154 Tasting Notes
I didn’t put anything extra in this tea.
When brewed the color is extremely light but, I brew a pot at a time instead of a cup and if you do this you will notice that the tea gains color as it cools like most whites and minimally processed greens. So its lack of color just seems normal to me.
The flavor starts sweet, hits a little wall of toast and jumps it so fast you’ll wonder if you imagined it. The finish goes right back to sweet. Sweetness that doesn’t go away for an extremely long time.
This is a great tea for non-obtrusive tea drinkers.
I had an idea that it would work well as a palate cleansing tea because of the extremely long finish and stubbornly sweet qualities. It does work well to remove strong sweet flavors like fruity cookie samplers but for thai spicy kind of food it was more of a pleasant compliment than a palate cleanser. I was not expecting that at all but it’s lean to compliment spicy makes me thing that this might be a more oily tea.
Anyways… I find food and tea combos interesting.
Great tea.
Preparation
Steeped 3 min 195 degree water no additives.
This is a steak dinner of a tea. Very dark almost black tea on the fermentation scale but it retains the toasty mellow taste of oolong.
Personally I preferred the second infusion as the flavor was as round as the first but some of the density of it was diluted.
Then again I also prefer the oolong towards the pouchong end of the scale.
It is definitely an awesome tea.
Brewed 5 min. 1Tsp raw sugar. Hot.
I taste the Ginger but not only is the ginger being dulled by the other flavors it is turning into a muddy mess.
This is not a clean tasting tea. To me that means it is not blended very well because good blending means that the flavors compliment eachother and stand on there own within the confines of a cup. An example of good blending is Tea Forte’s African Solstice where the fruit and vanilla can both be clearly tasted but also combine well together.
This is not a good ginger tea because of the muddy flavor profile and lack of balance.
Brewed 5 min. 1 Tsp raw Sugar. Hot.
The pepper in the mix I feel is misplaced. The rest of the blend is very complimentary but there is a bitter under current that takes me out of the pleasurable experience.
Chai shouldn’t have black pepper in it.
Haven’t tried this one. The only chai I like black pepper in is the Wissotzky Chai Masala, it blends but doesn’t overpower – maybe because there are so many other strongish spices as well.
Steeped 6min. 1 Tsp raw sugar. Hot.
Berry front. Vanilla finish. Very mellow, pleasant and smooth.
Non medicinal which is awesome considering that berry flavor teas usually taste medicinal to me.
I have a cup set from tea forte that holds 4 ounces instead of 6 and the explanation on the package said that there dessert teas specifically would brew in the smaller cups better to enhance the flavor. I’m strating to think that all of the teas from tea forte would brew strong pleasant cups in less water.
I’ll give that a shot with the next cup.
Brewed 3 min. No additives. Hot.
This is very well blended but I do not agree that it is so seemless you can not pick out the individual flavors. Which I wouldn’t consider a great compliment anyway. There is a citrus vein through the flavor of the tea that is effectively mellowed by the coconut and vanilla. The resultant effect is a smooth naturally sweet tea with a shimmer of citrus.
My only complaint is that the flavor is masking the tea. I can’t find a substantial under current of tea leaf flavor at all through the 3 flavoring agents.
But still. Mild. Not at all unpleasant but If they didn’t say this was a white tea I might have assumed a weak steeped herbal infusion.