Ah! The RiverTea website is now officially up, and once again I’m just so humbled that I had the chance to try some of these teas out before anyone else could. I’ve been slowly working my way through the teas I recieved – doing one every day I’ve had off since I know I have time to fully appreciate them this way.
I’ve been looking through their website for the last hour or so, and while there are a few blends that I think I would be very excited to try, for the most part I am so happy with what they sent me. I think they did a great job of picking out the teas that would best suit my taste interests!
Also, the site just looks amazing! Everything is really well organized, and I’m finding it easy to navigate. Plus, they’re offering free shipping internationally on orders over $50 and everything so far seems relatively affordable and not overpriced. So, I’m thinking everyone should check them out! So far, I’ve been very happy with everything I’ve tried and based on the reviews from everyone else who won their contest, it doesn’t seem like anyone has had any real “misses” with the teas they’ve tried. Also, I just put together a “mock” order of what I would get, and the shipping price doesn’t look too shabby either!
(They have an apricot chai tea just like Tea Desire, so I’m heavily tempted to order that as a comparison – among others that I want to try out)
Anyway, this tea definitely has my favourite name out of what I was sent to try out – and I’m just dying to know the story behind it! I already checked out the product descriptions for the other teas they’ve sent me, and it was neat because I now get why, for example, “Pret a Portea” is called “Pret a Portea”. It’s interesting learning the story behind things… So, RiverTea if you’re hovering around reading this, you should tell me why this blend is called Boatsman, because I’m just not making the connection on my own…
Following the RiverTea steeping guide, this one should be 1 tsp./cup, though I’ve been using a 10 oz. mug all day so I’m going with 1 1/2 tsp. instead. Another thing is that this blend has huge pieces of things in it (which reminds me of Tea Desire – who happen to have their tea blended in Germany and then imported to Canada, so maybe huge chunks of things is a German thing?) so getting “one of everything” into my measurement is proving to be hard – and that’s how I often try to do things my first time having something: make sure I get one of everything so that I’m tasting the intended flavour.
Seriously, take a look at RiverTea’s display image of it:
http://www.rivertea.com/boatsman-mango-vanilla-black-tea
I don’t think the crappy cell phone picture I took of it is doing it justice, because when you see those large hunks of mango or mother fucking giant ass cinnamon sticks on the plate thingy there, THAT IS THE ACTUAL FUCKING SIZE OF THE CINNAMON STICKS AND MANGO CHUNKS! Like – those cinnamon sticks alone are 1 tsp. worth of “stuff”. If I was to try to do one of everything, there’d be no actual tea leaf in my brew basket and this had might as well be a tisane…
So, 1 1/2 tsp. of leaf, no cinnamon sticks this time. Although I did get a large cranberry chunk, and chamomile blossom, and a small mango chunk into the mix. This was steeped for 3 min. and 30 seconds, boiling water.
Dry, the smell is very fruity mango with lots of creamy vanilla and subtler hints of chamomile, cranberry, and cinnamon. Steeping, the mango and vanilla are much more pronounced, with some more of the cranberry coming through as well as very mild notes of everything else but the banana. Just like in the dry smell, the banana is getting lost somewhere in translation for me. I’m wondering is that’s because I just had a heavily banana flavoured fruit blend, despite my drinking some plain water and allowing what I felt was more than adequate time to cleanse my pallet.
Hmm… Maybe now would be a good time to state that (while I appreciate it’s affect as a very relaxing and calming herb), I am not the biggest fan of chamomile – although it’s nothing I go out of my way to avoid, and I’ve never had a truly horrid chamomile tea either. I just have never had one that blew my mind or had it be something I was strongly craving. There’s actually very minimal chamomile tea in my stash (only blend that comes to mind is Bravissimo, which has a good deal of chamomile in it).
Anyway, I’m getting some really good juicy mango notes from the tea, accompanied with mild cranberry notes that I think are only serving to bring out the juiciness of the mango through contrasting tartness (hopefully that makes sense). The cinnamon, chamomile, and vanilla all feel like they’re “bunching together” separately to me. I don’t even know if that makes any sense…
You experience the mango/cranberry/and maybe the vanilla together and then you have to pause, take another sip and in that moment experience the cinnamon/chamomile/vanilla. It’s good, but it’s not totally meshed together and perfectly synchronized. The black tea base is sort of a middle note that comes through in each “set” of tastes as a side component (a very tasty one).
In the aftertaste, you sort of get mango/vanilla/cinnamon and that feel like the strongest point of intersection flavor wise. Again, the banana feels lost in comparison to me. I think the way I’m wording this maybe sounds (contrived, but also) negative – but I’m actually enjoying the cup very much and I do think that I would order again (although technically I didn’t order in the first place…) just based on this cup alone. I’m interested to see just how strong the cinnamon would be if you were actually using one of the massive cinnamon sticks as part of your leaf…
So yeah… Maybe this tasting note jumped around a bit, but definitely check out the RiverTea website because they’ve got some cool looking stuff and seem pretty affordable and I’ve only had good experiences so far (Also, free samples with each order and stuff)!
Sounds great!