Upton Tea Imports

Very light and creamy with a small hint of pear. Yummy evening treat!

Finishing this up and decupboarding.

There’s not a lot to say about it except that it’s a really nice spearmint, if you are looking for plain spearmint. I had fun tasting a hot cup of plain spearmint tisane a few times, but mostly I found myself adding peppermint and tarragon to this and trying to hit the combination that would mimic Tazo’s Refresh. I never quite found it and frankly, I think I’d be much more likely to buy Refresh as a “plain” mint tisane even though it’s a blend of three flavors, just because I like how they play off of each other. I’m not likely to buy this again, just because if I were going to have a single mint tisane I’d pick peppermint.

(backlogging)

Very smooth and mellow, not at all earthy-tasting. A nice, straight up spearmint. Though I prefer peppermint in terms of flavor, this gets high marks for being good at what it is.

Got this from JacquelineM Thanks! This oolong brews up to a pretty ambery red color. The smell is like a roasted tea smell more of the roasty smell than actual tea but you do smell the vegetal notes as well.
It’s a basic oolong and as I have been drinking so many flavored teas lately this one just isn’t doing it for me. Don’t get me wrong it’s not bad it’s just plain, it is a great intro into oolongs but I prefer silky, milky oolongs. The flavor in this one is not weak by any means in fact it is strong it’s not a bad tea I am just not finding alot to add to the other tasting notes here.

I would say the description of this tea is dead on, except for the tinge of jasmine I am getting. I don’t like jasmine. I’m giving this a low rating for MY reference.

Today was another long day in the laboratory. I was excited to come home to some new teaware. I received the Tea Forte Kati double walled ceramic tea brewing cup-thing. I decided to make some oolong and this came to mind.
It tastes like lentils and that’s all I have to say.

Finished up my last of this tea, and it went out with a bit of a whimper rather than the hoped for bang. Ah well, a day with oolong is better than one without.

Having this today at work since I have no sweetner and a lot of black tea that needs to be sweetened. Sigh. I got to find out how forgiving this tea can be – because I forgot I was brewing it for steep #2, and it went long – and yet is still drinkable.

Nice tea.

Nice, clean tasting oolong. Smells woody and rich. Yummy. It’s a great workplace tea (Multiple resteeps, doesn’t require sweetner or cream, looks pretty). Not that much of a complex flavor, but nice and warm.

The dry leaf smells slightly smokey, the steeped leaf smells seaweed-ish. The brew is browny-green, and it smells.. not really seaweed-ish nor really green. A mild scent of green tea with a hint of something more, and a hint of seaweed.

The flavor is on the bitter side, and vegetal. I need to try this again with a thermometer – I just used the pouring cooling method to get it close. As it is, I’m not fond of this tea.

After drinking my way through a can of this, mostly mixed with spearmint and tarragon in an attempt to try to find the sweet spot that would mimic Tazo’s Refresh, I am having to rethink my rating and significantly downgrade this.

The truth is, I never really did get used to the earthy, dirty smell and taste. I know that peppermint doesn’t have to be that way, because the peppermint in Refresh doesn’t have that quality. I don’t know if it was just the batch I got or what, but I’m not willing to order more to find out. I will stick with Refresh as a mint tisane rather than my Frankensteinish attempt to recreate it, and I’ll try some other peppermint samples as I go along. Teavana’s peppermint is getting a high rating here, I’ve noticed, so I may give that a try as well.

A second cup using a different formula. The directions recommend 2-3 teaspoons and 8 minutes. The first time I went with 3 tsp for 8 minutes. This time, 2 tsp for 5.

Interesting contrast. I prefer the 2 tsp at 5 minutes. It seems to lessen the earthy smell I mentioned before without weakening the flavor. Or perhaps I’m just getting used to that smell…

Straight up peppermint. There’s not much not to like about this if you like peppermint and I do. It’s nicely minty without any fake candy cane taste to it, but not so strong that you have the feeling it’s been doused with additional peppermint oil or flavorings to artifically enhance the taste. The only thing I found surprising is the aroma, which is a lot more earthy than I’d expected. But this is my first loose peppermint, so as far as I know it’s entirely possible they all smell like this but the bags screen out some of the loamy, planty smell.

Nice clean white tea w/a subtle vanilla flavor. There are rose petals in the blend but the rose flavor is not strong at all…

Had this today and definitely not cloyingly sweet…but somehow the caramel flavor was not as strong….

Well the caramel chunks in the tea are certainly not as big as the photo… But this tea is yummy w/a distinct caramel flavor (w/an emphasis on the toasty sugar flavor) and not just a cloying sweetness. I purchased the sample and I will repurchase again…

Nice Yunnan, good creamy body, not as sweet as Golden Yunnan from Rishi.