Featured & New Tasting Notes

My first order with TeaSpring was a speedy delight! It was thrilling to get a package from China. I think that it took no more than 10 days (including weekends) from the time I placed the order to the day of arrival.

This oolong has an intriguing taste. I would call it “peach trees a bit before ripening”. It has elements of grass, floral gardens, and young fruit. The leaf is very very long which makes measurement a bit of a challenge, but it’s always delightful to see such a long leaf. The leaf is also really multi-tinted with yellow and green and white shadings that are a real pleasure to look at.

After a brief infusion, I enjoyed a subtle, flowery tea which very much belongs in the early spring. It is not as grassy as some greens and not as astringent as some oolongs can be. It very much is a light yet complex treat, redolent of a walk through a sedate yet aromatic orchard in early spring.

Having worked at Borders (pre-Seattle’s Best), Starbucks, and Barnes & Noble I’ve tried their chai drinks and didn’t care for any of them. I likened the tastes to liquified servings of cinnamon & sugar toast. Granted, I never did try the Tazo tea bag version of this during my tenure at Starbucks, so I decided “what the hey” this morning and gave this free sample a go.

While I waited for the tea bag to steep I took a sniff of the packet and my head involuntarily shot back. The spice smell was so intense that my sinuses actually cursed at me in several languages. I quickly tossed the packet in the trash and tried to get myself back into a zen-like state of open-mindedness regarding this tea.

The smell reminds me a lot of the Extra Cinnamon gum that I had to stop chewing because it irritated my mouth so much. And here I must note that I’m a straight-up-no-additive tea drinker. I could imagine this tea being benefitted by some sugar and milk (but then I think that it’d be back to the liquified cinnamon & sugar toast taste). I actually preferred this black version over the other chais I’ve tried. The smell is a lot more intense than the taste. Someone mentioned that this tea reminds them of Christmas – I can see that, but Harney and Sons’ Holiday tea has already taken that spot for me.

Overall, I wouldn’t turn down this tea if it were offered to me, but I will not be purchasing this one. I am now very curious about their Double Spice Chai (with which I will NOT do the pre-steep packet sniff). M

Last weekend some friends and I went to club/bar that had $15 all you can drink beer and rails, needless to say, shit got crazy and it was a blast…. But the next morning I wasn’t feeling so great…. Britt told me that she just recently read something that banana milk shakes apparently are good for hangovers because the banana helps calm the stomach, and with the honey, builds up the depleted blood sugar levels. The milk soothes the stomach and re-hydrates your system. Bananas are also rich in the important electrolytes, magnesium and potassium, which are severely depleted during heavy drinking, thus giving you a nice energy boost in the morning. Sadly, last weekend I didn’t have any bananas, so it was just water and Gatorade for me.

Fast forward to this weekend… after a night of Gin N Juice, Smash Bros, and Bang!, I didn’t wake up hungover, but I still didn’t feel like 100%…. So since I now have bananas, I decided to give the banana shake a try even though I wasn’t feeling too bad. But then I remembered reading in a tea book that green tea is good for hangovers, then it hit me…. Banana Matcha Milkshake!

So, pulled out my remaining shiki matcha powder (about 1.5tbsp), added 3 bananas, 2-3 tablespoons of honey, 2 cups of milk, and a handful of ice cubes to add a nice texture too it (plus, H20 always helps with re-hydrating yourself)… BAM! Heaven in a cup…

Boy, does this hit the spot… Great form of sustenance, I feel like I don’t even need to eat breakfast now, I’m actually full from drinking this….. Like I said, this morning, I’m really not hungover, just feeling really lethargic… I already feel a nice little boost of energy from this… So I could definitely see how this would be a nice hangover remedy…

This is a perfect blend of banana and matcha… You get a nice banana flavor, with grassy undertones that mix well together. Then you get that little extra bit of sweetness from the honey… With how glorious this tastes, you’d think it wasn’t healthy for you at all… BUT IT TOTALLY IS!… So I’ll definitely be making this in the future for hangovers or if I just want a nice, refreshing, and healthy drink to satisfy my sweet tooth!

