Featured & New Tasting Notes

So busy lately. Really haven’t had a chance to sit and relax since we got back between work, wedding planning and my other half trying to kill himself while riding – that was a fun hospital trip. What have i been drinking?

Red Queen Cupcake
Laoshan Black + Cacao
Yu Lu Yan Cha Black
Salted Caramel butter oolong
zheng shan xiao zhong smoked wuyi black
pure bud
Spring Keemun
Mousse au Chocolat
Gao Shan High Mountain Black
Rocket Fuel

I’ve reviewed this tea several times, so I’m not really going to say much, except that it is pure enjoyment, and perfect for this morning…oh, I guess now it’s afternoon! Heh…
It’s been 3 weeks since I quit my job, & I’ve slipped comfortably back to little terri mode, sleeping in, doing my morning yoga/workout, gardening, & for the last 2 weeks practicing like crazy for an orchestra gig, which was completed on Saturday night. Today I’m sipping tea & practicing for a different orchestra gig that is tomorrow night. We’re doing the Harry Potter Symphonic Suite :)
I love my life, again.

I was staring at my teas, unsure of what to have this morning, until I remembered I had a lot of samples, sent by kind Steepster people, to try! So, something new!
This smells so rich and magnificent in dry form. Rich, almost custard-y, with a good hint of caramel. I can certainly smell all the elements advertised in the name.
It brews up less potent than it smells, but it still keeps the flavors, just a gentler form. Its a very smooth cup of tea, and a very nice drink.
Thank you, Ost for sending me this. I really enjoyed it!

Dolphin sprinkles. I could end the review right there.

Of course I had to order this! It’s actually really good too. Strong blackberry note, and as a first tea of the day it’s working well to wake me up. I may have more to write once I have had more of it. It’s still pretty hot.

But, dolphin sprinkles!

I had this the other day. For some reason I got a strong barley or roasted note. Not what I expected!! No cocoa notes either. Odd. Two infusions, more or less the same. This has happened a few times, but not every time. Has this happened to anyone else? I bought it over the xmas holidays.

On the health front, after jumping through about a dozen hoops… I finally got my hands on meds. Except it turns out it isn’t strong enough to make any difference at all. To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. My doc is on vacay this week and doesn’t take appointments, only walk ins. So it looks like I’ll be in his office waiting next week for about six hours… great… plus now I have to wait a whole week… not impressed I am!!
Anyhow… May the 4th be with ya ;)

Morning matcha protein smoothie:

1 cup unsweetened almond milk
2g French Vanilla matcha
1 tbsp Fry’s cocoa powder
40g BSN Syntha-6 Chocolate Peanut Butter protein powder
150g ripe banana

Topped off with a dash of roasted Saigon cinnamon. Yum! It’s been keeping me full for three hours now. The matcha gets lost amongst the cocoa, banana, and protein powder, but it’s still a nice addition.

So Boston Blend, which is one of my favorites, was my pot of tea this morning. However, I come not to wax rhapsodic over this brew, but instead tell of my weekend! It involves tea!
Sunday I went to a Japanese Tea School, to take part in a demonstration of the traditional tea ceremony for Boys Day.
It was fascinating. There is a ton of ritual and symbolism, and the actual preparation of the tea was done with great slowness and care and each guest is given the bowl of matcha one at a time, to drink. Then we pass the bowls around to study them, and the students told us about the instruments they used in the ceremony, where they were from, or any linage they had. A tea scoop with lineage! Thats fantastic.
I’m a novice in all things matcha, and to be honest I liked the ceremony more than the actual tea, but it was a wonderful experience! I’d love to go again.
And maybe I’ll be a little more mindful with my own morning beverage, from here on out.

I finally heard from Raunak of TETE. He lives in Kathmandu. The earthquake did much devastation there. He acknowledged the tea gardens are far removed from the epicenter. His words about the situation were, “…no time to ponder. Time to drink some tea and bounce back.”

So, I am having some of TETE’s black tea in honor of this spirit. It is my favorite of the three, though I found all of them to be very good.

