Upton Tea Imports

I have mixed feelings about Upton, but this tea delivers. My favourite lapsang souchong so far. I prefer to keep the brewing time around 3 minutes, it comes out brighter and the smokiness isn’t too overwhelming.

The Final Sipdown: Day 21
Decupboarding Total: 41

The leaves post-steeping look like my irises did after grasshoppers had their way with them. Other than grasshopper memories, this tea can be explained in 4 words: unimpressive Darjeeling with bergamot.

This tastes like a Darjeeling with a little hint of creamy on the end to cancel out any potential tart edge and then a little whoosh of faint citrus in the aftertaste. It’s not really a bad tea, but it’s not a special one either. The flavoring is too light for it to be considered an actual flavored tea, the bergamot is much too light for it to be anything remotely Earl Grey-ish, and the Darjeeling isn’t special enough for it to be a notable Darjeeling. So basically it’s one big ball of meh. In fact, the more I drink it, the less special it becomes.

That was then, this is now. Wonderful woodsy, spicy smell. Very, very smooth, full tea. Some spice, some wood, some fine tobacco. Chocolate hint, but not in the cup. If it weren’t for the nuances, this would just slip down almost without swallowing. Very tasty and yes, good with chocolate – Lindt’s Dark with Sea Salt.

My first yellow tea and… I’m apathetic. I expected something else, something different, something magical. Especially at this price pointed and limited supply. Alas, It never happened.

The dry leaf aroma is very intriguing, it smells of flowers and mandarins. Mandarins are my favorite part but unfortunately they don’t transfer to the brew. The brew… here is where the disappointment strikes. It is completely watered down. I’m drinking water, lightly flavored with Silver Needle. There is a tiny bit of sweet fruitiness lurking in there as well but it is hardly noticeable. Nothing more.

Off to the second infusion. All the fruitiness is gone, Silver Needle flavor is stripped down and only water remains… you get the picture. I feel like dumping it down the drain.

I need to try other yellow teas now.

Quite pleasant, but doesn’t scream Earl Grey to me. It’s smooth, vanilla.. pedestrian in nature.

I love how this one smells so I’ve been anxious to try it – it’s vanilla-creamy with a splash of creamsicle-like orange. And I’m a sucker for anything orange, so yeah. Post-steeping the smell is awesome. It reminds me (what I remember) of SpecialTea’s Earl Grey de la Crème, which I really enjoyed (though it has been years since I’ve had it).

Additive-less, the initial sip seems a little sharp but the aftertaste is sweet and creamy. Mmm. A few sips in, the sharpness evens out and I’m left with smooth, creamy, sweet but not overly Earl Grey-y tea. The citrus bit pops up mostly at the end of the sip and is nice and bright but sweet in a way that doesn’t really scream citrus fruit so much as fruit-like candy. It’s nicely sweet but I almost want to add sugar to fully realize the dessert potential of this tea.

Ultimately, this falls more in the dessert tea category for me than Earl Grey category, but that’s okay because I like the dessert tea category a lot. I have a feeling I’ll really fall in love with this one when I put in some sugar and milk (and thus the rating might go up).

This is such a nice tea! There is nothing missing from it. It’s sweet and even has some subtle flavor to it.

Weird.. barely any taste to it. I mostly tasted just hot water. =( Glad this is just a sample pack. I tried two infusions, 2nd was pretty long and still not much taste.

The last of my sample of this from Miss Melanie. This is one that I’d definitely get more of!!

Melanie was kind enough to send me a sample of this green rooibos. I’ve got to tell you, the smell of this dry is amazing. Smells like cream cheese frosting!

Brewed for 10 minutes…there’s still a hint of the frosting scent, but the rooibos is there as well.

I can taste the rooibos, of course, and there’s this creamy pear taste that is just delicious! I really think it tastes like you’ve dipped a semi-tart pear into cream cheese frosting. It’s not a combination that I would think to try, but it works!! And works very well. This is fantastic. If you like pears, and if you like green rooibos, this is a MUST try!

Hmm…This is a thought provoking tea. This is my first time trying puerh. I am pleasantly surprised, specifically after the slightly fishy aroma. (Granted, I do like fish.) But I don’t really think it tastes like fish. It’s rather calming and smoky, and has rustic feel. I’m considering my horizons a little broadened. ;)

Thank you Jenny Wren for including this in the swap!

Good tea. The bergamot is definitely at the forefront in the tastes but it is still far from overpowering. It is a soft taste rather than sharp, but does not seem to meld perfectly with the other flavors. Quite enjoyable, but not perfectly balanced. Falls into the rather tame, subdued Earl Grey flavors that seem to be the norm with Upton Teas.

The Final Sipdown: Day 4
Decupboarding Total: 5

For me, the worst thing about this tea is the end note. There’s something sour/bitter/tacky/acrid/just off about the taste at the end of the sip. From the artificial flavoring, perhaps? From the not-so-stellar leaf quality? I don’t know what it is and, at this point, I don’t care. Because this sample is gone and I will never get it again. Rejoice!

Wow. Seriously, wow. Talk about truth in advertising. This is very extra bergamot-y. Like, beat me over the head with bergamot. From the dry leaves to the steeped tea to the breath I exhaled after each sip – this tea is rolling in bergamot. I drank this with sugar and half & half and the bergamot totally drowned out both of those flavors (and any tea flavor there might have been, too). In a way, all that bergamot was good because the fumes flowing through my sinuses did open up my stuffy nose but at the same time, it was so bergamot-y that I felt a bit like a bergamot-breathing dragon after each sip.

