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Sipdown! (146)

Ost was kind enough to include a sample of this in the package with my stash sale purchases, thanks dear! I do love me some blueberries. The sample was 2 teaspoons and Della Terra’s website recommended 1 teaspoon for 6 ounces, so I decided to just use the whole thing for my 8 ounce cup. In my experience, Della Terra’s teas need to be overleafed anyway to be strong enough.

This is a perfectly nice flavored tea. It’s mostly pastry and cinnamon to me, with hardly any blueberry. It sort of reminds me of cinnamon rolls with sugar glaze over the top and maybe a couple of blueberries sprinkled over. I don’t think I would order this, it’s a bit too artificial for me. It is quite tasty, but not enough blueberry!

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Yum! It’s been long time since I first tried this one, and I’m not sure where my palate was then, but this is definitely better than an 85 now. I made this a bit strong, with a teaspoon and a half of tea, and it’s quite lovely this way. Nice and malty, there’s a teensy bit of smoke in the background but I actually love the effect it has. Very nicely balanced dark and rich tea! :)

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Thanks so much to MzPriss for sending me a sample of this tea. I have decided that my favorite way to have this tea is to steep it for 3 minutes. It turns into a lovely dense bready/pastry-like delicious thing. It’s right on the cusp of being slightly bitter, but I actually love that about this method. Yums! While this is a lovely tea, it’s not something I would purchase just because of the price. I find it to be very similar to the imperial gold style teas from Yunnan Sourcing, or even the Dian Hong Golden Tip from TeaVivre. And those teas are much, much cheaper than this one.

This is the final tea from Verdant’s blends club for the month of August. This was really the only one out of the three that I was any kind of excited to try… I don’t really have any experience with tieguanyin itself, but at least there’s no licorice or flowers in this one. :P The leaves are a dark brown-green color, and they’re somewhat loosely rolled. The dry scent is mostly roasted oolong, but I do get a little bit of citrus and vanilla. I steeped about a teaspoon and a half for 4 minutes at 190 degrees.

Brewed, the aroma is still mostly roasty and oolongish with maybe a little bit of vanilla? However, the other elements are there in the taste, thank goodness! The oolong itself is very light and sweet, with just enough of a roasty punch. There’s a nice orange flavor, especially near the end of the sip and in the aftertaste. It kind of builds as I continue to drink. The vanilla, well… it’s not there as much as I would like it to be. I can taste a teeny bit. There’s also just the slightest suggestion of spice at the end, I guess it must be coming from the sarsaparilla. I have no idea what birch bark tastes like, so I couldn’t tell you whether or not it’s here. Overall, this is a lovely light and slightly creamy citrusy tea, it kind of reminds me of Fauchon’s Sweet Almond & Orange tea. Thank goodness, I at least liked one tea from this box… glares at Verdant.

This tea sample was provided for free in exchange for review. You can find it here: http://www.teasenz.com/feng-huang-dan-cong-phoenix-oolong-tea#.U-pCB_ldXX8

I have little experience with oxidized oolongs in general, but I always seem drawn to them when browsing. So I decided to choose both this tea and the Da Hong Pao as two of my free samples from teasenz. The leaves of this tea are dark, long, and twisty, similar to some black teas. They smell of autumn leaves with a tart fruitiness and some honey. I brewed about a teaspoon to a teaspoon and a half for 4 minutes.

The brewed tea smells very roasty with a lot of autumn leaf. I can also smell fruit and a bit of honey. I’m not sure if “autumn leaves” is a good descriptor for this flavor, but that’s really what I reminds me of! There’s a definite roasted characteristic to this tea, and it’s quite lovely. The main flavor is definitely that “autumn leaf” taste, though. There is a rather strong stonefruit note, reminding me most of apricots or tart plums, and it’s present throughout the sip. I definitely get some floral as well, although I couldn’t tell you what kind. On their website they list lotus as one of the flavors, so maybe that’s it? It’s not heady at all. The only complaint I have about this tea is the way it leaves my mouth feeling. I wouldn’t quite call it astringent, but it’s almost dusty-feeling? I’m not sure how to describe it. Anyway, a small price to pay for taste! :P

Yay, last tea of the evening here. The bag itself smells strongly of celery salt and garlic, which I didn’t expect. I brewed it for 10 minutes in boiling water, as per the package directions.

