Tea Runners

I’m over this tea lol. Especially when i have other options in my cupboard. It’s not bad but there’s also a stronger stringency almost? underlying the flavours that makes me not reach for it all that often. I vastly prefer my toffee and caramel teas i think.

Advent tea!
This is malty and yeasty and if I squint really hard I can taste the sweet potato? There’s a bit of chocolate malt underneath. Seems to be only one taste note here, but my cup is draining fast so I must like it! Reminds me of a jin jun mei and I would drink this again.

Advent Tea!
Oh, this smells nice. And it brews up very chocolatey. With a hint of salted caramel. The second steep was weaker, but I tried for a third steep anyway and it too was a lovely chocolate brew. Thanks Lexie!

Yay, advent season is here. Thanks Lexie for this nice mellow start to a month of tea! This one is savory and mossy without any bitterness. A good example of rolled green tea that opens into huge leaves.

This is one of those green teas that benefit from proper brewing. I mean, all teas do but some you can’t appreciate without the properness. Or maybe I’m just not a fan of Maojian. I get corn notes and bitter grass notes with strips of astringency. Slight fresh squash notes and a bit of umami. But overall, this is not what I look for when I want to drink green tea. So perhaps I shouldn’t put in a score because it’s a good green, just not my taste?

Steeped up a mug of this on top of my advent teas today. I think it’s kind of fun that I ended up having two different mistletoe teas today – one that was literal mistletoe and then this one that’s more of a “vibe”. It’s very nice, though you can’t taste the white tea at all. Very smooth, cooling mint with strongly creamy notes. White chocolate type creamy, and not “fresh cream” though. Very nice with the winter vibes which was super appropriate now that it has OFFICIALLY snowed in Montreal. How fun that the first proper snowfall of the year to stick was on December first!

Grabbed this because I wanted mint but also caffeine, and then was pleasantly reminded that it’s also super creamy. Not sure if it’s just a cream/vanilla note or if it’s actually a white chocolate flavouring, but whatever the case it was DEFINITELY giving me white chocolate based Peppermint Bark vibes. Like, the kind you eat around Christmas. I’m not ready for snow yet, but creamy white chocolate and mint yet? Yeah, that sounds great.

Things have been so busy lately that I really haven’t had much of a chance to think much about wrting notes. And i’ve been drinking a whole bunch of new teas.

Anyway, I got the specifically for making cold brews. And this one works well. There is no astrigency that I can really detect brewed this way. (Have not tried it hot yet so I can’t say for that.) And it still has the flavor that I remember from the iced tea my father would make when I was a kid.

Overall I think I really enjoy this and will be restocking when I am out.

So with spring slowly approaching, I’ve been thinking about cleaning out my tea drawer. I purchased a lot of new to me teas last year and I’m finding I just never reach for. This happens to be one of them.

I think it suffers somewhat by comparison. Its not the flavor profile I want/expect from a black biluochun. If I try to look at it by itself, its ok I guess. It does have some astringency, mostly noticeable as it cools. It also just seems to be lacking something of the flavor I want/look for.

I still haven’t decided if I want to declutter , but its a possibility. Sadly 2oz is the smallest amount you can get from TeaRunners unless its a subscription, so its a lot of tea to throw out if I choose to do so.

Catching up on some old notes.

I decided to give this a try since I love Golden Snail from Whispering Pines so much. The flavor sadly just doesn’t match up. Its more bitter, less of that warm feeling to it. I know, yeah, really descriptive.

Overall I’m underwhelmed.

(Short tasting notes today because I have a killer migraine.)

Late afternoon office cuppa. The intensely full bodied liquor and darker robust notes of peat, tobacco, sandalwood and chocolate caught me a little off guard. Not because they were anything less than delicious, but I just had totally forgotten how much this black tea leaned towards that particular type of flavour. It like I could feel it gradually warming me up from the farthest back and deepest down parts of my chest. Lovely!

Gongfu!

One of the teas from my gifted September subscription box from Tea Runners. From the get go, this tea was very sweet and syrupy with really strong notes of pungent overripe stonefruit and waxy red fruits counterbalanced by raisin bread, smoke, dark wood, and tobacco notes. Very well balanced, and a great way to kick off the morning!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CiiKcuouYMB/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO6pFb74h5g

This came in my August subscription box this month.

Usually I get an advanced email from Tea Runners where I can choose to swap teas in the box if I want, but this was the first month in about a year where I wasn’t given that option. I don’t want to complain since I get my box for free, but I did miss having the option to choose. It’s maybe a good thing too though because I probably would have swapped this one out of my box because I’ve historically been fairly underwhelmed by jasmine greens – I would have just assumed this wouldn’t be my cup of tea. Pun intended.

That said, I cracked open the little sample bag and the dry leaf aroma immediately had me going “Oh, I have misjudged you!”. It smells like jasmine, yes, but also beautifully of soft and citrusy lemon myrtle and aromatic floral orange blossoms. So fresh and almost dewy! I steeped up a cup immediately, and it was very good.

Definitely more of an orange blossom profile than a jasmine one in my opinion and I super spot on orange blossom at that! It’s not a flavour that’s easy to find well executed in teas, so the fact it was so natural and fresh tasting with the perfect amount of body really blew me away. I thought the jasmine came though in the finish, but even it was on its best behavior with a softer and more delicate note rather than the heavy and kind of perfume-y quality that jasmine can sometimes take. The natural sweetness level was quite pleasant, and I also really liked the light top notes of bright lemon that some of the other ingredients contributed.

As I mentioned in another tasting note earlier tonight, I’ve not slept well this week and I’ve been dealing with a lot of migraines as a result of that insomnia. I had an awful one all day today, but by the end of this cup I was so relaxed and at peace that I hadn’t realized my migraine had gone away sometime after those first sips.

Just… yes to this tea.