362 Tasting Notes
This is indeed exquisite, and well worth taking extra care with brewing it just right – I would say mineral or filtered water is a must for this tea.
It might be the most bashful, diffident “oh, who me” flavoured tea I ever tasted – in a good way. The osmanthus is definitely there, by visual verification and scent before brewing, but it melds into just delicate tea-ness in the flavour. This is a wonderful very delicate tea. I was expecting something more like the standardish jasmine (green) tea, but it is nothing like any jasmine green tea I ever had.
I got to check about stocking another box of this, while the reseller has it on stock.
Preparation
I have a major weakness for lapsang souchong. And the Twinings one, while maybe arguably not the best I ever had, is a rather canonical LS, and a comfort tea for me. Yes, it is smoky, but from somebody who hates cigarette smoke, it´s a very different type of smoke.
From experience, I do not think this is too high in caffeine.
From experience as well, and I know this is so heretical, i think I prefer the Twinings tea bags for this over the loose leaf. Perhaps I undermeasure, or the loose leaf has aged too much, or the contents of the british-market teabags are better than the continental tin caddy, but this is one of those instances I think the teabags (the black british no-string teabags) do taste more and better than the loose leaf.
Preparation
This is sort of a dud, I expected something different – more rose, more flavoured. As it is, it smells very nice, though not rose, a lychee like smell instead, not at all english! Pretty dried rose petals scattered round. It has some flavour, but it is a bit meh as a tea.
Preparation
a cherry tea, with a bits of other fruits, some apple for sweetness and some unexpected coconut which goes with the rest much better than i would have expected. Not bitter, and very natural, light taste. Supposedly kiwi which I could not detect, but I brew just one cup, maybe my spoonfuls contained no piece of it. No hibiscus or spices at all. Very lovely.
And the infused cherries on strainer are quite delicious!
Preparation
Nope, not that Marco Polo, or even an “hommage”.
Red tea IMO is rooibos, but this is absolutely not rooibos but real tea. From description, twice fermented, I think this is a pu-erh, a type of tea of which I have drank very little (so far!). This is flavoured with red pepper, pink pepper and cardamom, and it is absolutely lovely. It is spicy, but not too hot (piquant) and the spice is very well balanced, none of the peppers or the cardamom rules. And it´s very tea-ey, earthy and deep, but not too much. If this is pu-erh, I am converted.
Preparation
I believe, in China, they refer to black tea as red tea. Oolong, amusingly, is blue tea which I think is just for the purpose of sticking to the colour scheme. :)
I did not know that. and makes sense, normal black tea is often reddish ( apart maybe from builder´s tea and similar). On the store they called black tea black and oolong oolong, so I was a bit baffled about the red tea. The owner said it was twice fermented, so probably some type of pu-erh – if it is, I am converted!
I’m not aware of there being a colour for pu-erh as well. I’d say that usually turns out redder than blacks. I agree that ‘twice fermented’ sounds pu-erh-y. If it was just a black one, doing it twice wouldn’t really make any sense.
The odd thing is that while this was shelved along with their pu-erhs the pu-erhs were called pu-erh and not read tea. Still odd. But I liked it a lot.
