La Poire (Pear)

I’ve been ridiculously busy – lousy timing, since I have samples from the ever-amazing Ysaurella that I want to try and write elaborate tasting notes for, but, alas, no such luck.

Okay, so looking back at the previous notes for this, I’ve really fiddled about with the rating. And it’s seemingly a never-ending story, because I’m going to nudge it back up to 90. I love this tea, and until I find a better pear tea (if ever) I want to keep it around.

The leaf is beautiful, the tea itself is fresh and clean and natural-tasting, and I enjoy it very much.

So much, in fact, that this tasting note will have to cover the four cups I’ve had over the course of the past two days.

This one was hiding from me, too!

I’m not sure why but Pear teas are tricky lil buggers! I find most of them aren’t great. Either they are ‘nothing like pear’ and/or artificial tasting and/or OVER DONE.

This one, however, smells adorable! Let’s see if it tastes good, too!

It IS pretty good! It’s not OVERLY Pear but it seems to be more TRUE tasting so that is appreciated! It has a floral-pear combo going on. The green tea base is top-notch! It’s also kind of brothy.

This is good hot and looking forward to it cold/iced :)

I realized that I have cold-brewed this twice without actually giving it a chance hot. Damn, we could have had so much fun together! I could have used my French teacups with the birds on them, and ate Madeleines and croissants… (I think that would be considered cannibalism for me, but damn that would make for a hell of an afternoon!)
All that aside, I really quite enjoyed the cold brews that I made! This blend and another one that came in my February Amoda box reminded me of how much I used to love all things pear. I think I even had my mother specially order a whole bag of just pear Jelly Belly’s for my birthday one year. Of course I ate the whole bag in one sitting and promptly threw it all up on a dog, but that is a story for another tasting note!
The green that Palais des Thes uses is nice and light and slightly grassy, not clashing with the pear flavoring that they use. idk if this is a blend that I would purchase, simply because they don’t sell it in reasonable sizes for tea addicts like me. Ah well, the tin looks cute!
Thanks Roswell Strange for the ample sample!

Sipdow (102)!

Man, I’m making no sipdown progress because once I finish one tea another manages to get added to my cupboard (by my hand or otherwise). Blah.

Thanks Cameron B. for the sample! I’m excited to try just about anything with pear, so definitely excited about this one. It smelled so vibrant and juicy too. I decided to cold brew my sample, and then I ended up drinking it late last night after getting home from tea with Robyn (and some unplanned shopping for myself at the comic stores; got a couple BTVS comics). It definitely did taste fresh and juicy like expected. Basically, to summarize, it was just like Bartlett Pear puree. Mmmm! And the vegetal base was so very in check too.

Definitely, definitely impressed by this one – and would totally drink again. Might restock, if I could get a hold of it in a smaller quantity (like, 1 oz.)…

This is one of the teas from my Palais des Thés samplers from MyHabit. Visually, it’s very pretty – there are thin, twisted green leaves mixed with lots of yellow flower petals and a few pieces of dried pear. Unfortunately mine seems to have been contaminated from being packaged next to the Glacial Mint… There’s a distinct and strong peppermint smell that’s mostly covering the sweet pear. This makes me somewhat angry, since it’s the company’s fault and not mine, and they’re in metal tins but there was somehow still contamination… I can only hope this doesn’t extend to the taste. I steeped a heaping teaspoon of leaf for 3 minutes at 175 degrees.

Well… The tea liquid itself doesn’t really smell minty, it smells like sweet pears. Ugh. The taste is rather weak for some reason, even though I slightly overleafed. Unfortunately, I can taste a bit of peppermint, and it’s definitely distracting. The pear flavor seems to be fairly nice and authentic. The base get slightly bitter near the end of the sip and it’s also slightly astringent.

I guess I shouldn’t rate this since clearly my sample is not representative of the tea as a whole… :(