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Basically I’ve been living on Sinharaja. It provides me a warm, comforting cup of tea that says, “It’ll be ok. The words will come” as I work through NaNo. It’s not that I don’t want to drink other teas. It’s that this one is easy on the tongue and easy on the mind. I don’t have to worry about temperatures or time and that leaves my mind available for writing.

I’ve had the flu and been unable to write and without an appetite for much of anything, including tea. Today I feel almost human and I’m celebrating with this delicious lychee tea. Lychee is one of my favorite fruits and this tea does a reasonable job of bringing the lychee flavor to this mild black tea. Overall it is quite nice.

Nice creamy tea with a good mouth feel. It has a delightfully roasty aroma that carries through to the taste, but gently. It has the vegetal of the sencha and the beautiful thick green liquid of the matcha all combined with the sweet roastiness and not a lick of bitterness or astringency. It’s very yum! Much thanks to Takgoti for this lovely tea.

My Rishi Tea Mannong Manmai Sample set came today and this was in it. Oh my these are big bags for samples! I’m used to Golden Moon samples (only enough for one cup) or Upton Tea’s samples (enough for 4-6 cups).

I am feeling sick (fever, sore throat, cough) and while I normally do not desire Pu-erh, and indeed I normally have to use my Be Brave days to try new pu-erhs, today I crave it and crave mint. Strange.

The tea brews into a nearly black liquor with the envigorating smell of mint and the classic earthy pu-erh smell under that. Strangely enough it smells really good to me today. The taste is nearly all mint with a dark, chocolate taste underneath, but softly, softly. The mouth-feel is quite full-bodied and it has substance on the tongue, almost a creaminess. Also it takes Silk Creamer very, very well. Overall I like tea. It is a good tea for someone sick.

This was my first experience with good teas and I’m so glad I tried it since it has led me down this delicious and involving path. It brews up into a beautiful golden color with only a touch of green. The smell is an inviting cream oolong smell and the taste carries through to the taste perfectly. It has a very clean taste with floral undertones and (of course) the milk taste. The tea is not flavored, it comes by this taste as a result of the conditions it grows under. As such, the taste varies from year to year as the weather varies. I am told by Cecilia that this last year was not the best milk oolong, but since it is new to me it seems marvelous. I can’t wait to try next year’s Jian Xuan!

I am fascinated by the idea that everywhere in the UK needs its own breakfast tea. Scottish Breakfast Tea should carry me away to the highlands (at least in my imagination) right? I have the bagged version of this tea.

It brews up into a reddish brown brew with a sweet tea smell and the strong taste of Assam. It has some astringency but it’s not too bad. There is a slightly unusual note, perhaps a barely there floral citrus? Perhaps that is the African tea I’m tasting? It’s really quite pleasant.

It has nice caffeine kick, which I need since I didn’t get enough sleep last night. It is defnitely a tea I could drink a second time.

Sweetly fragrant with a slight nutty vegetal scent with floral overtones. It brews up into a pale yellow golden liquid. The taste is a warm nutty vegetal that is very pleasant. I can see accepting this as a tribute tea.

A headache is pressing in on my brain after a night spent up with a server on-call issue. Dragon balls are just the thing! Their strong, full-bodied sassiness is willing to hold my head with gentle soothing motions while the caffeine kicks butt, drives out the pain and gives me energy to spare.

The tea brews up into a copper brown liquor that smells sweet. The balls release themselves from the tight black pearls and expand into full chocolate brown leaves, a process that never fails to amuse. There are notes of cocoa, caramel, and a touch of earthiness in the taste.

The only bad thing? I’m now out of dragon balls. I guess you could say that I have no balls.

Oversteeped on purpose to get the strong kick-in-the-pants wake-up power. Today is the start of NaNo and I am definitely feeling as if I want to do nothing except make a blanket cave in my bed and hide in it. Sinharaja is always good, though. I feel marginally less like blanket-caving.