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TTBC2 #18

Hmmm… While this is not the most tantalizing tea I’ve had, or not even one of the better white teas I have had, the peach flavoring here is really intriguing.

I have a very weird relationship with peach flavored teas. They often make me think of Lipton iced tea :P But once in a while, the flavoring can be put off nicely. The best example is probably Lupicia’s Momo blends. but I do like the peach in this. I am not sure about the “cream” part.. I guess the creamy notes are there, but barely.

Unfortunately, the white tea here is not spectacular and seems to be full of these notorious “sweatcloth” notes that just sit on your palate. Perhaps I brewed this tea for a bit too long. I would love to try it again some time. The version from the Traveling Box was in a sachet, I wonder if they offer any loose leaf.

I’ll tell you guys what is not right: That I haven’t had a Butiki tea yet that I have been indifferent about, not to mention disliked it. And it just makes me want to… buy all their teas!

I got this as an extra sample with my recent order (Thank you, Stacy!) and so I decided to have this today. Partially because there’s this piece of cake on the table that has been eyeing me and that I have been eyeing – and I’d rather not have it in case someone else in the house would like to eat it. So I went with a few pieces of dark chocolate and Ruby Pie tea instead.

Pieces of strawberry so bright red, loose leaf so beautiful! The steep turned out darker than I expected and I was worried that it would be bitter, but it wasn’t. The notes of strawberry and rhubarb (which must be imitated SO expertly by hibiscus. Can you believe that hibiscus can be actually USEFUL?) are present in the aroma as well as in flavor. I don’t detect much of cinnamon or graham (I wish I did) but it doesn’t make the tea any less tasty. It’s just perfect the way it’s in my cup.

The base tea is assam but it must be some pretty mild specimen of it. And that’s good. It actually makes me… crave a strawberry pie. Well, at least it’s not this cake on the table that I want anymore ;D

Good, good. Too good!

TTBC2 #17

Oh! Wow! This is a really tasty darjeeling. I don’t think I have ever had a straight tea from Della Terra, who are famous for their flavored blends (that are either hits or misses for me).

The thing about this tea is that it looks, smells and pretty much tastes like a balanced and non-too-sweet Yunnanesque tea. There’s absolutely no bitterness to it, no “bite”. The full-bodied sips hint at earthy sweetness and make you feel like you’re eating caramels outside after some big rainstorm.

I actually can’t get over how good this tea is… Wow, Della Terra, what is your crazy source for this?

TTBC2 #16

I generally prefer my white teas to be fruit flavored rather than dessert-candy-creamy flavored, but this blend is pulled off real nicely.

I have noticed that if I like the look of a blend’s dry leaf, I usually like the steep it makes. So was with this one. Adorable little peppercorns among beautiful, intact white tea leaves. And gorgeous-smelling. Just like butterscotch. And I am not even a great fan of buttercotch, but this tea smelled heavenly.

It turned out to be delicious as well. Strong buttescotch, caramel and cream notes that nevertheless did not overwhelm the delicate nature of white tea. What’s not to love? A very well done dessert white blend!

Okay… This one is kind of a bummer :(

I will admit that I got it for the name. Neptune. Isn’t that an awesome name for a tea blend? I loved the description, too: “Rich flavor of honey-preserved fruits”. Well, I don’t find much flavor in it, especially not any “rich flavor”.

The leaf, with pieces of marigold, seems to be the same black tea that Lupicia uses for their lychee tea (keemun? maybe?). I steeped it for 3 minutes @ near boiling temperature. The brew I got turned out pretty dark. I didn’t get much complex aroma out of it. It just smelled like some milder kind of black tea.

When it was hotter it tasted a little bitter, and I could not make out any characteristic flavors. It kinda tasted like the lychee tea I mentioned, except without lychee ;) It’s just… boring. Believe me, folks, I tried to focus hard on the notes, any notes. There isn’t many of them. It’s still okay, nothing to yuck at, and I did finish my cup… but I expected FAR more from this tea.

I guess Lupicia cannot be awesome at every tea they make, right? I will keep trying this one, perhaps tweak steeping times and temperature (mostly to avoid bitterness that is of the unpleasant kind). Anyone could give me any advice on this? Would it be better with milk?

TTBC2 #15

I needed some little break between the caffeinated teas, so I don’t walk the walls and ceilings at midnight, and so I went with this.

Dry, it smells delicious. When brewed into a crazy neon orange liquor, it still smells delicious. Like plums and cinnamon and Christmas punchiness. The taste is mostly a tart kind of bland. Yes, there’s hibiscus in it. So that’s where the tart comes from. I could taste cinnamony unidentified fruit. Apples? Something like apples.

It was pretty tasty, but fruit teas are not really my thing. And there’s artificial flavoring in this one shrugs.

Now I gotta go deal with my room which has tea packages everywhere, as well as clothes and books in piles of no particular sense or logic. When I think of that, it fills me with dread. I’d rather step into Bird of Prey’s room full of drunk Klingons.

I mean it. sighs

TTBC2 #14

This tastes a little bit too “generic fruit tea” for me to want to stock up on it, but at the same time it was a very flavorful, nice cup. Something to go well with a meal, when one usually doesn’t ponder upon the complexity of tea flavors – because there isn’t much of it here.

I did enjoy it, though!

TTBC2 #13

Another darjeeling that I had a chance to try thanks to the traveling box! I like this one just as much as the Upton one, if not more.

The dry leaf is so adorable with bits and pieces of green. The steeped carrot gold liquor smells like caramelized rose petals (yes!) and… it pretty much tastes like that, too. Except the astringency kicks in, but it’s not unpleasant, and balances the sweetness nicely. It actually gets sweeter and milder as it cools down.

A fantastic cup for late Saturday morning. And it’s my day off, too. Hell yeah.

Yet another tea from Shang Tea that is great!

It must have been one of the best white teas that I have tried so far – smooth and sweet, fragrant and delicate in a way that only white teas can be… I have no idea how honeysuckle tastes / smells in isolation but it blends wonderfully with the base tea and enhances some of its natural sweetness and charm. I still have a little bit of my sample left, but I will be definitely ordering more of it some day.

TTBC2 #12

Aaah, yeah. What a beautiful tea! I don’t know what kind these curly beige-brown leaves of tea are because I was too lazy to read the description, but they look uber-cool! The steep came out orange (how appropriate) and clear, and smelling exactly like its name!

It tastes so sweet, too! I detect vanilla and carot notes. A little bit of spiciness. What a treat! I would probably prefer a bit stronger base, but perhaps that can be fixed with steeping longer? Either way, I really enjoyed it. It seems to have fixed my tummy that was kind of disturbed by David’s Tea Lapsang Souchong fiasco.

(Pssst, okay, the cute leaves are Zhen Qu!)

And here’s my carrot song for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G53DW71BlNk