Featured & New Tasting Notes

One of Stash’s most memorable black teas, but you have to be in the mood for it. It seems better as an afternoon or dessert tea than a morning or “I gotta get going now” tea.

It’s an addiction, buying tea, is. I can quit any time! wild eyes
I have my prejudices and snobby opinions about the sort of tea you buy at the supermarket. The cheap mass produced teabags containing second grade tea at best. It’s very rare that I actually get some, but every once in a while I find myself in front of that shelf in the supermarket just to see if there’s anything new. A flavour or a combination there of that I haven’t seen before and I suppose it’s an okay way of checking if it’s worth trying it out at a better quality. I don’t know where in the world this brand is available, but it and Lipton are probably the biggest supermarket brands here in Denmark, and not one I’m usually all that impressed by but good enough in a tight spot. My main peeve with them is that if you read the brewing instructions on the box they insist on boiling water regardless of the type of tea. I don’t care what they say, I absolutely refuse to pour boiling water on green or white, the end.

Anyway, they had this sampler box of whites. And curiosity overwhelmed me. How much of a mess have they managed to make out of the delicate, valuable white tea? I figure if it’s awful, it’ll be good enough for the travel mug in the morning (and easier to prepare in a hurry) than my more expensive but better quality whites and greens.

It smells heavily perfumed and a lot like jasmine actually, which prompts me to see if there is a jasmine variety in the box. Guess what, there is.
Dear teabag producers. Jasmine scented tea is NOT a good choice to put in a sampler box, as it will turn everything in the box into a jasmine scented tea. -Me.
I can find the smell of grapes and pear, but it seems sort of synthetic.

I can pick up the pear in the flavour and it tastes natural. I can’t really find the grapes and the tea on which it was based does taste white, but also very bland and dull. I should like to know exactly which white tea this is supposed to be. It doesn’t help that these bags are not packed individually in an air tight way so it has picked up some of the jasmine from that other one in the box. I expect the variation with jasmine and orange blossoms will work a lot better than this one.

I have to say that it’s possible that I feel about pear the way I do about peach. I love the fruit, but I don’t much care for them in tea. Still, the tea as a whole totally lived up to my expectations.

ETA: I just added this tea and rated it 41, but on the tea’s profile it says 61. How does that work?

I ordered this tea at a local tea house—how could I not select a tea named after one of the world’s finest cities?

The aroma of chocolate is keenly sweet and the hints of hazelnut provide a dignity that does not take away from the chocolate but rather adds a grace note. It makes the tea less of a dessert tea and more of a scholarly treatise on good blends.

I drank almost the entire cup with great pleasure; at the end I experimented with a tad of sugar and milk and they seemed to obscure and not bring out the flavor. I won’t add milk again. And the sugar is not at all necessary.

Overall, I’m impressed and plan to purchase this in one of the handsome Harney & Sons tins.

This is one of my favorite “easy” teas. I always keep it on hand. It’s a great tea for a cold or sore throat. It has an amazing sweet flavor and I only add a little bit of sugar, but it almost doesn’t need any.

So recently discovered that a friend of mine is a tea fan, and she gave me a two bags of this and a bit of unidentified loose green as a way to cheer me up. My pet rabbit was recently discovered by the dorm RAs, and was promptly kicked out, which makes me terrible upset BUT she will take care of him for me till summer. So all is well once again! And now with added tea.

So this is one of first hot oolongs that I’ve had in sometime and it was as delicious as I remember them being. The tartness of the pomegranate melted into the light taste of the oolong. I really like how delicate and light the tea was overall. Downside, kind of bitter and doesn’t re-steep very well. Very pleasant, but may not something I buy with my own money.

Delightful aroma, both dry in the tin and brewed in the cup. Classic earl gray with pleasing berry overtones.

One must be extremely careful not to steep this too long. It can’t handle a typical 5-minute black tea steeping, despite being mostly Earl Grey. I typically do 3 minutes, and even going to 3:30 I notice some bitterness creeping in.

But when you do it just right, it’s a wonderful cup, and the only Earl Grey blend I’ve ever found that doesn’t ruin the Earl Grey-ness of its base tea.

Prepared in Adagio IngenuiTEA teapot.

