Cameron B. select Send Message

This tea came from Roswell Strange. I always jump on any chance I get to try French teas, since they tend to be a pain in the ass to get here in the US. So anytime I’m browsing someone’s cupboard for swap requests, these always jump out at me. I’ve definitely had good experiences with French flavored/scented teas so far! This one smells like black walnuts, hah! So clearly there’s something that contaminated the teas around it, maybe the Candied Almond tea? Not sure, but I don’t really care as long as it doesn’t carry over to the taste. :P I brewed this one with a very level teaspoon because I wanted to get two servings out of the little baggie, but I also did a tad bit less water than I normally use.

The brewed aroma is very mild – it mostly smells like a mellow black tea with caramel elements and maybe the tiniest hint of spice. I do get a little bit of a licorice smell for some reason, although I don’t think there’s licorice flavor in here. I added a scant teaspoon of sugar. Hmm… this is a very subtly flavored tea. I think I taste the black tea base before anything else. There’s some caramel sweetness swirling around, and I definitely get a touch of sweet orange and lemon (more of a candy lemon than a fresh one). The cinnamon manifests as a lovely warming sensation, and I’m tasting something that reminds me of anise or licorice, although it’s extremely mild. The apple comes in at the very end of the sip and combines with the caramel for a lovely aftertaste.

Overall, I think this is the most subtly flavored French tea I’ve had yet, and even though there are several flavors involved, they do merge and play beautifully together. Very nicely done, Dammann Freres!

Aww… I am getting a little bit of a black walnut flavor as it cools… Sad day. I’ll be sure to drink the other half of my sample while it’s still hot!

I got this tea in a swap from Ost. She sent me a huge amount of it, I guess she didn’t like it much. Well, more for me! I’m not really a wine person, but I do like some sparkling wines (the sweet ones). The tea itself is mostly leaves with some silvery buds mixed in along with some thin red flower petals. It smells like candy! Very sweet and slightly tart raspberry with a definite effervescent quality. There’s white grape juice in there as well. I followed the instructions on Red Leaf’s website and did a 4 minute steep at (about) 180 degrees.

The brewed aroma is very similar to the dry but a bit milder. Woo, this tea! The first thing I notice about it is the effervescent champagne quality it has. Very bubbly! The raspberry flavor is still very candy-like in my opinion, but that’s okay. I’m definitely getting that white grape juice flavor that I smelled before. I added sugar to mine, as the tea wasn’t as sweet as I expected plain.

I can see this being fantastic and refreshing iced! Must try that later! :D Thanks Ost!

Hooray, another tea from my 3rd anniversary sampler! I had totally forgotten which teas I chose as my optional ones, and I ended up ordering a sample of this in my sale order the night before last. Oops. I sent them an email asking to change it, just because I would rather try a different tea than one I’ve already had. If not, I won’t be too upset, because this tea is tasty. :D The dry leaves are long and sort of twisty, but more flat than I normally see. They’re quite dark, similar to a black tea. Their smell is a combination of musty hay, sweet honey, and dried apricots.

Mmm, roasty goodness. The brewed tea smells like autumn leaves and stonefruit, with a definite roasted note. I also get roasted leaves as the main note in the taste. It is accompanied by lovely ripe stonefruit drizzled with honey, and a touch of dark, rich raisin. There’s a little bit of a floral note that appears mostly in the aftertaste – I’m not a huge fan of floral, but I don’t mind it here. I also get a lingering roasty taste after the floral dissipates, and it lingers for quite some time. My brew came out a teensy bit bitter, but I think I overleafed it a bit and I probably should have stopped the steep at 2 minutes. Good to know for next time!

Overall, a lovely dark oolong. I can definitely see the similarities between this one and Oriental Beauty-style oolongs. Can’t wait to try more of this type of tea! :D

This is a tea that I’ve been really curious about for a while now, so I’m so excited that I got some in my swap from Roswell Strange! Thanks so much! I love marshmallow treats, and I love genmaicha, so obviously this one is a must-try. Visually, it pretty much looks like any other genmaicha, but with the addition of some mallow root pieces. There are a lot of rice kernels, along with a few popped ones. For some reason, the dry leaf smell like black walnuts to me, and I hate black walnuts. Possibly some scent contamination since there were several flavored teas in the envelope, but I’m not sure! None of the others really smell like black walnuts to me, so… Who knows? Anyway!

