Art of Tea

I’ve been remiss in logging teas. I’m trying to taste every tea I own (this is number 87) so I’m moving fast and taking brief notes. It’s now after Christmas and I can relax and enjoy some of my new tea.

This is one of my Black Friday teas, brewed with water from my Cuisinart temperature-controlled pot Christmas present, and it just seemed right to write up a note (particularly when I discovered that I’m the first reviewer.

The aroma from the fresh cup was really pleasant: a classic Darjeeling mix of stone fruit and leather. The taste had similar qualities. I really liked this tea, but as it cooled it became somewhat bitter in the finish, which was disappointing.

2nd steep: Nose is richer, with less fruit. The taste is still reasonably powerful but not as complex as the first steep. This time as the tea cooled the stone fruit came forward, but there was no bitterness. I may need to experiment with time and temperature for this tea.

A note on weight: Art of Tea doesn’t give weights for their samples, just saying “5-7 cups”. I bought a number of samples and most were at least 15 grams, which for me is more like 10 cups. I was happy to get this much tea, and love the little tins that their samples come in.

The combination of black tea, chocolate and peppermint is nothing new, I’ve actually had two other similar teas today. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the combination at all, it is in fact one of my favorite holiday combinations, but it does get a little boring from time to time. What makes this blend truly stand out is the addition of the pu’erh base, it adds a significantly different flavor to what would have been just another peppermint black tea. In the past, I’ve often described pu’erh as fishy tasting, but here it reminds me more of the forest just after a heavy rain, dark and earthy. There is a rich flavor from the chocolate that pairs incredibly well with the more earthy flavors from the pu’erh. On top of it all are the bright, sharp flavors of the peppermint and a slight sweetness from the festive candy cane and Christmas tree sprinkles. Art of Tea has done a wonderful job of taking a classic combination of holiday flavors and adding a twist to it.

You can check out my full review on my blog:
http://www.notstarvingyet.com/index/2013/12/24/tuesday-tea-santas-little-helper-art-of-tea.html

Tea #4 from the Here’s Hoping TTB

I just placed an order with Art of Tea and very nearly ordered this since it ties is so well with the holidays. Right now I’m incredibly glad I didn’t. It has a rather odd flavor to it, that tastes fruity, but not entirely fig-like. Don’t even get me started on the scent of the brewed tea, it was bad enough I almost didn’t sample this cup.

Backlog:

The peach flavor is a little subtle and that seems strange to me since Oolong tends to have a natural peach-y tone to it. It’s a tasty tea, but I was hoping for more peach!

This is an unusual tea. As an ex-coffee addict I was on board with the steeping smell—like chocolate-covered coffee beans, yum—but the white chocolate leaves zillions of light oily little drops floating in the tea (for the most part I’m not concerned with some debris in tea but the oiliness and color here were rather unappetizing). It’s hard to know what to make of the finished taste—you could be disappointed because it’s like watered down coffee (it reminds me a bit of those tins of powdered International Coffee from the ‘80s, very weak coffee bases overlaid with a lot of sugar and oil), or bemused because it’s got the body of tea but not really much of the flavor, or enjoy it for sort of being in between a lot of things, a novel synthesis. My own take keeps jumping from all of these, honestly. I guess I’d drink it again, and some sips I even think I really like it in a guilty pleasure sort of way. Not sure what to make of it. At any rate, it’s not at all bitter or astringent, especially given you’re expecting a coffee-type profile. I suppose it’s like coffee flavored ice cream—your feelings about straight up coffee can be entirely divorced from your feelings about the ice cream flavor, because they’re not at all the same though related. Something for when you want “coffee flavor” as if it’s a listed option for dessert syrup, but are entirely uninterested in coffee the actual thing with its texture and own complex balancing act of bitterness and roastiness and all that. Hm.

The oiliness and white chocolate give it a plastic dimension the more you drink. I think I would rather drink plain hojicha (now I wonder what mixing some hojicha with a tea like Florence would taste like…).