Now I’m just gonna sit here and relax while drinking my shake and watching highlights from last night’s Blues game….

Smells like a Ceylon (i.e. archetypal black tea), but a little fruitier, especially when hot. No additives this time – it’s tasty enough without, and I think milk might overwhelm the subtle bits (yes, there’s a little molasses) that make it more interesting than a typical Ceylon. A little sugar would probably be fine, but I wouldn’t do honey (again, subtle flavors). Some spice and berry make this quite satisfying, but I probably wouldn’t buy a stock; I like my black teas more in-your-face (a.k.a not ceylon) than this.

(Also I like parentheses :)
ETA: Actually, a tiny bit of cream was very good for this – brought out the rich caramel flavors. And a second steep at 5 minutes was slightly weaker but still very good.

One pretty special cup of tea.

I was craving something white and delicate today, so I pulled this out of the takgoti box of wonders. The leaves are gorgeous, green, fluffy beautiful wonders. And the leaves are speckled with the cutest of teeny blossoms. I’m assuming that this is osmanthus.

A word about osmanthus. I’ve never actually tasted it before now. The leaves aren’t particularly fragrant – white teas usually aren’t, in my experience – but there is an underlying sticky sweetness pervading the smell.

A tablespoon of this into the pot, and we end up with a light-cream-yellow infusion. Now the smell… I’m getting some pineapple, mixed with honeyed hay and silver needle goodness.

The taste… is actually a bit surprising! There’s the definite silver needle base, which is a bit veggie, but very smooth and endlessly drinkable. But the main notes here are this floral-honey note. I’d definitely lean more towards floral, though. And I can’t really identify the flavor note. I guess it tastes like osmanthus! It really is a peach-y sort of pineapple-y conglomeration.

Oh, and that toasted hazelnut that Samovar mentions in their tasting notes? Totally tasting that as well. It’s an end note, but it almost tastes like the husk around the nut once it’s been toasted. That kind of woodsy roasty goodness. I can’t describe it really any other way. Although there is a pretty distinct hazelnut tone as well.

Nom nom nom! Seriously Samovar, stop it. Stop being so awesome at everything that you do.

I was really excited to make this today at home so I could have a cup with my husband. I knew he would love this one. I wish you could have seen his face when he tasted it! He thought it was a revelation. I showed him the story of the way the tea was produced on thesimpleleaf.com and we marveled over this natural wonder!!!!

So good. So unique. He compared it to a chai/not chai. I explained my coffee/chicory/chocolate/caramel/ not coffee/chicory/chocolate/caramel theory and he thought I nailed it :) He just yelled from the other room “I think this is my favorite tea!!!”

I’m telling you – a revelation! <3

Whoa! I’ve ‘unfollowed’ a LOT of Steepsterites today. Many of them people who have gone inactive or who had seemingly decided not to follow me. In many many cases both. But also some others. I just want to make it quite clear that there is nothing at all personal involved in the people I’m dropping. It’s merely a case of trying to re-invent the way I use the site.

It’s a lengthy and honestly rather tedious process (that I have, I admit, brought on myself by initially trying to follow literally everybody with one or two exceptions), but I’m down to 814 now. Not nearly done, but I’ve got two whole pages now of people I’ve decided to keep. And at this point I’m realising that instead of clicking and unfollowing people one by one, it might have been easier to just unfollow everybody and re-add the ones I wanted to keep instead. Bit late for that now, though, so we’re plodding onwards.

For this purpose I of course need a good strong tea, preferably a smoky and one I know so well that I don’t have to put a lot of thought into drinking it. Enter Black Powder. I have this at work every day. It’s my work tea, which is also why I rarely have it at home anymore. It’s perfect for work really and because it’s smoky most people make this face o.O and I get to keep it for myself. (I do at the moment have one curious colleague though, but she’s not yet finished gathering courage for it. I’ve told her she’s welcome to dive into the tin/pot whenever she feels ready for it. I hope she’ll like it. )

I’m actually on second steep now. The smoother, slightly sweeter, but still very smoky one. I can’t remember if I’ve ever tried a third steep of it or what the result was if I did, but it would appear that today might very well be the day.

