Featured & New Tasting Notes

Check it out. I not only brewed a cup of tea, I added it to the database, whilst and at the same time writing my first blog post in a couple weeks. And now a review on Steepster. Go Me!

So, this Alishan oolong dry keeps its secrets to itself, with only a slight dried field scent with some corn notes also present. Once steeped the leaves try to convince this is a roasted oolong but it is definitely not. The cup is clear yellow-gold with a hint of green. The first sip while hot is a touch spicy. It is both icy and hot. That quickly disappears, followed by light floral. The floral present here is not an overwhelming presence. What you get is a solid flavor with out an assault. I noticed the aftertaste lasted a good long time.

There is no bitterness – though I never expected there would be, and no latex type taste late in the sip as many oolongs can have. The colder it got the more I personally liked it.

Unrelated – have you tried the Lemon Bar Frappuccino at Starbucks? There is no tea (or coffee) in it so I won’t add it to the database here. I really must try to make this at home. It is way too expensive for my wallet. It is lemon aid, milk, vanilla, and tons of sugary syrup. I had mine with 2% milk and sugar free vanilla syrup. I left off the whipped cream and sprinkles. Anyway so very fun, decadent, and delicious. Two thumbs up on taste. Two thumbs down on $4.25 for a 16 oz drink.

There is so much I do not know about tea, and I know the least about Darjeeling.

The first one I had was from A Southern Season. I thought it was “normal” black tea and I made it that way. I got a stomach ache. Then I read that it should have a shorter steep and tried it that way. It was better, but I still preferred Chinese teas and focused on them, having only a few Indian teas over the years. So I feel ill equipped to tell a Darjeeling lover about this tea, but I can tell what this tea lover found.

Dry Leaf Scent: bright, high, green, fresh, sharp-ish, with a hint of latex like a good oolong has.
Liquor: golden yellow, which always surprises me since Darjeeling is a “black” tea.
Taste: I am surprised to find myself thinking, "What magic is this? A Darjeeling that reminds me of Chinese green, a Darjeeling that has me thinking that this would be good to serve to my picky husband who only likes black tea drowned in milk and sugar, or green, white, or oolong plain. Yes, I am thinking that he would like this with our Asian takeout dinners.

The body is listed as medium in their description, but it has a creamy mouthfeel that makes me lean toward saying it is really creamy medium. The flavor is much like the scent of the dry leaves, but there is a little nut flavor underneath it all, with a tingle of citrus and grass, especially as it cools. I am reminded of Chun Mei. The taste and creamy feel really linger, like my tongue is swaddled in the last sip. It really fills the mouth and sinuses. And yet, it is light!

Having tasted it, I looked at the company description on their website. Chinese tea bushes, lighter style of processing… well, of course it all makes sense now!

My youngest daughter is drinking it with me. This is her first Darjeeling and she says that while she is not good at identifying and describing scents, she is on her second cup and says, “This is really good.”

And now we have polished off the whole pot! Thank you, Russell and Harney and Sons, for the opportunity to expand my palate!

I reached for this tea because the description just sounded so great for a hot day, with citrus and exotic fruit. The leaf is really pretty and definitely invokes a sunshine feeling, so I picked a tea set that would be equally sunny. Photos and full review:

https://tealover.net/2015/06/sunshine-cottage-sunshine-cottage-black-tea/

mia for a while because OMFG life is insane. pulled this one out to enjoy the other day because i wanted something fancy and french lol mostly i just needed a quiet pause in the day to take a deep breath and breathe. still enjoy this vanilla tea.

Hi everyone! Remember me? Miss y’all!! ;-)

Not gonna lie…I’ve had a few shopping sprees at Crimson Lotus in the last few months.

Yeah, yeah…I need a good spank!

But to my defense, I will say this: I don’t regret any of it. Top notch quality in the tea and the little pots. Yes, CL does know how to feed my addictions!

Now this tea. My friend MzPriss, who has exquisite tastes, bought this Bulang before I did and she was so excited about it, I could not pass on it since her and I are Teaplets and usually have the same tastes. She was right.

