Featured & New Tasting Notes

I recently got the bad news that the woman who owns Lavender Basics has had to close down her store. It’s terribly disapointing news because I love several of her teas and in the case of this tea I haven’t yet found a Formosa Oolong that matches up with this one in terms of quality or taste.

It’s baked without tasting burnt and it has a very faint trace of the bark-like flavour of Adagio’s Grapefuit Oolong (sans the grapefruit, obviously). It also gives off gently-wafting fruity notes, particularly as it cools. It’s a very full-bodied, complex tea that’s quite unique and a joy to drink.

I instinctively want to save this tea and use it as sparingly as possible, but I know that doesn’t really work with the limited shelf-life tea has. Sigh.

My favorite English Breakfast tea. Full of flavor and the toasty notes make it feel filling, almost as if you’d had it with a pastry.

So… I finally gave up to the hype surrounding this tea and ordered myself a sample.
I read all the praising tasting notes before trying it and was prepared to face something extraordinary.

I like jasmine teas and am always on the lookout for the perfect jasmine. This isn’t gonna get to the top, that’s for sure. My main gripe is the smell. What I’m looking for is fresh-off-a-bush-jasmine and all I’m getting instead is old-lady-perfume-jasmine. It’s heady, powdery and strong. I can vividly picture an old English lady wearing jasmine perfume and serving this tea to her grandchildren. The lady is so stuck in my mind that I think of her each time I brew this.

I decided to use a gaiwan because I figured since it’s Silver Needle it should stand up to several infusions. And indeed it does. Actually I like the subsequent infusions much better than the first one. The perfume is pretty much gone and now I can enjoy Silver Needle taste with the traces of jasmine flowers.

I’ll continue my experiments with this tea and maybe I’ll find a way to beat the first wave of flavor…

When I heard that this tea was made by taking a white tea and then soaking it in champagne, i was intrigued. I couldn’t wait to try it. It sounded like a sensualist’s treat. I’m very pleased with the experience of smelling and drinking this tea. It feels luxurious.

The dry leaves smell so wonderful that I want to eat the leaves. They have a wonderful grape and light raspberry smell. The leaves themselves are typical white tea leaves but with a bit more green and a little less downy white than some white teas.

The scent of the dry leaves is excellently expressed in the fragrant brew along with a very light musk as one gets in some grape juices. It leaves a very pleasant aftertaste.

As my first Darjeeling, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. The color of the tea threw me off, since it wasn’t as dark as blacks usually are. The taste is nice, definitely different than a “normal” black.

I gotta remember to back off the steep time just a hair with this one. The savory taste of the sesame doesn’t need a super-bold tea taste behind it. It can make it a bit overwhelming.

I usually pick a certain type of tea in the mornings before work. Stout enough that it helps me wake up but gentle enough that it isn’t a mean wake up since my stomach usually wakes up about 2 – 3 hours after I do. Anyway, I wasn’t 100% sure about having this as a morning, take-to-work-in-my-tumbler tea. But I figured what the heck, right? I added a little bit of sugar (1/2 teaspoon for my 12oz) and off I went.

Okay, I haven’t tried this with milk yet but I think I’m going to the next time I decide to start my work day off with this. The savoriness was a bit abrupt for me this morning. It was good and I liked it, but the first few sips were a bit shocking. Not a gentle wake up tea. Of course, I miiiiiiight have made it a wee bit strong (when I’m tired in the morning (aka ALWAYS) I tend to be a bit heavy handed with the leaf weight). But I think in a few hours I could have handled the tea much better. I still had some left when I got to work (unusual for me but again, it took a bit to gear me up for this) and by that time, all of me was fully awake and thought this tea was a fantastic idea.

Taste-wise, still as yummy as my first experience with this. Hello toasted sesame! I’m not craving unadon from it though, but that could be because unadon just isn’t a morning dish. Mmm, unadon. Anyway. The mouth-feel on this puppy is… AMAZING. My fukamushi from last night had less savory mouth-feel that this one (though I blame part of that on my decision to use a metal strainer, not my kyusu with the sasame filter – and how big of a dork does that sentence make me?). Post-tea I’m kind of left with the feeling that I need to brush my teeth. Not so much for the taste because I’m kind of grooving on that but for the mouth-feel-created-fuzz-factor-feeling. It rivals the tooth sweater feeling first thing in the morning. Kind of fantastic that it can be that thick tasting but weird in a black.

