Tea Gallerie

This is my second favorite tea from Tea Gallerie – my first being Earl Grey Creme! I call this my ‘entry level pu-erh’ for people who don’t think they like pu-erh. It’s got the pu-erh earthiness, but that Scottish caramel complements it beautifully.

Sooo this is the other tea I got in SD from this shop. The lady who was trying to help told me that this tea is a mix between their Irish Breakfast, another Vanilla Black tea, and then this Strawberry tea. Which seemed like an odd combo. But how she described it, it sounded sooo good!
This was one of the only samples I could actually somewhat taste since she couldn’t for the life of her actually brew up tea in the right way. She made me about 5 different samples and they were ALL extremely bitter. It was seriously awful. So so hard to choose when everything is made wrong and tastes horrible.
They had a lot of teas combined with jasmine there that I so wanted to try, but because the samples were all the same bitter/roasted flavor, I had to take a pass. :(
This one I felt safe buying though Since I love Irish Breakfast/Irish Cream teas for the most part anyway. Hate hate hate English Breakfast tea, but Irish…Irish does it right!
So anyway.
Finally got around to trying this tea while putting together some tea swaps.
Brewed right it actually was a quite light Irish Cream. It was kinda creamy and sweet-and had that malty flavor I love in Irish Cream teas! So yeah, I definitely do not regret buying this one! :D
But can’t say that I tasted all the other teas the chick mentioned in it. Especially the strawberry one haha!

Sooo this was the first tea place I went to into San Diego, apparently the “number One” tea shop there. xD
I think over-all it was a good experience. Got to smell all the teas which was nice, and they offered samples for whatever. BUT.
But. They kept steeping the teas out of the same freakin’ steeper or tea maker or whatever it was because we tried maybe, what, 5 samples? And the first was a roasted oolong….and I had asked her if it was and she said it wasn’t, so I who had just woken up from our car ride agreed when she offered to make it. Turns out she had NO idea what the difference from a green and like roasted oolong is-I don’t think the other is called “roasted oolong”. But that’s just what I remember it as because only green oolongs have floral notes to me. So like if you know if it’s not called just “roasted oolong”, please tell me so maybe next time I can be more clear xD
Anyway, so first sample tasted all roasty and I didn’t like it of course, and the samples following just kept getting more and more burnt tasting. Like…It’s cool they wanna make samples there, and let you try a lot. But they need to do it right, wouldn’t have minded waiting a while if I could have gotten the real flavor from the teas! XD
So only ended up with two. An Irish Cream one that smelled really good and that was apparently a mix of two other teas I smelled that also smelled amazing and this tea. Haven’t been overly fond of minty chamomile teas for some reason, but this one has worked-don’t know how but it just really really has!
It smelled sooo good in the container-though half the time when I open the pouch at home it tastes like weed, and it grosses me out so much. xD So I like can’t smell the dry leaf. I just gotta brew it up and drink it because then it tastes good! But yeah. Oy.
I liked how it had a really strong like peppermint flavor but also a really strong chamomile flavor; the combo was just really good.
I got 2oz of it, and since I gotta go back up there to see the dr guy again for for a check up in three months so maybe if I really really end up loving it I’ll pick up more!
Even though the chick who I was talking to there didn’t know that much about tea it felt like, and even though she made consistently horrible samples for us, she was quite nice, just like most people in SD, which seemed really odd because CA has like the reputation for “not being friendly” though I definitely consider La to be way friendlier than the city I live in that’s like 20 minutes away from HollyWood. So yeah I dunno.
Anyway, It’s been a super rough week emotionally mainly and my intense pain added to that just makes me want to get shot in the head…so…yeah, this tea has been rather comforting.
I think what would make it even better though is like a hint of licorice. I don’t know why but that just sounds like it would be really good, at least to me!
Anywho, I’d definitely recommend going there if any of you guys are ever in SD!

Two years+ on, this tea is still amazing. The flavour has great staying power.

So the boyfriend-creature and I went to San Diego for a week in mid-February and I only brought a few teabags with me thinking I could always buy more tea while I was there. Unfortunately I soon discovered that San Diego. Does. Not. Do. Tea. At all.

The hotel we stayed at didn’t even have so much a crappy Lipton teabag in its continental breakfast. And good luck finding something as basic as a Starbucks. My tea stash quickly ran out and this was becoming a serious problem because I need my caffeine otherwise I get cranky and tired (FYI coffee makes me sick so that was out).

Lo and behold I came a cross this cute little tea house in Balboa Park called the Tea Pavilion – it’s attached to the Japanese Friendship Garden (which is a lovely place by the way). This was the tea I picked out to try and damn was it good – rich, lightly sweet and bursting with creamy coconut flavour. It was so good that I asked them where they got their tea from and it turns out they’re supplied by a shop called the Tea Gallerie. The tea house owners were willing to sell me some of their bulk tea which saved me from having to track down their supplier myself. So I walked away with 100g of this lovely blend. I made myself a another cup this evening and it was every bit as good as I remembered it.

My friend and I went to Tea Gallerie’s tasting room. They offer “flights” where you can try several different teas before you buy. Scottish caramel pu-erh was hands-down my favorite. The heavenly smell of caramel and butterscotch wafts up from the cup before your first sip. As you drink, you can taste the yummy deep pu-erh flavor but it is tempered by the smoothness of the caramel. I couldn’t stop drinking this one!! So yummy!

brewed mine with steamed soy milk. It’s such a bright zippy tea. It feels like I’m wrapped in winter.

was okay. has a faint cinnamon-line smell behind it. otherwise rather unremarkable but not bad.

This is a very good vanilla. I like it over Adagio’s and Harney & Son’s. Perhaps not quite as much as Betjeman & Barton “Le Classique”.

I like most forms of earl grey, but I found this one to be a bit too weird for my taste. I found the vanilla to be a strange combination with the bergamot. I would try it again but was not impressed initially.

If you brew the tea strongly like I do, it tastes more like apple cider than anything else. I serve it to my friends whenever they come to my house.

I am not usually a big fan of Earl Grey, since I find bergamot to be somewhat astringent, but I love this tea! The addition of the vanilla really mellows out the bergamot flavor. It is a nice, creamy tea that I love having in the afternoon.

The sweetness of the coconut peels perfectly balances the strong taste of the Pu-Erh. One word to describe it: de-li-cious!