Since it comes in a gigantic brick, they sell it to you in chunks of 250g.

I used 12g for 170ml Jian Shui pot.

After the rinse, I can already tell this will be a treat. The smell is amazing.

Forget traces of barn, seaweed or leather that can be found occasionally in shou puerh. Think more “Caramel alert”. It’s sweet. And it takes over my mouth in a swirl of texture and body.

Yes, I will call this decadent. Creamy with notes of vanilla and dried fruits.

Laters steeps bring some cocoa but not the bitter type…it’s very mellow.

BONUS: it provides a nice relaxing qi, yes i feel like a noodle, and i like it.

Dexter the Dobe is looking at me funny cause I’m a little giddy and he feels it. yes, Momma is high on tea again!

This is something I will be craving. I’m glad I went for the 250g bag instead of the sample.

Now I’ll just close my eyes and dream of getting the 2 kilo brick!!

Pics of the session:

https://instagram.com/p/3umHgGwh_E/

https://instagram.com/p/3uoZC5whyS/

https://instagram.com/p/3urX5bwh3P/

Finally I’m drinking some Sheng! And a sip down (295) too!

I’ve reviewed this one pretty extensively before. It starts out kind of creamy textured, tasting like a mild bowl of cooked cereal, and gradually builds into something else…slightly bitter olive leaf…then a bit of a tart taste…each cup is an enhanced layer of flavor, as it should be, and the wet leaf smells like under ripe apricot to me.

Speaking of under ripe apricots, my apricot tree is loaded this year, & I’m starting to see some color!

Let me start of by saying that I generally dislike melon. I’ll eat it if it’s part of a dish or someone gives it to me, but not with relish or fervor(except fresh watermelon. Looooove watermelon!). Desserts that are flavoured like melon are even worse. Blech! I can’t stand it. Makes me wanna brush my teeth just to get the taste gone.
So when I heard about the melon teas at Lupicia, I was seriously not interested. A definite PASS for me.
But then I thought I’d better try it just to see what all the fuss is about. Cuz ya never know. YA NEVER KNOW!!! cuz it happens folks. Tea love strikes at the most random of times and you end up kicking yourself for not jumping on that wagon earlier. It’s so fresh and bright and happy tasting!
and now I’m all sad because isn’t this one discontinued???
It’s so incredibly tasty and I have no idea why, when I really should be disliking this cup. Does this apply to all melon teas? I swear I’ve had one before and it wasn’t like this. Or maybe it’s just this one cup, with these parameters? Or just the Lupicia version? I’m confused. Wouldn’t say that I’m annoyed, quite… ok yeah I would. Falling in love with a tea I can’t have has perturbed me. So there.

This tea is really strange. I brewed 1 tsp at 190 for 1 min. I think that might be too much tea since the rolled amounts say to use only one or two sticks. It’s hard to tell with the loose leaf. It has a real bite with lots of bitterness that hits the tip of the tongue and as it rolls to the back there’s a sweetness. It’s also a bit astringent like a green tea.
I just have a hard time getting past the bitterness. As the tea sits it seems to become even more bitter.

Sipdown (112)!

Finished this one off last night as well; in a timolino. It was reminding me an awful lot of catnip tea – but in a half decent way (I was not a fan of catnip tea). I feel kind of bad I never really wound up using this for any blending, like was intended, but I just wound up liking it a little too much as a straight, herbal blend.

OMGsrsly (or someone else who passed along this tea) wrote “interesting” on my sample packet, which essentially sums this tea up. It’s not the savory spices that are “interesting”, but the fact that I don’t get pineapple from this pineapple tea at all.

The dry blend smells of tropical fruits, but the fruitiness to taste is more a fuzzy peach, banana runts, or even plantain/banana with the finish and aftertaste- also reminiscent of a clove and banana accented hefeweizen. But, just as there’s a smiley face at the end of that “interesting” on my packet, this tea is a lot of fun- you just have to accept it for it is.

The aroma of the broth is probably the most “pineapple-y” aspect of this tea, so I’ll continue to breathe deep. Although now I want a plantain tea. Or a German Wheat Beer. Whichever is closer.

