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I purchased this in a stash sale, although I’m unsure whose at this point. Oops! I realized recently that I tend to never reach for my chais for some reason, so I’ve decided to make it a point to drink them more. The fact that this one is from Kusmi makes me have high hopes for it. The base is very small black tea leaves, and there are a lot of dried spices mixed in. I can identify cloves and pieces of ginger, along with cardamom and cinnamon bark. There are some dried green leaves that look like broken-up bay leaves to me, which seems odd. The dry scent kind of reminds me of Italian sausage, heh. In a good way though! I did a five-minute steep in about 6 ounces of water and then added sugar and vanilla soy milk.

This is actually a rather delicious chai! I can definitely taste the ginger, but it doesn’t bother me here. The clove, cinnamon, and cardamom are lovely, and I think I can taste a little bit of anise as well. The spices are actually strong enough, which is very good – weakly spiced chai is one of my pet peeves. I would definitely love to try this one with the traditional stovetop chai method, I bet it would be amazing! :)

Sipdown! (140)

Man, it feels good to sip down one of my oldest teas! The two mini-tin sets from Kusmi were some of the first things I ordered when I got back into drinking tea again. Ah, memories! Memories of my baby palate that has since grown into more of an adolescent version.

This tea… Not great, but not bad. I have since discovered that I am generally not the biggest fan of flavored green teas, with maybe a couple exceptions. The strawberry in here is definitely not very authentic, it’s more of a strawberry candy flavor, and a tart one at that. I also get an interesting little hint of mint from this tea for some reason!

Reducing the rating a bit, as I feel I rated this too high originally. :)

Sipdown! (141)

This sample came from KiwiDelight. I’m sorry I took so long to try it, Kiwi! I didn’t mean to! :P I wasn’t a huge fan of the other gyokuro I tried, so I kind of avoided this one. But now that I’m trying to sip a bunch of teas down, all bets are off! The leaves are very dark green and look similar to sencha, maybe a little thinner. Dry scent is spinach and slightly sweet. I did a 2 minute steep at 175 degrees, just because I said so. Lol.

This is actually quite tasty. Gyokuro kind of seems like a more concentrated version of sencha to me. It’s very intense spinach flavor with some sweetness, but there’s something about it that seems almost savory as well. It’s smooth and buttery, and reminds me of pureed butternut squash. Not something I would keep stocked, because I think I prefer sencha, but I’m glad I tried it!

This sample came from Stephanie (thanks dear). I don’t have a lot of experience with Keemuns in general, but this one seemed to get rave reviews and I liked the other tea that I tried from Andrew & Dunham. The leaves are very dark and slender, and they’re formed into little curls. I don’t really get a dry scent from them, but I’ve noticed that seems to be common for some black teas. I did a 3 minute steep at 200 degrees, as per usual for black tea.

The brewed aroma is very malty with some graininess. I can smell a little bit of spice (cinnamon maybe?) along with a touch of fruit. Holy smokes, this is a bready tea! It tastes like delicious whole-wheat bread with honey butter slathered over the top. Yums! There’s a little bit of a raisiny note, but it’s extremely mild and hides in the background. I also get a touch of floral near the end, but it’s not enough to make me like this any less. :P Thanks, Stephanie!

Sipdown! (142)

I’m finding this tea to be much tastier than I gave it credit for the first time I tasted it. It’s probably because I’m overleafing it so I don’t have a weird tiny amount left over. The cucumber is really rather lovely, and I can taste the pear and the apple too. The white tea’s flavor comes in strongly at the end, and it leaves a nice sweet haylike and grainy taste in my mouth. Quite refreshing and delicious!

Bumping it from a 78 to an 83.

I’ve had this sample hanging around for a while, I believe it was from TeaTiff originally. I’ve put off trying it because I’ve found in the past that I don’t really enjoy milk oolongs as much as other people seem to. But then again, I don’t seem to enjoy green oolongs in general, so that makes sense. I figured I’d at least give this one the benefit of the doubt and try it before I just automatically put it into the rehoming box. I was too lazy to look up parameters for steeping this, so I just did 190 degrees (the oolong button on my kettle, lol) for 3 minutes.