Seems I’ve generally had pretty good tea luck recently. Lots of yummy stuff.

Quite simply excellent. I don’t know how many orthodox teas I actually manage to drink, but this shows its pure pedigree. As Ricky wrote, it is a “complicated” tea in the best sense—each sniff, each sip, offers up a brave new world of taste sensations.

I would call it highly refined, elegant, and pure. It is smooth and sweet. I thought I detected a bit of chestnut, although others have not mentioned that. I think that this will be another tea that must always be here and will always be reordered.

TEA!

I have been tea-deprived. I have been so busy at work that I haven’t even had the chance to quaff my favorite beverage. Every cup I’ve made has gone cold with 3/4 left in it. It’s been that crazy. So I figured, why not curl up with some nommy Samovar from my first order from them?

Okay, these leaves are adorable. They’re oh-so-tiny, and they look like olive-green ramen noodles. I’m serious. And it’s hilarious, cause when they steep up, they turn a beautiful vibrant green, very much akin to broccoli. It’s the broccoli color. The try leaves smell… green. There’s a veggie goodness hiding out in there, and it’s pretty appealing.

This is actually the lightest-looking green tea I’ve ever seen. And the grassiest Chinese green that I’ve ever had. It smells like steamed vegetables. Like the vapors from the steam after you open the basket. The taste is awesome, though. Super umami-sweet, with lots of notes of stronger veggie goodness than usually found in a lot of Japanese greens. Slightly spinach, maybe? And a bit of salty mineral at the end? But really, it’s super-veggie-sweet. Like sucking the juice out of leaves dropped with dew.

I’m curious as to how this one will hold up to multiple infusions, because this tastes deliciously like spring. Like clean meadows and bright skies and light rain showers. And after a ridiculously insane week at work, this one is truly hitting the spot.

And it’s actually making me crave Japanese green tea now.

I am so excited that my order for this arrived this afternoon. I love this chai! It’s available to the general public – I don’t know if it’s for a limited time or not, but what I do know is that when I contacted them back in October about purchasing a small amount they would not sell to me because I was not a coffee shop or similar. So I was happy when I happened across their website last week and noticed that they’re raising money for Haiti relief by selling smaller (personal size) portions of their tea to the public! woo hoo!

What makes this chai so unique is that it’s a MATCHA chai! I prepare it the same way I’d prepare matcha, except that I heat milk (yes… for this tea I’m even willing to heat milk) instead of water. It doesn’t need anything else… just milk and stirring — you can do this without a chasen, but I do use mine for it because I have one.

The flavor is chai-spicy with the natural sweetness of matcha – it’s creamy and thick and oh-so-good. You can read my review I wrote of it several months ago here:

http://www.teareviewblog.com/?p=8088

Oh wow, this is so good I might make myself a second cup!

I love this tea! I am not to partial to smokey teas but this one has a medium smokey base and the Chinese logan fruit blends very nicely with the Bergamont flavour. During the summer, i love making this tea into a tea spritzer or soda. It’s an interesting taste but also very good! I recommend this tea for Earl Grey lovers as well as smokey tea people! If you’re neither i still urge you to try it!

My 1st Kombucha! I really need to start w/ unflavored versions of teas…

Prepared as suggested.

As soon as I put the bag in, it smells like lemon jello… and at the end of steeping that scent remains, only the aroma of peppermint is added. The flavors are much more mellow than I expected (mellow, not weak). The peppermint is slightly more pronounced than the lemon, but it blends well… and there’s definitely still the jello-esk component! Kombucha no longer scares me and I can’t wait to try an unflavored loose version!

The quiet life was nice enough to send this to me, in its own little sample tin (which I love, and will definitely reuse for travel tea afterwards). Another tea from my shopping list! I feel like I’m really doing some work on it.