Spent a pleasant evening with this tea last night. I didn’t keep track of number of steeps or changes between steeps, I just spent the evening drinking it. In fairness I should also mention that I was eating spicy food and chocolate cake. Sometimes you just want to have good food with good tea that you don’t have to fuss with. This was one of those evenings. The tea was what I was expecting. This is what shou should taste like, not offensive, lots of flavor. This was just a nice pu’erh to hang out with.
Thank you OMGsrsly for the sample.

I am pulling out some teas for a swap this weekend and of course had to have some of this tea. It’s been ages! I remember how I liked it but the smokey flavor was a bit much for me at the time. Thinking of how I loved the smokiness from the lapsang souchong I tried a few weeks back I was thinking I might enjoy the smokiness now.

So did two quick rinses. Then 10 sec. OMG!!!! Love, love , love this tea all over again. I usually throw out the first few infusions of most pu’erh but I was drinking on the first infusion and loving it.

So fun to pull out an old tea and love it even more.

Farewell delicious tea! Hopefully i’ll be able to pick up a little more of this one before the lot sells out…i think that i prefer the yuchi in this run but this one is still an excellent taiwan fruity delicious tea.

My no-buy failed fairly spectacularly this weekend. I placed orders with Twinings, Bluebird, and Teavivre, plus Christine Dattner in Paris. Not for huge quantities, but enough that it’ll probably push my cupboard number higher than I really wanted it to go. Still, I’m ill and I needed cheering up. Tea does that, every time.

Moving swiftly on (I was doing so well!), I’ve mostly been drinking this tea for the last couple of days. My cold is fairly awful and I can’t taste much right now, but I found out that Blackberry leaf is good for colds, so I’ve been drinking at least three or four cups of this one spread throughout the day. I think it’s helping at least a bit – I’m having less throat sweets and lemsip than I usually would be, and my throat is a lot less sore than I imagined it would be by now.

I’m not particularly sold on the taste of this one, but I can get behind it if it helps my cold!

I do love a fun tea, and when I saw that Piper & Leaf had a tea called Old Fashioned Birthday Cake, I was sold. The description on the site was, "A premium Ceylon black tea, infused with bergamot and vanilla, blended with locallygrown and dried lavender flowers, and garnished with cornflowers.” Sounds pretty good, right?

Full review and photos: https://tealover.net/2015/06/piper-leaf-old-fashioned-birthday-cake/

I’ve had this tea three times now. It is tasty. There’s cocoa, but it’s not dominant, more subtle. There’s also some fruity notes, like cherry or plum. It’s incredibly smooth. I really enjoy it but have a hard time describing the notes. Maybe my tastebuds are messed up due to allergies. Anyway, I can safely say it’s good. Go get some! ;)

i got this sample for review – thank you so much Crimson Lotus tea.

When i opened the pouch it smelled smoky, grassy and sweet.
This tea is delicious. almost no smoke detected in a brew. just faint to make things interesting.
I enjoyed it a lot. many steeps yesterday and i continue today.
7g 80ml gaiwan 200F rinse/short steeps. few secs, i didnt time them. its easy to drink, no harsh bitterness often associated with young sheng, no astringency ( but again i kept my steeps short). lovely tea overall.

Im so glad i was able to try this tea, thank you so much Crimson Lotus Tea

PS no stomach issues i usually experience with young Sheng

Brewed this with the wrong temp this morning lol, I am so tired I didn’t feel like looking it up online lol. But still a decent tea, although again muted by the travel mug and the steep temp being lower than it should be. Still some mild cream/honey notes, hopefully this tea also isn’t too old that it’s losing it’s flavor.

Funny, I just read my note and it said my sleep schedule was screwed up 10 months ago and I was going to fix it on the weekend..I feel like that again today, 10 months later lol. I am proud to say I have made a habit of going running at least twice a week, 5 km each time I go minimum! This has been ongoing since about the start of April, I am very pleased I have finally kept up with it. But anyways, that could be contributing to my sleepy state this week, just an accumulation of no sleep. Gahhh. Today I am off at 1:30 from work though, so I will go home and sleep hopefully if I am tired enough :P

See previous notes on this tea!

