Rishi Tea

Steeped today much hotter and longer — basically same as I would for a fruit blend or herbal. The tea has more color, a sort of beige-tan, and more flavor. Sweet hay, and maybe a touch of chestnut.

But it’s still pretty elusive and is not doing a lot for me.

Pathetic: I thought I had mistakenly entered this tea in my cupboard because I searched for it and searched for it and couldn’t find it.

Then today, when I was looking for something else (which I didn’t find), I found it.

Too much tea!!! How is that that I’m hovering at 100 sipdowns for the year, which means 100 containers jettisoned either outright or because I transferred their contents into a tin (the number of which remains static) and I still feel like I can’t find anything? Sigh.

As with the white peony, I am not convinced this is a different tea than the one without the Organic label, but this entry had more notes so I’m parking mine here.

I steeped according to package directions.

The dry leaves definitely smell nutty, like the meat of a Brazil nut with a sharp note.

The steeped tea is barely a color other than clear, which does not bode well. Usually if I can’t get color out of a white tea, I also can’t get aroma or flavor.

The tea does have a smell beyond that of hot water, but it is that diffuse, slightly sweet, fresh water smell. And the taste is about the same.

I am going to turn up the heat on this next time and see what happens. For now, I’m disappointed.

I seem to be nearing the end of the white teas in my cupboard as far as initial tastings go, so I’ll be starting to revisit a lot of those I’ve tasted and moving on to doing an initial taste of all my oolongs.

Steeped this one according to package directions.

The dry leaves have a very identifiable honeydew fragrance, as well as an earthy undercurrent.

It’s a pleasant, light, melony tea. It’s rare for me to have so little to say about a new tea, but this one is pretty straightforwardly what it claims to be. Or as we used to say back in the day, what you see is what you get.

I remember quite liking the Lupicia Melon White, in which I tasted cantaloupe quite vividly. I wouldn’t put this on a par with the Lupicia, but it’s pretty great.

This is billed as peach, but it’s more than that. In the tin, it smells like peach, but also like juicy orange.

That’s the same smell after steeping, along with some floral notes. The tea is a light to medium yellow and clear.

I’m really enjoying this one this morning. Its a light and pleasant peach with citrus and floral notes and the underlying tea delivers it without any fuss.

I steeped according to package directions, and that seemed to work perfectly.

The aroma was very strong, pleasant, and calming. Jasmine is always one of my favorite flavors/scents in tea. The professor for my tea class served it in class last week, which is why I don’t have the prep info listed. The flavor was a little stronger than some of the other jasmine teas I have at home, which I enjoyed a lot. There was a very slight bitter aftertaste, but nothing too bad compared to some others I’ve tried. I didn’t add sweetener or anything else to it.

Tea #4 from a teaswap with Mastress Alita. Thanks!

In my quest to both move through various samples and go through the teaswaps in a timely manner, I chose this tea for my morning brew. It was nice to compare to the Li Shan I tried yesterday. I have a third Li Shan I might try tomorrow to give me a more well-rounded impression of this type of tea.

I prepared this two ways: gongfu and western, with enough nuggets left over for another western cup.

Spring 2017 harvest. The dry leaf smells vegetal, creamy, floral.

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Gongfu: 3g, 60mL, 195F, 10s rinse, 10/12/15/20/25/30/40/50/60/70s
Warmed leaf smelled of spring bulb flowers like daffodil and lily, kind of perfumey and sour vegetal. The taste started out light and remained relatively light-bodied throughout the session, with tastes of the springtime florals and a sweet-tartness like golden delicious apple. Mid-session, retained the same notes with the addition of moderate astringency, light sugarcane, peppery watercress and hints of parsley, spinach, cream and butter. Changing the temperature might allow for the butter and cream to become more prominent but I think increasing it would also greatly increase the mouth-drying quality. Final steeps faded nicely, with the green vegetal moving more toward broccoli stalk. Aroma was moderate with springtime florals. Aftertaste was pleasant, sweet and relatively short-lived.

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Western: 3.5g, 8oz, 195F, 2.5/4m.
I’d have to say I preferred this western style, as it hand a stronger, more well rounded profile while keeping the astringency to a lower level. Really nice, not over-powering florals in the mouth and nose. The distinct vegetal qualities were smoothed over. A stronger sugarcane sweetness developed with the creaminess, giving a thicker feel in the body of the liquor. More pronounced cooling. Very nice floral aroma wafted from the cup and the aftertaste was much sweeter this way. Wet leaf is kind of thin and delicate but most of it is 3-4 intact leaves and a bud here and there still attached to the stem.

