Ovation Teas

I got my pound on order of this from Ovation last week and trying it out for the first time now. On my last cup of this pot that I made and I’m enjoying it quite a bit. Which is good because I have a pound of tea to get through and I like to switch it up a lot.

This is a very pretty tea to look at and also to smell. Lots of big raspberry pieces as well as raspberry flavouring to this, according to the ingredients. There is a nice bright flavour to it, citrusy from the bergamot and orange peel and also the tanginess of the raspberries. This is a nicely done earl grey and I don’t like a lot of earl greys so I’m glad that I like this one.

Mmmm pearls. Steep #2 in progress :)

Jasmine pearls are fast becoming one of my favorite teas of all time. These are what angels would drink, people! Delicate sweet little pearls of yum! Thanks TC!

Additional notes: Not to rain on Ovation’s parade… but I’m pretty sure this is the same as the Yunnan they were selling. The leaves look the same. The flavor tastes the same. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my palate isn’t refined enough. I certainly don’t mind it if they are the same — I love them. But now I have about six ounces of the same tea! I think these two teas being the same would only affect me anyway.. it looks like I’m the only one who bought both!

I’m sipping this one now, thanks to Yssah buying some Ovation teas for a ton of people. I ended up buying four ounces of this, hoping it was delicious! It is! And it looks like I’m the first to write a tasting note. It’s exactly what I look for in a lovely black tea. Well, sometimes they are nice brisk. This one is sweet, smooth, a bit malty. I was hoping it would compare to Golden Moon’s Sinharaja that I adore, and it is the most similar tea I’ve had to that one, but I really love the flavor of the Golden Moon. That one has a great maltiness to it, and a fuller flavor. (Though I didn’t steep this one quite at boiling, so maybe that would help next time.) This one has a nice lingering flavor. I’m VERY happy with this one. It will be my go-to black tea! I can’t wait to try other Ovation teas that I have on the way. It’s very sad Ovation went out of business!

This is what I was hoping Numi’s Berry Black would be and I am so happy that Ovation Tea chose to omit hibiscus flower. The floral “perfume” side of bergamot is missing, leaning toward the fruity lemon side, which is particularly enhanced by addition of orange peel. I’m not sure of the tea base; maybe Ceylon, maybe Keemun. The tartness of the raspberry hides the pure flavor of tea from my palate. I followed the instruction to brew for 5 min but I will go back to my usual 3 min next time. I do detect a dryness/astringency that might be diminished with a shorter brew. Today, I made two separate pots, one of 52teas EGC and this raspberry EG. Yay for finding another way to make EGC last longer.

Got another sample of this, this time from Tea Sipper although I have no idea when but I’m sure it was months ago. This time this tea was not that great. I don’t know what I did to it, but it is quite bitter, even with the addition of milk and sugar.

Got a pot’s worth of a sample of this from Alphakitty, thanks!

I brewed up a pot earlier this morning and poured myself a mug. Then I got distracted and it went cold. So I warmed it up again. Then I got distracted again and it got cold. At that point I decided to just drink it. So that’s why I’m reviewing this as a room-temperature tea rather than a nice hot one. And I can’t stand ice in my tea so it’s not even iced, just room temperature. Which is about 70F in the office today.

Anyway, adding a bit of milk and sugar to the blend and this tastes pretty great. I get the chocolate, quite a lot of the caramel, and a hint of nuttiness. I’m proud of myself about the nuttiness though because I really really wanted to just eat the hazelnuts out of the dry tea leaves because I love hazelnuts. I may eat them anyway now that this has finished steeping a while ago and with the caramel melted, I won’t go for another steep. I generally don’t for flavoured teas.

I’m glad I got to try this and this is another reason why I’m sad that Ovation has gone out of business. I have 4 lbs of tea from their going out of business sale, but this is not one of them. Oh well, onward and upward!

Got a cup’s worth of these in a trade from T.C., thanks!

