1398 Tasting Notes
This can has no mention of the Ohio Tea Company on it, but it is important for me to referene them as they are the ones who provided this tin for the Ohio Tea Festival for me to brew for the participants of my presentation. I will admit I was skeptical at first because of the number of American companies that don’t know how to properly store or brew it… etc… However, these guys knew good matcha when they tasted it, and this stuff is legit. Please do not put it in lattes… You’ll miss so many amazing notes.
Dry Aroma: Chocolate. Fresh leaves being processed. Somewhat creamy. Slight umami on the back.
Dry Taste: Intense umami. Mouth watering. Ugh, I can’t wait to drink this.
Feel: SMOOOTH. So smooth. In both finger texture and mouth feel.
Flavor: Chocolate. Both bitter chocolate and milk chocolate. Also, a bit of burnt chocolate. The umami is very nice and plays nicely with the creamy notes.
I do love a good Dragon Well but I must admit I like the Longjing #43 better…
Dry Leaf Appearance: No aroma, but the flat leaf is a nice mix of muted greens. Olive green mainly. A bit shiny on some leaves, but mostly just flat greens.
Flavor: I agree with savory. Notes of tall grass, composting leaves, and when steeping the second time, I get more notes of summer greens. The first infusion was the best.
Sorry. Short on time..
Update: Yup. First steep under 1:30 is amazing. Sweet grass. Melon.
Soft mouth feel.
This past weekend, 9/12-13/25, I had the pleasure of finally meeting Terry (and his wife) and Kurt of Ohio Tea Company. They are wonderful people, and I truly appreciate them for donating matcha to the presentation that I did on Saturday. Terry gave this to me as a gift. Thank you, Terry. I really appreciate having a cuppa in the morning like this!
Wet Leaf: Woody, weet wood,
Flavor: A perfect, unassuming black tea for those mornings when you want to wake up and want to drink without wanting to think. Brisk. slight malty, resin, dark wood.
Mouth feel: First steep was slightly astringent (probably due to less steep time), and then I steeped much longer on the second infusion, so now it’s a lovely punch in the face astringency.
I would say this is a good English Breakfast, but not in my top ranking.
Bought this on my way to Chicago for the Chicago Tea Festival. Thought I had reviewed it, but apparently not. I’m tired, so this might be short. Castiny Whimsey was a really cute shop. I picked this one up because it sounded like something my husband would like with the elderflower, but also something I like because of the honeysuckle.
It is a very relaxing and smooth tisane. Lots of unique herbal notes float around your palate. Honeysuckle, cinnamon, slight cardamom, a bite of ginger, a touch of citrus. I wish I could drink elderflower on its own to know which of the flavors it is.
Many martini bars keep elderflower liqueur on hand for various cocktails, and the flavor is a pretty good representation. One could always ask the bartender for a taste, and if one is a customer, they may oblige. At worst, one could pay a few bucks for a shot of it. Cheaper than buying a whole bottle!
Good idea!!
Alternatively, if alcohol is unacceptable to you, you might obtain an elderflower white tea, as the tea flavor may be secondary to the elderflower. TeaGschwendner does have an elderflower white on their website, and a few tea notes were posted here for it, though I don’t know if they can presently ship to the USA. London Tea Co had a similar white tea for which a tea note was recorded here a dozen years ago, but I don’t see that tea on their site today. Good luck!
Elderflowers generally are very floral, with kind of honey-ish and grainy flavour; hard to describe in other words than elderflowers itself :) Sonnentor have syrup, tea bags and loose flowers. The last available here: https://www.sonnentor.com/en-gb/onlineshop/tea/pure-herbal-tea/elderflowers-loose-organic
This is not an oolong. I thought I had requested an oolong in my order. This looks like one. It feels like one. Does not taste like an oolong. This will be a sipdown. I’ve let it sit for too long. First 10 seconds was too light for me. Richer notes past 30 seconds.
Dry appearance: Dusty brown on the upper ridges but the inside ridges is a dark brown. Twisted, long leaves.
Liquor: Clear amber.
Taste: It’s fresh. Like a lightly flavored aroma of what I smelled when the tea was processing at Obubu, but with roasty notes. It isn’t my favorite. Perhaps that is because I thought I had an oolong and I was looking for oolong notes.
Is “Dan-Fried” a misspelling from when you created the entry for this one, @Skysamurai or was it misspelled by Mitocha, thus becoming a legit part of the name? I ask because I’m dealing with some other misspellings in a different tea, which make it difficult to locate things… :-)
Oh my word! I’m sorry and thank you for catching that! I fixed!
This past weekend, we went to New York. Straight into the madness. My cousin got married last year and decided to hold a reception this year. Before the festivities began on the first day, I took my husband on a journey around Manhattan to find tea stores. This was the last of four shops. The quietest. Unlike the other shops, there was no one inside but us. They only sold tea and teaware, no drinks or food. While I found the tea to be expensive, I realized that that is the price of being a tenant in NY. The shop is a sterile white, with most of the tea being sold on one wall and the rest being devoted to teaware. Tea Dealers was one of the companies I interviewed, and you can read that here: https://teatiff.com/2024/05/24/tea-dealers/
Dry Leaf Appearance: Dark chocolate. Dusty. Tightly twisted. Medium-sized leaf.
Aroma: Also dark chocolate. A bit of dried prune and fig.
Flavor: Earthy with notes of dry woods. Roasted (and slightly candied nuts). Dark Chocolate.
Wet leaf: This is very unique. It doesn’t smell like other black teas. It has a squash, like pureed squash note (maybe more to baby food squash note and not soup).
You chose well! They are quality all the way. I remember when they had a small storefront in the East Village and served lovely food as well as tea. They were called 29B Teahouse then. Still wonderful tea and teaware even back then. I miss that space.
Oh man! Thank you for helping me make that connection. I read about that in a Eighty degrees magazine and totally didnt make the connection until now.
After this debuted on social media, I knew I had to try it. And certainly, it doesn’t disappoint. This is a complex matcha with many different flavor notes.
Dry Aroma: Toasty. Like hojicha. Slightly vegetal.
Dry Appearance: Bright and vivid green.
Touch: Smooth
Foam: Easy and light
Taste: A bit of roasted notes with a strong toasty flavor. A bit of seaweed. Ever so slight cream.
Mouth Feel: Smooth. Very little silt.
This matcha blows my mind. It’s amazing. If you enjoy the roasty notes of hojicha, the toasty notes of Dragonwell, and adore matcha, you’ll find this to be a mouth-watering mix of all three.
Steepster is being weird again
