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I can’t deal with any more new tea acquaintances today. Hello, kiwi vanilla goodness. Hi. You’re really pretty and you smell good. Want to come to bed with me?

Yes?

Excellent.

So I just took BuddyTV’s ‘Which Buffy the Vampire Slayer character are you?’ quiz, and, to my great surprise, I am Rupert Giles. I will have to somehow process this. Maybe everyone who drinks tea is automatically a Giles?

Anyway, this clearly calls for some (more) tea. This is another sample from Stacy (Happy birthday, by the way! Ha! Just kidding.) and again, I can’t remember if I asked for this or if it was one she chose for me.

Unlike all other Butiki teas I’ve tried, this doesn’t smell good dry to me – I really like the main body of it, but then this metallic note (I’m guessing it’s the hibiscus/rhubarb.) cuts through and kills everything else. Steeped, though, it smells so good – really, really good. Nothing metallic whatsoever remains in the cup.

Flavour wise, there is some hibiscus tartness, but it’s very well-balanced and goes nicely together with the base tea, which I love. There’s also a surprising amount of sweetness, which hits a perfect berry note. And finally a hint of pastry to round it off.

I love how complex this tea is. As usual, I wish for more intensity of flavour, but it’s still one of my Butiki favourites. And gah! I just realized this was the last of it!

[From my Butiki order to Santa Clara, October 2013.]
[Sample polished off in Rome, January 2014.]

I can’t remember if this was one of the surprise samples Stacy generously included with my order, or if I asked for it – either way, I’m excited to try a banana tea. This smells so good in the bag – quite like banana bread. I wish I had some dazzling banana bread story about a quaint little bakery in a small town in the South somewhere, but I’m sorry. The best banana bread ever is Honolulu Coffee Company’s. I love you, nice lady who for some entirely unfathomable reason found me delightful and kept treating me to free banana bread last Christmas. Please come live with me. I will knit socks for you. (Also please remember to bring the recipe.)

There is an elusive quality to the scent of the steeped tea. I was working on something as I waited for it to cool a little, and I kept losing my focus when little scent strands found their way to my nose. If this tasted like it smells, it would be one of my favourite things ever. The flavouring is super elusive in this one, though, and the Keemun base tea isn’t my favourite.

All in all, it goes down very smoothly, but doesn’t leave much of an impression on me. I’m happy I got to try it, though – exploring Butiki’s teas has given me a much better insight into what unflavoured teas could work for me, and it’s pretty exciting.

[From my Butiki order to Santa Clara, October 2013.]
[Sample polished off in Rome, January 2014.]

Oh wow, the leaf expansion. Completely unexpected. I turned away for a second (Okay, well, fine, four minutes.) and just SPLORFA! I swear I did not overleaf.

Anyway, I’ve tried a good number of rhubarb teas, and they all too often end up too tart for my tastes. A little tonguetip-tartness is fine, but not a whole soursip’s worth. This tea isn’t tart at all. On the other hand, nor does it taste of rhubarb. The vanilla element, though, is surprisingly nice. It’s silky smooth throughout, and comes off very rich and natural.

But I would like a whole lot more of it. And, seeing as it’s a rhubarb tea, just a little bit of rhubarb would be good, too.

As usual with Fru P’s teas, I’m left a little confused. One thing I like so much about companies like Mariage Frères or Lupicia, is that there’s a certain level, or profile, or something along those lines, that I can rely on. If it says, ‘Vanilla’, then I know what kind of vanilla to expect, not to mention how present it’s going to be. With Fru P (and many other smaller retailers, for obvious reasons) it’s just a lottery. Sometimes the base tea is great, sometimes very low grade, sometimes the flavouring is top notch, sometimes it’s painfully artificial. The comparison is unfair, I know, but, in the end, that reliability is what makes me commit to a company.

Thanks, Ang!

Anyway, this marks the end of the samples from the EU swap box – it’s been great fun. A huge thanks to those who participated – I loved trying out your teas!

[Sample from the EU Travelling Box, autumn 2013.]

A number of years ago, me and some friends climbed the foothills of Mount Juktas, all the way up to Anemospilia. Ancient Minoan temple, human sacrifice, high priestesses – you know the drill. The weather was insane – Crete in January is rarely delightful weather wise, but this was a year of unprecedented winter storms. We were soaked just stepping out of the car and the hill was a muddy mess, but we got to the top eventually. It was maddeningly beautiful, of course. Sacred sites are best experienced like that; rain pouring, wind howling.

