Upton Tea Imports

The tea has a wonderful smell and I love opening the bag. The dry leaf is very wiry and is difficult to measure out with a teaspoon. I found it very delicious with its toffee notes and hint of cocoa. Think of something in between a heavily roasted oolong and a classic congou. This bag of tea will be gone before I am ready for it to be!

1 tsp for 8 oz

Been drinking this for my first morning tea with soy milk and sugar. Very decent tea for that purpose. Wouldn’t drink it straight, though.

WELL NOW, this smells quite promising in the bag. Very sweet and fresh, like chocolatey fig cookies. Taste is smooth and firmly what I expect out of a Yunnan tea. I get the notes reminiscent of cocoa a little, but this particular one mostly tastes sweet and dry-fruit-like (fig?). A little mineral tasting too. As with most Yunnan teas, I like a little sugar in here. I find this has just a slight tartness in the aftertaste. Overall a great tea.

Mediocre but unoffensive tea. Annoying to brew because it is dust and resists water. No pervasive flavor, nor delicious aroma. Tastes pleasant cold. Would be a good base for other teas or fruits.

Short sentences today. Finally finished taxes.

The last week has not been stress free by any means.
So, when I got up this morning, I remembered this tea from my Upton order.
I have tried a lavender earl in the past (by Revolution Tea) and liked it.
But, when I opened the little sample tin of this, I grew frightened.
I like lavender, don’t get me wrong, but that was all I could smell.
I cried out “Earl, honey? You even in there”
No response, so I poured over the hot water and waited…the lavender is not nearly as strong(thank goodness) as the dry leaf.
It mellowed out some and I can smell the bergamot.
Lavender does hit your tongue first.
The bergamot takes the back seat in this brew, but is still there.
You have to like lavender to like this tea.
Right now, it is hitting the spot for me though.
I can feel the tension leaving my temples.
This tea would be lovely for a afternoon tea break at work.
Come at me, world. I am ready.

Taste and smell is clean and crisp. It almost tastes like chinese white tea to me, but stronger. It also has slight notes of that artichoke-like flavor I seem to be getting from the teas I’ve been drinking from the region lately.

This is a very satisfying ginger root. One of the better tasting ones I have tried or maybe it’s just because the older I get the more I appreciate ginger root, not sure. This helps the throat and my shifting wisdom teeth. Mission accomplished.

My first pu-erh! I’ve been very excited for this moment. All the descriptions of it sounded exactly like something I’d like, given my inclination for smells of musty basement, dirt and wet leaves.

Smelled like wet leaves in the bag, the rinse stage brought out much more of a, what my mother aptly described as, “bike tire air” smell. I know some people brew this gongfu style but I was kind of lazy about that. I used half a french press of water for one square, poured out some of the water at 45 seconds for a first taste. Yep, taste like bike tire air. But not unpleasantly! After the 4 minute-ish mark I poured the rest of it into my cup. My mother uncharitably described it as “still bike tire with some outhouse mixed in.” I had more positive connotations of decomposing log and musty shrooms. Pretty much exactly what I’d expect old wet tea leaves to taste like, but in the best possible way.
there’s some bitterness too that I noticed more as the tea cooled, but it’s not overpowering or harsh. It actually goes well with the earthy taste. A second steep brought out more earthy flavors and the rubbery tire taste was much less perceptible. Third steep is starting to lose intensity, but is still enjoyable.

Definitely looking forward to my next pu-erh experiences!

Excellent. Smooth and not too floral. I get overwhelmed by jasmine easily, but this had a very nice, rounded delivery. Tea flavor is pretty subtle, but the whole thing melds together so well it didnt really bother me.

Advice: My tea came with jasmine flowers still in it. TAKE THESE OUT BEFORE YOU STEEP. It brews muuuch smoother that way. The first time I steeped it with them in I got a weird bitter flavor.

Sipdown! 868.

A bit too floral of a pear flavour for me. Not terrible, but not great. I’m also not getting any creaminess, which I think would make this tea delicious. I wish Della Terra would do a pear cream tea! (With different pear flavouring from their Perfect Pear.)

Fairly meh on this one. There’s certainly the right pear aroma present, but not enough of it in the flavour.

By the aroma of this one, I was definitely underwhelmed. It smelled floral, leading me to bemoan the person who decided that “pear” and “floral” should be BFFs. So naturally, I was dreading taking a sip. However, I am pleasantly surprised. This tea does actually taste like sweet pears. I’m not getting cream from anything but pear? Very much yes. It’s like Jelly Belly pear, except less artificial.

