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I’m not sure why I still have a few Butiki teas that I haven’t tried yet, even though I bought them in July. This one is tightly rolled with a surprising amount of stems attached. The color ranges from caramel to dark chocolate, and it pretty much just smells like roasty oolong. I steeped mine for 4 minutes at 185 degrees.

Once the tea is brewed, it still has a fairly strong roasty aroma. It also smells creamy and nutty, with a little bit of fruitiness. This is probably my favorite of the roasted oolongs I’ve tried so far, although I’m not sure the genre is for me. The main flavor is roasty with nutty and sweet undertones. I taste a little bit of fruitiness that reminds me of apples, and there’s a lovely lingering sweet aftertaste, not quite honey but nectar perhaps? Overall, quite tasty. :)

Here we go, the last tea from this month’s Blends Club. I don’t have any experience with raspberry leaf, so I have no concept of what this might taste like. I will say that this is the most annoying tea ever to measure… It’s big fluffy raspberry leaf mixed with tiny pieces of citrus peel and rooibos, so you have to stir it ten times to give it anywhere near combined, and even then the rooibos immediately plummets to the bottom, taking most of the citrus peel with it. Ugh. I had to empty my pouch into a tin to be able to leaf this properly and make sure I got some of everything. Not off to a good start! The dry leaf smells vaguely sweet and musty, I guess from the raspberry leaf? I steeped about two teaspoons for 5 minutes in boiling water.

Once the tea is steeped, I can definitely smell the rooibos along with that odd musty somewhat raw herbal/grassy scent. The taste is pretty meh, I guess I’m not a fan of raspberry leaf. It’s very musty and dry in the mouth, but the aftertaste is nice enough. I guess I could draw some connections to chamomile…? But in a weird raw herb way. Not for me!

So… this tea. This is definitely the one I’m least excited about. It’s a shame because I’ve tried the base tea plain and really enjoyed it, but when I open the pouch I can see (and smell) a ton of lavender… :( Now, lavender’s not as bad as a lot of other florals in my opinion (*cough*rose*cough*), in fact there’s something about it that reminds me of citrus. But lavender is all I can smell here, and that’s never good… Visually, this tea is a mix of wiry green tea leaves, lavender buds, coriander, juniper berries, and some other small chunks of herbal-y things. I brewed mine for 3 minutes at 175.

Hmm, yeah, I pretty much just smell lavender in the brewed tea as well, with a little bit of coriander mixed in. Ooh, and it tastes like almost pure lavender as well. I can’t even tell that there’s green tea in this blend, which is rather sad to me. Lavender tea! :(

Not rating as I feel somewhat biased… Although clearly this is a very heavy-handed blend, and that speaks to me of poor blending.

This tea is the start of what I have decided to be a day of trying several yet untried teas. I mostly want to do this because I’d like to get my list of rehoming teas up soon so they won’t be sitting on my counter, and I don’t have that many teas that I haven’t tried yet. But I have yet to break into any of the Blends Club teas, so away we go! This tea is the one that smells the best to me, so it’s going first. The oolong pellets here are very loosely rolled, and it gives the appearance that they’re not rolled at all, but are a bunch of very tiny leaves. I was very confused when I first opened the packet and saw them, lol… There are lots of little (and some big) chunks of random “herbal-y” things mixed in with the tea leaves (ingredients include tulsi, sarsaparilla, schisandra berry, and blue lotus). Dry scent is an interesting combination of savory herbal and licorice-like sarsaparilla. I let mine steep for 4 minutes at 190 degrees.

Wow, the brewed aroma is very different! It’s a lovely melange of creamy, nutty, slightly spicy, sweet, and a slight vegetal note. Taste-wise, there’s definitely a slight sharp spiciness from the sarsaparilla that presents itself mostly at the beginning of the sip. I do get flashes of licorice-like flavor throughout, but the tea itself is quite creamy and nutty in flavor, which is rather lovely. I have no concept of what schisandra berry and blue lotus taste like, so I can’t comment on what they contribute here, but I do get a light hint of something similar to pine. Overall, this is rather tasty and I can see it being an excellent latte. It’s almost chai-like in a sense. :)

This was a bonus sample that Roswell Strange included in our swap. It is extremely smelly, ha ha… It definitely reminds me of Harney & Sons’s Hot Cinnamon Spice in that it basically smells exactly like Red Hots candy or any type of cinnamon candy really. This one is a green tea however, compared to black. The leaves are rather large and sencha-ish, and they’re mixed with red flower petals, cinnamon bark, and a few red peppercorns. I steeped about 1.5 teaspoons for 3 minutes at 175 degrees.

Brewed aroma is pretty much still cinnamon candy. And it tastes like cinnamon candy too, with a little bit of green tea at the beginning of the sip. The only real difference between this tea and Hot Cinnamon Spice is that this one isn’t sweet. Overall, not bad, but not something I’d regularly drink. :)

Miss Roswell Strange was nice enough to purchase and send me 20g samples of the David’s fall collection teas that I was interested in. What a sweetheart! For some reason, I’ve been neglecting these since I got them, and this is only the second one I’ve tried out of 4 total. Doh! I really love maple-flavored things, so I have to try this one. The tea itself looks like an even mix of black tea leaves and dried apple pieces (why…). There’s also cinnamon bark and pieces of maple brittle. Dry scent is extremely sweet with more cinnamon and apple than maple. It does smell delicious though, like some kind of amazing fall pastry! :) I steeped mine for 4 minutes at 200 degrees.

