Rishi Tea

This is a good classic white tea, in that it is subtle and sweet. Personally I don’t care for hot white tea, I usually take it cold because the sweet taste usually comes through strong.

Great Tea!

Excellent Tea!

Still nasty. Sometimes I wonder if this particular batch was made with rancid bergamot. The bergamot is overpowering, and deeply unpleasant.

Wow! This is a bold and very aggressive Earl Grey!

Just open the lid of the jar and you will smell what I mean. I can’t compare the aroma and flavor to bergamot, having never experience the fruit outside of tea, but I might suggest that the strength of the bergamot is overwhelming if this tea isn’t brewed with some care. The Rishi tea company suggests that this be brewed with 8 oz. of water to one teaspoon of tea, I suggest an increase of water in that ratio. I also suggest brewing for a shorter time, for three minutes as opposed to four.

This tea is, for my taste, almost undrinkable without adornment. I recommend both milk and sweetener, even half and half. This softens the aggressive tone of the tea, but never really mellows it out. I wouldn’t recommend lemon, lime, or any additional citrus flavors that some find traditional to an Earl Grey as they will only serve to intensify (by means of complimenting) the already intense bergamot.

I have tried mixing this tea with others: Lapsang, a Kenyan black (whose specifics I have forgotten),an Assam, and anything else I could find at the bottoms of my loose tea containers. This tea quickly overpowered all but the Lapsang, to which it was a strong addition but not wonderful – sort of off kilter.

With such a seemingly negative review, why such a generous rating number? Surprisingly it makes a great iced tea if brought to the desired drinking temperature slowly and adorned with a simple syrup (yes, it was worth the time to prepare the syrup ahead of time) The tea became remarkably invigorating and refreshing. I used old cold tea (not iced) as part of a braising fluid (along with beef stock and a little BBQ sauce) for some pork tenderloins on a lark and I think it has a lot of potential as a cooking aid.

This tea was given to me as a gift, and I don’t think that I would buy it myself, as I prefer a somewhat milder Earl-Grey flavor.

I didn’t love this tea but I didn’t hate it either. As stated before me the Osmanthus has an interesting flavor that is too overpowering for the tea itself.

This is a great everyday tea for those who enjoy a delicately-balanced tea.

And that’s the last of it…

I hadn’t quite cleaned my thermos out well wnough, so this particular batch tasted like raisins + lavendar. It wasn’t unpleasant. The directions from Rishi instruct you to steep for 1.5 minutes, I’m not convinced that it wouldn’t taste better if it was steeped a little longer.

Sometimes I’m tempted to try making a tea incorrectly just to see if it tastes bad. I suspect it’d be hard to make this tea bad.

Not particularly as strongly sweet the second time around, which is not necessarily a bad or good thing. However, the cooler it gets the sweeter it gets.

For me this tea seems sweet, very much like a raisin cookie with a little chocolate. I’m not really detecting anything peppery. There is a nice malty-ness that I’m enjoying, for me a “malty” tea is usually hit or miss, and this one is a hit.

I’m tasting the Zingerman’s Organic Silver Needle, but I’m pretty sure that it’s really Rishi. This is quite nice and pleasant, citrusy nose, clean flavor. A very good white tea!

Found another excellent one! Didn’t buy enough at once! :(

Moonlight White. Mmmmmm… It’s a very nectary white tea. Subtle hints of honey and ripe yellow fruits like apricot. This one I highly recommend for the white tea obsessee!!!
And as always the best comes from Yunnan. (Unless we’re talking green teas… Japan all the way!)

pu-erh-fect!

My first tea at work! I brought in a mug, a thermometer, my Finum Brewing Basket, and some tea, of course! I figured I’d start wearing down some of my samples. I don’t want to be brewing stuff I haven’t tasted yet in the office.

I measured the water temperature in the office, and it tops out at 180. Bah. So I guess that means greens and whites for now, until I get a kettle. I’m scared of exploding water in the microwave, so blacks will have to wait.

Anyway, this one steeped up to a very light color. I adjusted the temperature and steep time to maybe mellow out some of the astringency and weird mineral flavors that I got the first time I tasted this one.

