Enchanted Forest

Thank you Scheherazade for this sample! While this doesn’t knock my socks off or anything, i must say that this is a pleasantly smooth blend of tea. Most of you know that as a preference, i tend to stay away from greens/whites as they are generally just not as bold and wonderful as my blacks.

Yumchaa appears to do well with making their blends smooth and pulling the tea into the blend so that it isn’t bitter. In terms of the taste on this one though, I’m not getting an overly strong specific rhubard or blackberry taste. Instead it’s a more generic “fruit” sort of taste on a very nice green base.

One of the things I like most about Yumchaa is that the bases vary from tea to tea. I sort of assumed all of their green teas would use the same base, but they obviously don’t. I think they used to say they were all sencha, but they’re just identified as ‘green tea’ now, so I guess they must have changed that at some point. Saying that, though, I think this one actually is sencha, so that was a pretty misplaced perception.

Anyway, the leaves in this one are quite broad and thick, and look like they’ve been rolled. They’re all fairly long, but they’re relatively flat too. The scent is mildly fruity. I’m getting blackberry and rhubarb mostly. There are a lot of peony petals among the leaves, so I was expecting it to be quite floral in fragrance, but it’s not at this point.

Brewed, this one smells gorgeously sweet and fruity. It’s actually reminding me of a rhubarb and custard sweet, which came as a complete surprise. When I saw the thick, dark green leaves I was expecting a strong and bitter green tea taste, and not much else. This has come off surprisingly delicate, though.

The taste is similarly surprising. The green tea isn’t strong or bitter, and, as with Wanderlust, it remains resolutely in the background. What I can taste is fruit. Rhubarb and blueberry, primarily, with a very creamy-tasting finish. I never really expect a lot from green tea. That’s my one inexplicable tea prejudice. This tea is going a long way towards changing that, though, as it’s actually left me pretty speechless. It’s absolutely, geuninely lovely. Sweet, fragrant, fruity, perfect. Anything that can get me to drink green tea with a smile on my face must be some kind of enchanted. Yumchaa are rising quickly in my estimation.

I haven’t had much from Yumchaa but I have been wanting to sip on more and after this one I want to sip even more! This is a nicely flavored green with rhubarb and berry notes without being tarty. It has a great sweetness but also an even-smooth to round it out! The product descriptions says to Drink When: Wearing Thick Socks – well, I’m in luck! That’s just about every day! LOL

If anyone has some Yumchaa assorted teas laying around and would be interested in swapping – let me know via PM :)

Thanks!

I nabbed this from Momo’s teabox when I had it – it had one teaspoon left! The ingredients in this one had so many berries! I thought it would be amazing! I didn’t see any berries in this teaspoon, just something that looked like hibiscus. uh oh. After a long water cool and a 2 1/2 -3 min steep, the flavor isn’t very berry-like but also isn’t very hibiscus-like. It’s a nice buttery green tea mostly, with a tangy flavor that I wouldn’t call astringency but maybe its a hint of rhubarb or hibiscus. I wish there were BERRIES though. I really like the green tea though.. but it’s gone now!

I have been working on finishing teas, and this has been pretty much neglected. And weirdly, despite being in a mood where flavoured green teas are sort of not working for me, this one is much more to my liking than I remembered. Very nice.

so ya, i drank this 5 days ago, and still haven’t made a note.
i drank it the day after too. but couldn’t figure it out. and i don’t trust my judgement because green teas have been weird for me lately.
so i’m gonna save the bit i got from Scheherazade and gleefully try it again when i get my fresh and so clean green tastebuds back. yup.

Well, I finally made it to Yumchaa in Soho today! It’s a really cute place, and a nice place to stop out of the chaos of central London. I was torn between this and a few of the fruity rooiboses (and I’m sure I’ll be back for those soon enough), but in the end I couldn’t help but fall for the impressive array of fruits mentioned in the description. It didn’t quite live up to my expectations—the fruit flavors were neither as strong nor as distinct as I might’ve liked, especially the rhubarb—but the green base was smooth and pleasant and the faint berry flavor that did come through added a hint of something extra. I’m glad I tried this tea, and I wouldn’t be averse to drinking it again—it seems like the sort of blend that might be better iced, anyway—but it wasn’t quite the transformative tea experience I’d hoped for. Still, very much looking forward to trying more from Yumchaa now that I’m in London.

Like cteresa said, Yumchaa doesn’t tend to make actually bad teas, but this one isn’t quite my thing. (ha! Avoided a pun there.) It is, however, that got a bunch of my former colleagues into tea. I took my jar of Enchanted Forest to work because I wasn’t that into it and thought it might work as a work tea (you know, when I have something else to think about other than tea), and I made it for everyone and they were quite wow-ed. Then again, they didn’t have any idea that tea could be awesome. I do enjoy being a tea evangelist…

Anyway, it’s a perfectly fine tea. It smells nice, rather sweet. It tastes like berries. I’m not even sure which ones, since there’s so many in there. I think blueberries or blackberries, maybe? And then I feel like I can tell there’s cream in there, since there’s a kind of smooth quality to it, not sour. I don’t really know what else to say, really. There it is.

Btw, Dammann’s Souffle Fleuri has similar ingredients but tastes rather different and I liked it better. Feel free to mosey over to that review if you’d like :)