Upton Tea Imports

Perfection. Love. Relaxation.

This tea was ok but nothing spectacular. In my opinion too expensive for the taste.

The Final Sipdown: Day 8
Decupboarding Total: 16

I’ve had a number of Upton samples lately and think I’ve just gotten it in my head that Upton teas don’t sparkle for me. I’ve tried too many samples for me to have coincidentally only picked bad teas. There have been a few teas that are quite good but still nothing that has changed my developing view of the overall lack of wonder Upton provides.

This one is one of the few tasty teas. The dry leaf has a very malty smell to it – it’s surprisingly strong. The tea tastes smooth and malty and has a bit of dry hay note. It’s very tasty and I like it. It reminds me a ton of Teavana’s Golden Monkey and so which would be a great tea… if I hadn’t tried Teas Etc’s Golden Monkey.

Still, it’s strong and bold but smooth and sweet with perhaps a bit of a peppery tingle that’s left on the end of my tongue. It’s not overly nuanced and I’m not detecting any milkiness to it, but there would be worse things to buy if you had to buy tea from Upton.

The leaves are very furry; just as you’d expect from a white. There is a a unique odor smell to the brewed tea. It’s not bad, just different. It kind of smells floral, but artificial. Like an air freshener rather than a bouquet of flowers. Very little to no tanins. Medium viscosity. Interesting flavor. Almost saline.

This is a dramatically different Oolong than you’d find at your neighborhood dim sum joint. The tanins are more pronounced and there is less of a metallic tinge that I normally associate with cheap Chinese teas. The aroma is slightly floral and the taste is ever so sweet. The color is a classic light caramel and it brews up cleanly with few particles making it through the filter. Of course this depends on how fine your mesh is.

Perfectly blended! No flavor is overwhelming. This is my usual morning tea. I can get two steeps out of the leaves.

I wasn’t sure I was in the mood for a mint tea today but now that I’m drinking it, it’s just perfect.

Since it is broken leaf, I went straight for the additives here. Ironically though, there is no bitter aftertaste here like what I ran into with a few other Upton blends in the past couple of days. (The husband even commented on the nutty-bitter of River Shannon and he didn’t even try it without sugar and milk.) Actually, there’s not a whole lot of anything really. I taste milky and I taste sweet. Which, yeah, from the sugar and half & half I added. And I didn’t add that much – less than 1tsp of sugar and 2tsp of half & half for a 12oz cup. There is a mild hint of flavoring that I assume is Earl Grey and an even milder hint of tea flavor but only really as a hint of boring cardboard. Yes, not even the fancy, tasty cardboard.

Definitely not what I was expecting from anything with any kind of BOP in the description.

I’m surprised no one else has tried this tea on here.. it’s so awesome! One of the best flavored teas I’ve had so far. Yummy fruity sweetness! (and not overwhelming!) I definitely recommend trying a sample of it next time you order from Upton.

Fresh, minty, great for blending.

Scalds very easily – ruined my first cup by scalding the leaves and it was horribly bitter and astringent.

At a lower temperature, the tea is still bitter, which I’m not a big fan of. If you like a stronger, more bitter tea, I can see how it could be very appealing.

The tea stood up to a second infusion, but I didn’t try past that.

The Final Sipdown: Day 7
Decupboarding Total: 13

Because of the less-than-stellar interaction I had with this one the other day, I tried to think of what to do to make this final experience more satisfactory. I bumped up the steep time by a minute and added a pinch of sugar.

It sort of worked. The sugar is mild enough that I really can’t tell any added sweetness but I’m not having the bitter wrong taste at the end. Instead, I have a raw Nilgiri type taste a few beats after I sip. But it’s not near as distracting as the bitter was so I’m able to focus more on the taste of the tea.

Yeah, still just not quite my ideal lapsang. It’s not tarry (which is good because that’s usually a little too rough/thick for me) but at least tarry is interesting. This one is just tasting… thin. Almost like I didn’t use enough leaf or I massively understeeped it. (Which yeah, I didn’t on either of those.) It is smoky but it’s not an interesting smoky. It doesn’t evoke thoughts of walking in the woods on a crisp fall day, it doesn’t make me think someone in the neighborhood is barbecuing, it doesn’t make me think the house is on fire… It’s just… smoke and tea. Kind of flat and straight-forward but not bold enough to be such a one-note tea.

Anyway, it’s just not a lapsang for me but I’m glad lots of others seem to like it. Every tea deserves someone to love it, even if it is only its mother.

