Featured & New Tasting Notes

Oh…so you want to be center of attention!? Oh…you want to be the leading man? Well, let’s just see what you’ve got, sir!

This has a bit of nose trickery going on! At first sniff it reminds me of a chai. 2nd sniff it changes it’s mind and resembles a perfect wintery-type blend. Then…just when you think you’ve figured it out…the individual components smack you in the face! You are quite bold, mister! I can smell Cinnamon, Vanilla, and almost a buttery-creme in there with a bit of nuttiness.

The color is a rich brown.

My first sip was very slippery…yes, slippery! Smooth and buttery cream-like tones. The after taste is reminding me of Hazelnut. The 2nd taste…still slippery with the cinnamon popping out more. As I continue to sip I inhale at the same time to be presented with an ever-so-slight smokey scent that passes just like a breeze.

This is an interesting cup to say the very least.

Almost a competition for the leading role? Perhaps. I’m so happy Doulton let me “bogart” some of this from her stash! (har, har)

A darker nuttier white brew than other white teas I’ve had. It’s got a scent of fresh hay and a flavor that’s slightly astrigent but quite pleasant. It’s got some sweet notes as well as a few sour ones – but the sour works.

This is one of those teas that takes a lot of leaf with a shorter brew time. The leaves are light and fluffy and all over the place. It’s almost like clouds.

I think I still need to work on my brewing parameters, but overall, this is pleasant.

I’ve enjoyed this tea personally for the past week, but haven’t wrote a review because I just wanted to sip on it without having to think about it too much. This tea makes me feel , awake and cleansed in a strange way, because I’ve never felt that way with many teas. I’m sitting outside right now, with my cup of TKY and even though it isn’t sitting close to me,the smell is entrancing and is pulling me in for more and more. The smell alone gives this tea an A.

for a more detailed review visit: http://expandingleaves.wordpress.com

Note to self: Next time, don’t steep as long.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it, mind you. But for someone who’s not a huge fan of black tea, it was a little too, well, black.

I was willing to give black tea yet another try, though, and I’m glad I did with this one. Maybe because it’s yunan, or maybe because it’s organic, but either way I’ve actually found a black tea that I (gasp) rather enjoy. Oddly enough, I think I like the smell of the leaves better than the taste—not that that’s saying much of anything. The leaves have a strong, earthy smell (The length of time my nose was stuck in the canister is probably unhealthy).

The tea itself is good. It’s not like other black teas I’ve tried. There’s no bitter aftertaste, which is something I frequently experience with not-so-great teas. It’s really smooth, with a slight pepper aftertaste. Good call on this steepster select deal. Of course, we realize I now have a standard for black tea. I can’t drink that Tetley crap ever again.

Also, it took me too long to write this so the remaining tea in my mug is lukewarm. And it’s still not bad.

It was bad enough letting Doulton’s teas sit there and wait for me to regain full control of the keyboard again. But then the order from 52teas arrived today, and things only got more difficult. And then I opened one, just to smell it, and one thing led to another and so on… ahem.

So I’m giving it a go and as you can see I’m trying really hard to be patient here and type sloooowly and properly.

The reason I’m starting with this one is very simpkly that it was the one that I ripped the top off to smell. It had a stronger aroma than I had expected. I thought something sweetly fruity like fresh fruit. What it actually was was more like dried fruit, a bit soapy. Of course. It’s dried fruit in it. Not sure how this always manages to surprise me but it’s the same every single time.

After brewing the soapy note goes away. The primary notes in the aroma here are pure fruit, especially passion fruit, weirdly, and coconut with a bit if banana in the background. The passion fruit is odd because it not apparently supposed to be tjehre. It’s just reminding me so strongly of the passion fruit black I used to have from Adagio. I’m not picking up any pine apple and I don’t know what papaya smells like.

Tastewise there’s a lot of coconut overall in the flavour, but right there on the front we have pineapple loud and clear. Here we definitely have the fruity sweet that I was searching for in the aroma of the dry leaves, and lots of it. The beautiful thing about it is that the white tea itself is coming through quite well also. It’s a tea, not a sort of hot cordial. As it cools a bit, the banana is coming out more strongly too.

