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So I dropped by the Water Tower Place Teavana in Chicago to pick up some teaware. I’ll just be honest – I’ve never tried a Teavana tea that I’ve loved; I find them mostly plain and bland and poorly executed, and it’s vile how much sugar they put in the brewed samples they offer in-store.

Their teaware, though, is a whole other story. I think they carry beautiful tins and nice utensils and I’m all for going to Teavana just for that. I needed some filters, as I wanted to drink loose tea on my flight, and my thermos needed a proper wash before getting used again. Surprisingly, Teavana were about $2 cheaper for the same number of filters than every other store I came across, including grocery stores.

As for the function – they’re filters. Bags that filter tea. In water. They work just fine and predictably manage to do their job. No funny business.

Speaking of funny business, though, corporate culture doesn’t seem to have changed a lot since Teavana were acquired by Starbucks. I was still hounded by one of the salespeople in-shop who insisted that I try the samples.

‘Would you like a sample?’
‘No, but thanks anyway.’
‘Of course you want a sample!’
‘No, not really.’
‘But it’s amazing!’
‘Has sugar been added to the sample?’
‘No, not at all!’
‘Sorry, let me rephrase that – has any kind of sweetener been added to the sample?’
‘Well… yeah, but…’

And so on.

Hilarity ensued, of course, when there were ALL THESE TEAS that I just HAD TO BUY, and I was all, ‘Oh, but I don’t like your teas. I’m here for teaware!’. What do you even say to that? I felt like the most evil customer ever, but I swear I was really very nice and smiley about the whole thing, even as the salesperson got progressively more aggressive and rude.

Then upon checking out, I was told that these filters were ‘Pretty impractical’ (Whoa! Reverse sales technique! Mind blown!), and that the salesperson swore by this new thing.

‘Oh, but I already have your travel thermoses. They’re great.’ (But they could be easier to wash so I didn’t have to buy pretty impractical filters. )
‘This is much better, let me show you!’
And she showed me this: http://www.teavana.com/tea-gift-center/tea-gift-sets/p/tea-voyager-travel-kit which I do like a lot and have considered buying, but after researching it, I knew it wouldn’t meet my standards.
’It’s a full travel kit!’
‘Yeah, I absolutely love that, I looked at it online, and I would have bought it if the holes in the infuser had been smaller.’
‘Oh, but that’s not a problem at all! I have this product myself and that’s not an issue in any way.’
‘Yeah, but if you go read the reviews on the Teavana website, you’ll note that that’s THE MAIN COMPLAINT concerning this product.’

At this point the salesperson just stopped talking directly to me altogether.

I’m all for a hard sale, and with nice execution it can be a fun time for all. But incompetent salespeople who first talk down the product you want to buy (and which is absolutely fine – don’t cry, little filters, you’re quite adequate) all the while trying to push a product that’s obviously flawed without having the first clue about the criticism raised against said flaw..? Meh. Amateur hour.

When I first reviewed this here: http://steepster.com/annchen/posts/195695 I know I found it on Lupicia’s website, but as I executed my attack on the WVF Lupicia earlier this week, the very nice and patient man helping me told me it had been discontinued.

Definitely a sad day, because this tea really gives me massive travel nostalgia, and it manages to remain at a solid 85 in spite of the mistreatment I put it through in terms of varying cup sizes and steeping times and water temperatures.

Everyone’s always very nice about getting me hot water, even on really short flights, but it’s strange how surprised many people are that I bring my own tea. Like, what could possibly be better than the oversteeped, lukewarm English Breakfast we serve? Is it liquid gold?

I now have one last bag left, and I will give it a proper sending off sometime soon.

I chose this as my first Butiki tea to try (Thank you, Stacy!) because unlike the others, it came in little tin and hence balances precariously atop the rest of the pile of bagged-teas-to-try (No untried teas go in the cupboard! Rules are rules! Stand down, Cantaloupe & Cream!) but also because it’s one I got against my principles – generally, I’m reluctant to drink teas containing actual chocolate chips rather than chocolate flavouring, but this seemed like such a well-done chocolate-orange that I couldn’t quite resist.

In the (very cute) tin, it’s all Terry’s Dark Chocolate Orange, but in the cup, the tea base becomes more prominent nose wise. In terms of flavour, the steeped tea balances the orange and the chocolate very well, but it’s very subtle. What I assume is the marshmallow is a hint of very lightly vanilla-esque sweetness topping off the chocolate notes. I enjoy how the tea base is present throughout the sip, without overpowering the flavouring, in spite of its lightness.

I’d like the flavours to pack just a little bit more punch, mostly because I’m used to my arsenal of rich, French blacks, and I find myself missing some added element of complexity. This is a very honest tea, which I admire, but I’ve always been one to pay far more attention to the trickster anti-hero than the golden hero, so what I’d like is for Three Friends to trick me just a very little.

