ifjuly Send Message

Straight up breakfast assam for when you’re bleary eyed and still dusting the cobwebs out of your brain. Takes to milk and sugar well.

Did a side-by-side with the Mist Valley Estate Tippy and while I preferred that one (it was sweeter) this was no slouch either. More astringency, tannin, and bitterness, but also more woodsy flavor which was enjoyable.

Did a side-by-side with the Sakhira Estate Nepal and preferred this one—it was sweeter and more easy-going. Both were yummy though. Would elaborate more but I was busy on the couch watching the rest of Arrested Development Season 4!

Drank this last night, let’s see if I can remember…

Generally I haven’t been nearly as crazy for green teas as blacks in the past—I lived in coldcold damp dark Rochester, where you want hot black teas all the time!—and most of the greens in my past (from around high school and prior, say) were just generic lesser quality bagged things with over-the-top grassiness and a strange harsh textural bite that left the mouth feeling rough. But the loose greens I’ve trying in my tea revival now that I’m in hot sunny Memphis have all been very welcome, and this was no exception.

I like how sweet (cashew-sweet, yes!) and buttery bean-y and green vegetable smelling and tasting this was. There is a crispness, but it’s not really anything like unpleasant mouth-puckering astringency. For something so relatively light and vegetal tasting it’s so satisfying, drinking like a meal of fresh garden vegetables in broth. And that sweetness!—I hadn’t had greens with a lovely sweet perfume and front flavor assault until the past month. Really delicious. I can finally see how Ozu could write a movie named after a popular snack in Japan—“The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice”. As I finished my third steep of this (and the tip I didn’t know until this year, that greens resteep so well that often later infusions are actually better than the first, proved very true here; I thought the second through fourth were the best) I was reminded of it, thinking how tasty that would be.

The further along you go drinking this, the thicker and richer the mouthfeel; after 3 cups I felt like I’d stuffed myself with vegetable rice soup somehow just from the texture build up alone. Pretty interesting considering how light and sweet it seems with the first sip. Sometimes I really enjoy that transformative/subtle gradation of changes quality premium unbroken leaves offer, when I have the time to appreciate it! (Then there are those times it’s 9am and you’re in a rush and the ironclad consistency of a cup of CTC is called for, ha.)

Really enjoyed this! This was my first hojicha. It’s not quite as coffee-like as I was expecting from guidebooks, but it definitely has that roasty, toasty, satisfying quality. Really yummy and filling. Tea is so versatile and cool; I love that someone figured out you can even use the twigs!

I can never quite get over how wrong my guesses at what keemuns would taste like before trying any were—I was thinking heavily smoky and sharp, acrid, like knock-you-out generic lapsang souchongs. But no! For me they are more overwhelmingly about the smell of toasted chocolate than anything else, including smoke, and it’s been a rather pleasant surprise to discover this. There’s also a chewy grain quality here, an element I’ve noticed present in all of the Teavivre black teas I’ve tried so far (along with that complex relatively mellow sweetness I tend to associate with Chinese tea). A little bit of bitterness, but noticeably less than in the H&S version I tried earlier this month. There is a woodgrainy mouthfeel, I’m guessing from the tannin, and for some reason it works here with the softness of the flavor.

The leaves on this one are surprisingly lovely for such a mass distributor as Upton, complete with some noticeably long, pretty tips. Dry and brewing this smells surprisingly toasty and grainy—an earlier review mentions a vague resemblance to Laoshan Black of all things, and I can actually definitely see that (which is so surprising!); there isn’t the intense chocolatiness, but there is that barley-ish toasted chew feel. It isn’t like other Nepalese teas I’ve had, less woody and floral and more food-ish (I could be imagining it but I almost smell sweet cooked carrot). Some fruity perfumed astringency and tannin comes in at the end, giving it more resemblance to what I was expecting (darjeeling-ish qualities). Really surprised and impressed with this one!

The leaves are pretty onced brewed. The cup’s a lovely bright light orange-gold hue. Like most Nepalese black teas I’ve tried from Upton, there is a tantalizing sandalwood aroma dry and in the cup I’m just crazy about. That lingering sweetness that comes in, characteristic of these teas, is lovely.

A lovely “comfort food” darjeeling if you’re a fan of them. Sipped while watching the new Arrested Development on the couch late yesterday night with my husband, post-grillout (shrimp and watermelon and feta kabobs, buttermilk honey chicken kabobs with romesco sauce, cuke salad, leafy salad with blueberry dressing, yummy cookies!) game night (we destroyed the world playing and losing Pandemic, alas) with the neighbors. Nice evening, felt like a very appropriate beginning of summer.

So it’s a beautiful day—the sweltering summer season has been quite delayed here in Memphis with no complaints from me, and it’s just now in the past week or so ideal (and uncharacteristic for here) Memorial Day weekend weather’s settled in, the kind I remember from picnics in upstate New York (deep blue sky, mid 80s, bright sun but also some breeze). Feels like the ideal time to rotate out teas like so many seasonal wardrobes. School’s out (my husband’s a high school math teacher) and everything feels so much lighter.

Speaking of wardrobe, dry and brewing this tea smells so very much like fresh cotton, summer linens, and combined with the heady jasmine fragrance it translates to some Estee Lauder-type perfume. I admit some trepidation—I normally detest jasmine—but so many people love this tea (both on Steepster and pals IRL), and it is from Verdant, so…

The dry and brewed leaves are, as always from Verdant, breathtakingly beautiful, strong and thick as they unfurl to full size, with lovely rich silver highlights that almost make them seem to gleam as if laced with ore through their veins.

In the cup the jasmine fragrance settles down a bit, which I find encouraging. The jasmine’s definitely there in the sip, and it still has some of that mysterious element I don’t care for, but everything about the whole package is so well done I don’t mind somehow. The delicate jasmine melds really well with the exquisite white tea flavor; there’s a subtle freshness, a crispness, that somehow doesn’t overpower the soft cottony flowery jasmine aspect but does keep it in check and give the whole thing a refreshing, less wispy quality. Those two elements really balance each other and the result is a drink that somehow manages to feel both hauntingly ephemeral and sturdy, distinct. It does feel like being in a real garden with flowers as opposed to sniffing perfume, and that makes it fine. My friend told me earlier it was like spring was punching her in the face (in a good way, ha!) when she drank this tea looking out the window right as Rochester Lilac Festival weather came on and I can definitely see that.

I have enough of this one (generous sample size!) to brew in my awesome new gaiwan next time. Curious to see how that affects the jasmine dimension.