Verdant Tea (Special)

It seems like everyone has a peppermint bark tea this season, right? Although peppermint bark isn’t my favorite confection, I am happy to try Verdant’s offer. The dry leaf smells minty and very cinnamony… So much so that it made me sneeze!

My first cup is at Verdant’s steeping parameters, but I left the basket in the tea pot for the second cup to steep for however long. The first cup is mostly minty, and I don’t get a lot of the other flavors, especially at first. More of the chocolate comes out as it cools, but the one minute steep seems undeveloped. The longer steep, unsurprisingly, has more of everything… More mint, more chocolate, more cinnamon, although I would hesitate to call it truly chocolatey. I added some sugar to make it even more dessert-like, which was pretty tasty.

Tea Review: This is a day of Memorial and Celebration for many people around the World. I was up early, before dawn.

It’s not odd to drink a wonderfully light and celebratory tea to toast a great Grandfather of us all. I wrote much about my own feelings on my blog and if you like, you can read it beginning below.

This blend takes the Yabao that many have tried already and adds Holiday magic to zing it up!
In classic (now after several years I can say ‘classic’) Verdant fashion, the ingredients are blended in such a manor that no one ingredient screams out ‘Ginger’ or ‘Coriander’ or Birch Bark’.
If anything, there is a softness that I amped up a little by steeping longer than the recommended 1 minute.

Yabao tastes like light nutmeg to me. (It tastes like cardamom to David Duckler but what does he know, he’s a young man!)

Yes this is very ‘snickerdoodle’. BEWARE… our tastebuds are on overkill with cinnamon, peppermint and strongish flavors this time of year (love the goodies).
Yabao Snickerdoodle is light on the palate. I HIGHLY suggest adding sugar or mild honey to your tea (as well as steeping longer, and please don’t underleaf…LISTEN to GRANDMA!).

I would say (am saying) that I sipped a grand white wine or two in my day that were in the same league with this tea. Nutmeg, vanilla and ginger… sparkling sweet and delicious. (Murphy’s California)

Cheers to Mandeba!

Story
I woke long before dawn to watch the news feed from South Africa this morning.

It is the day of Memorial for Nelson Mandela.

What shall I say? Some of you are not going to like what I say…
I warn you…

Yesterday, I tried to explain to my granddaughter Schey what it was like during the days of Apartheid and Civil Rights.
It’s not easy for young people to understand what it was like in the 1960′s-1980′s but I’ll keep on telling my grandmother stories no matter what.

As an interracial couple with two young children in the 1960′s and 1970′s, life for my husband and I was often dangerous. I worked in Civil Rights for many years in local projects, then as a Vista Volunteer in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.

I was living in the Nation’s Capitol when both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were killed. Riots followed.
Shortly after the riots, my husband and most of the young Black men in the area were drafted. (This was during the Viet Nam War)
It was too dangerous, the Army said, for me to go ‘Down South’ with my husband because of the Klu Klux Klan, so I flew home to California until he was transfered a year later to Texas. (A Hard Place in 1970).
…the rest is on my blog…
www.teaandincense.com

This is incredibly unseasonal for a warm, spring-y day like today, but it is next so there you go. Actually some reserve yabao is next but I am unlikely to be gongfu-ing before the weekend so it is being (temporarily) skipped. Which should make this one #46.

Unseasonal, but delicious. I get kind of bored with Christmas-spices type teas but LB keeps this interesting. I kinda wish they would bring this one back at least at holiday times. Ah well, I have probably half an ounce of it anyway so it will probably take me forever to get through it.

Mmmm, it doesn’t really bother me all that much that the bergamot in this one (as in Bergamot Rose LB) is extremely mild. Would I love more bergamot? Sure. But this is quite tasty to me nonetheless. I just love most things on a Laoshan black base, I guess. A lovely, wintery tea.

Yayyy! This came in the mail today and I had to immediately try it. Holiday Earl Grey! With Laoshan Black (and Zhu Rong) base! I always love Verdant’s Earl variants, and I’m glad they finally had one for the blends club. The dry leaf smells really good, like a super Christmas-y Earl. Lots of bergamot, lots of cinnamon and clove.

The steeped tea smells amazing too, this time helped by the awesome chocolate of Laoshan Black. Mmmmm. The bergamot is less prominent but the spices scream Christmas in a cup. Yup, this one is a winner in my book. The chocolatey Laoshan Black, the sweet festive spices, the bright citrusy bergamot and orange. As with Verdant’s Bergamot Rose Laoshan Black the bergamot is not strong here, and as with that one that doesn’t bother me here. I’m not looking for a straight Earl, but there is enough bergamot flirting through the flavor to remind me that I am drinking a nontraditional Earl.

I’d love to use the tea cash I earned on Black Friday to buy more of this one (nudgenudge)!

Well the blends box for this month is on it’s way, so I figured I should get through some of the old blends. To make room. Also my Cadeux Deco Vendome order arrived today, so I have a lot moar tea!

Finishing off this tea and it really is cementing the fact that this blend is not for me. I mean, I don’t love chais in the first place, but there is something about this blend that is definitely not working for me. Oh well, can’t love them all!

I maybe possibly am doing slightly better today? I hope. I made a pot of this in the hopes that the spices would make it through my fog. Sweetened with maple syrup and mellowed with milk. Not my favorite but I am also not much of a chai person.

