moment of inattention and I forget to breathe”. Hans and Ondine kiss, after which he dies.
I kinda like that; I’m definitely really feeling this name. It’s a shame the tea was disappointing…
Hope everyone kicked off the Easter Weekend with some good teas! I spent the day working (hooray stat pay!), but I’ve got the next four days off as an Easter ‘vacation’ of sorts! And, I’m very lucky to get to spend those four days with my little sister who’ll be staying with me for part of her school break.
This time I definitely thought ahead and remembered that an integral part of having people stay at your house (especially minors) is FEEDING THEM. There’s so much food in the house right now; I totally over did it. To put it in perspective; my sister’s favourite food in the world is Watermelon so I’ve got an entire shelf in the fridge just PACKED with sliced watermelon to munch on!
However, one downside of having her stay over is gonna be not getting to update tasting notes that frequently, so I’m gonna try and power through this ‘mini queue’ I’ve built up over the last few days so as to not put myself even further behind…
Many thanks to Sil for sending me the rest of her pouch of this tea; I’m hard core wishing I’d stocked up – it’s easily the best Lapsang I’ve ever had. Just the right amount of smoke with some natural sweetness.
This time when I made this one I was inspired by OMGsrsly who likes to add maple whipped cream to her Lapsang. I don’t really have maple syrup or whipped cream (though I suppose picking some up wouldn’t be a hassle since I work at a grocery store) but what I do have is Cinnabon flavoured coffee creamer, so I added some of that since I figured it’d be similar enough in concept.
And it was SUCH a good idea; I was impressed how much of the tea’s flavour profile was untouched – it was still pretty smooth with well defined smokey and wood notes. It just had an added kick of sweet cinnamon and gooey icing/glaze! I’d absolutely drink it again; although I definitely still very much enjoy this one straight as well. Both ways are EXCELLENT options.