This is pretty good! Banana is hard in tea—it’s so easy to have it topple off into “candy runts” fake sugary territory. This banana is sweet, but never runts-sweet. I like the way it interacts with the coconut and yes, even the chamomile (I’m guessing maybe the chamomile is what keeps the banana-coconut combo from becoming beachy plasticky cocktail mixer flavored). The lavender is light enough you might not even register it as such; it just gives everything a soft, cleaned up backdrop. I like how this is sort of a light, gentle tea, not uber sweet or heavily creamy. It gives the impression of a freshened up banana, again avoiding candy territory. I’m not madly in love with it but it’s probably the best banana tea I’ve found so far.

My black Friday shipment arrived yesterday and so I’ve started to enjoy the teas (I’m letting my wife put some of the teas away as Christmas presents but I couldn’t stand to wait for all of them).

This tea was a bit disappointing. I tried it first without any sweetener, and the only flavor was cinnamon. The aroma reminded me of the “Atomic Fireball” candies I used to eat as a kid, and that probably influenced my impressions, but I couldn’t taste any tea or apple: just the fireball.

I tried adding NutraSweet, and the sweetener brought out the apple flavor, but the cinnamon still overpowered the apple. This tea might work for someone who really likes cinnamon, but it isn’t for me.

Note added two months later. This time I liked the tea much better. The cinnamon dominated, but I accepted the tea for what it was: a cinamon tea. I also noticed that the cinnamon faded faster than the other flavors so the second and third steeps were much more balanced. The current rating is an average of 73 and 82.

I was worried this one’d be disappointing because the 4oz size was on massive discount and I’ve been longing for more fig teas. But luckily it’s great. You have to be careful not to oversteep—the second cup edged toward overbrewed because I didn’t remove the infuser on time—but it’s a smooth, rich, wonderful cup, not too heavily spiced, just right, and you can really taste the fig (the few fig teas I’ve tried haven’t always delivered on that beyond smell). No regrets! Husband noticed the jump in quality too (we’d been drinking cheaper also flavored tea earlier in the day).

Happy Black Friday everyone! I reached my Black Friday goal so I decided to pull out some of the new teas that came in this month, moraiwe sent me this during round two of Secret Pumpkin. This is such a fun fall themed tea, thank you for sending it to me.

I wish I would have tried this before I placed my order last night because I really enjoyed this. The round two theme was fall and I would say moraiwe nailed this perfectly, this absolutely reminds me of fall. It tastes somewhat like a less sweet version of the apple cider I buy from our local orchard for my husband. This really appeals to me because the main reason I don’t care for apple cider is that I find it to be overly sweet. This I can sweeten just a little bit if I’m in the mood for something sweet or drink it as is, either way it was enjoyable.

I love that this has a green rooibos base since I prefer it over red rooibos, I just wish it resteeped better. I tried a second steep, but it was really watery and I dumped it out. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, I find that many rooibos blends are good for one steep only.

Tea #10 from Another TTB

It smells like a stinky shoe! Like a leather loafer that spent too much time in the garden and smells like moldy-weed-leather-and-food in a cup.

Should I taste it? . . .here goes…

Oh man. It tastes like stinky shoe too! Some of you all actually like this?? oh gee, no thank you!!

But, I will say Kudos to a tea tasting exactly like it smells.

Drank this tonight at Tealips, a local bubble tea place that I love. It’s called Green Rooibos and Apple there, however. I wrote down the ingredients and easily found that, and three teas I bought, on here as Art of Tea.

I was really excited about this blend. Yunwu? Cool! Unfortunately, something was really off with this for me. Something floral and just plain wrong. Bitter. Chemical-y. I had two sips and had to dump it.

Another swap from kimquat. Mm mm this is a nice sweet coconutty tea. When added milk this is so lusciously coconut and creamy! Yum yum. Thank you. Time for bed.