I bought this because of the success the bkack currant bai mu dan was for me and I wanted to continue explorijng the fruitier choices. This is definitely a winner for me, and if you liked the black currant bai mu dan, I suggest you give this one a go too. I think it would work quite nicely as a dessert with all the fruityness.

And yes, it would seem that I am actually capable of typing withiout all those typos. But it also took som,e 25 minutes to write this. sigh stupid finger!

After drinking my way through a can of this, mostly mixed with spearmint and tarragon in an attempt to try to find the sweet spot that would mimic Tazo’s Refresh, I am having to rethink my rating and significantly downgrade this.

The truth is, I never really did get used to the earthy, dirty smell and taste. I know that peppermint doesn’t have to be that way, because the peppermint in Refresh doesn’t have that quality. I don’t know if it was just the batch I got or what, but I’m not willing to order more to find out. I will stick with Refresh as a mint tisane rather than my Frankensteinish attempt to recreate it, and I’ll try some other peppermint samples as I go along. Teavana’s peppermint is getting a high rating here, I’ve noticed, so I may give that a try as well.

Caravan seems to have replaced the Tiger as the morning tea that I crave lately. But don’t tell the Tiger that. I love him too still, and don’t wish to break his heart.

I am beginning to fear that Caravan will be the first tea out of any of the A&D series that I’ll run out of. I don’t mind limited edition teas at all. In fact, there are so many teas out there. Far more teas that I’ll be able to drink in my lifetime. I don’t see myself as being someone who will keep certain teas in stock. I think I will be more of an endlessly sampling new teas and comparing type tea drinker. But I fear I may want more Caravan once I’m out. Or something similar and smokey. Perhaps Caravan is the beginning of a love affair with smokey teas. How surprising to me this is.

I should comment that I added a touch of milk to the 2nd steep and it was just meh. I probably wouldn’t do it again.

2nd steep: 6 min. Ended up preferring a 2nd steep at 6 min rather than 7 min.

Instead of buying the whole Golden Moon Sampler for $20, I purchased only those teas that I was interested in and saved $11. This was one of those teas. I love vanilla and I love jasmine, so I’d be telling a lie if I said I wasn’t excited about this one.

The smell is intensely vanilla. It’s an intensely creamy vanilla smell, like vanilla bean ice cream or the vanilla extract I use when baking cakes to decorate. The jasmine is there, but only slightly. It is tantalizing my nostrils.

This is wonderful! For a black tea, it is surprisingly light. I should mention that I’m drinking this after it has cooled down significantly; I was making some iced tea for my mother and forgot that this was waiting for me on the table. I actually don’t taste a whole lot of tea in here – it’s mainly just that extremely creamy vanilla with some jasmine on the tail end. There isn’t a whole lot to say about this. It is a very simple tea. Simple, but high quality and soothing.

I’m very grateful for Doulton sending me this as I have never tried it until now.

However…

It’s smells very herbal…very much like Medicinal Tea. It doesn’t taste like Black Tea to me. It doesn’t taste like white, either. I can’t taste any fruit or any peppermint at all – even tho the description does say that the flavors are to be slight.

“Provence is a modern twist on Earl Grey resulting in a soothing and energetic tea.” – it says…

This is light years from any Earl Grey Taste or twist I have ever had and would never, ever compare the two or even mention them in the same sentence!

I really don’t find this soothing and I don’t think it would be fair of me to judge the actual energizing potential properties or claims because I have been going crazy all day with work and Black Teas!!! LOL

The more I drink it the more I think I might be able to finish the cup but it’s not something I would buy. It you are into herbal-medicinal type tasting teas I think you would like this. BUT…I, personally, wouldn’t go by the description because I don’t think much of it is even close…this is one of the few times I will ever mention that…but, I had to point it out.

As an After Thought…again, something I had to mention – which differs from my previous statements and findings…
After it cools a little I could notice the peppermint in the aftertaste…so I wanted to be sure I DID state that.