Now, I prefer D’Anjou pears, so this is not/will not be my perfect pear tea, but it’s certainly one of the better ones I’ve encountered. A few points have to be taken off for the base tea, however, because I’m just not fond of rooibos, and as usual, scratchy throat syndrome is occurring as I sip, which is unpleasant. But overall, pretty impressed and glad to have tried this one!

This is a nice blend. It’s full bodied with a whisper of red wine beneath a dark tea flavor. I was nervous because it smelled like salad when dry, but the brewed tea is nothing like the dry smell and the aroma in the cup is fresh and sweet and lemony.

This is one of those teas I want all the time. I’m new to greens and this one was a fast favorite. It’s kind of dark and dirty for a green. Bright and fresh smelling, but it tastes like army green looks. Om nom nom.

I bought a big old bag of this one after trying the sample.

I like this one, but I’m typically a black tea lover and I think I like this tea because it’s strong and doesn’t taste like anything I’d put into a soup.

This would be a good base for blends, it would stand up against what was added to it nicely and give a noticeable straight tea flavor.

Also this is the first rolled tea I’ve tried and it’s so cute I can’t stand it.

I think this is the last green tea in my current batch of samples. This one calls for a short steep time and pretty low temperature. The scent while it brews is very rich and making me antsy to try it. Taste wise it is a little on the light side (but not too light), and unmistakably in the green category, but it also has some stuff going on that reminds me of an oolong. It has the buttery- vegetal sencha type notes, but there are also some minerally, lightly floral, almost roasty notes to it that I tend to associate with oolong teas. There is a fleeting aftertaste that is a bit sweet.
(zg71)

I’m drinking this tea with generic S’mores poptarts while my dog finds and eats all the stinkbugs in the house, cause we’re c-l-a-s-s-y.

I like my tea astringent, but following the brewing instructions on this one yields a tea that cools into some sort of paint-removing-acid. Don’t steep it for 4 minutes unless you need to have a chemical face peel or something.

This tea is nice, though unexceptional. It has a sort of dusty undertaste without sweetener or milk that isn’t great, but otherwise it’s a nice, full-flavored tea. With milk and sugar, it’s very good and has none of those pesky salad flavors I’m always complaining about. I have a relatively big can of this, and I’m glad because it will be a good tea for breakfast. I mean, it’s pairing with my fake poptart dinner smashingly.

Tea of the morning…..

I love that Upton labels tea, including samples with the date you ordered them. I must have been shuffling this sample around in my stash since last June. It fared better than most as I gave a ton of unopened samples to my knitting friends since the kidney stone last fall. This one definitely held interest for me to keep it around that long. Unfortunately, Upton no longer has it in stock, but that does not mean I cannot enjoy this while I have it.

Leaves are pretty short like a BOP. There are a few golden tips, hence the name. It must just be a lower grade of golden monkey. Right now, I am just kind of sad I did not try this sooner, because I know I would have bought some. It is very good. Smooth, malty, cocoa noted. Yum!

I love it when Upton gets interesting black teas in. I have about 4 more samples to try from my last order and they include a black monkey, a black tie guan yin, and another snail tea. Bliss for a China black tea drinker.

Usual teapot method.

I am getting the taste notes I expect out of a good sencha: buttery, vegetal, and seaweedy. It has a little bit of a sweetness (and something else I cannot quite place) in the background. It is a bit little thicker in body than similar teas I’ve had as of late, and the taste lingers in the mouth a little. Yet another sencha I like quite a bit.

Taste: This is surprisingly light and clean on taste and mouthfeel considering how dark it brewed up. I find it has that refreshing classic tea taste for the most part, with a little toastiness. I usually prefer teas like this iced, but it is good hot as well. This one is even better with some sugar. The current price on this is pretty decent, might get it again in the future. On some subsequent tastings, it kind of has a nuttiness that reminds me of some of the fujian teas I’ve tried.

Smells sweet and jasminey in the bag (of course). I didn’t think the jasmine was too strong or bitter like one of the other reviews. Like most white teas, I found this to be a light, clean tea.

Smell is what I expect from a sencha, with buttery, seaweedy notes. Taste leans towards the buttery tasting side, with a pretty smooth, clean mouthfeel. This is one of the better senchas I have had thus far, but then again I’ve never really tried a Japanese green tea that I didn’t like. I wish I had some of my other favorite senchas on hand so I could do a direct comparison.