Tavalon Tea

If you drink it hot it has a bitter after-taste, but if you let it cool a little the jasmine becomes a little stronger and the bitterness becomes much much weaker.

A nice strong jasmine. While I’m no expert on jasmine teas this is about the best one I’ve tried so far.

Dry, this tea boasts twisted leaves of slate blue, dark green, and brown. The brewed tea is has a sweet floral smell with a strong vegetal component and a very slight resinous note. The strong vegetal comes out in the tea along with the sweet elements. Perhaps I need to brew this at a lower temperature.

Screwed up so badly with the brewing of this, I can’t even begin to guess the parameters. Sadly, this is my last of this tea and this brewing is (hopefully) not an accurate judge of taste. There are hints of goodness in it, but ultimately it tastes more like soggy honey nut cheerios than anything like what I remember from last time. I won’t adjust my rating though since I know the soggy cereal taste is most likely my fault.

Okay, my nose is stuffy. I’m having trouble smelling pretty much everything. So dry, these leaves smelled like nothing. But after a quick rinse? Kapow! I can smell that! I’m horrible, however, at saying what things smell like when 1) I have a stuffy nose and, especially 2) when it is a dark oolong. I just don’t have much experience with them. But this smelled a lot like Adagio’s Wuyi Ensemble – if pressed I’d say it smells like a pleasant smoke smell plus a dark honey (plum or something) but I feel like I’ve been saying that about everything (either that or ‘bake-y’) so don’t push me to actually say what it smells like other than Adagio’s WE, k?

I’ve overfilled the glass so I’m going to have to wait a bit for it to cool a little so I don’t pour freakishly hot liquid down my front. On the plus side, it gives me the chance to notice the pretty color. Like apple juice. Or clear cider. Very pretty in my Bodum cup.

Okay, it’s cool enough now… Oooh, this is good. Sweeter than Adagio’s Wuyi Ensemble and a little more complex. Not quite as dark. Smoky at the front then a fruity taste (peach? DH mentioned apple… maybe pear? it’s not very strong and mostly comes across as sweet) then the finish gives hints of what this would taste like as a less oxidized oolong. Very sweet. Very smooth.

So yeah, this one kind of flies in the face of my belief that I’m not a fan of smoky or darker oolongs.

Winter always seems to make me crave black tea.

This tea seems hard to over-brew (or whatever the technical term is), probably because the smokey flavor is so strong.

Everyone needs to try this tea. (It reminds me a little of smoked fish.)

Made a cold pitcher. Even weak the taste holds up pretty well.

The difference between drinking in hot and drinking it lukewarm is still somewhat startling to me.

When it’s still very hot the taste is more peppery than lemon, but if you let it cool down the lemon taste becomes much stronger and the pepper taste mostly disappears.

Wonderful lemongrass tea. There is a great sweet aftertaste that I find unique.

A little too sweet by itself. I normally mix it with something.

Mixed with My Morning Mate, 1 tsp of each. 208 degrees in the Zoji, 5 minutes steeping.

This weirded me out with the puffed rice mixed in with the tea, but it was a really complex, nutty flavor. Nice for a cold, gray, Fall afternoon.

I got this as part of a black tea sampler. Hardly!! It’s Chai.

Although I’m not a fan of herbal teas I like this quite a bit with lot’s of milk and sugar.

At the suggestion of many, I dialed the temperature WAY down. Like to the top of the first white zone, which I’m thinking is somewhere around 160 degrees. [1. I really need to get a thermometer. 2. If you’re just tuning in and have no clue what I am referring to, I use a utiliTEA.] I put in more tea – like 1.5, maybe even 2 tsp – and I let it sit for 2:15-2:30 minutes.

MUCH improved. Of course, this is a completely different company, so I’m not sure how much that played into it [I’ll have to try Adagio’s again], but this was much more aligned to what I was expecting.

There is a distinct smokiness to the scent as it rises off the cup, which I don’t enjoy but don’t hate either. It’s almost gunpowder-y? Kind of like that smell you get from a log-burning fire, but with more of a peppery tone to it.

There is still some of that saltiness to it, but it’s not too pronounced. This is definitely a tea with some subtleness to it, but this cup had that chlorophyll-sweet taste to it that I enjoy. The sweetness becomes more obvious as it cools, and the aftertaste towards the end is somewhere between roasty and smoky.

It’s an interesting tea, and I want to continue playing around with it a bit, but I think that I’d enjoy it more if I were eating something with it. Something with complex flavors and a medium kind of intensity to it. Balducci’s makes this smoked ham, pear, and gorgonzola sandwich that would likely pair masterfully with this. I think I know what I’m doing tomorrow.