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I’m down to the last 5 or 6 of my upton samples; the ones that I’m not really sure why I got, and well I’m going to be frank these leaves look weird. They’re irregularly twisted, but more prominently they’re an off-greyish green colour, and they smell like ginseng or matcha powder.
At first, it tastes like bitter ginseng, and lemongrass, but with a dirty and sharp taste. it’s very lemony, very bitter and very ginsengy, there really isn’t much else that ever happens. I actually noticed at one point that it does have quite a nice, thick, creamy mouthfeel, but it’s not something that you notice while drinking this one, since it’s so sharp and abbrasively bitter.
the lemon eventually steeped out around the fifth or sixth steep, and left really just ginseng, with hints of florals and earth. I used a moderate temperature, about 80C, and varied my steep time around, but to no avail.
It’s very uncomfortable drinking this tea, and I wound up cutting my review session short because of the discomfort.

Teavivre sample 3/5

Well well, here we have the most expensive white tea that has ever come through my hands, so let’s see if it’s worth it.

The first steep is a lot of sweet hay, very thick and abnormally fruity for a white (melon)

The second steep is a lot more woody, with lots of clean florals coming through (clean like without the accompanying earth that always seems to be in whites)

Third – It’s a very full and rich tea, this one. it isn’t just repeating the same earth-flowers-melon-orange that makes me bored of a lot of whites. It’s very sweet and grassy, with subtle florals, and a very fruity overtone, lots of melon and hints of lemon/lime.

Fourth – You know how cranberry juice leaves your throat feeling like.. swolen? (is there a term for that sensation?) this tea does that to me, just along with astringency and a bit of.. cotton-mouth-ness. Hay, flowers, lemon-lime, melon.

Fifth – I may have been steeping slightly too long. Nevermind actually, it tastes just as good as before.

Sixth – I really appreciate these lemon-lime notes. It’s making the tea much more enjoyable. It’s kinda cantaloupey.

There’s nothing bad in this tea, (I mean I guess if you wanted to, then you could have a problem with the weird mouthfeel) but there isn’t really all that much that seems special about it. I know I never would have thought anything special about this if I hadn’t seen the price or.. frankly the steepster ratings.

I’m happy to drink this, in fact it’s more enjoyable than most of my other whites, but I’m starting to think white tea isn’t my thing anymore. Which is unfortunate since I have a rather large stash of whites at the moment.

Teavivre sample 2/5!

The dry leaves here are really pretty, they’re very whole and twisty and they smell kinda weird? like grape and almost like wine..?

This is tasty! grape notes, with a dark floral taste, even a bit of apple, it has this bit of a doughy kind of a thing going on too which is actually awesome, a tad of smoked woody kind of notes,

Well the second steep is a lot different, more like apricot and hops and uh peach? it’s almost like peach uh like brisk? it’s very syrupy, a really thick mouthfeel, also rice notes

The third I did shorter than the second in hopes of maybe it being more like the first, but it isn’t and it’s fine. Apricot and peach, wood, a hint of earth and there’s definitely flowers now with astringency

The fourth brought out more wood and earth than before, cinnamon, vanilla, flowers, apple, apricot

Fifth has like the teeniest bit of cocoa? some vanilla, apricot, flowers, earth, apple, astringency increasing to quite noticeable levels

There’s a lot of flowers in the sixth, with peach and apple

More peach, apple and earthy flowers until a bit of cinnamon pops in

Finally! The long lost grape taste has returned! I mean a tiny bit well actually not that tiny of a bit it’s actually quite grapey around like the tenth steep. I really like grape notes in my tea. But I don’t like flowers so this one isn’t entirely for me, but if you like em then you’ll love this.

So I’m trying this thing, I figured out how much water to boil so that I could fill the rest of the kettle with cold water and it’ll be like I can have any temperature I want! it’ll be like a variable temperature kettle just cheaper :D so uh yeah I’m doing about 70 C here :)

Anyways I better get to it before the temperature lowers and there was no point in me doing any of that, so uh there’s like.. a lot of minerals, and some roastiness, like a genmaicha taste, toasted rice; I had it western the first time I tried it because.. well it’s a long story. Anyways, that time it wasn’t very good. It’s surprisingly good now..well it was for the first 2 or 3 steeps, it’s bitter on this steep. It could be the time, I left it a bit longer than I probably should’ve. I flashsteeped the next one, and there’s no bitterness. It’s quite a sweet tea, and a bit buttery. .. for a little while, it was really nice for.. like 2 steeps it really isn’t that good anymore. it’s very astringent and .. can I say powdery feeling? Bleh powdery feeling that sounds disturbing.. It’s not as bad as it sounds.. I mean this might be fine for you if you brew western and uh do a rinse and then steep it for like .. 15 seconds and dont resteep but uh.. thats very specific and uh yeah so uh.. k well thats it :)

I wasn’t planning to review this one right now, but I was saying to myself how annoying it is when teas are… just so broken up so I decided to do it. Does that make sense? Ah, I don’t need your confirmation anyways.

So uh this one’s all broken up! into bits! and it’s annoying me >:(! Anyways.. I mean it actually tastes good, like hot apple cider. nice cinnamon notes, and a dark richness to it, with some grape and sour cherry notes, orange zest is quite strong as well.
It doesn’t actually have a very nice mouthfeel, it’s uncomfortably astringent, and not very thick. I’ve never had Indonesian tea and I’d actually be really excited to try higher quality Indonesian tea based on this one, and on a mostly unrelated note, it’s making realize I need to revisit Indian tea.

Thank you Teavivre for these samples! This is the first one I’ll be reviewing, which I honestly chose just because of the ratings on steepster, and frankly the dry leaves smell amazing, like cocoa, wood, earth, sweet potato, almost smells like grapes?

