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Happy new year everyone. Wishing you all lots of success in the decade to come and many happy tea adventures. Haven’t been on the site as much lately due to traveling and helping my brother with his wedding preparations. I’ve got quite a few tasting notes to clear in the backlog so here goes.

It’s been an awfully long time since I’ve had a yancha. I used to enjoy them but they could be a little too ashy sometimes. This Qilan is a light roast Wuyi oolong and I picked it up hoping for a greener flavor profile. The dry leaves have a gentle aroma of flowers, cocoa, and baked bread. The wet leaf smells like sandalwood, wet rocks, and buckwheat. The brewed tea is primarily woodsy with notes of autumn leaves and oak. There’s a soft mineral quality to it and a faint hint of spice.

Wasn’t terribly impressed by this Qilan. While it’s not overly roasty, it had a generic flavor profile and I wasn’t a fan of the wood flavor. The greenness just didn’t come through as I had hoped. I’ve had better luck with YS yanchas so I will try theirs or maybe What-Cha in the future.

This is a pretty good herbal tea if you’re looking for something spiced or to soothe a cold. Reminds me a bit of the old Verdant Tea Ginger Winter Rescue blend. Smells like garam masala, cinnamon, clove, and ayurvedic medicinal herbs. The brewed tea is tasty with a mellow turmeric flavor. Not chalky or bitter as turmeric can sometimes be. It’s nicely balanced with the other flavorings, although some like rose and lychee aren’t really discernible.

I think this would be a good base for a golden milk latte but will have to experiment and see. It’s a nice tea to have on hand for those times when you’re sick. Masala chai fans would probably dig this tisane too.

Not much else to say about this one other than it’s about as perfect as chamomile tea gets. Taste is nearly identical to the chamomile I bought from The Spice and Tea Exchange recently but at a much more economical price. Both are organic chamomile flowers sourced from the mountainous regions of Croatia. It has a cleaner, brighter flavor compared to the common Egyptian variety. Excellent quality all around and miles above your standard bagged chamomile.

Another brilliant Bao Zhong from TTC. Grandpa steeped 1.3g in my 10oz tea thermos using 200 F water. It opens with the scent and taste of fresh cut lilacs. Hints of orchids and something like a summer green meadow. Egg custard in the finish. The florals become deeper as it steeps with notes of bergamot and magnolia and a sugarcane sweetness that pleasantly lingers on. Stays juicy and floral till the very last sip. Boiling water amplifies the lilacs and gives a more TGY like flavor but the nuances are lost.

This was the last tea from my tea from Taiwan order and easily the best one. It’s an excellent Li Shan with a luscious floral character. Intense aromas of hyacinth, coconut cream, and Korean melon. The tea starts off fruity followed by a rush of floral goodness. A complex and impressive bouquet of flowers unfurls throughout the steeps. I picked up notes of orchid, hyacinth, magnolia, and lily of the valley. The tea feels like silk in the mouth and leaves behind a rich aftertaste.

For this tea, I followed the “non-linear” brewing style described in a recent Mei Leaf video and achieved much better results than simply increasing time and temperature with each steep as instructions generally tell you to do.

With a heavy heart, I threw out the last of this tea last night. It still smelled heavenly but given its age, I decided against steeping it. There was only a teaspoon left and for some inexplicable reason I had been hoarding it forever. I guess it served as a sentimental memento of a bygone era. Teavana was a part of my early tea journey and as far as flavored greens go, I still haven’t found one that can top this. RIP.

Sipdown. This works a lot better as an ambient/cold brew. Instead of the pancake syrup flavor of the hot brew, I get delicate florals and caramelized sugar notes. I’m discovering that I prefer my green oolongs hot and dark oolongs cold. I feel like cold steeping tames the roastiness of darker oolongs and makes the nuances much clearer.

This tea doesn’t quite live up to its exotic name. I was expecting something fruity and tropical but the end result tasted like apple cider vinegar. The tea brews up a copper color with citrusy notes of lemon and orange peels but tastes very puckery. It’s like drinking a tart fruit juice minus the sweetness. Don’t really taste the guava, quince, strawberries, or any of the other ingredients in the blend. It’s just sour all around. Tried it as a cold brew and the results were more or less the same. The idea of this tea is nice but execution is sadly a fail.

Man I was ready to write off this tea because it had been so dismal but today I casually steeped the last few grams at work and it was unexpectedly good. It’s amusing – and a little perplexing – how the most meticulous gongfu setup at home, right down to precise weight and water temperature, sometimes gives inferior results compared to just winging it at the office. On a side note, please ignore the brewing directions on the package. Any sencha steeped for 3 minutes will be terribly bitter.

Anyway, the first steep was lip smacking good. Wonderfully sweet throughout and balanced umami. Notes of spinach and fresh grass transitioning to a crisp lingering grape-like sweetness. Easily better than the pricier shinchas I’ve had this year. But subsequent steeps are a reminder of why this is a budget tea. The second steep had a generic sencha flavor and almost all of the flavor was washed out in the third infusion leaving behind a sulfur like taste.

So yeah, pretty good for a one and done kind of tea.

A decent sencha but not as amazing as Saemidori Kagoshima green teas I’ve had from O-Cha and Yuuki-Cha in the past. It’s also different from the others in that it appears to be more asamushi like with lots of long needle shaped leaves even though its advertised as a deep steamed sencha. First steep is light and vegetal with a splash of umami. Second infusion is grassier with a touch of astringency. Notes of spinach, cashew, and turnips. The last steep is similar with a generic green flavor.

Not packaged oxygen-free like other Japanese vendors which likely contributed to the less than optimal taste.