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I’ve been holding onto my Shang white tea samples for a while, and I’m not sure why. I guess I’m just not always in a white tea mood. Well, today I am! There is a ton of tea in this packet and it seems like way too much for one cup, but I’m going to trust the instructions and go for it anyway. The leaves are large and overall, this tea looks similar to bai mudan. Dry scent is lovely sweet hay and oats. I decided to go with a 2 minute steep – I would generally go longer, but I was afraid considering the volume of leaves.

Oh, honey honey! The aroma smell deliciously of honey, which is not something I’ve really found in white teas before. There’s also an interesting sweet and slightly fruity scent that reminds me of juicy sweet grapes or a sweet Moscato. The flavor is classic white tea, but with a little bit of extra. It has the usual hay or straw flavor, along with a nice light graininess that reminds me of oats. The texture is creamy and lovely, it reminds me almost of soy or almond milk. Over everything is that amazing sweet honey that I was smelling in the aroma. I can taste the honey throughout the entire sip, from beginning to end, but it’s not overpowering of the other flavors. There’s a wee little bit of cucumber that pokes its head out near the end, and it adds a nice refreshing element.

Overall, a lovely and delicious white tea with an amazing amount of (unexpected) honey flavor. :)

Wow it’s amazing how much my palate has changed… When I had this tea before, I thought it was super strong and heavy, I even listed smoke. What?

85?! WHAT?!

Now it tastes like lovely grainy deliciousness. No smoke, no earth, just amazing chewy raw grains. And It’s not heavy at all!

I ADDED SUGAR TO THIS?! x.x I plead insanity.

Putting this into the “permanent” cupboard and bumping the rating from 85 to 90…

Another sample from Stephanie! I generally like to jump on any chance I get to try one of the famous French brands (Nina’s, Mariage Freres, Fauchon, etc) because they tend to be a pain in the ass to get ahold of. Although this is not true with Nina’s anymore, since they have a lovely new store website (http://www.ninasteastore.com). Flavored green teas aren’t generally something I ever consider when purchasing tea, just because I usually only drink green tea as a digestive or palate cleanser. But I love pina colada, so I had to try this one! The leaf appears to be sencha. It smells quite sweet and vaguely coconutty.

Brewed aroma is mostly coconut. I added a little bit of sugar (and noticed there was still golden Yunnan fairy dust on my teaspoon, cute!) just because I almost always end up adding it anything with flavored teas. Hmm… I’m finding the flavoring to be fairly light, which I suppose I should expect from French teas. The coconut is very present at the front of the sip, and then I start to get pineapple near the end. The base tea itself tastes grassy and has a slight autumn leaf element.

Overall, quite lovely and light for a coconut tea, and I do enjoy that little hint of pineapple near the end, but I wish there was more pineapple in general!

This is the first of five free samples that I requested from teasenz. If you haven’t received samples from them yet, it’s a great value. No cost to you and the sample sizes are huge! Here’s the link: http://www.teasenz.com/free-tea-samples-with-free-shipping

Anyway, I was looking through my straight black teas this morning for something to try (I recently organized my teas by type, hooray!) and saw this pouch. Now, as anyone who has tried a few Yunnan teas knows, the descriptor “gold” doesn’t generally tell you anything. It can mean any amount of golden tips, from the very few to the many. I must say, I was shocked when I opened this pouch! When teasenz says “gold”, they mean it! This tea is a fuzzbud™ variety, meaning it consists purely of giant, fuzzy golden buds. I was expecting at most a large amount of buds mixed with leaves, so this was a very pleasant surprise! The inside of the pouch is covered with lovely golden Yunnan fairy dust. Dry scent is sweet and honeyed with stonefruit and light malt notes. I didn’t look up the recommended parameters, but did my usual straight black tea method of 3 minutes at 200 degrees.

The brewed aroma has surprisingly strong cocoa notes! And then there’s also the expected honey, malt, and stonefruit loveliness. This tea is rather simple, but delicious. It’s a lovely melange of creamy and grainy flavors. There’s nice crusty toasted bread along with light and airy puff pastry flavor. Then I also taste a bit of raw grains, along with hot baked sweet potato. I also get a sweet hay-like note near the end and into the aftertaste. Of course, there’s honey over the top of everything, and the whole result is quite creamy and delicious. I wish there was a little bit of that nice stonefruit flavor in here, but this tea is very tasty even without it.

Overall, this tea is quite light and a lovely mix of grainy, creamy flavors!