Brewed, it smells like broccoli, celery salt, and onion salt. Like a nice vegetable broth! :) The flavor is quite good too. The broccoli is definitely the base of this tea, and the cilantro pops out and says halloo! It has a nice little herbaceous, spicy kick. I can definitely taste the celery and onion salt as well in here, especially near the end. This one would probably be quite good with a bit of salt added, but I’m enjoying it plain right now. A lovely bedtime tea!

Daily Summary: 4 sipdowns, 146 teas remaining in cupboard

Sipdown! (146)

Another lovely Shang tea! The leaves are twisty and dark with a few silver tips. They smell of grain and slightly vegetal. I steeped the whole sample pack for 3 minutes.

This is really rather lovely. It’s sweet and grainy like the other Shang teas I’ve tried, but it has a noticeable vegetal or grassy element. Kind of like a combination of a white tea and a mild green. I’m ashamed to admit that I let half of the cup get stone cold, as I was playing a game. Oopsies? But it’s really delicious this way, which makes me think it would be great iced. It’s quite sweet and creamy and lovely! :D

Sipdown! (147)

Yummy, still love this one. It’s all honey, grains, and raisins! This is the tea that inspired me to try other oxidized oolongs. I probably won’t repurchase this one, at least not right away, just because I’ll most likely be trying other oolongs for a while yet. Thanks again to Green Terrace for the round of free samples! Your teas are quite lovely. :)

This was in the latest batch of free samples from Angel at TeaVivre. Thanks, Angel! I was a little bit confused by this tea, is it a white tea or a sheng? Either way, I figured I’d try it tonight. The dry leaf is in flakes, since it’s been broken off of a cake. The leaves are a darkish brown/green color. The smell is amazingly honeyed with notes of sweet dried fruits and hay or sweet dry grass. There was nothing in the instructions that said how much tea to use, so I just put a few pieces in until it was about a teaspoon and a half or so. Steeped at 200 for 6 minutes.

Yum, the aroma is super strong raw honey! I also get the same sweet dried fruit and hay from the dry scent, along with autumn leaves and tobacco. I can definitely see similarities to sheng here – it has a lighter version of that eucalyptus/menthol taste that I’ve gotten in shengs before. Lovely roasted hay and autumn leaf notes, along with a slight grainy taste. It’s overall quite sweet and honeyed, yum. I’m getting a little bit of the tingly tongue and I can feel this tea’s influence on my heart rate.

Overall, very good and unique for a white tea. I’m not sure I would purchase this, since you have to buy an entire cake. I guess technically I could just buy multiple samples of it. :P

So… Another “vanilla” tea from this month’s Verdant blends club. Now, I am not a lover of floral teas in general, but jasmine is okay sometimes. Looking into the pouch, this tea looks like potpourri – it’s basically a bag full of flower petals with a couple of silver needles thrown in. It smells very strongly of rose… ick. I looked up silver needle steeping instructions because for some reason Verdant’s steeping parameters are always for super short steeps with a lot of tea. Honestly I think I overleafed a bit, but it didn’t seem to have much effect.

Brewed aroma is mostly sweet jasmine, and thank goodness the floral is less intense than the dry scent. The rose is still there, but weaker than the jasmine now. Overall it smells quite sweet, and there’s a little bit of cucumber along with a faint hay aroma. The first thing I taste is the lemongrass, which is a nice surprise. The overall taste is mostly jasmine, however, but it’s not terribly strong. The rose is mostly present as an aftertaste, and honestly I don’t really taste white tea at all.

I have to say, there is absolutely no vanilla flavor at all in this tea! I feel like I’ve been duped… Verdant, you have broken my fragile little heart! This one will go into the rehoming box, there’s no way I’ll drink this with the amount of floral in it. Not going to rate.