I’m working from home today, the baby’s at daycare, and I finally have a moment to myself to brew a cup of tea. I swore to myself I wasn’t going to order a bunch of Butiki teas and then let them sit around for months untried. But then I had a baby and all Hell broke loose! The only tea I’ve had in the past 3+ months is Mother’s Milk teabags. I hardly remember what it’s like to have time to enjoy my old ritual of brewing tea: heating water on the stove in my kettle, using a thermometer to get just the right temperature before adding the leaves, waiting for it to steep and then enjoying multiple infusions while musing about what to write in a tea note. Those days of abundant time are gone! I’m lucky if I find time to shower once every couple days. Don’t get me wrong; being a mother is the most rewarding thing I’ve done with my life to date. But I do miss some aspects of life before motherhood, and brewing tea is definitely one of them.

So today I am making some tea and taking the time to enjoy it! I’m so sad Butiki Teas has closed. I managed to place a large order of my favorites (sans Almond Indulgence because it was already sold out) as well as some new-to-me ones before Stacy closed for good. The brewed tea aroma of this one smells amazing! I’m definitely getting cinnamon and a hint of vanilla. The flavor is WOW! So nuanced and delicious. The flavor seems to evolve throughout the sip, first being cinnamon and vanilla and ending in a lovely, hay-like Bai Mu Dan. Yum! White tea is the perfect base for these flavors. This is good!

I added a tiny bit of Truvia to see how sweetener affects the flavors. Hmm, it really seems to have brought the squash to the forefront. I was missing that before. I’d say the most downplayed element in this tea is the cinnamon. It’s there, but only a quiet whisper complementing the other flavors. This is a really lovely tea. I’d say that I recommend it, but sadly you can no longer buy it. :( But if you’ve been hoarding it like me and have yet to try it, you definitely should!

For those of you who are interested, I’ll write more about the birth of my daughter in another note. For now, here’s some pictures of my Olivia. :)

https://instagram.com/p/18NGUjF-nY/
https://instagram.com/p/18M_VTF-nM/
https://instagram.com/p/zIz1qIF-gs
https://instagram.com/p/zI8JP-l-iU/
https://instagram.com/p/2B_deSl-ld/

Thank you, thank you to Angel/Teavivre for the generous samples! I received this months ago but classic me has been hoarding them.

This is the second time having it and, to be honest, both times it hasn’t been as milky as I had expected. Plus, the base is a little too vegetal for my liking. I’ve also been picking up on a chlorine-like undertone that has been driving me bonkers because it seems like a little more than just chlorine. There’s something more to that specific note.

After all this time, I finally figured out what it is. I don’t know about you, but the mold in cheese like Gorgonzola, and the rind on Brie and Oka all have this chlorine-like flavour that hits my palate the wrong way. This is totally that. So I guess you can say that this kind of tastes like those creamy kinds of cheeses, mold/rind and all. Since I love the taste of Brie/Oka, you’re damn skippy I just take off the rind so I can enjoy the deliciously creamy centre, but I can’t do that with this tea!

Come to think of it, I’ve had milk oolongs taste more like cheese than milk in the past, anyway. For instance, I vividly recall DAVIDsTEA’s Quangzhou Milk Oolong to taste like Havarti. Go figure!

I have a serious backlog because I had to have major surgery and haven’t been able to review. I am on the mend, but most of my current notes will be short and sweet in an attempt to catch up.

This is a sipdown and will be missed. I enjoyed this sweet and sugary (literally like burnt sugar at times) dessert blend with a dash of milk to make it creamier. Will probably be a reorder for the next holiday season.

I swear, every time I think I can finally get back to writing tasting notes, new and busy things start to happen. Grrr.
But! We shall try again today!
Cup of the morning. We’re entering the season when I drink tea when I can, as most of the day its too hot to even consider a hot beverage. Do what you can!
Cranberry tea is something I really like. I like the tartness, it feels quite fresh. Fresh is goot, when you are sweating by 7:30 a.m.

