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One of my requested free samples from Angel at Teavivre. I was very surprised when I saw this tea. Usually when a tea is called golden tips it means there are golden tips included. This one looks like it’s almost all golden tips! It smells malty and there is a strong apricot scent along with some honey.

First time, I did a 4 minute steep at about 190 degrees. The aroma is very malty with honey and a light stonefruit note along with some raisin. It tastes like yummy toasty bread with some honey over the top. Maybe a tiny bit of peach or apricot jam. Very tasty!

I saw that a lot of people had mentioned sweet potato so I tried a 3 minute steep. The flavor is definitely lighter, but it’s still primarily malt. I can see how it might be a little sweet potatoey. The honey is still there but I don’t really taste fruit anymore. Overall, I think I preferred the longer steep, especially with a touch of sugar. And it doesn’t seem to be astringent in the least.

Thanks again TeaVivre!

Edit: I forgot to mention that I also received a sample of this from TeaTiff! Thanks lady! :)

This was the last sample from Harney & Sons that I hadn’t tried. Eleven samples in about a week or so, not too bad! This is my first straight bancha, but I’ve had it in genmaicha before so I kind of knew what to expect. The leaves are flat and similar to sencha, but rougher and more broken. Smells like grass, grass, grass with some hay and dry leaves. At first I steeped for a minute, but did a quick taste and then let it go another 30 seconds.

Brewed, it smells similar to the dry but with the addition of a little spinach. Wow, the taste! It’s extremely bright and grassy in the beginning. Almost sharp, but not unpleasantly. It’s like spring! The back half of the sip is more vegetal and I get that autumn leaf taste. Overall, not bitter and not as “rough” as I might have expected. I can see this being good with a meal, though it’s not something I’d drink daily.

Need to get back into these Japanese green samples I haven’t tried! Feeling like a nice mellow green after having several cups of black this morning. This is my first kabusecha, which is a green tea that has been shaded for a short time before picking. This tea was shaded for two weeks according to the website. The leaves look and smell like sencha, though they are maybe a little bit of a richer green color.

This tea is actually surprisingly light, and I am enjoying it a lot. It has the same butternut squash, spinach, and grass notes as other senchas. There is a definite creamy buttery quality to this though, and it’s quite mellow and smooth. Quite tasty, thanks Yunomi! I would absolutely drink this as an everyday green tea, and this may have to be a reorder.

TeaTiff was nice enough to send me a generous sample of this tea. It says on their website that this tea is from Yunnan, but the leaves look Taiwanese to me. They have that long, twisty, spindly look and they’re quite dark. Smells strongly of dry, unsweetened cocoa and honey with some maltiness.

Initially, I followed the directions on Hugo Tea’s website and steeped for 4 minutes. The aroma was malty with honey, but there was also a kind of peppery, herbaceous quality that reminded me of fennel seed. And it turns out, that’s exactly what it tastes like too! Very similar to pumpernickel or rye bread with a strong fennel seed taste, along with some malt and an aftertaste of dry cocoa. Wow, this tea is so unique-tasting! I kept taking sips just to experience the fennel phenomenon again!

After reading some of the notes on here, I decided to also try a 3 minute steep since a lot of people did that and mentioned more chocolate and caramel notes. Aroma was more cocoa and honey and less fennel this time. It definitely tasted less fennel-y, but I didn’t really find a lot more cocoa or honey in there. So I definitely prefer the 4 minute steep! And it’s much more honeyed with just a small amount of sugar. Pumpernickel bread with honey smeared over the top, mmmm!

Thanks so much to Green Terrace Teas for the free sample! I’ve been excited to try this one since I saw Marzipan’s lovely note about it. :) I now wish I had requested the Li Shan black tea as well! Oh well. This is a Taiwanese black tea, and the only other one I’ve tried is flavored (very well flavored, thanks to Butiki!). This type of tea receives a lot of love around here, so I was keen to see what all the fuss was about. The leaves are black and spidery, perhaps a bit shorter than the other, and there are a few stems. They smell more like maple syrup than honey to me, which is not a complaint! There’s also a strange metallic scent that I think might be from the foil packaging? I did about 3 minutes at 200 degrees.

The aroma is definitely all honey now! There’s maybe a hint of malt and some fruit. Tasting this, I’m unsure how to describe the main flavor besides to say that it tastes like a very smooth and mellow black tea. It’s not malty or bready, maybe a touch of raisin? But in a very light way. There is a definite honey taste, and a tart fruitiness. It’s listed as “peach and plum” on the website and I must say I agree with that description. Tartness from the plum but also a nice juiciness from the peach. I added a touch of sugar to the second half of my cup and it seemed to bring out a floral note? Perhaps I’m crazy! The lovely honeyed fruit taste lingers pleasantly after I’m done sipping.

Overall, very delicious and a wonderful experience for my first (plain) Taiwanese black! Thanks so much to Green Terrace Teas for allowing us to sample their wares for the very low cost of a review! :) I would definitely purchase this tea.

On a side note, I would like to suggest that steeping suggestions be added to the packaging just to make it easier for the customer. Even with a sample, it’s a nice touch and I feel like it wouldn’t be difficult to include. Thanks! :D

Leia happens to be my favorite character! Strong and feisty, not whiny or reliant on men like most female characters. This blend smells quite feisty too! It reminds me of ginger ale, but with a bit of orange and vanilla added in. I overleafed a bit, as I pretty much always do with rooibos blends. Steeped 5 minutes!