I was hoping for good things from this tea and maybe that’s my problem – my expectations were too high. I mean, it’s not a bad tea. It’s a gently smoky tea with a nice sweetness at the end of the sip. Super-faint hints of cocoa occasionally pop up, as well as something almost floral. It’s got a nice depth of flavor and actually reminds me of Teas Etc’s Bohea (which I love).

All of this sounds great, right? But there’s one thing that makes this one a non-happy tea for me. The aftertaste. There’s a little twinge of something on the end of the sip and in the aftertaste. I can’t quite peg what it is but it’s a little… off. It makes me think I’ve just walked through a big cloud of hairspray while inhaling through my mouth. Something sticky and a little perfume-ish/chemically. It’s not a very strong aftertaste so it’s almost ignorable, especially if I sip a little more quickly. But ultimately it means that this tea gets no love because there are other softly smoky teas in my life that behave better.

I’m wondering if Upton does something to their leaves that gives them this aftertaste. This funkiness isn’t near as strong as the ick that was the Extra Bergamot aftertaste (that one was bitter and sticky and wrong) but they could theoretically be related. Perhaps the way they store or package or maybe even flavor their teas? I see nothing that indicates that this tea is artificially flavored but maybe?

The dry leaves smell incredible – strong cloves and citrus, very festive.

As for the liquor itself – The cloves and citrus are mild don’t overpower the taste of the tea. Overall, really enjoyed this, especially with the cold rainy weather today.

SIPDOWN!!!! Only 600-or so more to go :)

Thanks LiberTEAs for sending me a bit of this! I will try just about ANYTHING Grapefruit!!!!

This has a very gentle aroma. It’s gentle in every way, actually! The smell of it is a more floral-white tea with a hint of grapefruit. As for the taste the grapefruit is subtle. There isn’t a lot there but what is there is lovely! Grapefruit goes well with white tea, at least I think it does!

This is very pleasant. I would suggest this for a nice calm-down or end to the day or if you are stressed – it’s comforting and relaxing! A nicely flavored white tea!

I recently made an order from Upton to fill up my Earl Grey tin and I chose a couple of tea samples that had been Upton best-sellers. Here is the report on one of them:

Both the picture and the name of this tea appealed to me. They both just muster pleasant images in my mind. The dry leaf has a more Oolongy appearence, and is so dark it is almost—blue, which is intriguing. As for the name… I mean, I love melons.

This is a Chinese green tea, but the flavor reminds me of a more characteristically Japanese “peaty” flavor. I have been detecting that flavor in Chinese greens an awful lot lately, so I wonder when I will altogether drop the reference and just start giving Chinese teas the credit…

Note: I feel kind of buzzed after 2 successive unique cups, so the caffeine content gets a +.

Initially, this smelled very smoky – ironically smokier than Upton’s Finest Russian Caravan – and very Keemun-y. I was a bit worried because I’ve been having some pretty kick-ass Keemuns lately and this one didn’t smell like it would match up at all. As it cooled, the smell became less smoky and began to get fruity and sweet, somewhat like plums. So maybe this tea will luck out and not end up competing against super-awesome Keemuns.

The taste turns into a good news/bad news type situation. The good news is that this tea isn’t Keemun-y enough to compete against my favorite Keemuns. There’s a little Keemun edge to the end of the taste, a little raw leafiness, but it doesn’t strike me as a Keemun. The taste is mostly Darjeeling, smoothed out by the Keemun and tiny, tiny bit of Lapsang Souchong. It ends up tasting just a little bit like a thin, light, sweet Yunnan.

But, here comes the bad news: it’s just not all that special. Yes, it’s smooth and sweet and has a nice flavor that doesn’t require any additives but all that just ends up being okay. Nothing really sings or sparkles or jumps out and, while it isn’t a flat, one-note tea, it doesn’t have a very complex or deep flavor profile. So, yeah, it’s just okay. I’d buy it at a grocery store if I needed tea but otherwise, not so much.

Meh

Just finished a cup of this as well as a SIPDOWN. Good while it lasted…see other notes…

LiberTEAs sent me a bit of this one as well and I thank her very much! :)

This smells like a very Lavendered-Up Earl Grey but the taste isn’t overly so. I can taste more Lavender than Earl Grey but even the Lavender isn’t over-done which I do like that about it….by this being mellower it doesn’t taste chemically like some can taste if to intensely flavored. This is a nice HAPPY MEDIUM type flavored Earl Grey. Pretty good, indeed!

The tie-guan-yin toastiness is there, with an extra punch. The ginseng and licorice (or whatever they ground on it) give it an unusual sweetness. I’ve had success both with 1 minute-and-increasing infusions and the 3 minute generic rule of thumb for oolongs. Play around with it to find your sweet spot.