So far, this is one of the only green teas I’ve liked so far in my entire life. I keep trying them and they keep being not good for me, but this one is pretty nice. Not something I’d normally seek out, there is still that essential green tea flavour that is not my favourite, but as a specimen of the green tea genre, this is the best I’ve ever had.

I will not be changing my rating because it’s my own fault, but this tea is old old old and has not aged well at all. If any of you other steepsterites still have some of this in stock, check it because mine has turned super gross.

The upfront taste is fine, if meh, but then I get an attack of BLECH face in the aftertaste so I’m tossing the rest of it, which makes me sad since I bought it at Ovation’s going out of business sale and I still have probably upwards of half a pound of it at home. Sad.

Been a long time since I had this tea but the caramel chunks still look appetizing.

What is less appetizing is the taste. With a normal amount of milk and sugar put in and prepping at the time and temp from my last note, this tastes burnt. Not burnt caramel, just burnt in general. I just added some more sugar in case that will help bring out the flavours I want, but I don’t have high hopes. Perhaps I added too much tea? 5 tsp per 750ml but there were a LOT of caramel chunks that take up space from tea. Aaaand I’m right, it just makes it a sweet burnt tea flavour.

2nd steep is just as dark as the first and smells very similar, perhaps a bit less burnt smell. Tastes still burnt but not nearly as bold. I don’t know what I did to this tea or if it’s just too old and gone bad at this point but I did not enjoy these 2 pots of tea today.

Having this again, though I brought it into work this time for some tastiness at work. Good way to get a nice taste in my mouth. First steep came out very burnt-caramel with hints of vanilla and I’m steeping it a second time right now.

Drinking the second steep right now, I think, for the first time ever that I have experienced in flavoured black teas, that the second steep is better than the first. The first steep, the caramel flavour was overwhelming. Nice, but a bit POW IN THE FACE and tongue and the second steep, the flavours are a bit more nicely balanced and delicate. Overall, this a tea that holds up well to two steeps, though I won’t go for more than that.

I have no idea why there is no entry for this tea until now, when they are going out of business. Did this company really only last for so short a period of time? Most of their teas only have a few ratings on them, if any. Strange.

Anyway, this tea looks and smells awesome. The smell is particularly potent right out of my one pound bag. There are so many large! caramel drops in this and the tea steeps up all murky because of it. I added milk and sugar because this is a dessert tea and I’m craving something really sweet.

This tastes of burnt caramel and vanilla all right. Very strong flavours. This will be a great tea for me when I want something sweet and POW in your face!

I love phoenix jasmine pearls. I have since the first time I ever tried them. Well Ovation was doing a liquidation sale and they had these babies up so I went a bit crazy and bought a full pound of them.

They are literally the best I’ve had! SOOOOO glad I got them now!!! Soooo bummed I won’t be able to get more once these run out.

They are more fragrant then I’m used to when I open the bag (could be because they are packed 8oz together). The smell is awesome
Watching them steep is fun as the tiny balls unfurl. No filler in this tea, just 100% hand rolled pearl goodness.

Taste is EXACTLY what I wanted. I can taste the green tea foremost but the jasmine is present and noted. Nothing bitter or astringent. Smooth, happy, and uplifting. I knew from the first sip this was going to peg 100 for me. Swear I could drink just these for the next month.

Okay, colour me impressed. This is one from my box o’ teas from LiberTeas from forever ago that I thought I wouldn’t like. It doesn’t have the smell contamination that others do (I finally realized that it is the packaging – the ones in the thicker plastic have no smell contamination but there were some in small sandwich style bags and those ones shared smells. Voila!) but chocolate orange is not a flavour I enjoy. The smell is okay but they just aren’t for me. Another side note: Terry’s now makes a chocolate mint which is fabulous. I bought one as a treat and wish I had more!

Anyway, the aroma of this was very strong and true to the name, I conjured up images of Terry’s Chocolate Oranges right away. Even when steeped both the chocolate and the orange are present, though the orange comes through more as rind at this point.

