Velvet Garden White Rose

Sipdown no. 95 for the year 2014! It’s looking like I’ll make it to 100 this weekend. Woo hoo!

I am sorry to see this one go, so I’m bumping the rating. Another of my “starter” group, it became the commuting and toodling around tea after the Three Kingdoms Mao Feng, mostly because it was in bags and it was easy to drop into the travel contraptions, but it’s also just a nice, fairly light, tasty-without-calling-attention-to-itself tea.

No. 1 really liked it as well.

It’s one of the few in the starter group I’d consider buying again, along with Refresh and Lotus from Tazo, and Chinese Breakfast Yunnan Black and Monkey King Jasmine Green from Numi.

I really should know better than to try a delicate new tea at my fiancee’s house when he really doesn’t have a good way to warm up water. This is why I normally stay with black teas at his house.

It didn’t taste like much. Just water with a light splash of rose. I don’t want to discount this tea because I think it will taste better if I could brew it right. Next time it pops up in the assortment, I am taking it home and brewing it where I know I can get the water temperature a little lower.

vanilla_bookworm sent me a couple bags of this to try out (thank you so much!!). Even with my stuffy nose (yup, I’m still sniffling), I can still clearly smell the roses. Reminds me of rosewater and my Aunt Della’s vanity…all that fancy old-fashioned jewelry and make-up containers. I haven’t thought of sitting there going through those bits and bobbles for years…if nothing else, I love this tea for that.

The taste isn’t all that different from then smell. Very rosy, and the white tea is still present, though rose is definitely the star of this show.

The only rose teas I’ve had have been rose congou black teas where the rose was more of an accompanim ent rather than the main even. Here, combined with the milder white tea the rose is noticeably more prominent, although it isn’t unpalatable. This tea has a light, delicate, almost girly quality that make me think of a Victorian-style tea party in the middle of a old-fashioned rose garden. Male tea drinkers need not apply. ;)

I could see this making a nice iced tea aswell, something smooth and refreshing to drink on a hot day.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare. Numi recommends cooling the water a bit after boiling — good. It makes me cringe when white and green tea packaging exhorts the use boiling water. Yeesh, way to ruin white and green tea for first-timers. But I digress.

For a white tea, this one gives off a slighlty leathery atringenct scent that I normally expect from a first flush Darjeeling. Or is that part of the rose I’m catching?

The rose is gentle aqnd very soothing. I feel like keeping still within a comfortable chair. The different scents encourage mindfulness and rest, and that is very good.

A four-minute steep gives a pale brass-cloured liquor and a really different rose scent. Not powders and perfumes at all, but instead very classic, even a bit sharp. The astringency reminds me of the Body’s Shop’s Tea Rose perfume oil (which I love but gave up wearing because wasps and bees like it, too; guess which insects I have a phobia of), though the tea for sure does not smell as rosy as that perfume.

Really good. Especialy for a bagged white. I’d love to try this one loose.

I really like samplers. Ya like some, ya don’t like some, but it’s a great way to meet new tea.

Tastes like rose water, the flavor overpowers the tea. I could imagine some Victorian ladies or the women of Downton Abbey sipping this at high tea. Not really my cup of tea. Too perfumy.

I had this tea over the weekend and it was ok, nothing I’d write home about. It does have sweet note that is good, but it was missing the depth, but I guess I am expecting a bit too much from a tea bag. I guess, if I didn’t have anything else to drink, I would drink it again.

Yay! My order from Numi arrived! Perfect timing to have an Easter tea with the ladies of my family on Sunday! I’ve been craving this particular tea since I first tasted it, but none of the stores near me sell it. I ordered it and now I am impatiently waiting for the delicate blush colored tea to finish cooling so that I can take a much awaited sip………mmmmmm perfect! Smooth and refreshing with a floral aftertaste. Almost like biting into a fresh rosebud.

Dun taste rose at all. Do detect a faint rose scent. But all I taste is white tea.. the white tea is q nice & sparkling, btw. Still, disappointed.

I usually associate white teas with being dry and fuzzy for some reason. This white tea wasn’t at all, and really let the roses shine. The white tea was plain enough to really let me enjoy the scent and flavor of the roses. Really nice. I usually avoid white teas above others (black, red, green), but I would probably try other Numi white teas in the future.