Imperial Tea Garden

Backlog:

A lovely Oolong blend. I love the big purple blossoms that are in this. So beautiful!

I steeped this in my gaiwan and got six infusions out of it. You can read about them more in depth here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2014/07/11/blue-spring-oolong-tea-from-imperial-tea-garden/

Sweet, honey-like, notes of roasted nut, and a predominate floral note. Creamy. The creaminess began to meld with the nutty flavors. It is delicious and sweet.

The name of this tea caught me attention right away when I dug it out of the Canadian Traveling Teabox – it just sounds so fun and cute. Most ‘pearl’ type teas are jasmine so it was nice to see something a bit different. I didn’t see the instructions about the number of pearls so I just used my usual measuring spoon – I don’t think I ended up with too many more than what they recommend. *shifty eyes *

The first steep at 3.5 minutes is very vegetal – in fact the flavour reminds me quite a bit of broccoli. I can’t say that’s a ringing endorsement – I used to utterly loath broccoli as a kid and while time and maturity have lessened my hatred it’s still never going to be my favourite vegetable. The second steep at 4.5 minutes was thankfully less broccoli-ish, though still quite vegetale, but this time a nicer, sweet note crept into the mix.

So ultimately this tea doesn’t rock my socks, but that’s mostly due to my highly-subjective brassica-phobia. ;)

This tea is from the trade I had a few months ago with Lala! Thanks for this generous sample!
I made some of this one to share with my student from Maryville University.
5G + Test Tube Steeper (5 or 6oz?) X 3min
That yielded a beautiful pale gold liquid, which I served in those tiny double walled glass ‘jello shot’ cups. It is a delicate & mild cooked cereal taste, like congee or a very light cream of wheat. The pearls were only about half open.
Re-steep x 5 minutes = the pearls are fully open, the color is now a pale apricot. The tea is still mild, but pleasant.
White teas are more interesting to me than they were a year ago, but they are not the teas I reach for, if you know what I mean.

Backlog:

Not quite a Darjeeling, but it is still quite Darjeeling-esque. Crisp, nice muscatel-like tones, notes of earth and wood, and a dry-wine-like finish. A very nice and refreshing tea.

Here’s my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2013/08/07/jun-chiyabari-nepalese-black-tea-from-imperial-tea-garden/

This is another tea from teaEqualsBliss thank you. This is a fairly good tea with mostly the mint and abit of chocolate and a mild black tea. Not enough of a chocolate tea for me although the mint is nice in this.

I was really in the mood for a plain old earl grey today, after trying my berry chocolate earl grey last night, plain Earl sounded like just the thing I needed. I thought I was going to have to run to the store, or Starbucks, to get a cup, but thankfully there was a pouch of this in the swap box TeaEqualsBliss sent me.

Ahhh…just the simple Earl I was craving today. No need for cream or sugar. This is a nice black tea with bergamot, as simple as it could be!

Loose
Appearance: fuzzy bicolored pearl curls
Aroma when Dry: sweet, bright, light floral
After water is first poured: floral honeysuckle, cherry blossom notes
At end of first steep: floral, fruity, cantaloupe notes surface
Tea liquor:
At end of first steep: clear
Staple? likely
Preferred time of day: any
Taste:
At first ?: light fruity, mineral notes, honeysuckle, berry, melon notes high on the palate
As it cools?: tea gets bodied, brothy, sweeter, salt close
Additives used (milk, honey, sugar etc)? No
Lingers? Only slightly, mineral notes

Second Steep (4min):
At first: light mineral melony notes
As it cools: bodied mineral broth

Third Steep (5min):
faintly sweet mineral broth

I feel like I am doing something wrong with this tea.

I used 8 pearls in an 8 oz. cup. The pearls appeared to have a hard time unfurling. Even after leaving them in the cup for 10 minutes only one leaf completely unfurled, and the others only partially. The liquor is almost clear, slightly straw colour. The colour becomes a bit darker the longer you steep it, but still remains clear. The taste was very mild and mellow, not so much vegetal or grassy, but a bit more like wheat or grain, slightly sweet.
I generally don’t like to steep for to long, but this is a tea that I can leave the tea leaves in the bottom of the cup for as long as I’m drinking it, and it doesn’t adversely affect the taste.
I am going to play around a bit with water temp and steeping time to see what happens.

