Art of Tea

This is a tea from Teaplz’s plea to take it away. I’m trying to find a decent rooibos tea or two as I’ve heard good things about rooibos helping allergies, and tis the allergy season. (Not that that matters for me, as I have them year round, but hey, if it means not having to take a pill that makes me feel drowsy and puts my sniffer out, I’m for it).

Looking at the leaves, I see the wood chip looking red rooibos and mint leaves. The dry leaves smell sweet.

Once steeped this tea smells sweet and minty with a touch of fruit. I taste a bit of sweetness, can definitely taste the mint. I’ve never had minty rooibos before, but there is definitely more going on in this tea. Looking at the description, I definitely get no chocolate. I want to like this because of the mint, I enjoy mint when I want it, but there is something tart that doesn’t go quite well with this mix.

Hrmmm…I think I like my teas less complex than this. This tea is trying to do too much in my mouth.

If anyone cares to try this, I have about an ounce in a baggie I could pass along.

Very sweet, even without honey! It seems to be a theme today.

I feel a little bad about logging all of these tasting notes when I can’t really taste the tea, but it’s kind of useful for me to remind myself that this tea is really good with a great big dollop of honey: it’s very smooth and sweet, and the sour berry scent from the dry leaves is completely gone leaving only an interesting tang.

(As you may have gathered by now, I got myself the Art of Tea Dessert Sampler off of the steepster select a while ago and am working my way through it!)

Recipe for a tasty working-late tea

Start with: one mug
Add: a bit of Tea Farm Oolong Rose (http://steepster.com/teas/the-tea-farm/12471-oolong-rose-tea)
Add: a bit more of Art of Tea Velvet Tea (http://steepster.com/teas/art-of-tea/2887-velvet-tea)
Toss in: three flowers of JK Tea Shop Wild Purple Chrysanthemum (http://steepster.com/teas/jk-tea-shop/11241-wild-purple-chrysanthemum-flower-tea)
Fill with: boiling water
Steep: until the water cools enough to drink and most of the tea is at the bottom of the mug

Sip, occasionally straining rooibos from your teeth, until the chocolate/rose/chrysanthemum/rooibos savory combination puts you at your ease despite the spreadsheets still open.

I will reserve full judgement until my head cold clears up and my taste buds are my own again, but I liked this so far. What I can get out of it is a strong, rough rooibos with a chocolate sweetness, no mint or vanilla. I do like rooibos for itself as well as for being a good flavoring base, so that’s a reasonable first tasting.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to open a new kleenex box….

smoked= kinda wired.
I’m trying

Tim found this tea here in San Mateo.

horrible

This is my first white tea

I first tried this at Siptea out in downtown LA. It was so good, I bought a couple ounces to take home with me. The vanilla smells absolutely amazing — every time I introduce a new friend to this, the usual reaction is “whoa.”

Teeerriiiiiii…. No no no no no no no.

But I thank you for sharing lol but I have sneezes now. Soooo many sneezes lol

whoo hooo i am really making progress on my sample box. idk why it makes me feel so good.

this tea? so good! more apple flavored than i expected! and less cinnamon than i expected. it’s like they read my mind :) and granted my wishes. my tea wishes.
thank you very much for this taste moraiwe. and i’m glad i have more too.

I’m finishing off my small sample tin of this tonight. I can’t say I am crazy about this particular tea since it just reminds me of a watery apple cider with some spices thrown in. When it comes to a dessert tea, I prefer something more creamy and decadent. Not horrible but not wanting to buy any more either.

I got a small sample tin of this a while back and didn’t log it, evidently neither did anyone else because I created the entry just now. :)

This tisane has a rather flamboyant description on the Art of Tea website. I don’t really think that it lives up to all the HYPE, but it’s okay. I get a lot of apple flavor here along with cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. there are pink peppercorns in the tea but thankfully it doesn’t taste real peppery or anything. This reminds me of a mulled apple cider than it does pie, but it’s pretty good overall. I don’t taste anything resembling a buttery pie crust. If you don’t really like the taste of rooibos, it could be a blend for you since I don’t taste a whole lot of rooibos in it.

Enjoyed with 1 tsp. or so of coconut sugar, it is almost making me forget the chocolate bars I got today at Trader Joes! :)

Turns out my local tea shop orders several of their teas from Art of Tea, so even though I previously logged this tea under a different company name (The Tea Shop) it makes more sense to me to post it under Art of Tea from here on out.

I’m still middle of the road about this tea. I want to love it, but the rooibos flavor just gets to me. The pear, caramel, and honey flavors are all there, and they’re really nice. Sweet without being cloying. But the rooibos taste too medicinal to me, and it kills all the fun that’s happening with the caramelized pear flavor. I’m really wishing this had a honeybush base rather than a rooibos base, but alas….

I’ll probably finish the rest of what I purchased, but this isn’t something I’d buy again.

When I opened the sample tin, the aroma was wonderful – sweet like butterscotch. As I steeped the tea, the smell intensified – yummy! I could not wait for the first taste – I love butterscotch! Disappointed – the cup of tea is OK but I do not taste butterscotch; the pepper taste is unusual but no butterscotch. Sweetener should help bring out the butterscotch, right? Nope, I taste a little sweetness but no butterscotch.

Cinnamon, bread, chocolate – that’s what you smell first. Also, earthy due to the Pu-Erh base and this all results in a very unusual combination. This is good! Would not want to drink every day but definitely want it in my tea pantry.

Dry aroma is undefinably synthetic to me, but it brightens and sweetens in the cup as the rooibos makes itself known.

This being a rooibos, I have plenty of time to contemplate the odor while the steep time passes. What does it remind me of? There is certainly something of a reminder of autumn. Certainly not fresh pear. More like… hmm… pear butter simmering away in a slow cooker. Or poached pears. Yes, it reminds me of autumn in the mountains where I rented a studio for a year and a half. A cherry-wood fire burns slowly in the iron wood stove, fueled by old prunings from the local cherry orchards. My landlady’s pear tree has produced a great excess of fruit, and none of it wants to stay on the tree. Countertops are littered with bowls, baskets, and paper bags full of windfall pears dropped while still underripe. Even more underripe pears wait out the winter in the crisper drawer. As the bounty of pears ripens, I use pears in every way I can think of. Eating out of hand. Pear scones. Pear cobbler. Poached pears. Pear butter. Pears go in salad, on swiss chard, in oatmeal. They make their way into breakfast and dessert. Excursions into the hills are accompanied by bags stuffed with pears. I eat pears under oaks laden with acorns, under maples dropping huge yellow leaves, under the shadows of canyon walls where the mountain stream winds around groves of alder and stands of blackberry.

Tasting this tea, I half-expect to feel the granular texture of those pears on my tongue. I half-expect to smell wood smoke and feel the bite of mountain air.

Forest fires raced through that area in may, and I haven’t been up the road to the lake since. Most homes survived, including my former landlady’s, but I’m uncertain which houses were burnt, or what the fire did to the landscape – to the stands of live oak, the streamside alder groves, the hillsides dark green with shoulder-high tangles of mountain mahogany and bush rue and chokecherries.

I’ll visit again, I know. In autumn I’ll make my way to orchards of peach and pear, and perhaps stop by my former landlady’s house. Maybe I’ll ask permission to once again gather dandelion greens and shaggy mane mushrooms from her field, and windfall pears from beneath her tree. And after a couple of weeks of ripening in the warmer october days in the valley, they’ll taste much like this tea. Sweet without need for any added sweetener, with a slight burnt-sugar tang. Or will that tang be missing when the house is not filled with the scent of smoke from a cherry-wood fire?