The brewed tea mostly smells like toasted rice, maybe with a little touch of vanilla in there. I tasted it sans sweetener and I found it mostly tasted like a plain ol’ genmaicha, albeit with extra toasty rice. So then I added sugar, and that definitely helped it to taste more like its namesake. The sweetness really helped the marshmallow/vanilla flavor to come out and play, yum! There’s a buttery taste – I’m not sure whether it’s flavoring or from the green tea itself. The green tea is there a little bit in the background, it mostly manifests as an autumn leafy taste and a slight grassiness.

Overall, I can definitely get the marshmallow treat reference once sugar is added. After all, marshmallows are mostly just sugar themselves. This is toastier than a marshmallow treat, but I think I would very much enjoy one made with toasted grains! Thanks again, Roswell Strange! I really appreciate the chance to try this one, since it’s discontinued. Luckily, I don’t quite love it enough to try to get ahold of some.

Hooray for Shadowfall! She purchased this tea from her local Home Goods/TJ Maxx/Marshalls store and shipped it to me. Thanks so much dear! This was definitely the Fauchon tea that I was most hoping to find in the recent sightings. And the tin is even cuter than the Apple version that I have! It’s hot pink and metallic with images of painted peaches and thyme all around. The inner lid has a cute little gold knob handle! I’m so easily entertained… :D

The dry tea is small, dark leaves (what I would call “generic” black tea). There are some pieces of dried peach along with red flower petals and dried thyme leaves. The dry scent is mostly just peachy. So excited! I did my general French flavored tea method: 1 tsp in 200 degree water for 3 minutes. Honestly, I think I could have let it go for longer – next time!

Interestingly enough, the brewed aroma was mostly thyme for me. Complete opposite of the dry scent! I added a bit of sugar to mine. The taste is actually a good balance of peach and thyme. I taste the thyme first with the peach in the background, but they soon swap places so the peach is in the forefront for most of the sip. I also get an almost minty cooling sensation at the end. This is definitely a unique tea, and I’m glad I got the chance to try it. Thanks Shadowfall! :D

Hooray, home again! I had several lovely packages waiting for me, including my 3rd anniversary sampler from TeaVivre. Hooray! And then I realized that the one thing I forgot at my mother’s house… my brew basket. Fuck. So for now I’m brewing my tea in a Pyrex glass cup and pouring it through a sieve into my mug. Definitely inconvenient, but at least it works… I’ll order another basket with Amazon Prime and have it in a couple days. Obviously I should order two! :P

So, this tea… The dry leaves are dark and they have that long, spindly, spider-leg appearance that I generally associate with Taiwanese black teas. The scent is super malt with chewy grain and dried fruit notes. Yummy!

Brewed aroma is still quite malty, and there’s an interesting tang in there, maybe from the dried fruit? Also dark grain and molasses notes. I was very surprised when I tasted this that the first thing I detected was smoke! I didn’t get that at all from the aroma. The first sip was definitely smoky and earthy, with malt and dark grainy bread. However, I noticed as I kept drinking this tea, the smoke and earth taste dissipated. I was left with a combination of bread, raw chewy grains, and toasted grains. There was also a bit of woodiness along with pipe tobacco (unlit) and just a little hint of syrupy, rich dried fruit and molasses. I got a very thick and rich mouthfeel, and there was a little bit of creaminess accompanying.

Overall, I find this to be a rather complex tea with a lot of different notes, I can see it being interesting gong fu style. Thanks so much to TeaVivre for giving me the chance to try this lovely tea for (basically) free! Love you gals! :)

I was trying to decide what tea to have this afternoon and this just sounded good, so out it came! I love melon (all kinds) as a fruit and as a flavor. I think this is the only tea in the chanakara collection that has caffeine, which is interesting. The bag smells melony and lovely! :) I did 3 minutes originally (there are no instructions on the wrapper) and then left it for two more after tasting it.

