Almond Biscotti

well, my insurrectionist tendencies (ie: plying samples of verdant and butiki on the staff at teavana… hee hee hee) yielded me a very surprising result: one of the women with whom i was sharing brought in A SHOPPING BAG of tea in thanks!!! previous to teavana she had worked at teaopia and had samples from there as well.

i have samples from tiny little tea shops in china town, teavana, teaopia…. although i may now have concerns about the samples from teaopia. apparently that store shut down half way through 2012? and while this tea smells persuasive, i am not persuaded.

what to do when assessing a tea under exceptional circumstances? well, for me i will comment honestly but will refrain from assigning a numerical value…the tea was a lovely thought, but i’m wondering if it is stale.

i love almond, i love the taste of baking in tea! alas, i do not love this tea. i saw the chocolate and caramel bits (reminds me of david’s teas), the slices of almond, the small black texture of the tea, however very little of what i see i can also taste. a lovely idea, and i’m not sure if it’s as a result of being stale, but for all my steeping and my awesome stainless steel basket technique…. i’m really getting nothing.

in order to lick my wounded tea persona with an appropriate level of stylishness i am going to toss out the rest of this mess and try my american tea room ‘formosa plum’. (very well to do… apparently they’re out of beverly hills, fancy fancy!)

agh when will I ever learn? :(
—am I the only one who tastes remnants of past teas in their tea masters? I tasted hardly any almond here, and then when the cup cooled, I swear I got their Monks Blend.
Maybe I’ll give this another try. maybe not.
that’s twice in one day I struck out! arg.

well, three if you count the fact that I was reaching for a new tea from my sample pile and got my white peony instead, without realizing it til after it was made. I never thought the day would come when I’d regret my white peony!!
this was a bad bad tea day. hmph.

it’s been over 6 months since I had this tea. I don’t normally write more than one note about the same tea, however my opinion of this one has changed.

This was almondy, slightly chocolatey a little bit bakey. This was quite good and either my tastes have changed or this tea having sat for 6 months has improved the taste.

So, this was my second tea latte today. I don’t usually do tea lattes, nor two in the same day. I usually just get it with or without milk, but nothing fancy. This is the tea latte that I was teased with all day, as I had told the SA what teas I had smelled the night before, and she said, “ooh, the almond biscotti would be good as a latte” and I agreed.

Keeping in mind that the Plum Oolong was a bit dominated by the steamed milk (it was whole) I opted for almond milk. Alas, I think still that this tea was overwhelmed with the steamed milk flavour. I think that this tea is also best with a little milk, or simply sans milk. Though I usually go for a little milk with my black teas. So again, like the Plum Oolong, I mostly tasted the steamed milk, whether it was whole or almond…

So I am not going to give a lower rating due to the preparation…I can tell the tea would be nice if only it wasn’t drowning in the steamed milk. And as I said with the Plum Oolong, I don’t think the fault is the tea or preparation (from a technical standpoint) or SA, I think that it is just not suited for the latte preparation, or the tea needs to be brewed A LOT stronger, and the mildest tasting milk needs to be used, and maybe in smaller amounts.

I don’t know how much of a reason there is in reviewing Teopia teas anymore, since I don’t think Teavana has any intention of bringing them back, but someone new who isn’t my mother is following me, and I’ve had about 5 cups of this today, so colour me inspired.

This tea has a great sweet, nutty, smooth smell to it both dry and brewed. In all honesty it isn’t that different from Teaopia’s Fireside S’mores tea. Obviously it’s stronger as it’s all black tea (which makes brewing it easier actually, the s’mores tea has white, oooling and black tea in it which makes determining the best brewing temperature to bring out the plethora of tastes without turning it bitter very difficult).

It can go astringent if you forget to pull the leaves out in time (I typically leave it in for about 4-4.5 minutes – makes it nice and strong), but even at its most bitter it’s still drinkable.

Obviously I don’t need to worry about if I’ll buy this again, but I can be thankful that I stocked up on this before Teaopia ran out (at %75 off, and yes that DOES make it taste better)

This has to be my favorite chocolate tea. I’m now beating myself up for not buying more when Teaopia went out of business!
At first I steeped this tea for too long, and hated it, but little under a month ago I tried it again and have been obsessed with it…This is now my favorite tea taking the place of the apple pie tea from Teaopia!