This is a strange tea.

Again, I can finish the cup and thankfully I didn’t quit tasting just after the first sip, but I doubt I would buy it.

This has really grown on me. I’ve been drinking it in the mornings, and I’m down to my last few bags. This one I will miss when it is gone.

Very rich, sweet (yes, it really is sweet — for whatever reason it didn’t seem that way to me when I wrote my first note, and it isn’t consistently so nor is it overly so, but on subsequent tastings I’ve found it to have a malty sweetness), full bodied, and otherwise yummy, though I don’t yet know how it compares to other Yunnans. It’s better than any of the other bagged blacks I’ve sampled, and it’s so good at what it does that it deserves to be kept in reserve for those times when a teabag may be the only viable tea delivery vehicle.

Bumping the rating.

Got this in yesterday from the Steepster Select offer. I’ll echo everyone else’s description. Yes, they did pack a lot of tea in the tin. What I am most impressed by is the simple, but perfect packaging. A plain steel tin with a tight fitting, friction fit lid..all wrapped in their paper lable. Simple, elegant, infinitly reusable.
The tea is as the picture, small black/gold leaves. The smell is earthy, but clean—not musty or moldy. I did my tea a bit on the short side compared to others. 1tsp, 90 seconds, 205deg water. Got a nice rust colored brew. Medium boldness, no astringency as others have noted as well. Smooth, slightly earthy…a good black tea flavor with no grassy tastes.

Part of the Nabokov prize package! (Thanks again, Doulton!) :9

Oh my. This was the first thing I smelled when I opened that prize package, and there was a LOT of tea in that little box. This was in a tin, too, so it’s slightly surprising that this won out.

But oh. I was worried. It smelled divine dry, as others have noted. It smelled even more divine after I poured boiling water over it. As it steeped, the rich hazelnutty chocolate smell pervaded the entire first floor of my house. It’s a hell of a thing to experience first thing in the morning! (Starting a day on such a note, really, how could your day possibly go anywhere but downhill from there?!? XD)

It’s delightful, yet nerve-wrecking. Smelling it, you think to yourself, how could this possibly taste as good as it smells? No way it can. No. Way.

And it’s…surprisingly light. Full-bodied, yes, but lighter in colour than expected when fully brewed. It doesn’t coat your mouth the way you’d think on smelling it. Which is actually a good thing, because it smells like one of those decadent desserts that you can only eat a few bites of before you have to doggie bag it. Because this is lighter than expected, I was able to drink the whole pot over the course of a couple hours.

Added a teeny tiny bit of raw sugar to it, but that’s it. Later, I may try a spot of some sort of milky-thing, or soy creamer. Update to follow. Man oh man, the Nutella comparisons are apt, except that’s chocolatier and this is hazelnuttier (technical terms, yes). I can’t wait to try this with my banana/Nutella crepes. :9

I just bought this tea and made a pot of tea yesterday. I enjoyed it very much. From reading All the Tea in China, I learned that this tea came from the work of Robert Fortune for the East India Company in the late 1800’s. He “gathered” tea seeds in China and the tea plants that sprouted from those seeds were planted in India…Darjeeling tea came from that “project”.

According to the story on the package, this particular tea is second and third flush tea. ie, they were part of the second and third annual picking of these tea plants.

YUP! I’m making it a new rule! I’m going to have at least 1 cup of Rooibos a day! Why!? ONE…because I have so much of it…and TWO…because of it’s health benefits. Especially Digestion benefits, at least that is my hope…

This is a tasty Rooibos. For those who aren’t sure or haven’t had much luck…give this a whirl!

After previous iced tea success, I decided to use the rest of my tin as a cold brewed iced tea. It has been brewing since yesterday and it is pretty awesome. I think we are just going to decant as we drink since I’m just using a regular pitcher, but I’m really enjoying this. It is so good in fact that my husband wanted to know how much a pound or similar large amount would cost. I think I’m slowly turning him into a tea drinker after all.

