Verdant Tea (Special)

Umm.

Normally I enjoy the smell of chamomile, and I absolutely adore frankincense. This, however, does not inspire those reactions. This. Smells. Nasty.

Steeping 1.5 tsp in 14 oz water for 3 min. Let’s see how this goes…

Steeped, thank GOODNESS, this smells like a high quality honey’d chamomile. It tastes like chamomile too, but there’s more lurking back there. I think it needs to cool a bit.

Hmm. Yeah. Spicy chamomile. Flavourful spicy, not hot spicy. Really interesting. Definitely like it a lot better than I thought I would, although I likely wouldn’t go out of my way to get more.

Another one from Sil.
Not really much to say about this one, except it’s minty fresh, lol.

Another verdant Blends Club tea from Sil.
This is ok, but not something I’d ever want to stock in my cupboard. The Sarsaparilla is kind of interesting in a root beer sort of way, but I don’t really care much for Tulsi.

Sil shared this, & the rest of the Verdant Blends club teas with me (& about 100 adagio fandom blends, but we’re not talking about those right now). I divided all of the Verdant Blends in half, & shared them with Dag.

So here’s the first one. I haven’t had a snickerdoodle cookie in about 20 years, so I can’t really say if it comes close. Plain it is just soso, add a little maple & it isn’t bad.
I steeped it for 3 or 4 minutes. I’m not really sure how long, as I forgot to set the timer.
Sipdown

It’s been a busy weekend of gardening, yard work and cleaning haha and finally we got our first couple thunderstorms today! And rain :D finally don’t have to water the flowerbeds, garden and lawn today lol. Anyways, May showers called for some rainy day tea..this one (April showers, but close enough lol).

I read the ingredients list and was a bit apprehensive about how many ingredients were listed. Also, I keep thinking I’m going to have a terrible allergic reaction to the birch and dandelion in the teas, as both of these make me sneeze horribly in the spring AKA right now haha all the pollen :( but as they use the root of the dandelion and birch bark, I seem to be ok so far with teas including these ingredients lol. I will also be trying chicory later with the other blend club tea this month, Cask Strength. Anyways, rambly aside over, onto the tea!

Dry, this smelled, well…intense. A bit overpowering. My nose didn’t know what was up lol. Cinnamon and cacao and wood..definitely wood. I also looked at the leaves and thought hmm! Roasted oolong or black tea?? Decided to steep and see if I could figure it out.

I steeped for 2 minutes with boiling water, as it also has Yabao in it which usually needs boiling water. The steeped smell is woody like crazy. I was unsure if it was all Yabao or something else…so I quickly searched Zheng Zhan Xiao Zhong on Verdant and found out it’s a smoked black tea!! Ahhh a type of Lapsang??? I have had bad experiences with the one Lapsang I tried (DavidsTea, highly do not recommend lol) so I approached this with a lot of caution. And I also was pleased my nose could pick out the pine notes from the scent :)

So as for the flavor..my first expression was actually kind of baffled. What is this…then my brain was like “damp campfire in the woods after a rain” and I spoke it aloud to my boyfriend and he’s like “Be sure to put that in your review!” So there it is. This definitely evokes a rainy feeling..and to be honest, it’s not an overpowering smoke, it’s more like that hint of smoke on the cool breeze after a rain and the ashes of the fire are close to being out but still slightly smoldering. Not at all unpleasant! It also has a certain sweetness in there too, later in the sip and in the aftertaste..maybe the vanilla? Most definitely that. It keeps it interesting!

Overall, a very earthy, interesting blend. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it all all from the dry scent, and was still unsure after steeping. But it’s not too bad actually. Probably not a favorite, but I do like the camping memories it brings about. And very true to the name, it’s a rainy day blend! Happy to have had the chance to try this tea, another exciting one from the blend of the month!