The infusion was really a very light cream-yellow, almost the color of a white tea. And the smell coming off of it was a lot more buttery than I remembered. But the leaves smell kind of gross wet. I can’t describe it. But it’s unappealing.

The taste this time… woah. Okay, so the mineral weirdness is still there. But now I’m really, really tasting pine cones. Like, wet, kind of old pine cones, mixed with a vegetal taste that’s really kind of like spinach. And then it’s blending into a sweet taste, but this only happens after the cup has cooled. I think the rating is staying where it is. This one isn’t exactly the best thing I’ve ever tasted, by far.

It’s good for mindless sipping, but I can’t say that I’m particularly enjoying the flavors that I’ve extracted out of this one.

SECOND STEEP OF IT, yay!

Or actually, really, nay. BLECH. What is going on with this tea. I brought the time up to three minutes, and watched the leaves completely unfurl. Very pretty! The leaves are all completely intact, and beautiful. I love it when I see leaves like this in my teapot. It’s the plant itself, and then you realize how wonderfully connected to the earth tea is, and then you wax poetic on the universe and life itself.

ANYWAY, the tea this time was a slight shade darker than the first, and I’m getting a real earthy smell from the cup. A little bit of spinach, but not completely overly-green. On first taste… yeah, I’m making a face and recoiling visibly from the cup. It’s even more minerally than before, and the sweetness seems to have vanished. There’s this really off-putting bitterness to it as well. Not even the usually tea-bitter taste that sometimes comes along with blacks. Just the base flavor of bitter on your tongue.

Surprisingly enough, this cup isn’t as astringent as the first, but there’s really no reason to continue drinking this one. I’m not getting salty, but I am getting the oceanic taste that Auggy described on her tasting note. I think it’s a seaweed flavor in this. Bitter and briny. It almost tastes like liquid sand from the beach in a cup, if that makes any sense.

I actually don’t think I can finish this cup, but I’m going to try. But the leaves are already in the garbage. There’s no way I’m trying a third steep of this!

This one is… really bizarre. Another Auggy sample (YAY AUGGY YOU ARE THE BEST!). It’s absolutely adorable when dry. A deep, verdant green rolled into silky, tiny pellets. There are stripes of lighter green in there. I absolutely love the way rolled teas look, and this one is no exception.

The smell is a bit… odd, to say the least. It’s very earthy. Musky, almost. So anyway, I steeped a level teaspoon of this, and watched the show. Rolled teas always like to do the jitterbug, and this one was no exception, for the most part, the leaves looked pretty much intact, but they didn’t completely unfurl with such a short steeping time.

The resulting liquid is actually a bit pale. A bit darker than a while tea, but definitely not super-green. It’s completely clear, and now has a scent that I can’t place. Maybe a bit of wild honey, mixed with a woodsy element. I took the first sip, and wrinkled my brow. This tea is… confusing, and it’s difficult for me to describe the tastes I’m experiencing. Piping hot, the tea gives off a very mineral-like flavor. It’s as if someone has steeped a bunch of rocks for me and given me the resulting brew. And I don’t mean gross rocks, I mean mineral-like rocks. It has that sort of tang to it.

As it cooled, though, this tea got exponentially better. Sweetness started to play a dominant role in the flavor. It’s not exactly the super-sweet that comes from a white tea (that I doubt that the greens will ever match), but it’s natural and refreshing. There’s a slight grassiness that I think I just pick up on in all greats as well. That sweetness that lingers on the tongue is becoming something that I crave in greens and whites. There’s still an earthiness to offset that sweetness, but for the most part, the mineral notes have dissipated.

While the sweet flavor is definitely refreshing, the astringency definitely isn’t. This has to be one of the most astringent teas I’ve ever had. My tongue feels like a desert. Like it wants to crawl out of my mouth, book it for the nearest fountain, and dunk itself repeatedly. I’m definitely going to need to drink something else, because I have sandpaper mouth right now.

Since the leaves don’t look like they fully unfurled themselves, and since Auggy wanted to know how my mileage will be on the second steep, watch for another post later on concerning those results!

Nice clean taste, not soapy but floral and fresh. The citrus smell is stronger than the citrus taste though. The blossoms add floral notes in the finish.

This is a tea to smell and drink at the same time. It gives a great throat coat on these cold icky days.