(I don’t generally add links to the product, but it was mentioned on the free sample page so I figured I should comply since they sent me such lovely samples. I hope this is okay/allowed!)
http://www.teasenz.com/yunnan-gold-tea#.U-ZwU_ldXX8

This sample came from the generous and lovely Stephanie. Must try all of the Butiki teas! Especially the straight blacks. :D This looks similar to the Taiwanese Assams I have from Butiki, it has those “creepy tree branch” leaves. I wondered how this differs from other similar-looking teas, so I looked at the website. Apparently this tea is a cross between Assam and Keemun, which is very cool. I don’t really get any smell from the dry leaves. I noticed that the website recommends 2 teaspoons per 8 oz, so I “underwatered” a bit for my sample, as it looked to be about a teaspoon.

The brewed tea smells lovely – apricots, dark dried fruits, and honey. My first though after tasting this was… yum! Lol. This may be the fruitiest black tea I’ve had yet. Very strong apricot and plum flavor with a generous amount of honey over the top. There’s a little wisp of floral near the end of the sip, which I have found in a couple of Keemun teas before. At first, I didn’t think I was finding a lot of Assam in here, as I’ve found more fruitiness in Keemuns I’ve tried. However, as the tea started to cool a bit, I started to taste that amazing pastry-like waffle flavor that I found in the Taiwanese Wild Mountain Black yesterday. Oh, hello Assam! So I would recommend trying this tea warm for a different flavor profile. :D

After trying the Carrot Curry savory tea, I was excited to get ahold of the others. Luckily, my sweetheart was making an Amazon order a couple of days ago, so I added the variety box to it. I’m not sure why I chose this one to try tonight, it just sounded so interesting and I figured it would be somewhat sweet considering it contains beets. The dry bag smelled strongly of cabbage and savory spices.

Whew, the brewed tea smells like cabbage soup! Luckily, I don’t mind cabbage, though it’s not my favorite. The flavor of this tea is much more subtle than the aroma, in fact, it’s almost too subtle. The main taste is boiled cabbage, and there’s a sweetness from the beets. The spicing is very mild, though I do get warmth from the clove near the end of the sip. I can definitely taste the parsley, and it adds a nice fresh flavor. Overall, I do enjoy the flavor, but I wish there was more of it. Perhaps next time I’ll steep this with less water and see if that improves the strength. I find that I really enjoy these savory vegetable teas as a caffeine-free nighttime option.

In other news, this is my 300th tasting note. Huzzah!

So… I figured I would give this a try, even though I’m not a fan of ginger. I figured, why not, what if it’s really good and you never try it? So I tried it.

NOOP. Pure ginger tea, ick. Not going to rate it. Into the rehoming box it goes.

Ugh, I just noticed that this wasn’t in my cupboard. I hate it when that happens! XD Anyway, I bought this at Teavana when I was visiting my mother. I’m glad I went in, because I got a couple of cute tins for half price, but I’m not sure what possessed me to actually buy tea! I plead insanity. Anyway, this is one chunky blend! Big pieces of apple and coconut and giant hunks of what I assume to be cinnamon bark? It smells very caramelly sweet with some nuttiness. I used a whole tablespoon for my 8 ounce cup because I knew it would be weak otherwise, and I steeped for 5 minutes.

This is actually surprisingly good! I noticed little pieces of dark red stuff, and I was afraid it was hibiscus, but it’s definitely not. Apparently it’s beetroot, I guess to make the tea dark pink for no reason? Whatever. The flavor is pretty good here. Lots of sweet apple with a perfectly charming amount of cinnamon, and a creamy nuttiness. I actually taste a lot of coconut, and it tastes like real coconut instead of sun tan lotion. I was surprised by this considering coconut isn’t mentioned in the name. There’s a little bit of tartness here, I assume from the apples, but it adds a nice dimension.

Overall, a perfectly nice little nighttime tea. Sweet and somewhat fruity, kind of like a very mildly spiced apple cider with coconut in it. Teavana has exceeded my extremely low expectations, color me surprised!

So I was unsure about this tea, since I hadn’t had it since my order, which was a few weeks ago. I left it outside the cupboard with the rest of the “sip down” teas, planning to give it another try and see how I feel about it. So tonight I made a cup with a little bit less water than usual and added sugar and soy milk.

And it’s super yum, and a pretty mild amount of smoke. Totally going in the cupboard with the rest of the keepers! :) I think I would like to try this tea without the smoke and see how it comes out.

Sipdown! (155)

This really is a lovely tea. A very nice combination of white and black tea elements, with a nice chewy grain element. This cup is on the cusp of being bitter, I think maybe it was a little overleafed but I just used the whole sample packet. I would consider stocking this one on a permanent basis, but I think I like the Bai Lin just a little bit better, and they’re a bit too similar to have both. :P