And honestly, this isn’t bad. The floral is fairly mellow and it’s quite creamy in texture. Something about it reminds me of buttered popcorn, hah. And the aftertaste is lovely peaches which goes amazingly with the cream. However, I find I just don’t love it. The overall flavor is too light for me, and I find myself wishing for more peaches and more cream. Ah well, I gave it a try! I only have one serving left of this, but I’ll still put it into the box since I’m sure someone will love it much more than me.

Sipdown! (143)

I was around here much yesterday! I wrote that note on Troika in the morning, and then we went to lunch. I had a yummy peanut butter burger (burger with peanut butter, honey, bacon, and tomato jam). Then we came home and took a nap, hah! After that the roommate and his girlfriend were taking up the whole couch so I was at my desktop and I got distracted playing Wildstar. :P Most of the teas I drank yesterday weren’t sipdowns and weren’t new teas anyway so I suppose I wouldn’t have felt the need to write about them regardless. I’m sorry, I didn’t meant to neglect you, Steepster! :P

So, this tea. I used about a teaspoon and a half because I didn’t want to have a random half teaspoon left over. So unfortunately it came out a bit bitter, as some teas do when overleafed. I added a little bit of sugar, which I never do with straight teas, and now it’s better with just the tiniest hint of bitterness near the end. I’m getting some very lovely fruit notes from this tea today, yum! Still probably not something I would purchase, but it’s pretty good. :)

It’s getting harder to get sipdowns just because a lot of the teas I still have are samples from TeaVivre, and you guys know what their sample size is like… So I foresee it becoming harder for me to stick to just the sipdown teas soon. :(

I love revisiting older teas that I haven’t had in a while. It’s amazing how much better my palate has gotten, and it’s especially evident to me with these Russian Blends. Now they taste so different from one another, when before I struggled to discern flavors in them. Yay, progress! I also feel now that they deserve higher ratings than I initially gave, as the flavoring is that lovely French variant that tastes somewhat subtle and natural as opposed to the Della Terra, David’s, etc. variant that I almost can’t stomach anymore.

As much as I’m enjoying this tea, I can’t justify keeping it around when I’m already going to be keeping both St. Petersburg and Prince Vladimir. Two bergamot teas are enough! I think Bouquet of Flowers way have to wiggle its way into the rehoming box, blah floral!

This sample came from Hapatite. She included several sizable samples with my purchases from her stash sale a few weeks ago. The black tea leaves in this blend actually look like they’re higher quality than I generally see in flavored teas. There are also pieces of what I assume is dried plum? Doesn’t say on the website or in the Steepster description, so who knows? Smells sweetly fruity and there’s something nutty too, but that may be scent contamination from another tea. I steeped it for 3 minutes at 200 degrees.

The aroma is mostly black tea with a vague fruity smell. I added some sugar to mine, as I am wont to do with flavored teas. I’m actually pleasantly surprised by this one! I haven’t been loving most flavored teas lately, and some of them even make me feel nauseous… The flavor in this does remind me of a very ripe and sweet plum, and there’s a teensy bit of tartness that makes it seem even more believable. I don’t really have much to say about the base tea besides that it’s mellow and it doesn’t interfere heavily with the flavor. This tea leaves a pleasantly tart fruity aftertaste in the back of my mouth, yums. :D

This sample came from Mandy. I really need to stop requesting so many flavored samples from people, as I tend to not like them so much anymore. This one looks like a shou mei with a few flower petals mixed in. It has that alcoholic flavoring smell to it, meh. I steeped it for 3 minutes although the package recommended 2 minutes.

Meh, this tea is just kind of unremarkable. It doesn’t really taste like toffee to me, closer to caramel, and even then it’s mostly just vaguely sugary. I can definitely taste that it’s artificial flavoring. The white tea itself isn’t great either, it’s quite “rough” tasting for a white tea – it reminds me of autumn leaves.

Overall, meh. This one will go in the rehoming box.