Nothing to do with this tea: There are several people that I talked about doing swaps with after the holidays, but I can’t remember who now. If any of you remember talking about a swap with me, let me know!

Hmmm, looks like I’m going to be the lone dissenter on this one so far. So I’ve never actually had the base Yu Lu Yan Cha, and I believe that is wholly the reason for my lack of enthusiasm about this blend.

I brewed as instructed, knowing that I would probably want to add milk and honey, but I took a sip first. People say the base tea shines in this one, and I would have to concur. The spices were mild but nicely balanced, with no one spice coming over the top. I could smell the fennel (bleh) in the dry blend but it doesn’t stick out in the brewed tea.

However, the main flavor in this was the black tea. I did taste the chocolate notes, but there was a bitter harsh note that was almost like smoke but not quite. I thought maybe I was losing my mind (based on descriptions by others) until I read Terri’s note about how she gets a burnt note from it when western brewed, which is obviously how this blend was prepared. Yeah, that’s it… like something that has been burnt, but not the smoke itself. Which is definitely a major turn-off for me. Perhaps I should only brew Yu Lu Yan Cha gongfu, as Terri does.

So anyway I added milk and honey. At first I was still unsure whether I wanted to drink it but the milk smoothed over the burnt note and the honey brought out the chocolate. I will likely be able to drik the rest of this one, although it may go into a swap box for someone who loves it more.

I was EXTREMELY lucky to have been gifted a bit of this tea. Thank you BrewTEAlly Sweet! You’re the best!

I was allowed to go home from work early today due to the winter storm, so I’ve been relaxing with a gongfu session this afternoon http://twitpic.com/dnt1nh

WOW. So smooth…so much honey flavor! Almost a floral honeysuckle but not quite. Also very rich and lightly malty. SO very very good! I’m so happy I got to try it :) :) :)

My final tea of the day was this one, from the Verdant Reserve TOMC from last December! I joined the Reserve club a year ago, & still have some of most of the offerings. I decided I’d drink each of the December ones this month, so this is a sipdown. I sat around sipping it in the late afternoon, while I was studying some music I’m working on (& rewriting the parts to simplify them a bit. I don’t have much time to learn this, & nobody in the choir or the audience will no the difference…shhhh).

So, the wet leaf had a salty & savory aroma. The early steepings were creamy & even had a cream-like taste. Very lovely & mild. Otherwise, it tasted like a Sheng! LOL.

blech. bah. I think i’m going to need to try this one again and then give the rest up for adoption if i don’t figure it out.

Tea #39 from HHTTB2

This tea fits the imagery of a forest grove in the fall impeccably. Minty and cooling, earthy and mulchy, with very slight fruit and spice notes. The star anise was a nice addition, offering a bit of Asian flair.

It seemed that the pu’er couldn’t really stand up against the sheer amount of other stuff going on in here, though. Every once in a while I thought I found it. Earthy and rich. And then just as soon it was gone. I felt like I was playing hide and seek with the actual tea component here.

This tea was not very good at all once it hit room temperature.

I’m pretty sure this was sent to me in the Turkey Santa swap by CelebriTEA – thank you so much for this!

My new gongfu is on it’s way, and so I felt bad about having this today without it. Still, I really wanted to try it, so Western style it was.

This steeps up a pale yellow-ish green color, and smells very toasty-roasty rice-y, just like how it tastes. Some depth from (what I assume is) the cocoa, and a few other flavors I can’t quite place, but seem to round out this tea nicely. Initially I thought I’d dislike the tea because of the rice kernels, and then I started to like it, crave it even.

My four cups of this were enjoyed fully, yet quickly, and it helped me meet a deadline – so thank you for that! :)

Sipdown! This tea has really grown on me. It’s also been nice to have an herbal tea around. May need to reorder this one!

I liked this way more than I thought I would! A very pleasant surprise. It wasn’t sour or tart. It was very smooth. It wasn’t too ‘berry’ which is a very good thing. I prefer berry flavor to be mild in tea. I really like how they mixed this blend- I drank this yesterday so I’m having trouble recalling the details of why I thought it was so good, so hopefully next time I drink this I can write a more descriptive note.

Hmm, this isn’t as bad as I was afraid it would be. I’ve got a strong aversion to fennel or anything with an anise like flavor! Licorice bleaarrghhh!

;)

i have a bunch of catching up to do regarding tea but since this is what i had today and is a sipdown, i figure it was worth mentioning tonight…the rest can come later! I had an excellent weekend away, we drove through 5 states, saw some friends, enjoyed spending time together in the car and came home lol. I’m sad this one is gone because i really like it cold brewed, steeped in half apple juice but no more orders until i get my cupboard under control…and with 3 packages to pick up from mail jail tomorrow….i’m going to need some time! haha

Final Count: 149

i had another cold brew of this today…. half apple juice, half water. And still i love it. the sad part? Maybe one more brew of this and then i’m all out. And not allowed to buy tea yet…so i’ll have to move on to some other herbals, but it should give me an excuse to drink some that MissB sent us. soooo upside? but man..i’m going to miss this one.

yes, that’s right..another cold brew of this steeped in half apple juice and half water. perfect with dinner.