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I found this tea to have the qualities of a great daily drinker and preferred it western. The price seems a little high for that, though. In comparison to a different, more complex Li Shan I drank yesterday (which is $10 cheaper per 100g), the price for this tea from Rishi is quite high.

EDIT If you play with the steep times western, you can minimize the slightly drying mouthfeel. Also picked up massive honeydew and more cooling sensation with the last of my sample brewed western. Do three steeps.

Thanks again Mastress Alita :).

This tea is great for a calm afternoon without stress. It was very light and helped my sore throat. However it was not my favorite type of tea and I don’t think I would choose it again but I didn’t dislike it.

Earl Grey is by far one of my favorite teas and this Rishi tea was no exception. I decided to brew this for a lighter taste and I was blown away . This tea always helps me focus and relax in almost a meditative sense and I will always turn to it first.

I was sick last week and decided to brew this tea for myself as I studied. It was perfect. I brewed it for richer taste and the tea was flowery and calming to my throat. It had a full-bodied flavor and a lingering mouthfeel after every sip. I would recommend adding a little honey or brown sugar as well if you like sweeter tea.

Sipdown no. 97 of 2018 (no. 453 total).

It also made a nice cold tea.

Another tea with a duplicate entry. I wish the Steepster gods would use their super merge powers on these. It messes with my OCD.

If I had to guess, this has a separate entry because one is “organic” — but I find it hard not to believe these are the same tea. The description is identical, and there’s nothing in the “organic” description that elaborates on the organic label. BTW, mine is labeled organic and I’m taking the plunge to put it here with the vast majority of entries.

In the tin, I definitely get the “sour, dead plant” aroma from the dry leaves that I have associated with white peony in the past. A more charitable description is something like “arboreal” or “woody.”

The steeped tea’s aroma seems to veer rather significantly from that, however. I can’t say I’m smelling toasted chestnut, which I associate with a very specific smoky smell from the stands in NYC in winter, but I do understand the honey reference. Though it’s not an intense smell, there’s a sweetness that is reminiscent of a very light honey. The tea is a very pale yellow.

So to compare this to the Andao, which I just had a few minutes ago: they’re pretty similar in flavor (minus the undefined fruitiness, which I am now convinced was a holdover from a different tea), as I would have expected since they’re the same type of tea. The main difference is that the Andao is both more and less. It has more of a rounded flavor, whereas I feel as though I’m searching for the flavor a bit in this one amidst the hot water. But it is also less sharp. The Rishi has a sharp note that reminds me of a darjeeling, while the Andao doesn’t.

I’m going to rate this a little higher than the Adagio because I enjoyed this more, but lower than the Andao which will earn a ratings bump.

This is a tea that has been in my cupboard for YEARS! My husband bought this tin and I’m pretty sure that was prior to us meeting, so I’d give it at least 11 years. No telling how long he had it before. With the massive amount of tea that I own I think he forgot that he bought it and I often overlook it because it’s not a tea I picked out.
I added a little creamer to my cup and I’m getting some really nice smooth flavor. It’s a little earthy in the finish, like puerh, but has a sweetness on the sip. It’s almost like puerh lite. It’s a little nutty and I think I get some of the cocoa hints that others have mentioned. It’s a solid tea that I’ll have to pay more attention to!

Sipdown no. 99 of 2018 (no. 455 total).

I made the last of this today — a big pot — because the BF is still sick and he wanted “some tea, something hot, anything really.”

It grew slightly on me over time, but never more than slightly. If I think about why, it’s the mint. I think I would have liked this a lot more without the mint. With it, I focus to much on the mind and not enough on the delicate floral flavors it is overpowering.

Last weekend I broke open an ATR white rose sample and was bemoaning how they’re no longer around. Because looking at my tea log, I have discovered that I have a thing for white rose tea. I seem to have rated the ones I’ve tried high, though I never stopped to think about it as a pattern until now.

So I was pretty excited to try this one because it’s still available for order. But then I looked a bit more closely at the ingredients.

Turns out this is white rose heavy on the melange. I mean, it is white rose, but it’s also green tea, peppermint, lavender, and jasmine.

In the packet, the mint is eyewateringly strong. It pretty much dominates everything else, though I do smell some rose.

The tea steeps to a sort of a rosy gold color and is clear. The steeped tea’s aroma reminds me of bath products, with a touch of laundry detergent, which isn’t the best sign.