Anyways, the tea itself smells fruity and sweet and chocolaty (is it supposed to? Huh) and reminds me somewhat of H&S’s Paris (which makes sense because I remember a few tasting notes saying that it’s probably a nod to Marco Polo anyways).

She was nice enough to provide the steeping instructions on the side, so I shouldn’t be messing anything up. Hurray!

I’m trying this plain first. Maybe I’ll add milk and/or sugar to the last cup from the pot, or just wait until next time.

The wet leaves smell just as delicious (and a bit stronger), perfumy and a bit like strawberry, with a good black tea smell in there as well.

First sip… I got black tea, and then a sudden aftertaste of strawberries. The tea taste is strong (astringent, but somehow ALSO very smooth), and is then followed by the berryness, and almost sweetness. The more I sip, the stronger the berry flavour comes (and the more it fades away from strawberry and joins just ‘berry’).

There’s an almost chocolatyness to it as well, I think. Hrm.

Added a bit of sugar and milk to the last of this cup. Okay, maybe too MUCH sugar. I realize I am not very adapt with sugar portioning. But there is definitely a sweetness and taste that isn’t from the sugar in there. The addition of the milk also makes it unbelievably smooth, almost silky. I think just milk and no sugar would taste very nice as well. Otherwise, I would have just jumped past the sugar for the honey, but I assume the taste of the honey would have overwhelmed it.

I went to throw the rest of this cup back and smelt vanilla. Mmm.

Back to no milk/sugar. And I think I can taste that vanilla I smelled a moment ago. I don’t know. Weird. Still, delicious.

I always wish I had more experience with flavoured teas, since most of the tasting notes I read rave about the flavour, and most of what I get is only in the smell, but I’m glad I got to try this anyways (and I still have a fair amount left in my tiny sample tin!). It is delicious and smooth, and the flavours are subtle, but actually there.

Edit: A continuation, as I resteep this. The smell is much stronger now, and I realize that it reminds me a lot of The O Dor’s Place Saint Marc. A lot!

The taste is a bit more evident, which is nice. Although the smell is really reminding me of Place Saint Marc. Berry and vanilla.

Mmm.

Well, my last Upton sample is green Earl Grey, which is simply Not Suited for being my morning tea, so I’m going to get started on a new project! The Great Finish Off My Adagio Samples That Have Been Taking Up Space In My Cupboard For Ages To Make Room For More Samples Project! (or TGFOMASTHBTUSIMCFATMRFMS Project for short)

Does anybody else do this thing where you end up not drinking your favorite samples all that often because you don’t want to finish them off and be left with the not so great samples? That is what has happened to Golden Monkey. I love this stuff, but the sample tin tends to sit in the back of the tea cupboard, neglected due to my miserliness. Poor Golden Monkey. This tea has a lot going on; I was thinking “smoky” when I was drinking it earlier, but reading the other notes, malty is definitely the right word.
I let this steep for a stupid long time this morning because I was distracted trying to find all the April Fool’s jokes I could before leaving for class, so the end result is extremely strong and extremely malty. Suitable for mornings, when nothing else gets through the post wake-up fog, but I was definitely wishing for more subtlety by the end of the mug.

I have taken to sampling green teas and I like this. I don’t think that green tea will ever be a favorite of mine, but I like to have it occasionally. I ordered some samplers from Upton Tea Imports—-they have earned my eternal gratitude by providing 15 g. samples for just a little bit of money. The tea is bright, vegetal, flavorful. It is not an exuberant green that tastes like rolling around in a spinach field or in a huge vat of freshly mown grass. It’s restraint is a virtue, however.

Curious, I looked up the meaning of Yamoto and the ever-reliable (:-)) Wikipedia informs me that: “The term was semantically extended to mean “Japan” or “Japanese” in general, and carries many of the same connotations as Americana does for the United States.”

While I think I like this tea better than the other reviewers, I also doubt that I will select it as a “go-to” green tea. I’m still seeking that one green tea that I will cherish above all others and want to keep in stock.

