15695 Tasting Notes
This was the other tea my mom picked up from Murchie’s and, of course, I made sure to try a cup for myself one of the mornings we ordered breakfast in to our Air B&B…
It’s a straight forward blend, and since she was mostly just looking for something really coconut forward she could add milk to I think she’s going to be really satisfied with it. I found the very slight oiliness from the coconut fat to be somewhat distracting as I sipped the cup, but the taste was really nice. Just a rich, creamy coconut balanced by a brisk black tea base. Delivers exactly on what it claims to – nothing more or less.
Cold Brew!
I brewed this one overnight in a travel tumbler to drink on our second day in Vancouver – it was nice to have something really punchy and lemon zest heavy but with a deeply menthol cooling minty finish. Ultra hydrating as we drove around to the day’s various activities – many of which were just visiting tea shops.
This was the boba that I ordered!
I would have loved to taste through their entire menu, but that just wasn’t realistic. I picked this over the many others than caught my eye because it was a seasonal offering, so I guess I’m secretly holding out on some hope I’ll someday get to revisit this boba shop.
Honestly though this was delicious! The bottom portion of the drink, before I swirled it together, was filled with a black cherry puree mixed into milk that tasted sort of like an extra cherry forward pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. Rich, fruity but also dense. The top portion was freshly whisked creamy matcha with a bit of a unctuous yet floral quality. Definitely sweeter than the Dalgona Honeycomb my mom had ordered, but when you mixed the two parts together it balanced really well!
During the trip we mostly focused on tea stores, but we did hit up a couple of boba shops. Boba Run was very high on my list; they just seemed to have so many really amazing sounding flavours. This is actually the one my mom got, and I’m glad because it was on my short list too – so I got to try some more than just the one I’d ordered!
Essentially it was kind of like a normal matcha boba – milk based with the standard tapioca pearls. Very fresh, smooth matcha as well. Not sweetened either. Well, that is, not sweetened aside from the many shards of broken up dalgona honeycomb that they topped the drink with. Picture the dalgona candy from Squid Game – exactly that! It was cool because they slowly dissolved into the drink, and as they did they added a little burnt sugar/sponge toffee type flavour that gradually increased the sweetness level.
Very tasty, and also beautiful looking before they started melting into the drink.
We actually went to two Murchie’s locations during the trip – one in Vancouver and one in Victoria. The Victoria location was the one I was most interested in going to as it’s their flagship store, and the space is just beautiful looking. However, we were a little worried we might not have the time in Victoria among our other activities and I really wanted to make sure I got to buy a bunch of AJ’s new blends, so we slotted in one of the Vancouver spots to shop at as a safe guard.
This is actually one of two teas that my mom picked up for herself but, as our Air B&B had an electric kettle, I took advantage of getting to try a few more teas than the ones I bought for myself by brewing up a cup the ones she had purchased in the mornings the following days.
We had a bit of a fun tasting and guessing game with this blend as we tried to figure out the different flavours in the mix. It made for a pretty solidly full bodied cuppa with just a nice little bite of tannin, though that might be more from my penchant to overleaf and over steep black teas. Both fruity and floral, it was interesting how it simultaneously tasted very distinct in its tasting notes but also perfectly ethereal for the name. We both tasted strawberry, but my mom also tasted blueberries and lavender in her mug. For my part, I got more of the bergamot than the lavender but also found the florals reminded me of the lush, sweet taste of parma violets. I see now, also, that sweet pea is one of the tasting notes in the copy and I find that pretty apt.
I don’t think this is a blend that I would personally want for my stash as I feel I have some stylistically comparable blends that fit the same need this would. However, I see why my mom was attracted to it as someone who really loves bergamot, lavender, and (in general) fruit tasting teas she can still add milk to.
Gongfu!
This was our last tea of the guided tasting – it’s also Lincang material so Geoff had pulled it for us to compare with the sheng we had just finished tasting made using the same material. It was my favourite of the three teas served. From steep one I found it so aromatic and flavourful with rich notes of spices and jammy red fruits. Those red fruit notes only got increasingly more potent with an almost over ripe pungency and tangy quality to them. Plums, red apples, pomegranate molasses, and tamarind. Actually, lots and lots of tamarind. Maybe even a bit of a tomato-y kind of umami explosion with both sweetness and a sort of acidity.
I really wanted to pick some of this up after our tasting, but the shop was sold out of sample sizes and only had full 200g cakes left. At $265 for a cake, the price was a little steep for me considering this was only the second tea shop we’d visited on a list of over a dozen, so I passed on the cake. In hindsight I really regret that because I’m still drooling thinking about this tea, and unfortunately it looks like it’s now sold out in the week since this tasting – at least according to their website…
Gongfu!
