ifjuly Send Message

Drinking this after a dinner of Mitchell Davis’ pan-charred salmon with a marinade of fresh squeezed orange juice, white wine, and soy sauce and Italian-style sauteed spinach cooked with slivers of the heirloom purple garlic my mom sent me in the mail. A dear friend sent this tea to me a while back when she was concerned about us with all the husband’s-job-issue stress, what a sweetheart. I wonder if it will ever stop being 95F in the evening here for good for the rest of the year (we got teased one evening and one evening alone, last Saturday, with cooler dinner weather), ugh.

Don’t know that I’ve had bancha in quite a long time. This is nice! It indeed reminds me a lot of the sesame-garnished dessert I had at Pok Pok this summer when we were in Portland, the way it’s toasty and subtly, cleanly sweet but not nearly as sugary as standard American dessert flavors. In particular, fresh subtle sweet notes gives way to a rounded, almost vanilla-like sweetness at the end of the sip that is a nice foil to the toasty bancha and sesame. I like that this is a tea you could have as a sweet ending to dinner or to just plain treat yourself, it falls in that in category, but doesn’t have the warmly spiced heavy dimension nearly all dessert teas possess. That makes it a good choice when it’s scorching hot but you still want sweet treat hot tea, and it goes better with the bright, fresh flavors of warm weather meals too.

Going to cold steep some of it tonight I think; I hope the toasty sesame element doesn’t get lost (I looooove sesame seeds and toasted sesame oil, yum).

Still more from Nicole. Thank you! I feel like I have a decent handle on Kusmi’s general approach and that will help me a lot when I place an order this fall with them (there was a Groupon-y voucher thing for them a while back and I ordered it, so it’s just a matter of deciding what to use it on at some point within a year).

The smell of this one brewing (EDIT: and the finished taste!) is kind of blowing my mind in that it’s evoking the vividest memories, like Proustian level, of being a little girl playing up in my attic playroom all afternoon before supper—something about the smell, I think it’s the vanilla mixed with berry/general fruitiness, and some nebulous flowery element, that particular combination reminds me of the smell of My Little Ponies, scratch n sniff stickers, and scented Strawberry Shortcake figurines from the ‘80s. Complete with that little bit of a plastic element (sounds offputting but isn’t somehow). Wow.

For Kusmis, I think as a general rule of thumb I’m going to overleaf somewhat (a big heaping teaspoon per 6oz cup) and steep a full 4 minutes unless that specifically seems like a bad idea. I did it with this one after the delicate nature of the first and it helped a bit.

I love bergamot and this has some Indian tea in it; I can sense it and it almost pings my “comfort nostalgia tea blend” radar, but not quite—maybe because it’s not bergamot-y enough, or brisk enough, or whatever. It’s sort of in between those types of teas I love (and many Steepsters don’t seem to!) and something a little exotic in its subtlety. It has that subtle fragrance all of the Kusmis Nicole sent (thank you Nicole!) seem to have, a little unique and quite lovely, dare I say feminine but not clobber-you-over-the-head perfume-y. It wouldn’t replace my Earls but it’s nice. It feels more appropriate later in the day than Earls often do to me for some reason (I tend to think of them as a mid-morning tea), something that’d be good if I’m eating a sweet snack right before or after dinner (hazelnut butter toast in today’s case, yum) and want to be reminded of that Earl-y essence when it feels too late for that full-throttle (I know that’s purely a psychological thing that might just be me and my weirdness!).

Another freebie sample from Nicole, yay! Thanks.

Smells great. The body and flavor on this is initially quite thin, almost watery, and at first I felt disappointed…but oddly after a few swallows a little surge of vanilla comes through all at once. And then after that, I notice if I sip a certain way, kind of “tighter”/a little slurpier, the body is actually satisfying and the flavor is good in brief, fleeting little jolts. Not bad. Not amazing in an easy-to-get way but definitely not bad. The delicate nature of it is kind of charming.

Not used to green tea in flowering stuff, so this was a little different than the flowering teas I’ve had in the past and quite nice for a dreary Sunday afternoon pick-me-up after being up ‘til 6am writing and getting my introvert on (LONG RAMBLE, NOT ABOUT TEA, feel free to skip ha: every Saturday my husband practices here at home with his band which in itself would be fine but thennn they always want to get dinner afterward…and then either go out for karaoke or movie watching etc. orrr just hang out until like 2 or 3 am so it’s a weekly all-day-long marathon of socialness here in my home and given I work from home ie have gotten spoiled about not having to put on a social face and all that, and am introverted anyway, it becomes this weird thing where Saturday you mentally expect to be a day of relaxation but it never is, quite the opposite. And then I waste Sunday sleeping it off and doing whatever chores still need to be done before Monday. Bah. It’d be ok if it was every other week or something, even one week a month without it I could always count on, but it hasn’t worked out that way so far and I’m getting socially exhausted. Anyway. And you might be thinking “well don’t you get your introvert on during the work week” but the whole point then is I’m working and busy so that doesn’t fulfill that sort of unwinding alone time I crave).

