Featured & New Tasting Notes

A happy flowery soft and gentle scent. As most white teas the Select Tips has a light taste and is soft to the palate. Doesn’t taste as clean as a Rishi Silver Needle white tea. A decent tea. Next time I will be getting a different white tea.

The first Coconut Pouchong I tried was from SerendipiTea and LOVED it. When I received this sample from Golden Moon in the mail today I was excited to try it. I am just finishing the steeping process as I type this. Dry leaves smelled nearly identical to those of the other brand I tried…almost pastry or cookie like. Very nice. However, as this steeps it loses a lot of that scent. It changes to a green tea with a hint of coconut scent. First sip was a great enjoyment. 2nd sip…just as pleasant. The scent and taste together remind me of just-rubbed-on Coconut Suntan Lotion smell. It’s very light in color…next to no color, really. The taste is very even and smooth and brothy. It’s not overly coconut and not overly green tea to taste…everything just seems right together!

This tea gives a nice dark orange liquor (see picture and video below). Off the nose, I am getting a musky & bitter citrus aroma (the oolong is semi-fermented). This oolong provides a nice medium bodied tea that has a clean finish, lingering little (simply the woodiness of the oolong), and no briskness. It is not too bitter/astringent on the palate either. I am, like the description states, getting notes of leather and smokiness, complimenting the light woody notes on the leaf. Right off the bat, you get subtle notes of a floral orange that aren’t overwhelming at all. They compliment the oolong nicely. This is a superb blend!

Addendum: photo (http://twitpic.com/q9b0r) and video (http://qik.ly/rHxz)

So, this is a drink from my college’s campus, the Freudian Sip. Whether there’s any actual tea in this stuff, I can’t tell ya for certain, but it tastes good and I always order it.
Very sweet and frothy. There are four cafes total on campus, but the one I go to seems to do it best. There’s not much to say about this one – a simple, extremely sweet pleasure, that makes you feel sick if you drink too much.
In any case, happy birthday to me! This latte is my birthday cake.
I get to go home today! For ten days! So excited.
My friend and i are planning on going out tonight, him with a video camera, and I’m going to ask random girls for sex. Let’s see how that adventure pans out!
In any case, it’s worth a CHAI. (Get it? Like “try”! It’s a pun. Because I’m drinking a chai latte.)

It was after the sweetness on the train ride home, I think. I just needed something now that went KAPOW! at me. (Oh look, punny! I honestly honestly hadn’t even realised until after I wrote it. Honest!) This is the first that came to mind and ARGH! at new Cupboard feature that caused me to put all tins back in the Real Life cupboard instead and organising them so they all fit in the small cupboard. This is not something that involves considerations as to which tins are used more often. It’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle project. Consequently I just spend some five minutes searching for this particular tin in a rather small cupboard.

Ah yes. This is more like it. The sweet note and the smoky note in perfect balance. When I’m done with the tin I’ve got at work, I’m getting me some more of this to drink there. (I wonder how shocked colleagues will be at the smell of this? Hey, I wonder if I can get any of them to taste it! That could be loads of fun. I think only one of them will like it.)

Kapow indeed. :9

I added milk to the tea just to see what it would do (I’m sure I’ve commited some horrible blasphemy by doing so, but whatever). The brew immediately took on an appearance a lot closer to hot chocolate than to tea. But as for the taste it didn’t really do anything for the tea at all, good or bad. Oh well.

Love the new updates BTW. _

I love this tea. Delicate green flavor complimented with coconut and accented with ginger, it’s a very full-mouth flavor (not puckery at all); the ginger keeps the flavor feeling fresh and alive.

One of my favorites, and a morning standard. This tea has a medium robustness to it. Steeped a little longer than 5 minutes and it might just pass for a semi-strong morning tea. It’s a beautiful blend of black teas that taste delightfully classy and refined. Can hold up to medium types of sweet and savory dishes without getting lost in the strong flavors of the food. Can turn bitter if steeped to long, timing is crucial. Although not needed, this tea gets an aesthetic boost when nurtured in a beautiful cup.

Definitely…interesting.

Unfortunately I’m drinking the bagged version, not loose leaf. And I’m thinking that is playing a big factor in the experience. I get a distinct, artificial aroma and flavor from this one. I’m thinking it’s coming from the plastic the tea bag was individually wrapped in, but I can’t be sure.

I’m not really getting any of the jasmine, just a hint of sweetness followed by the classic green vegetal flavor. I’m getting a ting of bitterness, but I think that’s just my feeling towards greens and the fact that my water might have been a little on the hot side. Even with the whole “artificial” aspect of the tea, it’s still somewhat pleasing. I think in some weird way it reminds me of my grandparents or something (try to take that in the least weird way possible). It just kinda makes me think of their house, which, is not necessarily a flavor I want everyday but a nice reminder every now and then.

