SerendipiTea

Nom nom nom

Lately I’ve been trying to recreate the incredibly delicious cups of tea that I had when I first tried this blend. I haven’t really been all that successful.. something is just not right. It’s much more.. tart and there is less of that raspberry/chocolate cream that I had tasted originally. I’m glad that I didn’t buy a ton of this blend as I would probably be even more disappointed! I’ll continue to experiment and see if anything changes. It’s not undrinkable, just not the lovely tea I remember!

I. love. this. tea.
This is the ultimate dessert tea, in my opinion. The raspberry is perfectly sweet and tart. The first sip tonight tasted like vanilla ice cream with a hint of berry. So delicious!

The leaf smells amazing. Raspberry and a CREAMY chocolate. An ideal dessert tea! I taste mostly a tart raspberry, but the finish is decadently sweet! It’s almost like a creamy cheesecake at the end. Simply delicious. This is so smooth, I hardly taste the rooibos. Neither a negative or positive as I actually like the flavor of rooibos. I really, really enjoy this tea. Yummy!

My standards for milk oolong may be a bit high. This is a natural milk oolong (JIN Xuan) but I still wanted a bit more creaminess from it. I personally would spend my oolong dollars on a different milk oolong or SerendipiTea’s Forever Spring.

Just steeped a cup to break-in my brand new Adagio utiliTea kettle, ingenuiTea and glass mugs. Being able to see the beautiful red color of the perfectly steeped cup is a treat and I’ve finally stepped up my tea drinking game.

Thanks to LauraR for sending me this tea!

This is very unusual, I think. Very smoky and quite spicy. I drank this with a little honey but no milk and compared to a few pre-honey sips, the honey definitely brings out the spices and emphasises the smokiness.

When drinking this, it made me visualise sitting in a dark room with thunder in the distance. No idea why. It was very warm, not as in heat warm but as in spice warm. It’s not really an in-your-face chai. I quite like in-your-face chais, but this is good in an unusual way.

Steeped this at 170 for 3 minutes and I am surprises at the lightness of the brew. It has a nice jasmine flavor to it as well as a flavorful oolong base. I can taste a little bit of the orange peel at the end of the sip if I try really hard. I will have to steep the next pot for longer or hotter. Thanks to Jacqueline I have a few more cups worth to play with. The more I try jasmine teas the more I enjoy them.

Second steep at 10 minutes is not nearly as delightful as the first steep at 5. It’s merely a shadow of that lovely, tart brew, taunting me with hints of its former glory.

Sad.

Another sample from Meghann!! This one smells so very, very good…

Oh. Oh, my. Oh.

Fruity. Tart. Sweet. Blood orange. Rich. Thick. Magenta. Amazing.

Excuse me, I need to be alone with this for a bit.

I’ve been drinking this tea for a couple of weeks, and it hasn’t been doing much for me. It’s not as robust with the delicate muscatel notes of a 2nd flush, and not as subtle and gentle as a 1st flush. I guess it makes sense since it is an atumnal flush.

I enjoyed this Ceylon one morning at a local cafe when i was really sleepy. it was brisk, and strong, and woke me up. probably not the best ceylon out there, especially for the price, but it worked for me on that sleepy day.

Ahhh, Wednesday. I find myself with the day off today [yes, the glories of retail are numerous and boundless] and have been sipping on this sucka for the majority of the morning. Here is what I have discovered:

1. I like this tea hot better than I like it cooled. Cooled, it gets a bit astringent. Sometimes, I like astringency; it can work to contrast with the flavors the tea has to offer and heightens its better aspects. But in the case of this particular one, the astringency is a bit too close to its profile and it’s kind of unpleasant.

2. That being said, hot, it is rather tasty.

3. The creamy, milky notes are deep, soft, and billowy, however…

4. The floral notes are loud and somewhat overwhelm everything. It pervades both the scent and the taste.

5. On the tongue, I find it difficult to concentrate on other flavors past the floral taste. It’s like…one part gardenia, one part hyacinth, one part roses, one part lilies. I love every single one of those flowers in their own right, but if you put them all together it’s overwhelming in more ways that one.