I liked this one pretty good, tho I don’t consider it a Tea it is a pretty good “coffee” type drink.
This one to me tastes like a chicory, dandelion herbal coffee substitute, I can’t taste very much of the orange peel or anything else really other than maybe the burdock.
My review of this is prolly biased because I’m very fond of chicory dandelion coffee substitutes, I like the slightly bitter herbal coffeelike goodness and thats what this one is to me.
It can brew up really dark and nice if you let it, If you have some from your verdant TOTM club brew it strong and treat it like a coffee, If you have an espresso maker machine you can totally make this tea in there and it is the best.
I’ll be brewing this in my Espresso maker from time to time in the mornings until I run out of it, Luckily I was able to get some more so hopefully I wont run out any time soon :)

Sipdown of this one yesterday. I enjoyed this one pretty well but in the end the Dragonwell was a little too savory-buttery for me. Sometimes it was almost broth-like. It probably would have been decent cold brewed but the amount of fluffy flowers in this would have made judging leaf amounts very difficult.

I guess I still don’t know what exactly is in this tea, since I haven’t dug out the info sheet since the first time I had it. I don’t even know if I still have those info sheets or where they went in the move, so I may never really know, haha.

This is pretty tasty overall, and not really floral despite the “bouquet” designation. The dragonwell (probably dragonwell-style laoshan green, right?) is so buttery that the tea almost borders on savory. It gets a bit sweeter and lemonier as it cools, and it would probably make a tasty iced tea.

I don’t remember what was in this blend and I added it this morning at work, so I don’t have the info sheet with me. Dragonwell, obviously, and it looks like jasmine blossoms, sunflower/safflower petals, and lemongrass? We’ll see!

Ok, yeah, this is a nicely lemony dragonwell. Hints of jasmine, but not too floral. Buttery, fresh, and pleasant. Will be interested to know if there is anything else in here that I’m not tasting, but otherwise it is a nice spring tea.

So I did end up canceling my blends club (even though I have enjoyed these teas) because I was looking them all again, and one tea of three a month is just not worth it to me. Clearly my taste buds are just a little bit different from the folks at Verdant (they love fennel and mint!), which is funny because I have enjoyed so many of their blends that have been offered for sale on the site. Guess I will stick to those for now on.

My Verdant club teas arrived today :) This was my the first tea I tried from the club I’m in both blends and pure clubs), purely chosen as it’s not April any more but we are having May showers here in Leicester. It smells like hot cinnamon and aniseed, spicy but sweet and earthy. Very nice, in a way it does smell like rain.

Flavour wise I was met with delicious thick cinnamon and light brown sugar with a sour cocoa after taste that mists and lingers. Also a hint of wood.

It tastes similar to a spiced Oolong I’ve had from Tealux. Really liking this blend.

Sipdown on this one, and boy was this cup full of flower dust. But still magically tasty. I think that possibly Yunnan White Jasmine can do no wrong. I would not be mad about more blends with that base in the future. Which reminds me, I still gotta try the Tropical Jasmine from last month, which I already got more of from Cameron B. :)

This tea is getting weird toward the bottom of the bag. I’m pretty sure there has been no crushing involved, and yet the last bunch of tea has TONS of little tiny bits in it. I think they are mostly flower petals from exploded chamomile flowers and maybe something else, but there definitely appears to be broken tea leaves as well. What’s more it’s so blended up that it is impossible to get a scoop without tiny bits. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, so I scooped a LOT of tea into my infuser to make sure I would actually get some of everything (and not just tiny bits with not enough actual tea leaves), and then steeped it for only 1 minute.

It worked! It was delicious. Floral and creamy and a little tart. It didn’t taste overleafed or bitter at all. At least I’ve found a way to make it work, even if it is a little odd. Penultimate note to a sipdown!

There is something hinky going on here. I brewed this one up at a slightly hotter temp since I remembered it was a white tea and that I like white teas brewed hotter. It smells good, but there is some strange note in the flavor that is kind of bitter. Bitter in a weird way though, like it’s not the white tea but something else that went wrong. Boo, I like this blend, and now I can’t drink this cup. I was about to say that this is my preferred “bouquet” from the blends club (over the Dragonwell Bouquet), but I guess I’ll be having a cup of that next anyway. This note hopefully serves as a reminder for the rest of it: don’t brew it too hot!

More blends! I haven’t had most of these in a while, so it’s nice to try them out again.