SECOND STEEP: The second steep was very well-behaved; was neither too weak nor too strong. It seemed to have blossomed a bit more towards a slight floral note. Very aromatic.

Drum roll please. I have in front of me my favorite breakfast blend with half/half & sugar, and a fresh glazed twisty donut. It’s my virtual Friday – we do a thing here where we get every other Friday off due to easing traffic congestion. Am I being bad with good stuff? Or am I being good with bad stuff? Either way the taste blend is INCREDIBLE! Bite of soft, gooey glazy twisty donut, slurp of creamy breakfast tea. Slurp of creamy breakfast tea, bite of soft, gooey, glazy twisty donut. What was that about work? Don’t bother me, I’m cheating. 80’s music softly rounding out the experience. I swear when I die, I will erect a donut shop bakery and a tea house in heaven right underneath my spiritual living quarters. This must be one of the main reasons why I reincarnated during this century. Came in too late to have to wear a dress all the time, but not too late to enjoy the pleasures of taking tea and facilitating Victorian-style spirit circles. Gotta love it! Om nom nom nom nom nom. :)

JacquelineM actually inspired me this morning, so after finishing the morning pot of Lapsang Souchong, I switched to this.

I’ve never really managed to get the hang of Dragonwell before and I’ve never really been able to agree with myself on whether or not I like it much. So I was in a weird situation where I had a sort of semi-craving for something that I wasn’t really sure I liked.

What to do, what to do?

It’s not really practical to brew half pots at the time, because I have a tendency to forget that I’m only supposed to fill it half up with water and end up with a totally weakling cup of tea. I don’t really have the brain capacity to do it that way when I know I’ll be steeping it several times. If it’s just the one or two times, it can be done, but more than that and chances are it’ll go wrong at least once.

Cue the little yellow gaiwan that I hardly ever use, because I always spill and/or burn myself. I was feeling brave though, so I brewed in that and carefully decanted after steeping into another little cup. That gave me half a very small cup on each steep which isn’t so much that I’ll give up on the questionable flavour or get too much of it, and it allows me to do a multitude of steeps.

So I’ve been drinking Dragonwell for oh about… let’s see… hmm… about four hours or so. I haven’t got the faintest idea of which steep I’m currently having, the counting got messed up, but JacquelineM totally nailed the primary flavour note when she called it asparagus-y. It’s like with Takgoti and the walnut note in the Pai Mu Tan. I knew it was a well-known clear flavour, very easy to pick up on. I just couldn’t work out what it was.

At this point though, on Steep X, the asparagus-y-ness has diminished quite a lot. It’s not really a flavour that tries to invade and conquer, it’s just sort of there. Much more toned down. The flavour has sort of deepened, if you know what I mean. It’s not as bright and bouncy anymore. It has calmed down and turned darker. Like the difference between brand new leaves on trees at the beginning of spring, and leaves that has been on the tree for half a summer already.

I’m liking these ‘older’ steeps better than the first ones, definitely, so it seems like with this one the gaiwan is the way to go.

As I said, I lost count of what number steep this is, but to give you an idea of how far I’ve approximately come, I’ve become quite good at transferring from gaiwan to cup. I don’t spill every time anymore. And I haven’t burned myself either.

It’s still not a tea that I really see myself drinking a lot of though, so I’ll leave the rating where it is and let first impressions count for this one.

This tea courtesy of Doulton!

I am very excited because I’ve been wanting to try this tea ever since I read about it. The leaves are absolutely GORGEOUS! Long, dark and handsome! It’s so hard to believe they are not blended with chocolate!!

This tea is ridiculous, and I mean that in the most highly complimentary way possible! It’s deliciously tea-ish and a chocolatey roasty flavor. Not hot chocolate, not coffee, not chicory although all these things come to mind. It’s something all it’s own and simply sublime!!! I want to wander the streets and go up to random strangers and say “Taste this tea! It is simply pure camellia sinensis, but have you EVER tasted anything like it!?!?!?!?”