Sweetened asparagus and Froot Loops, that’s what this tea makes me think of. Okay, 95% of the time I was sipping, it just made me think of sweet asparagus – not really honeyed or floral asparagus, just asparagus with the natural sugar content turned way up – but every so often, I’d get a like Froot Loops. It wasn’t so much in the taste (though once or twice I ended up with a mild Froot Loop aftertaste) but it was definitely in the smell. It didn’t come out as I intentionally smelled the cup. Only as I was holding the cup in between sips would I get the Froot Loops smell wafting by. For a bit I actually thought it was something on my porch that smelled like that but eventually I figured it out.

As weird as it sounds, sweetened asparagus with super-mild Froot Loops works really well.
3.9g/8oz

Quite a yummy afternoon cup. Brewed 3g in 8 oz water, in a small glass teapot because the two separate layers of green leaves gently swaying below, then the light brown rice bits and the occasional white puff floating on the top look so… cute? Idyllic? I don’t know what I’m saying. But it was a joy to make this cup. Will go for another tomorrow.

…a very elegant tea. The refreshing hints of lemon are pushing trough in a rather pleasant kind of way. The flavors of the Lapsang are balanced perfectly and very harmonious which still allows one to detect all the other notes that are part of this blend.I am extremely pleased to find that there is no astringency going on…something that is normally quite common with Lapsangs. However, it seems to me that, if brewed with water on boiling point, the tea tends to come across a bit rough.
If one keeps the water temperature below 85 degrees Celsiuis the tea starts to unfold it’s fragile flavors in a very gentle manner…the whole story becomes soft and silky.
It would not be my first choice for breakfast as there is no strong awakening effect…but it is a great tea for late afternoons…

In honor of today’s H&S Steepster Select, I decided to dig into my sample of Vanilla Comoro!

Oh my my god…you guys, the reviews aren’t wrong—this tea is delicious!! It’s delicious for a decaf tea, it’s delicious for a regular tea. The flavor is is just rich and great!

Like ashmanra says, the scent of the dry leaves is just like maple syrup. The taste is like caramelized vanila sugar. There’s no hint of cough syrup or that awful fake fruitiness in this tea! And underneath the vanilla flavor, I can actually detect the black tea taste! I’m really surprised this is decaf. It’s very satisfying for decaf.

This is on my list to order a full-size!

When I purchased my Rishi iced tea pitcher I wanted to also pick up a specific tea made for icing. After checking out a few other Steepsterite reviews of Rishi’s iced teas I came to a halt at this one. Oh Cha! started her review of this tea with “FRUIT LOOPS!” That’s all it took to get me to purchase this. And I’m glad that I did.

I opted to do the hot brew method (which is all I ever did at the cafes I had worked at) and when I pulled out the spent tea bag I smelled it: FRUIT LOOPS! Oh Cha! really nailed it in her review: Fruit Loops, a scary thought, but a good thing in reality. There’s a bit more lemongrassy tang to this, so next time I plan on seeing what cold brewing will do for that aspect. I can also really pick out the jasmine, but only if I tell my mind to think of this as tea and not Fruit Loops.

I can’t imagine having this every day, but I can see craving it. Especially in the summer. NE

This tea reminds me quite a bit of Rishi’s Jade Cloud but it is softer and silkier. It tastes vegetal green and a little salty, with a nice nutty aftertaste that, as the cup cools, threatens to overwhelm a bit as it combines with the salty to make a not-quite-bitterness. That taste is something that I could do with having less of so I think I will shorten the steep time the next time I have this since that helps tame Jade Cloud.

ETA: Second steep @ 3:00. The nutty bitterness has increased. That’s unpleasant. I feel that this tea still has potential though. We shall see.

Thanks to LORI for sending me this sample. I wanted a late-afternoon tea with a strong flavour but not an overwhelming amount of caffeine and this seemed to be the perfect occasion to try Casablanca Twist. The dry aroma is pure mint. Steeped, the strong mint comes through very nicely. The Darjeeling is so subtle that I’m not sure that I would recognize it. I could be drinking a pure single-note mint tisane and would not know the difference.