Savoy Tea Company, my favorite little shop in Northwest Arkansas, does flavored teas really well. Have had less experience with their unflavored products, but it bodes well for future experimentation.

This blend leads with Fujian tea, which I love. Leaves a light breath of cocoa flavor on your lips after you swallow. The label says it plays well with milk and sugar, but it’s very tasty on its own.

Sipdown (112)!

How does everyone here pronounce “Pecan” – I’ve always pronounced it “Pee-Can” and heard it that way or as “Peh-kahn” but apparently “Pee-kahn” and “Peh-Can” are also used. Which is the correct way!?

I bring it up because to finish this one off I made this in a timolino with a splash of Cinnamon creamer, and aside from just tasting super duper sweet and cloying something about the combination of this creamer and the tea finally made the pecan notes in the blend stand out. Hooray! That’s worthy of celebration even if I did get the feeling drinking this was sweet enough to cause ‘instant diabetes’.

Today’s word of the day is… Igneous!

Igneous means: “Formed from fire; especially said of rock formed from fiery magma.” I admit, I was confused momentarily by the definition because I kept reading this as ‘Ingenious’. Heh…

Certified organic + authentic ancient arbor leaves from Pasha Mountain means that my expectations for this tea are rather high. It does not disappoint. Attractive whole leaves make up the cake and it is full of silver needle-like tips. Sweet smell comes from the dry leaves but after the first rinse, the smell intensifies. Deep gold tea liquor which is beginning to reveal a light orange hue. The fragrance from the cup is lovely. The tea is mellow and smooth with a cooling sweet sensation after the 2nd cup. Definite tobacco notes revealed in the sip but this balances out the sweetness. Nice mouth and throat feel with good staying power – 10 steeps for me before I decided it was time to move on to another tea. Haiwan produced this 2006 Pasha as both a 200g and 400g cake. I have the smaller 200g cake but YS now lists only the 400g at the high price of $110 (reportedly $50 in late 2012). I purchased my 200g cake from Angelina’s Teas (located right here in North Carolina) at the very reasonable price of $32.

Interesting. A young sheng that does not grab you by the throat with bitterness. In fact it has very little when short steeps are used. The dry leaf was field and leather scented. The wet was leather, asparagus, seaweed, and mint. The cup was apricot colored. The first thing I caught in the taste was a hint of smoke. I never catch smoke in poo. Everybody else does. Not me. Until today. Woot! The taste goes from light mineral to leather to cooling bite.

The next cup had a spicy cedar/cinnamon mixed with leather. Behind it was a light metallic brightness. The combination was an interesting cooling heat.

The qi hit me hard on the second cup. The medicine I take for my lungs reacts with caffeine apparently. I really want to indulge in more of this but I am putting it away until morning. Probably shouldn’t have taking the meds with poo. Yeah, I’ll be more careful next time. Anyway, for only a few years old, this was an amazing sheng.

New tea! Cold brewed for a couple of days because I forgot about it in the back of the fridge.

It’s yummy. I get a lot of strawberry from it, which is nice.

Also, hi! I’m not around much at all due to busy, but hi!

This is a very tasty tea with a strong flavor of mangoes. The black tea base is nice too but the mango overshadows it. This is not necessarily a bad thing. This is the first of my teas from my group order I am drinking. So far all the teas from Damman Freres have been good both from the group order with Marzipan and my own order. Thanks Marzipan for all the work this order took. I wonder what other French tea companies ship to the USA? I know some don’t.

I brewed this once in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 3 min.

Sipdown! Trying to finish teas off before more come in over the next few weeks. Although, really, I should be finishing off older stuff since this is one of the freshest ones I have. Doing things backwards!

This was my other free sample from Mandala, and it is also officially the last tea in my cupboard (#–7)!! Of course, I skipped a few teas here and there for different reasons, but I have once again sipped-through my entire cupboard. And it took me 3 less weeks than last year! Once again it was really fun, and reminded me of all the teas I have forgotten. But I never know exactly what to drink after I’m done with this.