!!!!

Now that it is cooling a bit I am tasting a caramel note joining in with the tea/chocolate/coffee/chicory. Wow. This is one of the highlights of my tea tasting experiences thus far!!!! THANK YOU DOULTON!!!!!

EDIT: Great resteep! 6 minutes, more roasty chicory chocolate. Lighter but so delicious. Better than many teas first steep! but steep #1 is the best one.

Backlogging from last night.

I picked up a handful of teas from Teavana yesterday, and this was one I’ve kinda had my eye on for a while, I figured I’d get it since I tend to have issues sleeping most nights and I don’t currently have any other chamomile teas.

So yeah, last night, I was just beat…. I spent most of the day running around places, spent a couple hours at a park throwing a baseball around with a friend just trying to get ourselves ready for summer softball leagues… So I thought this would be a great tea to end the night with to help me get to bed.

The tea itself has a nice smell to it. There is a sweet citrus-y aroma to it either form the orange blossoms or the citrus peels. There are small undertones of lemongrass scents in this as well. I can’t really smell the chamomile all too well though. Once steeped this tea has pretty much the same scents as it does unsteeped.

I typically don’t mind the tartness of hibiscus or rosehips, even when they are in a tea together, I sometimes even enjoy the tartness of the two. But since I was looking for a nice soothing tea to go to bed with, I wasn’t really wanting a tartness to the tea, so I was almost afraid of trying this one.

But MAN, this tea was actually really good and wasn’t tart at all! It definitely does have a very soothing quality to the tea, I could definitely taste the chamomile a lot better than I could when it came to the smell of it. I was able to taste almost every ingredient in this, except for the hibiscus and rosehips, which is pretty interesting.

Needless to say, I passed out shortly after having this tea. I don’t know if it was because of the relaxing qualities of this tea and the chamomile, if it was because I was already feeling dead tired from being out and about for the day, or a combination of the two. But this tea definitely hit the spot right before bed. Definitely a good nighttime tea choice.

You know, I’m starting to wonder if I didn’t do something wrong in storing this — I put it in a tin, but it’s a biggish tin for a small sample. This pot, like the previous one, is just not as flowery as the very first one. I mean, on any other tea I’d be calling this flowery, but here? Only barely.

Well, I’ve already ordered a bit more. I’ll have to see if I can treat the next batch better!

Mmm, flowers.

In my book, anything with the name ecstasy in it can either be discounted immediately as puffery or has a very high level of living up to do. Ecstasy is, after all, not just a run of the mill, mild feeling. It’s sheer rapture.

The fact that I have had a four for four success rate with my Samovar samples thus far (I am intending to order more of all of the ones I’ve tried, something unsurpassed in my admittedly limited experience) left me doubtful this name could be discounted fully, so I had very high hopes for this one. And I haven’t been disappointed. Though I wouldn’t go so far as to state that drinking this left me ecstatic (wouldn’t that be cool, though? maybe one day I’ll find a tea that really does leave me ecstatic and then I’ll know all the secrets of the universe and more), I can say that I’m now five for five.

My only pu erh experience before this has been the Numi bags. They’ve all been varying degrees of enjoyable with the chocolate out in front. But because they’re bags, there’s a visual component to the experience that is missing. I’m finding more and more that I really enjoy examining the dry leaves of the tea I’m about to drink, and watching how they change after they’ve had their steep.

The Maiden’s Ecstasy leaves are brownish green, dark and pretty. A little on the small side, and not overly curly. Dry, they smelled to me as they smelled to Auggy after rinsing — like sweet tobacco, right from the pouch, with notes of leather and earth.

After rinsing, the leather aroma came to the fore. This, I think, is what I smell where others might smell fish. There is something slightly fishy, but not in an unpleasant way, about the smell of certain kinds of warm, pliant leather. I’ve had belts and shoes that have had a fishy note to them that body heat brings out and I know I’ve smelled this in horse saddles. It’s not always the case, but common enough. The smell of this steep makes me think of a new, buttery smooth, black leather English saddle.

