20 Tasting Notes
The tea is a dark brown with deep red undertones. It smells like the dried leaves did. It is like someone stuck a campfire in the tea cup. Breathing it in it is as though you are sitting right in front of a fire. The tea is warm, not heat warm or spice warm. It has a flavor profile that is warm and makes you feel warm from the inside out. This would not be a tea that would make a lot of sense to try to make into an iced tea because of this warm flavor. It does sort of taste like drinking smoke. All the flavor of campfire or barbecue smoke is mixed up in the flavors of this drink. It’s not a sweet taste, although the start of it could be considered a little sweet, moving down into the a nutty and light flavor. This is a very thick tea, it sits heavy in your stomach. At the same time, it is surprisingly smooth.
For more information and pictures see below.
http://teasnobbery.com/2010/10/29/tea-review-russian-caravan-from-nm-tea-co/
Preparation
The color is far darker than I was thinking it was going to be. It is a dark amber color, like a dark green tea, or a light black tea. The smell is light, and not very fragrant. It is sort of floral, like roses.
This has a very light taste that is easy to ruin. A slight overbrew and this will become bitter quickly. It does taste sort of like rose petals. Soft and sweet, this tea drifts over your tongue easy. At the end there is a bark like aftertone to it that finishes off the taste with a little bit of bite. This is the opposite of the smell of the tea leaves.
More information on pictures see below.
Preparation
This is a delicate tea and can be over brewed easily.
The liqueur is a light amber color, almost looking like it has no flavoring to it. It smells floral and fruity. The flower smells like rose but it tastes like jasmine. There is a lightly earthen tone at the back of the smell that is similar to many black darjeelings.
The taste is started off with a overtone of jasmine that slowly introduces the taste of fruit. It is sort of like a low roasted fruit taste though, like a low roasted pear or red apple. As you hit the end of the tea flavor it starts to hit a roasted nut and rice tone.
For more information and pictures see below.
http://teasnobbery.com/2010/11/19/tea-review-darjeeling-green-by-shanti-tea/
Preparation
The liqueur is a deep amber tone. There are a couple of leaves left in the cup. There is a smell of cooked grass, sort of like leeks, and a soft hint of caramel in the smell.
This doesn’t seem to be a super complex set of tones to this tea. That doesn’t make this a bad tea though, it is just a sort of basic tea.
The tea has a warm flavor to it. The feeling of baking is in the flavor of tea. It tastes of an oven, just after you have pulled bread out of it. There is also a hint of jasmine and rosemary. There is also a hint of sweet grass, sort of like someone lightly glazed the grass with honey. I really do love the taste of this tea. It is straight forward and simple, light, but not so light that I can’t taste the flavors. It is a nice balance for a green tea.
For more information and photos see below.
http://teasnobbery.com/2010/12/10/tea-review-dragonwell-from-shanti-tea/
Preparation
The tea is a deep amber color with red hues. This is definitly a black tea, although it doesn’t look as fermented as it smells. The smell is not all that much different from the way that the leaves smelled. Tangy with a hint of alcohol, the smell is that of unripened grapes, still green and juicy. There is a hint of something not as tangy lingering in the smell. It is sort of like jasmine and oak mixed together. Breathing it in, I feel peaceful. There are no grassy hints in the smell.
This tea has a slight alcohol taste to it, but it is not overpowering. It does remind me of a wine. It is grape like, slightly fermented, but not a lot. It is just enough to give it a hint of alcohol, but without having alcohol content probably. There is a hint of an oak undertone to it that is accompanied by a roasted almond flavor. It is clean and refreshing. In fact, it reminds me more of an oolong than a black tea. There is a strange sort of tangy nuance to the tea that seems to vary from sip to sip. There is a bitter aftertaste and the alcoholic taste of the tea seems to go up in the very end. There is a slight note of jasmine that is almost drowned out by the oak tones.
For the full information on this brew see the following post.
http://teasnobbery.com/2010/12/03/tea-review-vithanakanda-from-souvia-tea/
Preparation
The tea is a bright orange coloring showing that this is a much lighter black tea than I was expecting. However, the higher steeping temperature doesn’t seem to have a bad effect on the tea. The smell is subtle and sort of like malt and Carmel. The malt I was expecting, but not the Carmel.
The malty flavor is traditional with an Assam tea like this. However, this tea seems to have a middle malty tone. It isn’t until after you have drank the tea and let it sit for a little bit that the malty taste gets stronger. This is a brisk tea that gets stronger as you drink it. There was not a lot of bitter taste in the beginning, but it sneaks up on you as an undertone as you continue to drink it. The Carmel smell in the taste flavor is the an undertone that provides a sweet flavor that livens up the tea. The overtone of this tea is a sweet and somewhere between leafy and grassy flavor which reminds me of wheatgrass. It isn’t quite as sweet as wheatgrass, but it has many of the same tones as it.
For more information check out my blog.
http://teasnobbery.com/2010/11/26/assam-ftgfop-from-chakra-4-herbs/
Preparation
This came out a very strong brown color. It has a nice light smell to it, fruity, mostly like berries. The taste of this brew is what is interesting because it is a complex bunch of flavors. The beginning of the tea is light and fruity. Specifically it tastes like berries, but not so much that it overpowers the roasted, earthen, smoked taste that fills your mouth all at once. In the middle of the sip there is a bit of astringency that starts to soak the flavor out of the tea until you hit a flavor dry spell. It lasts for just a little bit, but it is sort of like drinking sand. As a beautiful end note, the flavor of the rose petals starts to soak in and give the tea a floral tone that gets sweeter and sweeter through the end until it tastes a little bit like honey.
More information about this at my blog.
http://teasnobbery.com/2010/11/12/tea-review-shalimar-rose-oolong/
Preparation
This red robe actually comes out a deep golden color. It smells like chocolate and strawberries. The taste of this tea is slightly different though. There is a deep floral taste in the liqueur. It is sort of like jasmine, but a little bit harsher. In the back of the liqueur there is a smoky deep chocolate taste that lingers on the back of your throat before hitting the back of your tongue.
If you want more information about this tea check out my blog.
http://teasnobbery.com/2010/10/15/tea-review-da-hong-pao-from-a-tea-co/
Preparation
The liqueur is a light golden color. It smells soft and subtly sweet. There is a hint of being fermented a little bit extra long. The smells are subtle overall and not very strong. The taste is a lot like the smell but stronger. The first thing I notice is that it is subtly sweet riding in the middle tone while the deeper tones are more vegital and warm. It makes me think of a flower garden when I taste the first few notes of the drink. The tea finishes not on a warm note, but instead on a colder note drawing with it a little piece of the astringency.
Further notes are available at the link below.
http://teasnobbery.com/2010/11/05/tea-review-ceylon-forest-green-from-shanti-tea/
Preparation
This tea is a dark amber. It smells like roses, light and floral. There is no smell of berries like in the dry leaves. Tasting it, the primary taste is just like the smell. It tastes very strongly of roses, almost as if they were actually in the tea itself, although I have seen no parts of it. At the end of the tea, after I have let it sit for a while there is a sweet raspberry aftertaste that slowly overrides the other tones in the first brew. I brewed it a little too hot for the first brew, for a little too long, so it is a little extra bitter.
For more notes on this tea see the review on my blog.
http://teasnobbery.com/2010/10/08/tea-review-ontario-icewine-from-nmteaco/