This is a very light tea. Both the base tea and the flavoring are rather subtle, and they do go well together. I would describe the green tea as more of a grassy variety, rather than vegetal. The melon is definitely honeydew. I found that a little bit of sugar really helped the melon to come out – yum! There’s an interesting creaminess to this tea, and I’m not sure where it’s coming from. Is yerba mate creamy at all…? I don’t know! Overall, this is a perfectly nice tea, though not one that I would purchase by itself.

I was feeling like a nice black tea this morning (I miss all of my Yunnans!) and I thought I’d try something new instead of drinking one of the few teas I brought with me from home. So out this one came! I actually think this was one of the teas we sampled in-store, but I’m not positive on that… Anyway! The leaves are dark, medium-sized, and twisted. I didn’t see any flower petals in mine, but it was a small sample size, so that doesn’t surprise me. It smells very sweet and floral, like some kind of flower-scented candy! Somewhat similar to the Violet I tasted yesterday, actually. I considered steeping it for 3 minutes, which is my usual time for black teas. After poking around on Steepster, I saw that the average was 2 minutes and decided to go with that! God, I miss my electric kettle something fierce… :P

The floral in the brewed aroma has toned itself down, which I appreciate. It still smells quite sweet, almost vanilla-y. There’s a little bit of citrusy something in there, too, tangerine I suppose!

Hmm… I’m not sure about this one. I do like the base tea a lot, it has that nice almost chewy grain flavor that I’ve found in all of Shang’s teas so far, which I adore. There’s a little bit of citrus in here, but I find the floral element to be quite overwhelming. I am not a huge fan of floral teas in general, and I think this one is just a little bit much for me. I would probably enjoy this more with either less tea used or a 1-minute steep, unfortunately I only bought the one sample. This probably isn’t one that I’ll purchase, just because I’m not a floral tea person. I’ll try some shorter times for the resteeps and see how they come out! :)

Not going to assign it a rating because I feel I’m biased and I don’t want to drag its overall rating down for people who do like floral teas. :P

I have a confession to make… I went to Teavana today. Hangs head. I was at the mall with my mother and sister and we were walking by the store, so I figured might as well. Actually, I’m glad I did go in, because I picked up a couple of cute little tins (http://www.teavana.com/tea-products/tea-storage-tins/p/pompom-tea-tins) at half price! So worth it! As usual, the salesperson was annoying and overzealous about trying to get me to taste all of the samples. And of course, when I picked out a couple of teas to buy, he wanted to give me 2.7 ounces when I said I wanted 2 ounces. No sir!

Anyway, this tea. It smells wonderful and sugary, just like it should. I was in for a big surprise when I took the first sip… HIBISCUS. It was so tart! The flavors that I could taste underneath the tartness were good, but it was hard to focus on anything other than the hibiscus! I don’t even understand why anyone in their right mind would decide to include hibiscus in a marshmallow flavored tea. Those two things are pretty much complete opposites! Are these people crazy?! Rage rage rage.

So anyway, after that I spent a while picking all of the hibiscus petals out of my two ounces of this tea. We’ll see how it tastes after that another time.

Teavana, you are on my shit list! >:(

So, my sister’s birthday was June 30th and I had purchased a 4.4 ounce tin of this tea for her with my Kusmi order a few weeks earlier. This was the tea she was most interested in when I showed her the website, so I figured it would make a nice little gift, especially since their tins are so cute. I didn’t mail it because I knew I was going to be coming to Kansas City soon (she lives here, too). So when I gave her the gift a couple of nights ago and she opened it, I took out a serving for myself and kept it until today. I’m going shopping with her and my mother later today, so I’ll definitely ask her what she thinks of this tea. Dry, this tea smells like floral candy – it’s very sweet. I did my usual French tea method – 1 tsp in 8 ounces of 200 degree water for 3 minutes.

I don’t think I paid much attention to the brewed aroma – oops. In the tea itself, the flavoring is quite mild, especially when it’s still hot. The black tea base is smooth and mellow, nothing special but unobtrusive and drinkable. I don’t consider myself to be terribly familiar with the smell or taste of violets, but it’s definitely a more delicate floral note than I generally encounter (rose, jasmine, etc.). There’s something about it that makes me think that these are sugared violets, not the fresh variety. I definitely get a candy flavor from this tea, even without sugar. I found it altogether pleasant enough, but not something that I would seek out or order. Then again, I’m not big on floral teas generally. :)