My first steep at 2 minutes delivered a beautiful mahogany colored liquor.

The taste. It has that Samovar thing going on for me, an almost preternatural smoothness that makes their teas taste like velvet feels. I love that. To me, it is the difference between something that is nice and well made, like a shoe or a car, that you wouldn’t mind having, and the same thing delivered by a luxury brand. There’s a little luxury in every sip.

Within the smoothness, there is also a flavor that verges on leather — but is kept from being a stark leather flavor by its sweetness. I’m not getting raisin here, but perhaps a pre-raisin (i.e., grape) fermented sweetness, as though the tiniest drop of a fine port has been dropped into the tea.

The second steep at 2:30 yielded a similar flavor. The nose became more sugary, more carmelized.

OK. I’m about ready for my third steep and I am going to stop now and just go enjoy this for a while. I want to sit with it and see how it changes. I have all kinds of time for this tea.

I got this on a whim since I’ve always wanted to try a rose tea and so far I’m really enjoying white tea. It arrived today and I popped open the bag (*special note on Stash’s loose leaf tea containers: if you have a kitty and you give him kitty treats out of those crinkly bags, then be aware that this is how their tea comes. My poor schmoo was so utterly baffled as to why he wasn’t getting treats. I shall be getting some different tea containers soon).

Okay. So. The smell was insane. Like “HEY I’m a HUGE bouquet of cheap flowers and I’m gonna punch you in your naughty bits via your sinus cavities!” The smell utterly devestated me. I wanted a giant cup of fou-fou and not a giant cup of anger!

I went ahead and gave it a go since I’ve discovered what a difference a steep makes. Praise Jeebus that it did indeed mellow the heck out of it. The tea taste was much more prominent (not a ton, but it was there), and the smell was better. It was more like my aforementioned “fou-fou” desire. Like the Jasmine I’ve tried it gets bonus points for scent memory in that it reminded me of a childhood friend’s “Barbie Perfume Maker” set and the rose water it contained. (After typing this I looked up the Barbie Perfume Maker and it turns out the scent I recalled is named “Tea Rose Water.” Brilliant!)

And I think the second steep was ideally what I was hoping for. (I did go for a third – white tea and all. Yeah, not so much. Truly barely rose water.) I shall go forth and quest for my ultimate girlie-girl rose tea, but I’d probably order this one again. NE

Absolutely delicious! For the coconut aficiondo, this one is delicious. It reminds me very much of Premium Steap’s Organic Coconut and I am very hard-pressed to select between the two. They both have given me superb coconut experiences. I may need to hold a coconut tea survivor game and sip all of my coconut “contestants” and force myself to vote one “off the island” until just one supreme winner remains.

But such is the speech of nonsense. I don’t want to snuff anyone’s flame. This tea is just as rich, full, and delicious and true to flavor as any other coconut I have had.

I also have to make a plug for the speedy service American Tea Room provides.

I tried more of this—two days in a row because I was having a major jones for it. As Jane Austen might say, “I extend my approbation completely”.

Upton Sample Buying Spree Tea #14:
Just the green Earl Grey left!
Before anything else, I have to say that I really liked the color of this tea – it was such a nice reddish brown. Or was it brownish red? I’m sure there’s an official name for that color. Possibly to do with wood. Mahogany? No I think that’s darker. Once again the leaves are pretty finely crumbled (or whatever they do to them) so it brews up fast.
On first trying this, the astringency kind of slapped me in the face, but that faded as I drank. Still, I can definitely see why they recommend drinking this with milk. Tough luck, Upton Tea! Milk is for cereal! and oatmeal, I guess. and for making into cheese. mmmm, cheese. Anyway, I stand by my tea without milk stance! It’s very difficult for the human body to digest you know! In fact, the majority of people are lactose intolerant to a certain extent! I read that in Newsweek! Or possibly Wikipedia!
Ahem. Now that that’s out of the way. Nice black tea, certainly pretty to look at, think I liked the Scottish and Irish blends better, though.