In my opinion, Golden Monkey is a Teavivre classic – one that all tea lovers (and particularly black tea lovers) should try at some point. It’s a cupboard staple for me, perfect in any season, and at any time of the day or night. It’s a real comfort tea, for me. Reliable, versatile, and tasty to boot! I used 1 tsp of leaf for my current cup, and gave it approximately 2.5 minutes in boiling water. The resulting liquor is lightly golden, the scent sweet and malty with an underlying hint of grain. I’m drinking it without additions today, hence the reasonably low steep time on this occasion, but it also works well with a 4 minute brew and a splash of milk.

One of the reasons I like this one so much is its almost intensely chocolatey initial flavour. It’s like a square of high quality dark chocolate; bittersweet, with an edge of dark, dry cacao. The malty notes emerge in the mid-sip, and make this a much sweeter prospect, which becomes a little reminiscent of molasses. It’s by no means overpowering, though – there’s just a hint of something treacley lurking in the background. Notes of baked bread, grain and a light nuttiness develop towards the end of the sip, along with a smooth caramel richness.

See my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2015/05/22/golden-monkey-black-tea-teavivre/

this was a tasty treat today – a deliciously guava like tea with ginseng. I think in the grand scheme of things, i could have done without the ginseng but the guava flavouring was spot on. really interesting tea to try!

Sipdown! Finishing off the very last of this delicious tea today. maybe it’s time to buy some more soon?

Well I was about to type and say my plan for the day but as I was about to begin I received a text message from my husband to say his uncle has passed away. I only met him once as he lives quite far away but he was a nice man, welcoming of me into his family and it’s truly tragic news. He looks like the double of my father in law, it shocked me the first time I met him. Like twins, I will always remember that.

So getting onto what I actually was going to say and start with before being given such sad news. Today I am cross stitching up a storm to try and get somewhere on my Heaven and Earth Designs chart. It’s a massive piece and will take a long time to finish but I adore the design and plan on persevering through. It’s a free chart on their website called Ice Princess by Hannah Lynn, so if you’re into cross stitch/sewing then take a look.
http://heavenandearthdesigns.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=19

To aid my busy sewing day I have a large pot of this delicious Bi Luo Chun that I plan on re-steeping a few times. Usually I would glass tumbler this tea but today I grabbed my personaliTEA teapot from Adagio and decided to brew it that way. Much thicker than the glass tumbler way but just as tasty, gives me a real burst of energy which keeps me sewing.

Then to top it off I am watching horror films throughout the day. Started with Carrie 2 and now moved onto Stake Land. I adore horror films more than I do tea and that is truly saying something. It’s a trait I picked up from my parents and we often enjoy watching horror films together. The more gore the better.

And that is my day and tea of the day, I hope you all drink some wonderful tea today!

This is pineapple love. Such a sweet but not overly sweet breakfast blend with notes of citrus and pineapple. I took this down in no time. Even cold brewed this was good. Sunshine Cottage is just such an adorable Etsy store. She even has tea jewelry. I have my eye on a few pieces. Her site has some fantastic sounding flavored black teas. Yum!

http://www.cuppageek.com/index.php/2015/06/03/tea-of-the-day-bermuda-breakfast-from-sunshine-cottage/

Oh this is yummy.

So, Glen and Lamu sent me a message a little while ago, asking if I’d like some samples in exchange for reviews. I’m always open to that, especially if the tea is good.

And boy, is this tea Goooood.

I wanted to take all kinds of pictures and such, but my phone decided this morning to take a crap for me. All locked up for hours before I sorted it out. While drinking tea. Good tea. It helps a stressful situation be less stressful.

Anyway, this tea. It’s rich and delicious. Sweet. Chocolaty. Tasty. Amazing. It lasted through several infusions. It would have lasted longer, but I was distracted at work on the second infusion, and instead of steeping for about 10s, it was more like 90s. Oops.

I’m adding this tea to my wishlist now. I’m sure I’ll order some soon.