I like how it has yeah, a sort of fresh seawater-y and sweet pea, underwater floral thing going on.

Whoops, mom called, got distracted. Maybe I’ll edit this later. In short, I needed the tranquility and little bit of beauty here to soothe me this weekend. Last week was an emotional rollercoaster (husband nearly lost his job due to surplussing yet again, and this “we may, we may not” psychological hostage-held thing is getting old) and I’m just drained. Thought this weekend would finally be full of what I needed—no social obligations, just lots of lazy alone down time—and then it wasn’t. Next weekend I am locking the doors and insisting, eh.

Wow, so much not about tea. Sorry.

Dumbest idea ever to make a 3-cup mug of this at 1:15 in the morning, but we’ve been up late unexpectedly chatting with a pal about movie directors and video games and whatever else and I don’t know, I always crave bold stuff during those late night conversations. Rereading Harney copy about the divide between more refined, modern day sweet and delicate Chinese tea preference and that old school Indian brisk black tea world reminded me how no matter how far I come along with tea exposure, my heart’s with those legacy teas due to nostalgia.

Probably be mad at myself tomorrow morning when I don’t sleep tonight, but right now I’m enjoying the heck out of this with lots of milk and way more sugar than I normally take.

Another great tea sample from Nicole! Yay! Super thanks for this.

what I wrote on FB earlier:
“think Robert gave me his durn cold (this always happens but I always act like somehow I can avoid the inevitable if I just try hard enough, alas), got the classic itch in my throat. worked like a demon early this morning so hopefully i can do a protracted gongfu tea brewing session this afternoon (someone on steepster sent me a buncha verdant oolongs, oh baby) before he comes home (and before the cold renders me tea-dumb).”

So here I am. I’m still very clumsy/ungraceful about doing things gongfu—the job gets done I guess, but with zero artfulness on my behalf alas—but I love how it forces you to really respect and pay full attention to your tea. And I am getting better at using a gaiwan without looking ridiculous, so there’s that.

In the brewing video for this one, David’s not kidding about the aroma and explosion of spring in this one. Growing up with the lilac festival in Rochester every year, this one really spoke to me as there’s tons and tons of true-floral aroma, especially of lilacs. The awesome thing is despite being very floral and spring-y, this tea is not wimpy at all. It has a lot of backbone, with some sweet, fresh-cut grass (as opposed to the harsh, older grassiness in some Japanese greens), just a little bit of hay, and pine! Reminds me of summers as a kid hiking and canoeing in Vermont around B&B country (my parents had close friends up there), farmhouses with straw in the yard and wooden bridges and rocky caverns and streams of cold, rocky but sweet water. There’s also a creamy sweetness to this which comes as a surprise with the upfront floral elements. That vanilla-y aspect lingers and grows, which is lovely and tied up with those Vermont memories in that our friends ran an antique shop with a candy store within, so this conjures up the smell of those creamy caramels along with everything else Vermont. More mineral comes out after a few steepings as well, along with a mysterious element I can’t quite name, something more savory than sweet, heady and frankly a little sexy…hm. Saffron’s listed on the site, and I can see how that might be what I’m sensing. Whatever it is I really like it, and to go into detail would possibly be TMI it’s so alluring, ha. Appropriate for spring, let’s just say.

If you could bottle these exact aromas as a perfume, with their depth and evocation and gradually unfurled complexity, I’d wear it, and I hate perfume. It would have all of that going on yet also the freshness (and mysterious flowers-and-the-whole-world’s-getting-it-on sexiness) that’s here too.

Definitely worth doing gongfu style.

Another tea from Nicole, yay! Thanks Nicole!

I love doing things a little differently in the name of tradition, so of course I prepared this as directed, 200F for nearly 5 minutes, rock sugar at the bottom of the cup, cream lowered in at the end without stirring. I’ve had Upton’s East Frisian but not Harney and Sons’, and it’s been quite a while since the Upton so I can’t say which I like better really but I’m inclined to say this one just because for today it’s quite pleasant. The brewing smell is malty and comforting, and it does remind me of how much I love “Western” traditional blends, you know, meant to be taken with milk and sugar, with lots of classic brisk black tea taste. They’ve been lost in the shuffle lately with my exposure to lots of Chinese and Taiwanese stuff, but this is a good reminder not to forget about them too long as it’s really up my alley, for the nostalgia as well as enduring personal preferences.

This is from Nicole, who super generously sent me a buncha tea samples without wanting anything in return. My first Steepster mail interaction! Thanks for all the exciting tea Nicole! It’s making Friday a lot more fun than it’d otherwise be, ha.

Oh darjeeling, how I’ve missed you. Been so caught up in exploring teas I don’t know much about that you’ve been lost in the shuffle as you’re one of the only ones (along with assam) I knew quite well before all this Steepster stuff. But here you are, in all your second flush glory, with that trademark dry woodiness + true flower perfume combo I love and that no other tea possesses. <3 Sometimes, with tea, you CAN go home again, ha.

This one’s lovely too! I need to say more, but I’m flipping burgers right now…it’s super smooth but has a toasty edge to it that sets it apart.