Anyways, so the first steep is relatively reminiscent of the smell, without any of the sweet potato; chocolate, earth, wood, theres quite a fruitiness to it, like grape and maybe peach?

Ooh, wow the second steep is quite different, it’s a much darker chocolate taste, with a lot of woody notes, plus a nice richness, and a kind of maple-ness, it has a really thick texture, like syrup, just a little astringent, still with its grape notes,

I think I slightly oversteeped this one, it’s very woody, less complex, there’s very light cocoa in the background, quite astringent, it’s still nice though

Yeah, the fourth is much sweeter, grape, chocolate, earth, less wood.

I can finally taste a bit of that sweet potato in the fifth, quite astringent, sweet, cocoa starting to fade too.

The astringency does get quite strong for me, my mouth is drying out a bit, but it still tastes really nice, the grape is gone now.

I reheated my water, which was actually quite necessary apparently. I’m getting a bit of marshmallow notes, the cocoa is almost gone, also the yam and earth. It’s even a bit grassy, I’m actually getting notes of graham crackers, and yeah so uh no I know you’re thinking s’mores but it doesn’t taste like s’mores. Even with all 3 components, its like I’m having each one separately. Also they aren’t very strong compared to the earth and yams and uh some cinnamon I just noticed. I got a bit of banana flavour here, that’s interesting. I’ve never seen banana notes in a black .. or in a tea actually well alright then. It’s a bit like chocolate chip banana bread, after I don’t know how many steeps
Raisins! Also raisins

I actually like this, I don’t usually enjoy roasted oolongs, for the first couple steeps, it tastes a lot like hay at first, and nice and earthy with subtle cocoa notes, even tastes a bit like pumpkin and some spices, kinda like pumpkin pie

Once it wakes up after 3 or 4 steeps, it gets some woody, darker, and thicker with stronger chocolate notes with moderate astringency, it has quite a nice, comforting body. The roastiness isn’t very.. Uhm isn’t very like .. Central in the flavour? Like you can tell that it’s roasted just like with the laoshan roasted oolong, just this is a bit more noticeably roasty if any of that makes any sense. It finally begins to taste like autumn leaves after maybe 8 or 9 steeps, and around that point the roastiness gets strong into a point where I don’t like the taste as much, and it loses most of its complexity around this time, it’s just sort of roasty, with autumn leaves and dark and earthy, with radish and carrot notes.

This is okay; I first tried cold-brewing it and it was really earthy and tasted like kinda dirty and sharp and a bit floral, but anyways that’s not as important to me as brewing gongfu:

The first steep was decent, it definitely wasn’t awake and you could tell, since the body was quite a bit thinner than it should’ve been, but still floral and earthy;

The second is thicker, thankfully, and earthy, floral, tastes like stems of a flower.. Wait how do I know what those taste like? When have I ever eaten a flower stem….. I.. well whatever, that’s what I’m going with. It’s a little sweet, and a little sour, there’s even a bit of mint in the aftertaste.

The third is much earthier, and astringent this time, with a kind of gross sour flower aftertaste, but the soup does have a very nice mouthfeel,

I’m really enjoying how thick it is, I think this time I used more leaves than I usually would for any tea, and it’s working out nicely for this one, not that the tea’s all that great or special,

I’m getting about the same in the fourth, but with some grassy notes as well.

The fifth gives me a very astringent feel, a bit of tangerine, quite a bit grassier, maybe a bit of hay,

Shorter steeps lend a lighter, warmer, fruiter (a bit of orange, lime, cranberry) tea while longer steeps give a darker, earthier, floral astringent cup, I much prefer the shorter steeps; but I think this tea is giving me a headache……. in fact, it definitely is. But it’s okay, I gave the rest of this one to my friend. I don’t really like it that much. Also the leaves are really, really ugly like shou mei’s usually aren’t pretty like at all but this one is very torn and seems to have an abnormally large amount of stems. Not that that really means that much, but I mean at the same time it kind of makes me disregard shou mei and bai mu dan teas, well actually I don’t think it’s because of how they look but that contributes a bit wow I’m rambling so ..

This ones a bit sour, it’s grassy at first, earthy, bitter, quite acidic actually, with some cocoa notes,
the second steep gives oats, milk chocolate, caramel, and burnt notes
Then i get some sort of plum or apricot, wood, sort of like licking a popsickle stick that had just a bit of chocolate ice cream left on it still, the next steep is creamier.

The tea fades to earthy, woody caramelness, wit a bit of burnt ntes and an increasing bitterness, with some minerals; the caramel eventually the caramel steeps out, after which it was quite bland, a bit roasty, with some wood and earth .

Sipdown(1)? I’ve never done one of those before but this seems an appropriate tea to start on. Sorta. Anyway okay so this one’s been really strange for me, it’s probably the only tea I’ve ever had that I liked better western style than gongfu, and I don’t really know why.. But .. Well anyways,

2015 autumn harvest.. I think?

It’s very strongly cocoa for me, and lots of oats, maybe a little vanilla , hints of floral but very subtle ones. It’s quite astringent as well, gets a hint of citrus notes later, when the florality gets a little bit stronger, it still does have the darkness to it, with a bit of wet earthy notes, it has a nice thick, slightly creamy mouthfeel. It’s kind of reminiscent of an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie, except if you used dark chocolate chips in it instead. But in later steeps, the astringency becomes so strong and the nice cocoa and vanilla notes are basically gone after like 5 steeps? It’s still sweet and oaty but that’s pretty much it, I don’t really see the reason for all the hype around this one, like it’s pretty decent but it’s not amazing for me.