I definitely enjoy this blend. A bit creamy/marshmallowy, sweetly floral, a tiny bit fruity. It is a bit of a spring bouquet, but I like it that way.

There have been a ton of “bouquet” blends in the club lately; lucky for me I do enjoy floral teas, otherwise I would have been really disappointed. I didn’t look at this one closely before I brewed it so I didn’t realize it was a white tea, but it seems to have turned out pretty well.

I get some fresh jasmine, notes of hay and apple from the chamomile, and a bright tartness from the goji berry. The white tea gives the whole thing a smooth, marshmallowy sweetness that is very pleasant. I do happen to like this tea a lot.

Thought I had two servings of this one left, but it turned out to be only 1.5, so I dumped it all into my cup and steeped it for a little less time. It’s a teensy bit overly strong, but not too bad. The Zhu Rong is very bold in this cup, and drowns out the goji and chocolate a bit more than when at optimal ratios. Still pretty tasty, though.

And another sipdown, only 7 teas to go! Note that I have not at all added the tea samples sent to me by Cameron B. Right now I am pretty much pretending that they don’t exist (sorry Cameron, I do want to try them, I’m just trying to be focused on sipdowns. Soon tehy will be front and center, and hopefully by that time Steepster will be behaving).

Wow, Steepster is really f’ed up, isn’t it? Even the discussion boards aren’t working right. Hopefully it will work itself out soon.

I have realized that the best way for me to work down my cupboard numbers is probably to regularly drink up the Blends Club blends that I receive every month. It’s tempting to hoard some of them because I can’t get any more of them, but I have to fight the impulse and just enjoy them for what they are. Most of them I probably wouldn’t restock anyway, although I tend to find them tastier than some people. It helps to like florals in the Blends club (it also helps to like licorice and fennel, but I deal).

Anyway, this tea is quite tasty. The cocoa and berries go well together. Will happily drink this one regularly and will be a bit sad when its gone.

When I first had this tea, I was contemplating quitting the blends club. I did, but have since rejoined (fickle, fickle, haha). It is blends like this that make me want to stay in (even though July’s box wasn’t my fave). Chocolatey, with bright berry flavor… just really tasty.

I am looking forward to next month’s box, which apparently will be vanilla themed.

So my goal this weekend is to try all my Verdant Blends Club blends that I have neglected and make a decision on whether to continue the club or not. I like the idea in theory, on the whole I’ve not been overly thrilled with the blends. Some of them I’m super glad to have (Jolly Earl, Master Zhang’s Genmaicha), but others are super not for me (Licorice Mint Herbal, the tulsi box). I’m just not sure if it is worth it; not the money, but the accumulating pile of tea that I won’t drink.

Side note: sometimes I feel like I’m one of the only ones in the Blends Club (with CelebriTEA, haha). I usually add all the teas to the database right when I get them, but I didn’t this month and I just had to add one of the May teas today.

Of course, I started with this one and it’s pretty good. I think I need more leaf, but it’s a nice blend. Rich, chocolatey tones from the Zhu Rong and the cacao husks, bright, tart fruitiness from the goji berry. Blends like these tempt me to stay in the club, and the fact that the blends that I love never actually make it to the blends page of the site. Then again, if I love it and then can never get more of it, what’s the point? The reserve club was educational, and I drank all of those teas happily (plus there actually was a way to get more of those). Then there’s the fact that it seems like half the teas contain things that I strongly dislike (licorice, mint, fennel), or can’t drink (rooibos).

So anyway, this tea was tasty, but I seem to be talking myself out of the blends club. We’ll see how the rest of the tastings go!

This MIGHT have been ok with a black base?¿?
I can’t taste the orange peel which I believe would
have enhanced the experience for me.
I am not crazy about almond extract either.
Nothing about this is my style, blech…

Sample sipdown! This was from inranger

So so soooo good. Also, I think I’m going to make myself drink all green teas today for a change of pace :) It might be fun to pick a different type of tea for each day this week actually!

OK so apparently I HAVE tried this one before! And this time, like last time, it is the nectar of the gods :)

Green tea bliss!

Thanks again inranger :D