I received this in a tea swap today. First time I I have tried this tea AND this company! Thanks Karen!!! This is full of spices! I’m steeping now. Some of the spices are floating to the top of the steeper/holder. I see a chunk of ginger switch kind of frightens me. Oh well, I’m game! The color is a true brown. Not much else to say about the color. I have to sample a sip more than once to make up my mind. I did use a little less of the blend because of the scent I thought it would be too overpowering. BUT I really don’t think it is. It blends well. I think it might be the hint of peppermint to offset the other spices. I never add anything to my teas…no milk/sugar…nothing so all my reviews are based on the true taste and this is a nice middle road for a chai. If you have had bad experiences with chai before give this a try if you are looking for something way over the top and spicy this may not have enough kick for you…but if you add milk or other things to it it just might work regardless…depends. It’s not bad…I like it.

My boyfriend brought me a tremendous amount of Chinese teas in teabags to sample. Ten Ren’s Pouchong was one of them. I’m a relatively new tea drinker, without much experience in any particular tea, but I’m aware that pouchong falls somewhere between the greens and the oolongs.

This tea has an almost floral fragrance on the nose. The tea itself steeps to a goldenrod/yellow color. The flavor? Very mild. It goes down smooth, with a slight, green, vegetal flavor at the beginning, that develops into something richer (I assume this is the oolong flavor, although since I’ve never really had an oolong tea, I can’t be entirely sure). My cup was gone in 10 minutes. I do think the tea got a bit astringent towards the bottom of the cup (some dust managed to escape the bag and congregated at the bottom of my cup), but the entire experience was mild, pleasant, and delicious!

Eyes the level in the tin Damn we’re drinking this tea at an alarming rate, I guess it’s the tea’s own fault for being so incredibly delicious. ;)

I’ve prepared this the last two mornings – short on sleep and not ready to face the day. This tea has a strong dark color, and a smooth, malty, smoky taste that makes it easier to face the day. I usually want my morning cup to be brighter and more cheery, but this is a good tea to relax with.

And I still think watching the tea balls unfold is great entertainment. Or, at least, as much entertainment as I am up for this morning.

I cannot say that I hate chamomile tea, but my past experiences have been limited. I’ve had chamomiles that tasted like hot water with a faint spritz of hay seed. Back when I was in college there was the dreaded proffering of Celestial Seasonings Chamomile by those who took their earthy, hippy status seriously. Fortunately, tea has come a long way since then.

Mighty Leaf has me jonesing for more.

I just got a variety pack of Might Leaf tea-bags and decided to accompany “The Amazing Race” with a nice soothing tea. I decided, quite staunchly, that I was going to get the chamomile out of the way—the way I occasionally make myself do an unpleasant chore first thing in the day and spend the next 6 months using this one burst of virtue to justify my inherent sloth.

First I had to admire the tea bag. I imagined an artisan lovingly crocheting the string with a tiny crochet hook. As the tea brewed, citrus emerged. The typical old hayseed odor never appeared.

I was starting to get alert and to pay attention to this tea. I had regarded it as a chore to be endured and I now felt that I had arrived at the “sens de la visite” as French signs point out tourist attractions.

Mighty Leaf has concocted an impressive mélange of flavors to support whatever the essence of chamomile is. I still remain uncertain what was the chamomile–maybe the supporting cast is the star here. The citrus is strong, vibrant, but not a bit brash.

I made an immediate note to promote this Chamomile Citrus to full-time status at my house and to adopt it as a favorite evening child. I know that I really like this tea because I’m already slightly nervous that I only have one tea-bag left and the stores do not open for another 7 hours. I’m a convert!

Oversteeped on purpose. Still LOVE it. YUM! Getting a little low on this…hum…

I’ve officially run out of this Lichee tea. This time around, I did not add any milk or sugar. It tastes just fine, but if I had oversteeped it, I would have considered adding it. Dry, there is a vague hint of lichee. I smell mostly the black tea, which is how I like flavored teas to smell like. After steeping, it smells rich, and the lichee is very faint. The color is of very dark honey. When I swish the tea in my mouth, I can appreciate the lichee flavor, which is nice. It tastes a little bitter, which in my opinion, it doesn’t ruin the experience. The aftertaste is pleasant but left my mouth a little dry. I suppose that happens with some black teas I’ve had. Overall, I like this tea. I wouldn’t buy it again, but it was worth trying for sure.