6. When the creamy aspects of the tea shine, it’s brilliant. They are always there, lending a rounded, opaque sense to the overall flavor of the tea, but I wish that it was more consistently dominant. This could have everything to do with how I brewed it, though, so I’m curious to see what happens in consequent steepings.

7. On the nose, the florals blend with a nearly-just-as-loud fruity component. I’m on the fence as to whether I really like it, or it makes me just a teensy bit queasy. In whole, the scent is strong, young Skywalker.

8. The aftertaste is sweet, and, again, floral. Maybe with a light hint of fruit. Like…an apricot, perhaps.

To round this up, my verdict is positive. It’s a nice tea, and from what I’ve seen thus far I think I’ll be brewing it in smallish quantities so I can enjoy it hot. And next time, I’ll have to remember to use le sorapot.

Slightly saturated but mostly accurate picture from this A.M. | http://bit.ly/a5p6yD

Very nice green tea for a meal or afternoon, since it is darker than most greens with the complexity of an Oolong. Pleasantly surprised with how complex the flavor was and would consider it a hardy green tea (which is why I recommend it for a meal). One of my favorites now.

Strong tea base sweetened by the coconut with a great mango flavor. Not much else to say, but this was the perfect afternoon cuppa!

Wow, this tea smells of tart citrus, fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. Looking at the teas description, it is blood oranges and not grapefruit, even better! I haven’t had blood orange since Ciao Bella’s Blood Orange Sorbet a few years ago. The tisane brews up the color of a blood orange too. Such a rich deep crimson. Delicious. This tea makes me want to dance!

Thanks JacquelineM for letting me sample some of this tea! Must get more!

I go back and forth between this tisane and Buccaneer. I think I prefer the mintiness of this one. I’m fairly certain that this has chunks of coconut in it, even though it’s not listed as an ingredient. It’s a soothing blend of chocolate, peppermint, and vanilla. Fortunately, the rooibos does not come through strongly at all. Overall, a very good dessert tea.

Yep! Today I am drinking Mango Magnus. This is one of my favorite mango teas. It is the perfect blend of black tea with an accurate taste of mango. Very smooth.

First off, it is hard for me to not like a chai when made the traditional way – I mean, lots of milk, lots of sugar, what’s not to like? At the same time, since making it that way takes so much longer, I rarely have chai. So I almost always like this type of tea and I almost never make it. But I’ve been looking forward to trying this smoky chai from sophistre for quite a while so today I finally mustered up the energy to make it.

I can’t say I would have pegged this as a smoky chai – though maybe that’s because I’ve been drinking Russian Caravan this morning – but there is a certain something in this that is really different and unique. An edge I’ve never gotten from chai before – it makes it a bit mysterious. And tasty. That little edge is addictive, too. I like tasting it.

I don’t think this is a dramatically different chai from most of the others out there, but at the same time, that little extra note (the smoke, I imagine) gives it a distinctiveness that I think any chai fan would appreciate.

My first matcha so I don’t know what good vs bad is. But. i did enjoy it. I started off with a very leafy taste with a surprise but very brief finish of lemon

Received this as a surprise gift from teaplz the other day. YAY.

The water was probably too hot in preparation, because I was too busy looking up how long to steep this for and forgot I had the kettle on. Whoops.

Regardless… this stuff is pretty awesome. It’s smooth and light, and it’s taking a lot of willpower not to gulp it all down at once. There’s something in there that I can’t quite place—not exactly floral, but something nature-y. After three cups, you’d think I could get it (though let’s be honest here—I’m probably using that as an excuse to drink yet another cup of tea). It’s both comforting and delicious.

Though if I don’t stop drinking tea now, I’ll never be able to fall asleep tonight.

This is a great vanilla black tea option. The vanilla flavor profile is kind of medium and doesn’t get in your face. It balances nicely with the black tea used here which is rich, malty and gives off chocolate notes. This is naturally sweet and I enjoyed this best unadulerated.