Brewed, it smells quite gingery! There’s that orange fruitiness there too. I didn’t expect to like this tea much, not being a huge fan of ginger. Luckily the ginger is much milder than I expected, though it is still the main flavor. The sweet vanilla and fruit round out the spiciness quite nicely, and the orange just adds an extra element and melds well. There is a definite peach aftertaste, and the ginger lingers at the back of the throat, warming and feeling a bit odd. I drank this with a half teaspoon of sugar and found it quite nice actually. Didn’t taste black tea or rooibos at all though! I would consider this a good evening option since there is very little black tea in it.

This tea is from TeaTiff’s ridiculously generous swap package! I’ve been curious about milk oolong teas for a while, and she was nice enough to send me samples of two very highly rated ones. I thought I’d try one while I still had at least some memory of the Simple Loose Leaf variety I tried recently, so I could compare. They look fairly similar – although all green oolongs have looked similar to me so far, with only minor color variation. This tea smells very rich, like buttered popcorn, coconut milk, and sweetened condensed milk mixed together. I looked at tasting notes until I found Tea Sipper’s note with Mandala’s recommendations for western style brewing. Jackpot! :) Brewed for two minutes. The sample was a bit more than a teaspoon, but I used the whole thing.

The aroma has similar butter & cream notes, but mixed with a fairly strong floral scent and a light fruitiness. I find the taste somewhat similar to the other milk oolong I’ve tried. There is a light vegetal taste in the background, with definite cream and butter notes and a lovely peach aftertaste. The whole flavor is extremely light. It was not sweet like I expected it to be, but I started to get buttered popcorn flavor as it cooled.

Next, the resteep. I did 2.5 minutes this time. The aroma this time was butter and cream with a stronger fruit scent. The flavor was even lighter and it was all cream and butter with some fruitiness. That nice peachy aftertaste is still there.

Overall, I think I’m not a fan of green oolongs, their flavor tends to be too light for me. But I recently got a small teapot (free gift with my first Simple Loose Leaf box) so I may try to do a pseudo-gong fu session with my other milk oolong.

Yay I finally got my TeaVivre samples! I’ve been really excited to try their black teas. Thanks Angel for the very generous samples! This tea was the one I was most anxious to try because it’s so unique. :) The pearls are about a half-inch in diameter, and the color is about an equal mixture of brown and golden tips. They smell divine – very sweet honey with some cocoa, malt, and bread notes. I did two separate steeps (4 pearls each) and then a resteep.

The first steep, I followed the package directions and let it go for 5 minutes. The aroma was very malty in a beer kind of way, with bread and honey and some light cocoa. The taste was…meh. It was very one-note and the malt dominated. I was surprised it did not get bitter at all, even with the long steep.

Second try, I went for 3 minutes. The aroma was more sweet honey this time, but the beer scent was still there with stronger cocoa. The taste was more complex, with some strong honey notes and a little bit of bread or malt. Not really cocoa though. I then resteeped the same leaves for 4 minutes, and got a flavor somewhere between the other two.

I feel like I didn’t get the full flavor out of this tea. The steeping parameters that others have used are so widely varied that it’s hard to know what to sweet spot is. My only idea is to try more pearls, maybe 5, and a shorter steep time. Any suggestions would be amazing. :)

Backlog from last night! I went to start reviewing another tea and realized I still had the notes from this one and hadn’t written it up. Oops. This is from Simple Loose Leaf’s July selection. Looks like rooibos with dried lemongrass, citrus peel, and the odd red peppercorn. It smells quite citrusy, which is good for me. It’s obviously grapefruit, but there are some other citrus scents and a touch of spice. Brewed 5 minutes!

The brew smelled similar to the dry, but with less punch. I was actually surprised that the grapefruit is not very strong in the taste. I mostly get lemongrass with a citrus accompaniment. It’s a little bit herbaceous from the lemongrass, and there is definitely a peppery note. The spice is there but subtle, just a background flourish.

Overall, I liked this as a caffeine-free night option. The rooibos taste was not strong, and it did not taste medicinal like some rooibos can. Although I don’t really get “tropical” from this… Odd name choice.

Another tea from the July Simple Loose Leaf box! I have pretty limited experience with white teas, and I’ve only ever had the bai mu dan variety, so this is a new one for me. I think shou mei is a lower grade of white tea, right? The leaves look fairly similar to bai mu dan, except there are a ton of stems in there. The leaves themselves are large and very varied in color. There are a few scant flower petals in there, too. It smells sugary sweet and kind of like grape, I guess. Mostly like candy… Not a great sign for me. 200 degrees seems high to me for a white tea, let alone one mixed with green tea. But I did it anyway! 3 minutes.

The brewed tea smells similar to the dry, but much more muted. There’s also some weird aroma that I can’t identify… The taste is kind of meh. I like the taste of the base – it’s kind of like a rougher version of the white tea I’ve had before. There’s that hay flavor, but then there’s also dry leaves and some grassiness from the green tea. I’m not sure that I really get floral, it’s definitely very mild. But the plum flavoring ruins this for me, it tastes like candy (not in a good way) and it has a very weird aftertaste that reminds me a bit of plastic combined with Dimetapp (grape cough syrup basically). It’s improved with a bit of sugar, but it still tastes just plain odd to me. :(