Tea's Me (teasme) Christchurch

Tea is one of my favourite birthday presents and I’m always excited to have new additions to my tea cupboard. Uncle Martin gifted me this so I’ve taken a crack at giving it a write up.

The smell from the bag promises a sickly sweet trip down the vanilla river to flavour town. Unfortunately scents can be misleading. Starting with a strong bouquet of vanilla essence and sucrose, the flavour, once the leaves hit the water, falls flat.

Transparent and slightly astringent, the black tea base doesn’t have enough body to piggyback the vanilla successfully resulting in a watery, weak flavour that clings to the tongue like a child to its mother on the first day of school

To the Vanilla Black’s credit it does maintain a soft and lulling aroma throughout the cup and in hindsight maybe some milk would have brought it all together.

This tea really lives up to its name. My partner and I have sort of become earl grey connoisseurs after trying it, collecting many different kinds of earl grey, but none of them in my honest opinion taste as authentic or ‘distinctive’ as this one. The bergamot gives the tea a very ethereal, perfumey smell that is what initially drew me in, and then had me hooked. My partner describes it as an ‘evening tea’ because it is fairly weak, but if you’re like me and enjoy your earl greys for their unique bergamot-ey flavour rather than the caffeine kick, then I suggest you try (or at least smell) this one.
It’s a ten!

Figured I’d put this tea through it’s paces today – gongfu style, of course.
Disappointed as I was with the store, the two Taiwanese wulongs I bought from teasme are actually pretty good.
This is the cheaper of the two, at $14.50/50g.

Rinsing. It’s not as cold this morning (and I slept in a little bit later…) so it’s not as steamy. Still smells good though!

First steep: ~30 sec, ~90˚C. Very pale yellow-green liquor. Stronger than it looks.
Aroma: Honey, lilies, vanilla.
Taste: Sweet, subtle, fruity. Milky smooth.

Second steep: ~30 sec, ~90˚C. More colour to it now.
Aroma: As above, though the vanilla note is more pronounced. I sniffed a bunch of things in my cupboard to give myself some ideas to compare it to (I’m really bad at naming smells/tastes), but I’ve forgotten most of them now. Oh well.
Taste: A little more astringency at the back of the tongue, but still smooth, sweet and fruity. Very tasty.

Third and fourth steeps: ~30 sec, ~90˚C.
Flavours and smells are quite pronounced now. Lingers in the mouth for a long time.
I quite like this tea.

Well, four steeps is enough for one morning. My teapot is rather large, so I’ve had almost a litre of this tea now. I’ll give it a break for an hour or two and come back to it later.
All in all, a surprisingly good tea.