An additional element of excitement is how well the rich, natural orange is executed – it’s a very difficult flavour to get right, and as the (hopefully winning!) Lemon Macaron entry in the Butiki Custom Blend Competition states, it would be a treat if Stacy were to make a lemon blend, something I agree with fully.

[From my Butiki order to Santa Clara, October 2013.]

I had so much Momoko on my flight.

And every single person on the staff made fun of me, as per usual. I cup-steeped after lunch and they were all like hue hue hue, you brought your own little strainer, how adorable. And then I was hanging out in the pantry filling up my thermos and everyone was all ooh and aah about my tea tin and had to smell it and I took note (actual, physical note, with note pads and pens!) about Lupicia and the name of the tea, and I was seriously like a traveling tea circus.

And Argo are expanding like crazy over here and I’m not quite sure how I feel about them.

(This is my 100th tasting note.)

I had Ginger Lemon tea and very lovely company on my flight between Rome and Stockholm; double win. (Or maybe even a triple win, because I got two steeps out of this bag.)

Now I feel a little Romesick, because that’s where my tea stash is. <3 My pretties! My sweet treasures! I will be back soon.

Oh, I Mosaici lounge at Fiumicino, how I loathe you. But hey, you have hot water. And tiny tiny tiny tea cups, so the bag of Apricot Houji would have been enough for ten of them.

But I only had time for two.

This whole Dammann Frères experience is turning a little too existential and emotional. I just wanted to drink some tea, okay? And now I’m forced to reminisce about my dead grandmother and maybe even reevaluate my whole outlook on black teas. I’m packing my trans-Atlantic suitcase right now; I don’t have time for these shenanigans!

But fine. My two top blacks are teas from Mariage Frères – they’re rich and luxurious and very flavourful. I love all those things. But they’re also fairly thick, almost a little muddy, and very dark, which pretty much sums up what I have a hard time handling when it comes to certain blacks.

Dammann’s black bases, on the other hand, leave the liquid a dark amber, and they’re very light and easily drunk. In this case, though, the flavour is a little too delicate to leave me entirely seduced. It’s quite smooth and elegant, but I think I’d like to try a somewhat longer steep to see if I can get some more flavour out of this.

[From my epic Instant-Thé order to Rome, October 2013.]

It’s all Sil’s fault. I wasn’t going to have another cup, but she just had to dangle that tasting note in front of me.

This smells insane. Going by the dry tea alone I understand all the hype when it comes to the famed Dammann Frères caramel notes, because this is all lush caramel and vanilla… and pu-erh. This particular pu-erh really is like drinking an exquisite, wooden box, polished to perfection.

Steeped, its flavour mimics what a room in my house in the country smells like on certain days – down to the very last nuance. It used to be my grandmother’s room, and her fine, carved wooden box from India is still there. She always had caramel toffees, so I keep some in there for her ghost… and that’s what’s in this cup exactly.

It’s almost a little too freaky – a little too close to home, a little too intimate.

But still absolutely wonderful.

[From my epic Instant-Thé order to Rome, October 2013.]

So for my very first attempt with this tea, I (gasp) followed the instructions against both my better judgment and Angrboda’s recommendation. There are at least two more brews to get out of this sample, so it seemed like a good place to start.

Following the instructions in this case, resulted in an 80C-steep for a whopping 8 minutes. Yes, eight. And yes. This is bitter, but far from as bitter as expected. What is less appealing is the metallic taste that sometimes seems so hard to avoid in ACP’s greens – but it evaporates once the brew cools off a little.

But I get ahead of myself a little – the dry tea smells very pleasant, there’s a nice balance between the orange and the strawberry, but the fruit notes are a little too candy-esque for me and my devotion to natural fruit flavours.

But yeah – next time this will need to steep for a shorter time, because right now this tea is half bitter and half fruit candy; two main flavour features that don’t marry particularly well.

[Sample gifted by my sweet friend T, October 2013.]

Interestingly, if you compare the English and French descriptions for this tea, there is no mention of citrus (or, well, agrumi) oils in the translation – I picked this as the first to try from my Instant-Thé tea haul, as it smelled so strongly of blood orange – which I can never keep my hands off.

Green/black tea blends really appeal to me, as they are often so clear and light. My main issue with all-black (flavoured) teas are their muddiness, to be honest. But this turns a perfect shade in the cup. I steeped it for three minutes first, deemed it too weak and then gave it another minute. The recommendation was for 4-5 at 90C, and I think it could take the full 5 without any bitterness.

This is very peculiar. I’m not really a fan of jasmine (this was a free sample included with my order), but it works very well here – it’s a subtle, elusive perfume both in the nose and the cup.

Flavour wise, I get mostly passion fruit and blood orange, but a deep, rich blood orange – there isn’t any tartness to speak of. This all plays out against a very complex backdrop of intermingling fruit flavours, which is just lovely.

I find myself really enjoying this one, and I very badly want to try it with various forms of baked goods – it would be an excellent tea party tea, in all its complexity.

Some astringency.

[Sample from my epic Instant-Thé order to Rome, October 2013.]