But hey, even the most intrepid explorers need lunch, so after carefully considering the layout of the bones and artifacts and contesting most of the conclusions drawn by former archaeologists (that’s how you’re supposed to do it) we left and eventually ended up at this tiny restaurant in an equally tiny village. We were very wet and very hungry. There was no menu, but we asked for whatever they had, which turned out to be bread, and olives, and this cheese I’ll never forget, and some other things that are even more beside the point, and then these little deep-fried fish.

Being Scandinavian, I’ve eaten various fish in the most horrifying preparations you could possibly dream up, but it just never occurred to me that you’d actually eat the whole thing. I always left the little tail end and the head. It just seemed more polite to the fish, you know? But then my friend turned to me, and said, ‘But the head is the best part!’ And she was right. And since that day, I always eat the whole thing of whatever is served, unless I’m expressly told otherwise.

This is just a very roundabout way of saying that I’m not very squeamish… and that this tea tastes exactly like small, deep-fried fish. And their heads. It smells like it too. I quite enjoy both the scent and the flavour, but it’s very confusing to experience it in liquid form, and not accompanied by the crunchiness I’m used to.

To me, there is nothing even remotely resembling orange in this cup; it’s a sipful of charcoaly, deep-fried sea creature. Even if it’s not for me, I have to say how I love the surprises some of these swap teas have given me – it’s been an unexpected treat not having the smallest clue what to expect from the brew.

Thanks to whoever shared this!

[Sample from the EU Travelling Box, autumn 2013.]

Okay, so you know how frustrating it can be if someone keeps calling you the wrong name or constantly mixes you up with your sibling, or something along those lines? Right.

Well, words have feelings, too.

Pallet

This is an image of a pallet: https://bit.ly/3emkvSz

Palette

This is an image of a palette: https://bit.ly/2NuuN7v

Palate

Yes. Mouthfeels.

I bet these three words feel like Amy Adams and Isla Fisher and some other tiny, strawberry blonde actress who gets mixed up with the other two all the time.

On to the tea. This smells vaguely of fruity black tea, but without any specific, discernible fruit character. ‘Random berry’, I’d say. Steeped, the scent continues to be subtle, a subtlety that carries through into the sip.

What I really like about this one, and that I feel I often complain about in other black berry (not blackberry) teas, is that it’s not tart or sour at all. The flavour is simply blackberry (with hints of blueberry, as per usual, as the two flavour profiles are really difficult for me to keep apart in dried/tea form) and a very natural-tasting, smooth one, at that.

I’m not a huge berry tea fan, and this one doesn’t have the complexity I usually go for, but I like it a whole lot nonetheless. It’s just one of those teas, I guess. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that it made me crave scones with berry jam and clotted cream (and the works, really) something crazy and there’s just no way that is happening anytime soon.

Thanks for sharing this, Ang!

[Sample from the EU Travelling Box, autumn 2013.]

When my friend and I went to Venice for the final, flickering moments of the Biennale, I picked up some sample tea bags from Tea Forte that were on sale while she was shopping for gifts. That’s how it always goes – I accompany someone as they shop. They buy gifts for others. I buy gifts for ME.

Anyway, I’d been curious to try out TF, and I’d only seen them in hideously overprized huge tins before, so I snagged what looked interesting. One of the bags was this one. I’ve been a little too excited to catch up with my untried teas lately, and the amounts of black tea I’ve had late at night has resulted in the following type of sleeping pattern:

O_O

0_0

zzz

0_0

O_O

So I figured white was the way to go today. This bag, helpfully, even has ‘Very little caffeine!’ printed on it. As for the tea itself, well.

Sniffing the bag didn’t get my hopes up – it smelled very strongly of artificial ginger. The description clearly says PEAR, with a note of ginger – ginger as the dominant feature in a tea isn’t really for me, unless it’s very well-balanced, like Kusmi’s lemon/ginger which I quite enjoy.

In the cup, the ginger definitely mellows, and the flavour is predominantly pear. However, it’s a really artificial pear experience, much reminiscent of my fave Swedish ice pop, Piggelin.

Just… warm. And with ginger. Urrrhh.