Mint is among the tastes that I need to have in stock (along with vanilla, almond, chocolate) so I would certainly consider investing in a full load of this next time I order from Adagio. I don’t think it’s an earth-shattering revelation to me (as a tea like Maiden’s Ecstasy from Samovar was or Jackee Muntz) but I do think it would make a great member of the Reliable Dragoons of my teas—you know, those foot-soldiers who are essential back-up for the Admirals and the Generals. Why in the world I am thinking in military metaphor I don’t know unless the word “Casablanca” makes me think automatically of the WWII film with Bergman and Bogart and the wonderful Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Claude Raines—-great cast all around. And Edward Gorey’s stepmother was the lady who burst into singing the French National Anthem! True, true, true!

In any event, I like this tea. I don’t know that Adagio has created a one-of-a-kind blend, but it’s good and it’s nice and it’s minty fresh. My rating reflects the fact that the Darjeeling is not the major player it’s advertised to be. Maybe it went AWOL to take the waters?

I’ve had this sitting in a little bowl on my counter that is overflowing with other samples on my short list of things to try for a couple of weeks now. I decided that today was the day, since I’m celebrating the demise of two boxes of bagged black tea today from my “starter” teas.

I haven’t (knowingly) had a Ceylon black before by itself, though it does make appearances in black blends so I’m sure I’ve tasted it intermingled with other things. But solo, this is a first.

I really liked the look of the dry leaves. They’re dark and pretty and vaguely twiggy. I thought they’d make a very attractive nest for a very small bird, or a lovely, very small basket if they could be woven into such a thing. This may sound odd, but their smell is warm. The air around them gives off the impression of being some degrees warmer than the surrounding air. I haven’t experienced this before and thought it was a cool thing. They don’t have a very loud smell, in fact they’re less aromatic than just about all the other Samovar samples I’ve tried, as I recall. They do have a fruity smell, that is also somewhat like tobacco. Like a fruit flavored pipe tobacco. Cherry maybe.

After steeping, the aroma is of carmelized sugar, and a high, somewhat “narrow” note that might be wine or might be citrus. The tea is a lovely clear reddish tea color. A deep coppery color.

There’s a vaguely metallic note to the taste, though I must admit that I’m not sophisticated enough in my tasting of metals to be able to distinguish iron from zinc from copper. It’s a full, sweet flavor, with some malt, and some tang which could be either the aforementioned wine or citrus. It’s not as smooth as the other Samovar blacks I’ve tasted (which smoothness I had come to regard as a sort of trademark) but this could also be because I steeped this one a bit longer than I did the others because I was feeling adventurous today. Still, it’s not bumpy either. Not harsh. There’s a bit of toastiness and a coffee-like quality, not so much in the taste as in the overall impression of the flavor and body.

But is there raspberry?

Yes, with this caveat. My mother was a big crossword puzzle worker and she used to tell me that to be good at crossword puzzles you had to “throw your mind out of focus” a little, to be receptive to meanings you might not think of initially. To get the raspberry taste while the tea was hot, I had to throw my mind out of focus a bit. It’s there in the aroma, and in the aftertaste.

And, as I just discovered when I sipped what was left in the cup after typing to this point, it’s much more readily identifiable when the tea is cooler.

Wet, the leaves have an interesting reddish tinge. One of the other notes mentioned they smelled like tomatoes, so I had to give them a sniff. They do! (More like tomato sauce to me, actually.)

It’s not my favorite Samovar black, but it’s still an excellent drink. Onto the shopping list it goes.

Love this tea! Very fruity and delish fragerance. very pure ingrediants, i have the loose bag and nice big pieces are in its and bright flowers. Tea is not overpoweringly strong like some black ceylon teas, feels of very high quality leaves, and leave plenty of room for complex over flavors of fruit and flowers. Powerful flavor so i usualy steep once lightly, then keep repeating for longer. One of my favorite teas but i only found it the once and it was very expensive, 13 for 100gs, but thats what high quality complex teas like this cost. It is extreemly similiar, except less sweet, than many of the teavana teas which are also pricey.