Fortunately, the tea doesn’t taste exactly like it smells. Everything smooths out into something that isn’t particularly bath producty, but nor is it a home run in the rose department. Then again, that’s not really fair because this isn’t a white rose tea. It is something else.

And what it is is just ok. I think I’d like it better without the melange, frankly. The peppermint and lavender are pretty strong and the rose is just around the edges. I don’t taste the tea at all and I’m not sure I’m getting any jasmine either.

It’s not a favorite, mostly because I want more rose in my white rose melange and I feel a bit misled. But solely because the detergent/bath products aren’t something I taste, I won’t mind sipping it down.

This tea was nice. There is a distinct scent of the jasmine flower. This scent adds to the taste of the tea, enhancing the experience.

I prepared this tea with a whisk and bowl as I had for my matcha from last week, but I used a different bowl with a designated face. I turned the bowl three times in my palm to admire it, and I was surprised by how much more enriching this made the experience. Really taking in the sight of the bowl and tea as one was picturesque and made me feel like time had slowed down just for me to enjoy my tea.
Unfortunately, this was where the pleasantness came to an end. The color of the tea was an army green with a gray undertone. I was excited to try a sweet matcha to compare with last week’s, and I am not I fan. It was overwhelmingly sweet with a synthetic earthy aftertaste. It didn’t have scent, and did not foam up as much as I would have liked.

Really good, definitely better than other brands. It just tastes really natural and nothing added to it. It really gives you that spiritual warmness when drinking.

Picked this up from the co-op a while back. It was much cheaper per pound there than through Rishi. Yay high turnover bulk.

Gone grandpa, 1 tsp, 10oz ceramic coffee mug, 195F, 2 top-offs.

The dry leaf scent resembles a young, non-boozy cabernet. I pick up on red fruit, green bell pepper and woody vanilla. The liquor smells mostly like baked cherries and honey with a dash of cocoa.

The taste is more complex. It seems like a medley of malty dark cherry pie and a flakey apricot and blood orange pastry with large sugar crystals sprinkled on top. The most prominent notes are honey, baked cherry and rose. Other, non-dominant tastes include a swirl of wet wood, musty autumn leaves, red plum, green bell pepper, golden syrup, violet, black licorice, cacao, vanilla, black pepper without the spicy bite and mineral. Mouthfeel is pretty light and later quite drying especially at the back of the throat and uvula, making for an awkward swallow. Aftertaste lingers early on before the astringency takes over.

This is a very tasty tea. Compared to previous brews western style, I pick up more flavor complexity with grandpa style. However, due to the astringency in the throat, I think it’s better-suited for western.. In general, it does lack the fuller, thicker mouthfeel that I appreciate, though that makes it good for a light daily drinker. I’ll have to try it out in a gaiwan.

This is a very spice heavy tea. In a blind smell test, one could easily mistake this for garam masala. There are strong notes of cinnamon, star anise, clove, and cardamom. It’s the kind of potent aroma that reminds me of walking into an Indian spice shop.

I prepared this both as a chai and steeped it the normal way following Rishi-Tea’s instructions. The chai turned out to be a complete fail. It smelled and tasted like roasted gram/chickpea flour. There was some cinnamon and an odd cayenne note but I couldn’t get past the weird chickpea flour taste and ended up chucking it after a few sips.

It fared a little better when brewed on its own. The spices were tamer and I could actually taste some of the rooibos base. The dominant notes were cinnamon, star anise, and tellicherry peppercorn in the finish. I didn’t really like the sharp peppery flavor though and had to add a little sweetener to take the edge off.

I think Rishi had the right idea with this blend but bad execution. The combination of spices doesn’t really work and overwhelms rather than complementing the tea. I haven’t dabbled in blends for a long time, but this inspires me to create my own chai blend using the 1 lbs of rooibos sitting in my cupboard.

I drink this hot in the winter, iced in the summer, all of the time, always with soy milk. The chain of cafes around here that serves it makes it pretty strong and it’s beautiful. Strong and spicy and not too sweet at all. They sell this by the quart box as a liquid. Can’t get any better.

Rishi is a local company for me, so I’m lucky enough to be able to have their tea pretty frequently in cafes around town. I’m pretty sure this is the matcha they serve, and it’s delicious. I like it iced with coconut milk. One of the more grassy matchas I’ve tried, with a vegetal afternote. Just very “green” tasting. Next time I’ll review their chai – one of my favorites!

2/2 win today for Rishi! Can’t believe I never tried their delicious teas! This was so good, it literally warmed me up from the inside out on this dreary and cold Monday. What a special treat, and didn’t need to add anything to enhance it.