Then there’s this other note, both in the scent and taste of the steeped tea, that I absolutely cannot place. It’s just weird, like drinking something that came out of a 3D printer. It’s so very clearly the scent/taste of an object not made for drinking and it’s really confusing.

I will finish the cup, but I never need to drink this again.

(ETA: I’m liking this a little better as it cools, so I’ll kick the rating up a little, but just a very little.)

[Sample bag picked up in Venice, winter 2013.]

The more I sample David’s Tea products, the weirder their overall profile seems to me; they’re very much like Teavana in that way. It’s basically a concept/execution issue, as the ideas are often excellent, but the end results can range from unfathomably poor, I mean really, truly what were you thinking poor, to quite tasty. But for me, it never really gets beyond that ‘quite tasty, but…’ with either Teavana or DT.

This tea, albeit double-bagged, had taken over most of the swap box when it reached me – not in a permanent way, it just needed some airing out, but the fact remains: this is a very strongly scented tea. It’s also a hot mess in every possible way. Every sip offers a new flavour combination, every whiff makes you flinch in confusion and sensory overload. This tea makes no sense.

However, I really like when things make sense, so the scenario I would like to propose is the following:

It’s a quiet day at the tea factory, all quotas are met, Dario the Junior Tea Blender is just messing about, playing little drum solos on the ingredient tins.

BUT ALAS!

OH NO!

FLORP!

The unfathomable has happened. The shelf containing the jars for hibiscus, apple, raisins, rooibos, candied pineapple, candied papaya, orange peel, coconut chips, rosehips, elderberry, mallow blossoms, peach, almonds and cinnamon COLLAPSED from Dario’s musical pounding. David the Senior Tea Blender is NOT going to like this.

Dario must make haste to sort this out before David returns! He secures the shelf, returns the tins, and is in the process of scooping the fragrant mess on the workbench into an empty jar, when…

David the Senior Tea Blender enters the room! All hope is lost!

Mamma mia! Dario exclaims, freezing in place.

Cocking an eyebrow, David the Senior Tea Blender leans over the offending tin. His skeptical expression turns to one of delight as he roars, ‘Dario! This is brilliant! You even got the name just right!’

(As usual, thanks for sharing, whoever put this in!)

[Sample from the EU Travelling Box, autumn 2013.]

This is one I absolutely would have bought for myself based on scent alone – it has a caramel-sweet (without being cloying) apple compotey (without being artificial) roundness to it, which is very comforting all on its own. The dry tea itself is quite nice, too, full of large pieces of dried apple.

Steeped, the scent morphs into a brown sugar/calvados cake I sometimes make with my own apples in autumn. The caramel element really kicks in here, and it smells like sweet, gorgeous, baking pie crust. It would have been absolutely lethal if the slight booziness and the pastry scents carried through into the flavour, but they remain elusive throughout the sip.

This is all very ambiguous – I either want to like this a little more than I do, because the scent profile is so appealing, or I want to like it a little less than I do, because it’s not readily available to me. But I’m at a loss – I hate when I outfox myself.

What I do know, though, is that I wish this were a green tea. The base tea doesn’t really get to shine in this blend anyway, and the flavour profile as a whole seems so much better adapted to a green tea base.

Thanks for sharing, whoever put this in!

[Sample from the EU Travelling Box, autumn 2013.]

This one was an easy swap pick – I wanted to try some more flavoured pu’erhs, and this had that good old, bad old pu’erh smell. I didn’t get much orange then and still don’t, but it’s clear that some kind of flavouring is at play, rather than this being a straight-up pu’erh.

It brews up murky and a little filmy, with surprisingly little presence in the cup. While I understand why people frequently seem to characterize pu’erh as fishy (that is, smelling of fish, rather than being shifty and unreliable) I don’t really agree, but I guess it’s more fit for polite conversation than my own scent analogy that ties in with summers spent next door to a big farm in the country. While there are certainly hints of that organic, earthy, sun-warmed farm animal urine scent, this, overall, mostly comes off a little flat, with no traces of orange.

This might just be one of those flavourings that fail to register for me, but I enjoyed trying it out – if nothing else, it has inspired me to keep looking for flavoured pu’erhs to enjoy.

Thanks, Ang!

[Sample from the EU Travelling Box, autumn 2013.]