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Tastes of hints of popcorn and butter, canned pastuerized pineapple juice, and a cool vanilla that is pleasant but in someways acts to take away the crispness that pineapple can have. The apple acts to add to the sweetness and tartness to the tea. I don’t notice the pepper but then I have eaten Traditional hot homemade curry in Rajhastan and have a high tolerance for hot spice. The white tea does provide a creaminess to the tea and both the green tea and white tea provide a thicker body to the beverage. The base teas also provide a sweetness and a nuttiness. The first 2 steepings atually reminded me a bit of popcorn covered with a fruity buttery coating. Later steepings are more creamy fruit tasting. Nice for when you want something fruity that is not overly tart or sweet.

This tea made a nice introduction to this class of teas. It is yet another one I found at the local Korean grocer and is packaged and sold by a company that controls a Taiwanese grocery chain. It comes packed in plastic within a cream carboard 60g cannister with a green label. The plastic did not seem to contaminate the tea.

The dry tea smells like raisin dominated dry fruit and contains long olive to forest green leaves. I brewed it 5 times but it still had a little life in it.

35s 1st steep – scent- sweet, slight raisin, soft sweet floral and sugar and cinnamon, colour, pale yellow.
– Taste more intense than smell, buttery, sweet cooked apricot and clover nectar. sweetness intensifies as it is held in the mouth and becomes almost candy like, hay, light spice hinting at cinnamon.freshening feeling towards back and top of mouth, Aftertaste of sugar, cooked peaches and clover.

48s second steep- scent -strongerand slightly more of dried stewed fruit.
– taste sweet dried stewed fruit, sugar, hay and strong sweet floral notes like honeysuckle and clover. Tingling ay bak of mouth, still buttery with hints of cinnamon. aftertaste cooling with sweet, floral with slight hint of cereal vegetal.

50s third steep – taste- more floral with a mineral vegetal note that is slightly bitterand a hint of yam. still buttery and slightly sweet. freshening feeling in back of throat and sinuses.

120+ fourth and fifth steep – tastes of a pleasant slightly sweet green tea with a thicker mouth feel, and a slight reference to seaweed and peach. still lots of flavour.

I was surprised how naturally sweet this tea was. On the first steep the sweetness almost tasted like Stevia. However this tea is unsweetened. It tastes pretty nice on its own and this tea is affordable enough that I don’t feel guilty experimenting with blending with it.

Borsapori Estate has a sustainable farm certification given by a
subsidiary of the Rainforest Alliance, which means that it meets
certain standards with regards to fair and ethical treatment of its
workers and he surrounding community, does not employ child labour, and
has introduced several standards with regards to environmental and
wildlife proection, conservation and sustainable agricultural practices. For more information see here:

http://sustaiablefarmcert.com/?page_id=172
http://sustainablefarmcert.com/?page_id=23&idD=1471
http://www.sanstandards.org/sitio/sections/display/2

The dry tea leaves are quite pretty with silvery dark grey brown with a
lot of golden tips that smell of chocolate and raisins. It brews to a
beautifully clear rosewood colour, and smells of milk chocolate and
spice (cinnamon) with a floral note. The tea tastes of bitter sweet
and milk chocolates. It is a smooth tea with little to no astringency.
The tea also has a powdery floral note and a hint of cinnamon and
sandalwood. This Assam has a strong flavour without the astringency,
and leaves afreshening feeling towards the back of the mouth. The tea
develops a faint fruity note such as ripe plum as it cools sweetening
the tea a little, however chocolate remains the dominant note. The
aftertaste is of milk chocolate with a slightly bitter note, and a
cinnamon floral.

The second steep is a little bit more fruity with the chocolate, floral spice remaining dominant. It is quite a nice tea and is robust enough that It will hold up well to milk. I however pretty well always take my tea black.

Having a nice biscuity, raisiny assam base with some body this tea does make a nice breakfast tea as intended. The flavouring is nice with the fruit tasting like cooked berry,paired with the naturally biscuity flavour of the tea it certainly does evoke the taste of some blueberry baked good. To me though the tang in the flavouring evokes the memory of my mothers pancake batter made with yogurt, instead of a cream cheese danish, however this is a good memory. Regardless the tea is delicious. The tea interacts with the blueberries to create a slightly smokey, slightly chocolate undertone beneath the fruit and pastry. I don’t really get any notes of frosting, either the sweetness or the vanilla accents that are often in it, but I suppose if you added sugar you might get these notes, however this is not necessary. The tea is very nice as it is and resteeps well with decent fruit flavour for the first two and a nice tea flavour for the third.