I absolutely love this tea. Very grassy and aromatic. Best green tea I have tried. It is not from Impreial Tea Company, though I’d like to try it for myself. i had a cup of Serene Teaz’s “imperial Dragonwell” and it was phenomenal. It was from my brother’s tea stash. I needed to comment on this.

I bought this thinking I would like it. BLEH, I am just not a fan of green tea. Gave it away. This was not my first attempt at trying to like green tea, but it was the last.

so i made a cup of tea with the 7 pearls and it was VERY nice i really enjoyed the subtle Sweetness and was so wonderful at work to calm me :)

A beautiful silver from LiberTEAS. This white has more flavor than most I have tasted. Sweet and smooth.

This is a completely different tea HOT than ICED. It’s stronger iced but still a flatter black tea all-around. There is a roated-crusty-malt to it when hot. It’s a tad fruity…but fruitier when iced/cold brewed.

Because I generally like my teas BOLD and RICH I do like this one better hot even tho it’s supposed to be a COLD/ICED Tea.

I cold brewed this one in my Steep & Go! This morning and 10 mins wasn’t long enough. At 30 mins – it was still weak. About 3 hours did it some justice. It’s still a mellower black but it’s slightly malty and slightly fruity and floral…more fruity than floral.

Even tho this is an iced tea I am going to try it HOT once before sending the rest to my Sororitea Sister Liberteas!

This is a delightful white tea. The mouthfeel is soft and velvet-y, and the flavor is remarkably complex. Delicate, yes, but, so many nuanced layers of flavor. In the description, notes of honey, nuts and vanilla are suggested, and I taste those, I also taste hints of freshly cut hay … like the air that surrounds you when you’re in a hayfield that’s just been cut. You can taste the hay in the air, and I taste mild hints of that with this tea … off in the distance. The sweetness of the nuts and vanilla and honey in the forefront, while the distance has vegetative hints, crisp air, and hay. This is very good, one of those white teas that I could drink daily and not tire of it.

This is a really good Kukicha, I love the level of roasted flavor to this – so delicious and toasty. Nutty and sweet.

Thank you, TeaEqualsBliss for sending some of this Kukicha my way!

Backlogging 2 cups from yesterday. I have had good luck with many teas from Kenya and hope to try many more! This is great! The leaves remind me of albino pine needles! :)

The flavor is wonderful especially for a white. It’s delicate but certainly NOT lacking character and flavor! I picked up on natural vanilla and sweet notes, of course what you would expect in a white tea – that flavor as well – but it was almost creamy, and there was a hint of pine or even sage of some sort…really nice!

I am quite enjoying this Oolong. It is sweet, with a lovely plum-peach kind of flavor that almost tastes as if it has been macerated in brandy or wine. It’s really tasty. There is also a nice malty tone to it and an earthiness that I did not expect. Rich and yet subtle, too. Very pleasant and surprising Oolong.

This is very nice! It’s crisp! It’s wheat-like…I taste actually taste a wheat-type flavor! It starts off sweet and turn a little drier towards the end of the sip! This is a neat tasting tea and I LOVE the little swirl-E Leaves and the name of this tea is FAB, too!

Having a cuppa this evening … a nice white tea … sweet, mild, smooth. Fruit notes. Crisp, airy notes mingling with a hay-like note. Pleasant, just what I needed this evening.

absolutely lovely!

The flavor is crisp and clean, with an astringency that develops. The first couple of sips were so smooth and sweet and then the astringency kicks in right when you need it, to cleanse the palate so that the sweetness does not become overwhelming. I taste notes of hay and sweet grass, reminding me a bit of the air in the small town where I grew up on the days of the hay harvest and bailing.

A very pleasant cuppa.

Looking at the leaves and the color of the liquor, my first thought was that this looks more like a white tea than a green tea. (And the name certainly helped inspire that thought too). The flavor is stronger than a typical white though, so, ok, I believe you, it’s a green tea.

The description suggests a strong astringency, but I’m not getting that. I do get some astringency, perhaps it’s how I steep it? I don’t know. This is a very pleasantly sweet tea, with a flavor reminiscent to honey. Lovely floral notes in the background. As I continue to sip, the astringency builds, it is sort of a tangy/tingly kind of astringency that sort of tickles the tongue.

A lovely green.

An excellent green tea.

Gentle, Smooth, Slightly Sweet, Delicate, Delightful! Just a few words to describe this one! I really like the flavor! YUM!