2036 Tasting Notes
Sipdown no. 14 of 2023 (no. 672 total).
For the last few days, this was my take it to work tea, and I noticed something about it I didn’t think I’d noticed before until I read my original note. The freshness — mintiness without the mint. Menthol? Camphor? Who knows.
It made things interesting. I didn’t notice the same thing with the plain coconut one from Premium Steap so it must be something to do with the chocolate.
In any case, I think I did in fact like the plain coconut better, but not by much.
Sipdown no. 13 of 2023 (no. 671 total).
This is the last of my huge bags of Harney fruit blends, which I have been enjoying for a while now as cold brews. Fruit juice without the calories!
I’d originally rated this one 80 which I think is about right. The Harney fruit blends all seem to use the same base, which makes them all taste a little similar and heavy on the hibiscus, which I have come to learn to appreciate and even enjoy over the years. So you have to really think about teasing out the individual flavors.
The cold version of this isn’t heavily orange. In fact I’m not sure I would have pegged it as orange in a blind taste test. But it was still good, and I’ll say it again — fruit juice without the calories!
Sipdown no. 12 of 2023 (no. 670 total).
I’m embarrassed to say that since I sipped this down a few days ago and neglected to write about it immediately or take any notes, I just don’t remember what I had planned to say about it.
Looking back at my original note, I’m just going to stick with that. The last bit of this was super old. It didn’t approximate a coffee-like richness like I said in my original note. If it had, I would have remembered. I just remember a pleasant, mild, tea with a flavor I couldn’t define, as though all the distinct notes had flattened with age into something nondescript but that suggested its former self. Sort of like a much worn and long-lived piece of fine clothing.
Sipdown no. 11 of 2023 (no. 669 total).
This was last week’s take it to work tea, and I can’t say that the last bit of this retained much in the way of fig over the years. But that’s my fault, not the tea’s.
It was still pleasant in a mild, generic, fruity sort of way.
Sipdown no. 10 of 2023 (no. 668 total). And with this, I’m down to 14 pages of cupboard! Whew!
I have almost an entire page worth of lower rated herbals/fruit blends which I need to get on the stick about. But at this point, nothing in my cupboard is rated lower than 80 and that’s a great place to be.
I think I might have undervalued this little tea when I first started drinking it. It is so well-blended. The coconut is just the right amount to give a pretty substantial hint without tasting oily or pasted on. I actually think I like it better than the chocolate coconut, which I’m also drinking at the moment.
It’s a happy-making tea.
Sipdown no. 9 of 2023 (no. 667 total).
This was also a lovely take it to work tea — a bit on the toasty side without going over into heavily toasted/smoky/burnt, with a soft mouth feel that is comforting. Perhaps because I was drinking it at the same time I was drinking an Iron Goddess, this one seemed a lot less green-like to me than my original note indicates. It seemed to lean more toward what I think of as Taiwan oolongs — and probably because of that it was my rainy day tea while the Iron Goddess was my sunny day one.
Sipdown no. 8 of 2023 (no. 666 total).
I drank this as my take it to work tea for the past week or so, meaning I made it in the Breville and put it in a to-go cup — and it was really quite nice. I agree with my original assessment that it is a solid tea of its type, but not necessarily a stand out. It wasn’t as milky/buttery as I remembered it, nor was it as floral, but that could be a function of age. But still drinkable and a nice work companion.
Sipdown no. 7 of 2023 (no. 665 total).
Drank the last little bit of this and it didn’t hold up over the years (but then, it isn’t supposed to). It was a shade of its former self, even though a lot of the mix-ins ended up at the bottom of the tin. Mostly what this did was make the liquor look more like coffee with milk in it than tea.
I’m now pretty firmly into the 85 rating group of true teas. There are some cool shaped ones that I’m holding on to for decorative reasons, and some tisanes as well, that are still below 85 and the project of a separate sipdown. But it’s a nice problem to have to be in a position to cull my very good teas.
Sipdown no. 6 of 2023 (no. 664 total).
I continue to rank Samovar teas as among my favorites in general, and about this one I find myself saying — it’s gone? I drank it pretty regularly for about a week, because I had a full tin in my kitchen and it was such a perfect background tea to my breakfast or to my clearing my in-box at work because it didn’t call attention to itself in either a spectacular or horrible way that I didn’t realize I was getting to the end until I did.
Believe it or not, this is a great compliment. Some teas are meant to just be there in the moment with you.
Sipdown no. 5 of 2023 (no. 663 total).
I enjoyed the last little bit of this — it wasn’t astringent as I’d noted before and it was sweet, as I’d also noted before. I spend a lot of time wondering whether I would rate things the same way I did way back when if I rated them for the first time now. I suspect I would have rated this a bit higher, but given the age of the last bit of this sample and the fact that my palate is out of practice, I am not going to change the rating now.