Taste-wise, it’s not as rough as I would expect such a heavily (heavily) flavored tea to be. (Maybe it is just me but sometimes flavored teas seem to have a lot of rough edges to their texture. This one didn’t have that – it was a nice smooth, almost silky texture.) But the bergamot flavor was so strong that had to brace myself for each sip. I put in a teaspoon of sugar but I really felt it needed more to balance out a somewhat harsh endnote that seemed flavoring-related. I found myself wincing as I made each swallow, bracing myself for that weird endnote and the bergamot whoosh that would expand and fill my mouth (and my sinuses… and my car) after each sip.

And speaking of that endnote, it was a taste I couldn’t fully identify but that made me think of charcoal or ashes. Not burnt or smoky but something sort of… acrid but not quite. It’s a flavor I’m cool with when it is coupled with a delightful smoke whoosh but without the smoke, it’s just kind of awkward. Maybe another teaspoon or two of sugar would cancel that note out but I really don’t want to use that much sugar in my morning teas. Some dryness was left behind on the top of my tongue that again seemed more flavoring-related than tea-related (in other words, I don’t think the tea was astringent so much as the bergamot adding some astringency to it).

I will admit, I did drink this cup very quickly – but it was more of a “let’s soldier through and finish this off so I can chew some gum” than “ooh, this is so tasty, I can’t stop sipping.” I’m hoping the husband likes this so I can pass it all off to him. This tea is just too much for me.

I’m going to buck the trend for this one. I’m just not in love with it. In fact, I really just think it qualifies as only okay. The dry leaves look and smell divine but the actual tea is just a miss for me. It’s just not enough – not enough tea flavor, not enough chocolate flavor, not enough Earl Grey flavor. It’s not bland or flavorless (even though I don’t think it has enough of at least three different flavors), it’s just not bold enough. I have a feeling this falls in the same category as Tea Etc’s Rosy Earl Grey. Lots of fans but just sort of okay for me.

This tea confuses me. The name is “Chocolate Earl Grey” but the chocolate bit is more strong hints of chocolate or cocoa flavor (not an actual chocolate taste) and the Earl Grey bit is more of a hint of fresh citrus lightness (instead of noticeably bergamot).

I’ll admit, I was hoping for something a bit more like a chocolate orange. So the fact that this tea is mild tasting with notes of chocolate and bergamot instead of the actual taste of chocolate and bergamot left me feeling a bit confused. That being said, I managed to drink my cup pretty quickly – it was sweet, smooth and had a very nice flavor. Just totally not the flavor I was expecting. For that reason, I’m leaving this one unrated for now. I need to have a cup of it without blatantly incorrect expectations clouding my experience.

I have a high regard for Upton Tea, the way they personalize your order with nametags is a little much, but I do appreciate how seriously they take their business.
That said, I am not a big fan of Pu-Erh in general. Earthy teas I like, but this tasted more like decomposition. Since it is the style of tea itself that I like, mayb have gotten a bad batch or may have brewed it incorrectly, I am giving the review some benefit of the doubt, but this was distinctly unpalatable for me.

Knock Knock
“Yes, may I help you?”
“I am here to see the Earl of Grey”
“He doesn’t live here, try another tea”

While a pleasant tea, my unsophisticated palate does not pick up the Earl Grey flavorings in this tea. It is not bad and reminds me of another “pure” unflavored tea I have had – Assam or Ceylon maybe? Did I mention the unsophisticated palate? This is pretty good but it doesn’t fit EG the bill for me. I have learned to appreciate subtle flavorings in Japanese food but apparently not for this tea.

Thanks to LiberTEAS for a sample of this!
Dry leaf smell: cocoa and citrus
Wet leaf smell: chocolate-covered wetnap, but that’s ok!

This is a wonderful tea, and I have to say that I could probably grow to really like Earl grey teas by easing my way into it with tasty blends like this! The chocolate flavor is definitely there, but doesn’t smack you in the face (still looking for that chocolate tea btw, if anyone knows of one!)

Honestly, just not feeling this one. The bergamot flavoring is really faint – it came through most in the aftertaste as kind of a light citrus-y, whoosh-y, almost flowery feel in my mouth after the sip. The description says that the bergamot is “light enough for the quality of the base tea to be noticed” but I wasn’t really feeling the tea base all that much. I mean, it had a nice mouthfeel to it – it was kind of thick and furry and made me think of the texture of cocoa powder – but the taste of the tea? Not all that impressive. Maybe this is my anti-Ceylon showing through but I just found the tea kind of dull and unexciting – not really flat or cardboard-y like bad tea, but not a whole lot of depth or any pretty notes. I did add a little sugar and milk to this so that might have killed off any faint pretty notes the tea might have had. We’ll see if I change my tune when I try this straight.

I would speculate that Ceylon fans would enjoy this one since it does have a noticeable tea base. Though I can’t say for sure how good of a Ceylon it is, I’d have to guess it’d be at least on the good side of decent for Upton to want to showcase it. But for me? Just doesn’t hit any of my happy buttons.

I’m a fan of rich, Keemun-style China black teas in the morning. Not being able to afford a daily pot of Hao Ya “A” prompted me to seek out similar teas at a more reasonable price. I was underwhelmed by Upton’s Hao Ya “B”, so I kept sampling and this tea, China Congou Ning Hong Jing Hao (item ZK94) was the winner to my palate. Though this is not an inexpensive tea, I think it shares many qualities with many of the more expensive Keemuns, even though it is not exactly like a Keemun. I’ve been drinking this one almost daily for the better part of a decade, and I never let myself run out. Though I continue to sample other Keemuns and high end China Congous, this one still remains my favorite.

Light and pleasant – it doesn’t beat you over the head with “the Earl”. This is really very nice and well balanced.