Brewed, this tea smells like a cinnamon apple tart or some other form of pastry. And with maple glaze! :D Wow, it’s very buttery, which I did not expect! It’s definitely very similar to some kind of pastry, maybe an apple pie with plenty of butter in the filling! There’s only the barest hint of maple here, which is unfortunate, but this is a really good apple pie tea! I taste buttery, flaky crust along with buttery, cinnamony, brown sugary apple filling. Yum!

Also, this would make the best latte ever… Next time!

Another Lupicia sample from mj! I love how vague the description is for this tea – “honey-preserved fruits”. Well, sounds lovely to me, so let’s do it! Dry, it’s a mixture of small to medium-sized black tea leaves and yellow flower petals that I assume are there for visual interest only. The dry scent is extremely sweet and honeyed, and I’m unsure whether I could pick out a specific type of fruit – it has more of a general candied fruit smell. Okay, so I made a bit of a boo-boo with the steeping… I set my electric kettle to 200 degrees, and I didn’t notice until I was pouring the water that there wasn’t quite enough for an 8 ounce cup… So I had to add a little bit of room temperature water, bringing the temperature down a bit. I had planned to steep for 3 minutes, but I let it go an extra 30 seconds because of this.

I think this came out a tad weaker than it would have had I not messed up the water temperature, but still tasty! It doesn’t have much of an aroma, perhaps a vague sweetness. The dried fruit flavor is also vague, but delicious, and it goes perfectly with the honey. If I had to take a guess, I’d say perhaps dried figs? And maybe a touch of dried stonefruit? There’s also definitely a touch of vanilla to me, although it’s not listed as a flavor here.

So, long story short, this came out quite tasty despite my shortcomings (doh). I’m sure it’ll be even better next time, when I steep it correctly! :P

Lewis & Clarke TTB

This is it, folks! This is the very last sample I took from the TTB before sending it on its merry way. I’m not sure why I haven’t tried this one sooner, it’s been hanging out next to the dreaded Da Yu Ling Oolong sample that is finally gone. Anyway, on to the good bits! The leaves are long and fairly thin, and tightly twisted. Color is a lighter shade of grey/green. The outside bag smells like Hot Lips, oops! Luckily the tea inside didn’t seem to be contaminated, and smells lightly sweet with mild vegetal notes. I steeped mine for 1.5 minutes because I felt like it (seriously).

I think I may have underleafed or understeeped this one, as I’m not getting a ton of aroma. What I do smell is a bit of mineral quality combined with mild and sweet vegetal notes.

Confession: I totally let this tea cool a ton, mostly because I was looking through boychik’s cupboard with my mouth wide open… Seriously tempting things in there! Ahem! Anyway, yeah this is definitely underleafed. I do like the flavor that’s there, and it reminds me of the Bi Luo Chun that I got from Han Xiang on AliExpress. It has an interesting mineral/smoke note to it that I enjoy, along with strong apricot notes near the beginning. Overall, very nice, even underleafed! :D

Lewis & Clarke TTB

Okay, I admit it… I’ve been avoiding this one. I took a sample out of the TTB and now it’s been a week or something since I sent that off, but the little baggie was still sitting on my kitchen counter, conspicuously outside of my normal sipdown box. I just can’t get excited about green oolong, as I find they all taste basically the same to me. The only reason I took a sample of this one was that there was definitely enough of it for everyone to try, so why not? So anyway, here goes! Looks similar to other green oolongs, although my pellets are abnormally small because my sample was from the end of the package (this tea was in multiple small packets). Dry scent is the usual – peaches, cream, slightly vegetal note. I steeped it for 3 minutes at 200 degrees.

The aroma is actually a bit strong on the vegetal side, which makes me at least mildly excited to try this! I actually like this tea better than a lot of other oolongs I’ve tried. It has a fairly strong almost spinach/butternut squash-y vegetal note which is lovely and almost fools me into thinking it’s a green tea. But then that nice peach (definitely fresh peach) flavor pokes its head out and yells, “Hey Bozo, this is an oolong! Get your head out of the clouds!” There doesn’t seem to be much floral, which is a nice reprieve, and I’m not getting much of that creamy taste and texture either. I actually rather like this one! Who’da thunk it?

Edit: As this cools, it’s getting more and more floral. BLECK! :P

This sample came from mj. This is one of the Lupicia teas that I was most interested in, so I’m very happy that I was able to get it in a swap! It’s in sachet form, and it looks to be about a teaspoon of leaf in there. The leaves themselves are small and dark, and there are little chunks of something mixed in (apparently almonds). Dry scent is very sweet and caramel-y with vanilla. I steeped mine for 3 minutes at 200 degrees.

Brewed, it smells like oatmeal cookies (no raisins) with caramel in them. Honestly… I’m not too impressed with this one, and that makes me really sad. I’m not getting a lot of flavoring here, just a mediocre black base with a bit of astringency. I tried adding a bit of sugar and milk, and it helped it taste like a cookie a little more, but I’m not big into teas that I have to add things to in order to enjoy them. This one is a letdown for me. :(