Apprehensively, I took my first sips. Wow. No bitterness (from the tea or the orange rind) and the chocolate is actually sweeter than expected. I believe it has cacao nibs rather than milk chocolate but there is some sweetness in there that gives more of a milky taste. Accurately it is more of a dark chocolate orange and it is good. Way better than the chocolate.

Speaking of the chocolate, this doesn’t have any nasty artificial taste to it the way many chocolate teas seem to do. This tastes very authentic and natural rather than chemically reconstituted chocolate. Nice!

I continue to be impressed at how smooth this one is. I really expected some bitterness but the base tea on this clearly is quality tea. I thought I may have over-steeped a bit, but it’s holding up well. Very nice! I just checked and am sorry to report that Ovation teas is going out of business…I would manage to finally try their tea after it was too late. If there’s any of this in their closing out sale and you like chocolate orange things, I highly recommend picking some up.

Additional notes: This was a fresh batch from the Ovation sale! I don’t know how old the other sample I had was, but since this was super fresh, I knew it would taste better. It does! But the first steep was three minutes and wasn’t as good as the second steep at seven minutes. It seems like the longer the steep time, the better this one gets. I really love a stronger bergamot, surprisingly, but this one is mild. But it perfectly blends with the pieces of raspberry and orange in the blend. I’m uping the rating a bit from 82.

Thank you Dinosara for including a bit of this in our trade! Sadly, I heard yesterday that Ovation will no longer be in business. I really wanted to try many of their blends, and this was the only one in my stash, so I thought I’d try it this morning. The idea of this one just seemed dreamy. Earl Grey and raspberry?!? I steeped for four minutes in boiled water that I had let cool for a few minutes. I didn’t really smell any bergamot and I didn’t really taste any bergamot. There is a slight hint of raspberry. I really like the black tea base though! It’s a nice malty, medium flavored black tea. The steep color is a coppery brown. I’ve REALLY been on a malty tea kick lately. I wish I could drink malty teas every morning. I keep thinking of Golden Moon’s Sinharaja but I only have a little left of that one (that Momo kindly sent!) and that stuff ain’t cheap. I might have to splurge on some when I run out though. It will be one of my treasured teas. Anyway, I like this one but it isn’t the best representation of a bergamot tea. I wish I could try more of Ovation’s teas though!

Backlog:

I had this over the weekend of despair (also known as: the weekend when there were no tasting notes), and I was really surprised at how well I liked it. I ordered it because it sounded very intriguing but after ordering it I worried that it would have too much going on to be able to taste anything but possibly the mint, which tends to be a very aggressive herb in blends.

And the first few sips WERE indeed like that. This tea needs a few minutes to cool slightly – I’d say I let it cool about 3 minutes – to be able to realize the other flavors in the blend. When served piping hot, fresh out of the teapot, the mint is really all I tasted. but after that three minutes, I could taste the other flavors come through.

The mint hits the palate first and remains throughout the sip. The chocolate is there too, but it is more of a low note, but it does remain throughout the sip and I really liked that. The raspberry came through toward the end of the sip, and lingered into the aftertaste with a distinct tart-yet-sweet berry taste.

The black tea also comes through, and it is a rich and full-flavored tea although it does struggle a bit to keep up with the other flavors here.

Overall, this is a really tasty blend that certainly lives up to being a Chocolate Raspberry Mint, although, if we are going to go in order of flavors that are tasted, I’d say it should be Mint Chocolate Raspberry.

I’ve been hoarding the less-than-an-ounce of this that I have left, but now that there’s 8 ounces on their way to me I can indulge a little! Such a tasty blend.

I am so behind on tasting notes! I have officially vanquished NaNoWriMo and am currently at 55k, but I’m only finally getting to the third and final arc of my book so my writing is far from over. As such, I’ve been devoting all my writing time to it and not to Steepster, though I have tried to keep up on everyone else’s tasting notes and threads!