Randomly, I think if I were to add yak butter to any tea, I’d want the tea to be like this. The tea is strong enough and bold enough in flavor that I don’t imagine butter – even yak butter (which I equate to having a taste similar to goat cheese because, you know, it’s a YAK) – would be able to overtake the tea. Of course, I don’t imagine ANY tea could overtake yak butter but at least a tea like this would have a fighting chance of not being overpowered and, in my mind, balance out the tea/yak taste experience.

Not that I plan on adding yak butter to any of my teas. But you know, if I had to.

After finding I wasn’t really in the mood for Black or Black Flavored Tea today I sipped on this. I think I will be more into the Greens and Whites today!

Ginger is my favorite spice, and so when I saw this in the shop last night, I had to get it, even though I’m trying to move to loose leaf rather than bagged tea. (And two other boxes came home too, but we’ll not speak of that. )

Once I removed the plastic, I was surprised that the the scent was so.. weak. Once brewed, the spice scent still had less ginger than expected, but was definitely better than just the smell of the tea bags.

Flavor-wise, it’s definitely a cookie flavor, and the tea tastes like a mild gingerbread cookie. The ginger doesn’t have a bite to it, and you can taste a few of the other spices.

I am enjoying this tea, but likely won’t buy another box – I prefer my flavors bold, and this is very mellow. But, it’s good, and if you like spice tea and mild gingerbread cookies, this is good stuff!

RL is still busy like a busy thing, and I’m only now coming up for air. I’ve been gulping down my staples the last couple of days, and this one is definitely in that category.

So school has been using me as a punching bag as of late, but only about a month left to go. I honestly feel bad about not updating here whenever I’ve had a new tea, so I’m taking a quick break to fill in this one gap at least.

That being said, this tea was worth the loss of the nap I was planning on taking. When I first opened the tin (ages ago) I smelt sour and cinnamon, but with something else that adds a bit of sweetness. The smells blend oddy well together and kind of overlap in my mind,but I’m not a fan. The leaves look un-uniform, with some rolled and downy silver and other open and blackish-brown. I did really enjoy the light yellow it brewed to, and in my glass mug I could see the little hairs from the leaves floating around. I tried not to think about that too much when I maned up and took a dainty sip.

The first taste was more spice than I expected. The cucumber aspect was definitly overwhelmed, but when I did isolate it was like woah. I felt a the same sensation when I’m eating cucumbers, sans crunch, that wetter than water feeling. It also tastes pretty much what I’d expect from a cucumber tea, cucumbery goodness, when ignoring the cinnamon.
One the second steep, the cinnamon was cut back and I enjoyed this cup more than the first. One the third steep I lost interest and left it to sit for about 6 hrs.

Does any know why Adagio added the cinnamon aspect? It doesn’t really detract from the tea, or help it, but I can’t figure out why it would be there. I’ve never thought cucumbers and spices. Pickles and spice, yes. But cukes? Not really.

This is a bagged tea that smells strongly of cinnamon and cloves with the sweet shy scent of chocolate peeping around the corner. I used two tea bags which created a rich red-brown broth tasting strongly of vanilla, cloves and cinnamon with a chocolate taste appearing toward the end of each sip. There is also a strange cool-sharp sweetness that I assume is the licorice. I do not get much of the rooibos, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned since I don’t like rooibos. It claims to be cherry vanilla but I don’t sense the cherry at all. Overall it is an ok tea for an evening sip. I will try some of their other blends to see what they’re like as well.

Update: It gets more chocolatey and less spicy as it sits. I think it needs time for the volatiles to evaporate and the chocolate to get a firmer seat.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the tin is how oily the leaves look, like the whole container was dropped in a pot of sesame oil. The smell made me think of Chinese food, or maybe teriyaki. When I started steeping though, the smell reverted back to being just like a bag full of sesame seeds.

I goofed on the steeping time so I’m not sure how long it was, but it’s probably somewhere around four minutes. When I rescued it, the surface of the ‘tea juice’ (ha!) was covered in a distinct sheen of oil. The flavour is very much like what I’d expect toasted sesame to taste like; so Adagio gets points for authenticty. It seems to also work quite well with the tanins in the tea base.