The tea smells like warm raspberry syrup and vanilla, slight hint of rooibos,faint dry woodiness, followed by a cool vanilla cream dominated raspberry, leaving a warm sweetened raspberry coulis aftertaste, leaves a drying freshening feeling in the mouth. Despite my initial description the rooibos is quite well hidden by the flavouring but acts to add depth to the tisane. The flavouring is
not as strong as the almond marzipan and chocolate mint rooibos.

I find that this tea requires a little more leaf than I usually use for Zen Teas Rooibos’, but it re-steeps really well and has a really pleasant flavour if you love raspberry desserts.

I have a feeling that this tea bought at one of my local independant grocery stores was brought back while on a vacation in Ireland, because the packaging is not like the other bewley’s teas the store sells. Its in a cute octagonal red tin with a print of their iconic Grafton street shop on the top. So I bought it, partly because the tin brings back memories.

This is a loose leaf blend of several grades of Darjeeling. The dry tea smells of raisins, hay, with a spicy floral note. It brews to a slightly redder tone of deep orange and smells of a spicy sweet, floral, hint of hay, almond, muscatel, and a hint of malt.

The tea tastes of almond, apricot, prune, grape, with a slightly powdery cooler floral, bitter vegetal, and malt notes. It is moderately astringent. It has an aftertaste of spicy floral,
apricot and almond notes. The tea is much sweeter if brewed at a lower temperature and becomes more lemony and astringent when brewed at boiling.

The dried leaves are quite pretty with long twisted wires of brown grey
and almost a camel colour. They smell like a slightly lemony raisin. Imagine my surprise that when first brewed the tea tastes and smells of chips and vinegar. It has malt tones and potato tones. I also smell lemon, a hint of rosemary and a hint of that spicy tone of some yunnans. It doesn’t taste vinegary just to be clear. It brews to a nice orangey brown. It is smooth with little to no astringency with a hint of artichoke, and bitter floral tone.

After the first steep the tea retains its malt with hints of potato, but is much sweeter (indistinct but slight reference to honey). There are hints of cocoa. It is smoother, and feels tannic at the front of the mouth but buttery over the rest. The tea has fading bitter vegetative note and citrus notes.

By the 4th steep indistint sweet flavour dominates, others fade but there are still aspects of malt, honey, cocoa, and a slight floral note with a slightly fading buttery mouth feel.

It retains a honey flavour, with hint of cocoa into a 7th steep, though by the end of this series it tastes more like dilute honey water.

The spent leaves are large and entire and smell of malt and chocolate.

This tea requires longer steeping than my indian teas of usually 4-5 minutes.

Considering my first impression of this tea it was quite fitting that I began drinking this tea on Good Friday. It certainly has an interesting variety of flavours and the leaves hold value for their money as they hold up to many steepings. I’m not sure that this would be an everyday tea for me but I would like to try some other Nepalese teas.

Comparing this to the the other raspberry green I have, I’m not sure which is my favourite now. The other one has a more complex and interesting mix of flavours, but this one has a sweeter base and tastes more of fresh berries and is slighly tarter. Both are really nice. This one would probably be nice iced.

I decided to add some sugar to this time to see if it would make the fruit flavours pop. Interestingly it did just the opposite. It muted the base making it just taste like a malty black tea and it masked the fruity so that the tea tastes more like a heavier breakfast blend. So I guess I wont do that again. Part of what makes this interesting in the contrasting flavours of the fruit mixed with spicy flavours of the base.

Pear, it seems, is a hard flavour to replicate in a natural tasting way in teas, at least according to the reviews that I’ve read on this site. This tea actually doesn’t do that bad a job at it. It does it by combining apple and fennel which actually works to create a taste that is somewhere between baked pear and a bosc pear when the flavourings are well blended together. However I don’t really get a feeling or taste of cream in this tea. This is a gunpowder green tea crossed with silver needle style white, and I suppose that this base could produce a creamy feel if steeped properly. However the green tea used here is quite aggressive and bitter even when steeped at short intervals. The white tea looks quite nice though with lots of silver hairs. Both teas were sourced in Sri Lanka.

The tea brews to a nice light saffron yellow. There is a nice balance between the tea and the flavouring with both remaining present. The tea base is lightly astringent, providing a bit of a tang like you would get when eating fresh fruit, it has a faintly bitter vegetative quality to it. The fruit flavour ranges betwween apple with fennel and pear. When the fennel mixes with the apple flavour it really does
taste like pear, The tea is pleasant but I think that the suggested brew time of two minutes would make this tea overly bitter. The tea still remains slightly bitter even with shorter 40s steep times but then the fennel becomes more dominant over the fruit. At the second steep the green tea softens, becomes silkier, and slightly sweeter. The Flavouring remains consistant. Not a bad effort, I might like it better if I add sugar to tone down the bitterness, but It would have been nicer if the tea had been made with a sweeter base tea.