I got this in a very generous swap with Dinosara. Raspberry + earl grey? Hell yes, sign me up! In the bag this smells intoxicating, super yummy and fruity. Since I got it I’ve tried it both cold brewed and hot, and I like it equally both ways. Cold brewed the raspberry is very prominent and quite authentic and juicy. Hot it has a rich black base, strong for an EG but I don’t mind it. The bergamont is subdued but nicely citrus-y both ways, and it’s distinctly an Earl Grey. This is definitely a tea I could see adding to my permanent rotation since I don’t have a solid fruity EG—maybe I’ll have to try out some of Ovation’s other blends before I make a decision!

I ordered this ages ago, tasted it, and decided I wanted to let it “meld” for a while since Ovation blends their teas to order. Then I promptly forgot about it, until I decided to make a cup today to try it out before I sent most of it out in a swap. I have cold-steeped this once in the interim as well, and it turned out nicely.

Last time I found myself not fond of the bite of the assam base, and without clear flavor profiles. This time I will say that the flavors have mellowed more and I get pretty decent raspberry and citrus notes. It’s not super bergamotty, but it is enough so to definitely be an Earl. The black tea still has a kick to it, but not overly so. Tasty enough, but not one of my faves.

Before I made this order from Ovation I tried a sample of their blueberry Earl Grey, and I enjoyed it even though I’m not a big fan of blueberry flavored things. But I was pleased with the Earl Grey part of it (and that the blueberry tasted pretty authentic), so I decided to go ahead and order this one. The dry leaf is chock full of dried raspberries, orange peel, and a scattering of flower petals, and it smells awesome. A nice blend of bright, citrusy bergamot and juicy raspberry.

The steeped tea has that black-tea-blend aroma that I can’t quite pick apart but find a lot of places. Assam-y, I think. Not my favorite, but it doesn’t always mean a flavor that isn’t good to me. There’s also the bergamot and a warmer raspberry aroma as well. I’m going to hold of rating this one as well (and tasting the rest of my teas) because I do think that these blends need time to settle and mature since they were fresh-blended to order. I’m not getting a lot of strong flavors out of this cup, and they all seem a bit muddled. There’s some astringency with a citrus note behind it, and maybe some raspberry, but they are kind of lost. I definitely can’t figure out this tea base… I don’t like Assams but I felt ok ordering more black-tea-base teas from them because my sample of Blueberry Earl Grey wasn’t bitter or astringent to me, but brewed in a similar way this tea is both. Maybe it will mellow more, but maybe it won’t and it will mean I might have to write off black teas at Ovation because the base and I don’t get along.

G’morning! My blind tea grab today got me this sample, courtesy of The LiberTEAS Sample Box that I purchased a little while ago.

The dry leaf’s aroma is sort of a generic “sweet,” maybe a hint of caramel. I didn’t get any nuttiness or chocolate. Brewed, the chocolate made its appearance in the fragrance, but I still didn’t really get any nuttiness.

Chocolate is the strongest flavour I got from my unsweetened cup, followed by a bit of caramel complaining about how I couldn’t expect it to play its role well if I wouldn’t give it any sugar (it had a point). The nuts apparently called in sick, or quit or something. After sweetening my tea, I finally got the caramel I really wanted, but honestly, I think that’s more because I used dulce de leche as my sweetener than that the tea did its job.

In the end, I just had to work too hard for this, and even then it was only mediocre. After being blown away recently by some Della Terra Teas blends, I’m just not willing to put in so much effort to get a cup with lackluster flavour.

Tea amount: 1 level tsp/~4.75g
Water amount: 6oz/~175mL
Additives: 1 tsp dulce de leche (http://amzn.com/B000WMPGDW) (a lot cheaper in my supermarket than on Amazon)

This has a very simple flavor; I taste the pecan most, then the rooibos, then the chocolate and caramel. Very nice if you want a sweet and nutty rooibos!