Beautiful little nest individually wrapped makes for an excellent presentation. Smells like a pu-erh should with very earthy tones. About to try it in just a moment!

I had a decently sized, well thought out comment on this tea. But then I got distracted, ate dinner, did some work, watch a little South Park, and realized I never finished or posted the note. And then we had a system update, so it was lost.
All in all it boiled down to this tea tastes like sesame seeds and it was delicious in that sense. But I’m not a huge fan of sesame, so I won’t drink it often.
Also, the dried leaves smell exactly like soy sauce, and maybe a little bit of peanut butter if you stick your nose in there deep and good. They look super oily too. Very odd.

I love this tea! It brews up a very light color, and can handle multiple steepings. It’s a very light flavor, more lemon than strawberry, and it is my current favorite evening tea.

Since time has dragged by kicking and screaming to my 40th birthday, I decided to console myself by getting 2 teas from Bag Ladies’ on recommendation from Jillian. The package arrived the day before my birthday. I unopened it and pulled out the lovely canister and noticed there was a tea bag tag and string dangling outside the canister. The tea bag contained a quote from Peter Gabriel, my favorite guy. Inside, the other bags were all sealed in a plastic pouch. Nice touch - and, quite possibly, the nearest thing I’ll ever get to getting a B-day greeting from Peter Gabriel.

Anyway, what about the tea? I made myself wait until my birthday to have a cup. It’s Ceylon black tea and is really smooth and flavorful. It’s the kind of flavor that goes all the way down into your toes. Rock on!

Delicate, but with a lovely scent and taste. Probably the nicest rose-flavoured tea I’ve tasted.

This was sitting in my fridge for a couple of days. Oops. Drinking the second steep iced. I can taste more of the purple flower and rose compared to when the tea hot. Might actually be better iced. Not that it does me any good to discover this now as is it discontinued. Boo.

I got my new teas! And this one for some reason has been nagging me to drink it. I used two balls for a decently sized cup, but decided against using my tea ball so I could watch them unfurl. So cool, but then I realized that this is probably why I over steep everything.
This is the darkest liquor I’ve encounter. When I went to scoop out the leaves, after about an inch I lost sight of my spoon. The leaves are long and very a chocolaty brown. When dried the definite smelt like cocoa.

Funny story, I opened my package at the start of my Entomology class out of pure excitement, and let my friends and professor smell the tins. Everyone immediately jumped to chocolate at this one and was highly confused at the artichoke. I do believe I made a few converts, even if their in it just so I bump their grade up. Thus is the power of being the TA with the grade book.

The tea smells bittersweet and a touch cocoa like, but very clearly black. The taste is strong and bold, but smooth. The feel is more coffee-like to me with that (good)acidic/tangy bite. The complexity is fun to mill over, and I feel predominately its earthy with that strange not-quite-sweetness edging in.

Now that its cooled down, I definitely tasting chocolate notes. That aside, it tastes like most black teas and isn’t quite distinctive for me to re-buy, but I will throughly enjoy my sample size.

Great earthy smell. Full-bodied and lots of deep earthy flavors! This is probably the darkest tea I have seen. Looks like a cup of coffee. If placed next to drip coffee I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. A very excellent puerh tea. I would definitely buy this one again.

This was yummy. Added milk and sugar. Really comforting and great as dessert. I was unsure before trying (I’m not a huge caramel fan) but i was pleasantly surprised. Very enjoyable.

Snowbud makes a good cup of white tea with a subtle, yet distinctive taste. It’s a bit grassy and a bit minerally, but very smooth and with just a hint of tea aroma. The color is a barely there yellow, which reinforces the subtlety of the tea in general. If you’re looking for a smooth, mellow tea that’s hard no to like, this is it.

I don’t quite get the “froot loops” smell that others have mentioned—Earl Grey Bravo smells more like that to me. Regardless, this does have a very strong lemon-lime scent. As usual, I expected the tea to be overwhelmed by the flavor, but I found the citrus to balance quite nicely. A tasty tea that makes me feel summery.

I even resteeped for five minutes and it made a good, while noticeably weaker, cup.

Very nice, wine-y, tea. Not too astringent. Best with gong fu preparation.

Steeped for 12 minutes, 3rd steep is as good as the first 2. Going to try to get to 5 steepings.

Well I’m impressed. A balance of earthy pu-erh, mixed with chrysanthemum that adds a not-quite-oily heft. Energizing and relaxing. Pretty awesome.

Every time I find the bottom of a mug of this, I feel disappointed. Must buy larger mugs. Or maybe, just add milk and honey and drink it straight from the pot?