Anyway, I thought about saving this tea to have at a gongfu session, but then I just decided to drink it. Sorry Equusfell. :) I had a little more than I would normally use for my 12 oz cup, so I steeped it a little shorter to compensate.

I had a sample of this tea something like two years ago, and reading my note I can say that I found it much the same as I did back then. It smells really sweet and floral, with a bit of butteriness, like a really good TGY. But the flavor is more vegetal and less floral, with some butter but not much cream. A tiny hint of sweetness comes out as it cools, but it is still predominantly vegetal, a little like snap peas but not quite. Overall a pretty tasty tea, but when I drink it I just kind of wish I was drinking a TGY instead.

Thank you for the sample kieblera5!

This is a very nice DANCONG. There are definitely some floral notes but it is not as intensely floral as some others I’ve tried. Decent level of complexity. I give this one a B- or a C+

I was given several new varieties to sample so I’m definitely going to take notes on each one and figure out which kind is my favorite!

:D

This was a great way to start a TTB! I picked this to get me going for the start of my morning. The dry leaf consists of small downy golden curls. This tea is so fluffy it actually sticks together in large clumps. I grabbed a generous amount and placed it inside my mini Gawain. I washed the leaf once and let it breath. This brew carried a thick malt aroma. I brewed up a cup. This thick garnet liquor carried a strong scent of spiced rum and roasted yams. The flavor was incredible! This was such a deep and heady brew. The initial sip carried the flavors of brandy, malt, spice,and caramel. It was such a thick brew and incredibly smooth and silky. I was able to pull a few steepings out my Gawain. The next subsequent brews became sweeter and thinner. This was a great start to wonderful TTB experience!

https://instagram.com/p/2BTneJTGVs/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel

This is a queued tasting note.

Thank you VariaTEA for getting this one to me, and Kittenna for splitting it with me! It smelled so good dry, and I ended up making it yesterday morning for my breakfast tea on my day off. Mmmm! I’m pretty sure it’s Bear With Me who’s obsessed with Grapefruit EG so I’m happy to finally be getting the chance to taste an EG with grapefruit in it (you’ve gotten me super excited!), even if there are other additions too.

I actually find I’m tasting the tangerine more than anything else; it tastes exactly like the tangerine in Butiki’s Tangerine Creamsicle guayusa blend except while I really disliked the flavour in that blend I think it works perfectly here. It ties in better with the base tea, and has a lovely, mellow sweetness to it and just a touch of citrus pucker. The grapefruit notes are more in the body of the sip, and ave the faintest bit of bitterness but in a way that’s pleasant and natural for grapefruit.

The EG itself wasn’t as strong as expected and I found myself craving a little bit more from the tea. It mostly was apparent running alongside the grapefruit notes and in the aftertaste. It paired phenomenally with the grapefruit by the way; I can see why that pairing seems to be a successful one.

The base was nice but didn’t impart a whole lot of flavour; not that I necisarrily wanted it to dramatically affect the taste of the tea but it would’ve been nice if it had not have been as mild and I could have pinpointed some distinct note from it. This is a really nice breakfast tea though; I will absolutely enjoy finishing off my little bag of it!

Today’s word of the day is/was: defunct, which means “having finished the course of life or existence : dead, extinct”. How dreary…

Other than the teas I have been reviewing for the blog, about all I have chugged lately is Diet Lipton Citrus Green Tea. I think it is laced with something. I find it devoid of depth but so addictive (truthfully it is because it is easy and I am lazy). There are no more in the fridge at the moment. sigh. Oh well, I’ll just have to have some Earl Grey hot from my replicator. As I pop the tin, bergamot fills my olfactory. I can’t even imagine why EG is not everyone’s favorite. It is one of the very few teas I still always have with sweetener. It simply intensifies it and mellows it at the same time. All this typing has worn me out. Back to the couch. Make it so Number One… Spock why couldn’t you have been the EG guy? Then I could have just had Scotty beam me to the couch.