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The first sip of this tea surprised me with the strength of the jasmine flavor. As I said before, the Verdant teas I’ve tried have seemed weak to my palate, but this tea tasted like pure jasmine. However, the more I sip from this cup, the weaker it tastes. I can only remember the flavor of jasmine now.
Tried to drink the whole second cup while it was still pipping hot, but the jasmine flavor still faded after the first sip. The cup was left with a sweet, vaguely flowery taste until the end.

Hello again – my inability to afford any tea at all for the past year has kept me from making new tasting notes on Steepster, but I’ve finally to a point where I can have a small tea budget of my very own. My first move was to place an order with Verdant tea, and I was gloriously excited to get the package in the mail, full of autumn-looking brown paper bags and well-typed instructions.

However, I have to say that I’m a bit disappointed with the teas I’ve tried so far. The suggested brewing method (3-4g for 2-3 seconds) yields tea so weak that the phrase ’Lamb’s Water’ (from Life after Life by Kate Atkinson) keeps coming to mind. I don’t necessary need tea so strong I could ‘stand a spoon in it’, but I do like a bit of bitterness, astringency, and other flavors to really hit my palate from the start.

For all of you who are smitten by Verdant – what would you suggest? Should I try a different brewing method, or am I simply a hopelessly unsophisticated tea drinker?

This is another tea I drank without marking its passing. I remember it being very green tasting, very grassy, which are qualities I prize in a sencha. It seems like it would have been a good tea for spring.

Oh Bother, somehow I drank the whole tea without ever logging it – but I can’t remove it from my cupboard without leaving some sort of a record of it. I remember this as being a floral, pleasant oolong. It seemed to be a good daily tea, one that I looked forward to drinking, but the taste never overwhelmed what I was doing enough to incite me to write about it. Sometimes those kinds of teas are good. We all need them in our cupboard.

I bought this because I had a gift certificate to Amazon, and it seemed like the best choice at the time; I drank all of it in a week it because it was so easy to prepare. Although it seems that many have liked the flavor of this tea, I found it comforting but bland. I liked the bitterness of the cut black leaves, and the hints of vanilla and fruit, but didn’t taste much complexity there. Sometimes, however, what counts is cheapness and ease of preparation.

Unfortunately, I opened the container to realize I only had a few leaves left, so tried to make the most of it. I probably should have just brewed a 1/2 or 1/4 cup, but I wanted to make it last and so made a full cup. It turned out sort of watery and flavorless… I remember it being a nice, woody oolong, but that didn’t really come out today.

The loss of the container from my tea cupboard made it seem alarmingly diminished, so I’m relieved that I just placed a small order with Harney and Sons. More on that soon! (hopefully)

For whatever reason, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Pu-erh – but I often wish that some tea or person would come around and change that opinion for me.

This tea tastes nice, but only in the way that you would call a person who has no other defining traits ‘nice’. It does have that classic dirty, woody, pu-erh flavor that I actually do enjoy, but it lacks any sort of bitterness or astringency, which I feel that I need in order to to truly enjoy my cup. Pu-erh connoisseurs would doubtless taste more complexity in this well-rounded tea, so don’t take my rating seriously when deciding whether to purchase.

I know that my life is coming together again (after a cross-country move and starting a new job) because I’ve finally gotten to brew my first cups of tea in my new home. Nothing makes one realize that life is going to be OK like a lovely, bracing cup of oolong. I can see myself sitting here, relaxing, and enjoying many future cups of tea in a way that I haven’t been able to up till now.
Additionally, I have finally gathered up all of my tea things that had been scattered across the country and now have a designated oolong tea pot, which just makes life feel organized and deliberate.

I finally found some more Novel Teas and have been using my nifty new ice-maker to make delicious cups of 1/2 iced tea with 1/2 lemonade. I brew the iced tea in a normal tea cup with 2 bags of tea in about 8 oz water. The tea is strong enough to hold its own against the lemonade and is refreshing enough for the most obstinately hot of summer days.
Unfortunately, I have been in the middle of moving for several weeks now and my tea consumption has been reduced to this or Twinings. I cannot wait to get back to my ‘serious’ tea tasting, and perhaps even order myself some new teas once I finish off some of my remaining ones. I’ll just have to keep that in mind until my kitchen gets sorted out.