This isn’t a flavour I’m used to tasting in my tea (obviously) so my tongue is sending my brain rather mixed signals and confuzzling the poor dear. I think I’m leaning towards liking it, but not loving it – further testing is required! ;)

Ahh yes! The plot thickens! So in my quest to purchase another container of St. James Tea, I discovered that St. James is just a wholesale distributer that gets their breakfast tea from a tea blender by the name of Keith Spicer Ltd. www.keith-spicer.co.uk I noticed it at the bottom of the St. James Teas web page. After visiting Kieth Spicer Ltd.‘s website I saw that Ashby’s of London is another tea retailer. I’m going to try Ashby’s Breakfast Blend tea to see if it tastes the same as the St. James. When I love a tea, I’m willing to get all Sherlock Holmes with it to keep my cupboards nicely stocked. “Watson, I do believe we are on to something…”

A great start to the morning, this black tea offering from Shang is pretty good and is on the lighter side of the black tea spectrum since it is made using his white tea leaves.

Light and mildly grassy. I can understand those who say that this tastes buttery to them. I’m not talking about a stick of butter here, but it is a little creamy and has depth. Not an everyday tea for me…but then again, I think I’m on a black tea kick right now.

DH loves mango. Like, a lot. Like, he gets it in bulk from Costco. So I’ve met a lot of mangoes. Fortunately, I like them too (not the buy-in-bulk level but still well enough). Anyway, this tea does taste like mango. Not quite like the super-ripe, making-a-little-puddle-of-sticky-syrup-in-the-fridge mango. More like the mostly-ripe-but-a-lighter-yellow-color-and-a-little-fibrous-towards-the-center mango. These types of mangoes are still good mangoes, they just have a slightly different flavor. And that flavor is pretty much exactly how this tea tastes.

Bought this at a TOPS yesterday in Fredonia, NY. They had 4 Revolution Teas for sale. 2 I have tried and then 2 others – could only buy one…not much cash on me…so I sprung for this one! Glad I did. It’s stronger than a Lady Grey but not Bergamotty like the super strong Earl Grey’s. It’s a nice blend of Earl Grey and Lavender. Glad I bought it.

This is another single sourced tea from The Simple Leaf. This one is from Arunchal Pradesh in India, which is high in the mountains north of Assam and west of Bhutan along the Chinese Indian border. One of the nice things about these single sourced teas is that they are kind of an adventure in a cup. I fantasize about the beauty of these mountainous areas as I sip.

This tea has beautiful, large twisted leaves that smell of chocolate and raisins. It brews into a golden red liquor with scents of chocolate, toast, slight note of malt and the sweetness of tea. It has a very light mild flavor with chocolate notes. It is quite good.

Reminiscent of a very high quality Darjeeling, but with stronger tannins. The flavor blooms and expands in your mouth. Woodsy, oak-like scent to the dry leaf and liquor. Light like a Darjeeling or a crisp Chardonnay, but fully flavored with layers of depth in taste and aroman

This tea is yummmy. I was trying to find a bagged version of my favorite dim sum tea so that I could enjoy it at school. Somewhat difficult to find without knowing Chinese characters, but after standing in the tea aisle long enough, I picked up this box and whaddayaknow!

Anyway, this tea is great, not too sweet, not too bitter. I have tried Ten Ren’s chrysanthemum tea and found it way to sweet. Their combination with Pu-erh is spot on!

I’m a huge fan of spearmint so this is a great tea for me. While it doesn’t exactly put me to sleep it’s great when you’re winding down after dinner.

ive never tried a “run of the mill” green tea before this is all i have to go off on. normally im not a green tea drinker, but i enjoy this. i think its the spices in it that make me like it because they do stand out to me. its a very light tea, i prefer mine stronger so maybe next time ill go for a longer steep time. i am enjoying this as i do my chemistry lab report (yuck)
the color is a pale greeny color that i find very pleasing to the eyes and the smell is wonderful, again i think it’s the spices. ive got to say this was a good purchase on my part. hopefully steepster can help me open up to more green teas :)

If you like the flavor of cloves, you should love this tea. I’ve enjoyed it before but I just had a “critical cup”—i.e. one in which I thought about the qualities of the tea instead of just slurping it down. It’s one of the richest rooibos teas I’ve enjoyed. I let it steep for a long time and then drank it slowly. As time passed, the cloves became the dominant aroma and taste. That’s great for me because I’ve always loved clove.
I think that this will become one of those teas that I must have in stock—a destination tea for when I need to be perked up in the evening and caffeine is verboten.