This was the second tea brewed for us during our O5 tasting. To be honest, I found the first two steeps to be somewhat forgettable tasting however I did really like the thick yet smooth texture of the liquor. The later steeps were more to my taste with a mineral woodiness alongside peachy fruity notes and a little bit of a floral lychee kind of undertone. I’ve been loosely interested in Lincang as a region lately, so I did appreciate getting to add another lincang production to my Rolodex of teas I’ve tried.
What was really interesting to me was that my mom, who generally HATES pu’erh, actually really liked this one. In fact, it was her favourite of the three and I think actually one of her favourites teas she tried of the whole trip. If I genuinely thought she’d have brewed it for herself I probably would have picked some up for her, but instead I think it’s best for me to make a mental note that she might have more of an interest in similar sheng to this so I can brew something like it for her when I visit later in the summer.
Gongfu!
One of the activities we did on our first full day was a tea tasting at O5 with the store manager Geoff. We pretty much gave him free range to pick out any teas he wanted to brew for us, with the exception of green teas which we asked to avoid.
This was the first of three teas served. For each tea we had four steeps brewed for us. My mom really doesn’t like pu’erh (shou in particular) so this was a challenge for her to start off with. However, I think Geoff did a really excellent job with picking out a shou that I would enjoy (as a more seasoned shou drinker) but that would also be really approachable for my mother. Very, very smooth liquor without really any obvious fermentation notes at all. I would describe it as a “clean earthiness” with a bit of a sharper top note that made me think a lot of roasted chicory root. Also just a bit of an interesting greener/under ripe banana note which I’ve observed before in some other Yiwu shou productions I’ve tried.
Overall this was my second favourite of the three teas served, and I did end up picking up a small sample size of this for myself too – it’s very accessible, and I could see it making for a really excellent grandpa style option for work days.
The first tea shop we visited was a small tea room and bubble tea spot called Paragon. Though I hadn’t heard of them prior, I found them when doing my before-trip research and building a list of shops to visit. The space was really cool! Very modern with lush green and gold colour scheme, and a wall of loose leaf teas available for purchase in addition to their drink menu!
What I found interesting was that, with about three exceptions, all of the teas that they carried in loose leaf for purchase were very traditional straight teas – a lot of Japanese green teas and Chinese black teas, with a few oddities mixed in. Pretty specific region information, and honestly just way more focused around origin than you might assume based on their drink menu – which skewed a lot more towards lattes, boba, and other more ‘novelty’ flavours. I did pick up a couple teas from them, so I’ll get around to those reviews eventually.
Aside from my shopping, I did grab an iced latte to go! Their whole menu is vegan, with oat milk as the default alternative milk of choice. I picked the “Pu’erh Oat Chocolate” as my drink and, to my surprise, it came with a bit of a cautionary statement from the barista that “pu’erh is a very acquired taste – are you sure you want this?”. After assuring her that I did like pu’erh, my drink was made. I’m sure the statement came from past experiences of people not liking their drinks, but I did find it strange to be forewarned given that the bulk of teas they sold were things like Gyokuro, Keemun, and other straight teas that the “baseline” consumer would probably be as equally unfamiliar about as a pu’erh…
The drink was actually very good, though much more overtly chocolate than I had expected and it kind of made me requestion the warning I’d been given seeing as this was basically just a deeper and richer chocolate milk. Subtle earthy kind of undertone, but nothing offensively pu’erh forward. So strange.
Iced!
Our first stop on day one was breakfast at a cafe that my mom had wanted to check out called “Breka” – they’re open 24/7 and after doing some pre-vacation research she determined that she HAD to try their tea flavoured cream puffs.
So, in addition to her iced coffee and my iced London Fog we also picked up an Earl Grey Cream Puff and a Matcha Cream Puff. They were MASSIVE with a thick almost “shell” of icing on top. The matcha one was a deep, deep green and the Earl Grey more of a beige with noticable pieces of tea leaf mixed into it. I actually thought both were delicious, though surprisingly I liked the Earl Grey one more. It was fragrant and citrusy from the bergamot but also super rich and custardy with a vanilla-like flavour to the icing that made me think of (ironically, given my drink) a London Fog. If I have any complaint of the puffs themselves it’s that the amount of filling was disproportional to the amount of pastry. Like, it was a lot of filling.
My tea was very underwhelming. To my disappointment, it was served in a big mug with two tea bags left to infuse in a bath of ice water and milk, with a shot of vanilla syrup. So as you might imagine, it was thin tasting as the tea bags hadn’t been giving the time to infuse properly before being iced – a process which pretty fully has yielded any steeping that was happening. Definitely one of the worst cafe based drinks of the trip, sadly.