I like this version of Pi Lo Chun. It’s not the fancy highest AAA grade but costs not even the half of it and tastes very good.
The fragrance of the dry leaves is very intensive flovery and fruity. The leaves look very good for a medium quality tea. Very even, quite small (if the leaves of the pi lo chun are big it means the quality is not very good) a nice green in color with lots of white “hair” (old guy :)).
I always love the first infusion – it has the best mixture of fuit, flover and lightly pan fried green tea. The liquor is full and quite creamy. If you keep the steep time under one minute it shouldn’t be bitter ( i move between 45-50 seconds).
Now we have good quality for a good price…what else? It can take quite many infusions..like 5-6. Also you can get more flavour by prepearing this tea using the gong fu cha method. I like the classic preparation too – it’s easy and good for all-day-long-drinking. Just pre-heat the tea pot, put like 5mm layer of tea leaves on the bottom and steep with something like 80-85C water. This works out for most the pi lo chun’s i’ve had.
I’ll continue to buy type regullary. Unfortunately teatrade.sk only ships to Slovakia and i dunno what’s the source or the name of the chinese producer :<

Say, isn’t it ‘passion fruit’ in two words? Anyway, I’ve been awake for hours and hours and we’re moving rather quickly towards noon actually. And I haven’t had a drop yet. Not because I didn’t want any, I just didn’t know what to pick. And then in a convoluted sort of thought patterns that I couldn’t trace even if I wanted to, one Arnold J. Rimmer makes the choice for me when the following quote popped into my head. “You are the fruit of their forbidden passion. You’re forbidden passion fruit.” (Red Dwarf S3E6 The Last Day) And I thought, hey why not? (Again with the setting, self! What gives???)

Smells sweet and kind of floral and with a note of something that kind of reminds me of yoghurt, strangely enough. It has a sort of dusty taste to me that makes me wonder if it’s fading and at the same time it tastes more ‘real’ than your average cheap flavoured bags. I think it’s the lack of syntheticness that does it.

Unfortunately I accidentally oversteeped it a little bit and the fruity flavours have drowned somewhat. The tea as such hasn’t turned unpleasant at all, it’s just not really all that sweet and fruity anymore. However, a smidgen of cane sugar, and we are back in business. Very nice.

I have been looking for a bagged tea like this. For whatever reason, green tea and pomegranate is delightful, though I can’t say it tastes strongly of either, so the blend is pretty decent. Unlike a lot of flavored teas, there’s very little indication of some cheap, chemical flavoring. Keep some sugar handy.

Not too bitter, not too sweet; don’t steep it too long, or I fear the green tea will hiss at you from your teacup (am I the only one that uses teacups anymore?!). If you must use just-boiled water (as I do), steep it for a shorter period than you’d expect. The tea should turn a lovely russet-purple (pomegranate!) color. Perfect for fall, and I bet it’s delicious iced!

Not even a tea, more like candy. Really really good.

First, even though this is listed as an oolong, it is actually a black tea. Secondly, I think that Shang sells some of the finest tea in the world, including this tea.

This is the tea you want when a hurricane is bearing down on your dwelling – sweet, light and soothing.

I don’t detect a lot of pear flavor, but I suspect that is what is adding the sweetness.

The package recommendation for steeping was 2-3 minutes. My first try on this was 4 minutes. The color was a little stronger than other white teas I’ve tried, which may be due to the longer steep.

Overnight Fridge Tea at it’s best!!!

My Overnight Coca Tea technique is what I use for Maté. In Seattle there isn’t much sun, outside of the summer, to make sun porch tea, so I came up with a overnight fridge tech.

Just fill a Gallon or more jug with cold water, immerse stainless steel ball with 4 (four) Tablespoons of Maté, (used two roasted, two raw), place in fridge and try to sleep with the anticipation of tomorrow mornings brew.

This process also is amazing with coffee.

~paganbuddha

I’m slamming a pitcher of iced blueberry at the moment and it is so good and refreshing! Its obligatory at this point to pound a lot of white tea so I can get over this H1N1 virus more quickly. Yes, I got the swine flu …but I have hope this white tea and all of its wonderful antioxidants will help with the longevity and reduce the symptoms. I’ll let you know!

My first try of this kind of tea, they say you either hate it or love it. I love it. The smoky flavor mellows when you brew it. It stays with you after you drink it, the aroma sticking around in you nose. Very smooth finish, which from what I’ve read makes a difference in these teas. If you smoke cigars, you will probably love this tea.

This is such a good oolong. Really, it’s just Mmmm. I want all my oolongs like this. Simple, smooth, mellow, rich. Sooo good AND it holds up to multiple steeps very well. I believe one can only drink this tea hot…to ice it would cheapen it. (But it would probably still be delicious.) I’m raising my initial rating. Damn good.

The initial smell is peachy and the taste is peachy but not as sweet as the smell. Pretty smooth. A little smoky from the oolong, I think. I think the white peach only comes out in the aftertaste – it seems sweeter/fruitier than the peach oolong on its own has when I’ve had it before. The sweeter white seems to balance the smokier, dark flavor and it’s all wrapped up in a peachy bow. All in all, a pretty good peach tea.