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This tea always goes down way too fast. :) I didn’t even have time to add this to my cupboard and suddenly I’m working on the last cup of it.

It’s a real testament to how delicious this tea is that I keep buying it (something that’s pretty rare with flavored teas) and when I do, I positively guzzle it. It’s so yummy!

I politely request a long time of notice if this tea is ever in line of getting discontinued so I can buy an absurd amount to stockpile heh heh. :D

Upping the rating because this tea has stood the test of time and I continue to love it every time.

Received this as a sample in my order! :D

I accidentally made this rather potent. My measuring cup was in the wash, so I estimated eight ounces in my pot. (The pot’s a bit of an odd shape, which makes that hard) Turns out I gave it a little less than five. Good job me.

Still, even though it’s quite a bit stronger than it was supposed to be, it’s still fairly sweet and is obviously sweeter when better balanced with the amount of water.

Enjoying how fruity this is. :) I’ll have to try a second infusion with the proper amount of water.

Hooray! My order arrived! :) This is the first of the samples I received that I’m breaking into.

The leaves are just as pretty in real life as the preview photo on Facebook a little while ago. :) Steeped up, the liquor is very pale, almost translucent. I find the main thing I smell is strawberries, but when I take a sip, while the strawberries are very present, I find the predominate taste is the toffee! Which is fabulous, because it was the toffee that intrigued me the most about this tea. :)

I love toffee. I love how it’s buttery, nutty, sweet in that ‘gooey’ way, and also salty. I get all of that in this tea, as well as the strawberry.

I find while in most cases with Butiki Teas, the flavors don’t usually come so strong that you can’t taste the tea anymore, but I actually do have that with this one. It might be because I’m pretty uncultured when it comes to green teas, but for once I’m not complaining about that because the taste of the toffee is so delectable I just want to keep tasting it. :D Ha.

This tea is a very interesting combination of flavors (I never would’ve thought strawberry and toffee would be a good pairing, but I trusted Stacy and sure enough she was right!) and it’s super good. Really enjoying this cup. :)

Thanks for packing this into my box! :D

WOW!

Decided to have make my sample packet of this as my Sunday white tea today, and it’s … wow. Ha.

The leaves are downy and beautiful, and the liquor is buttery in color and a bit in texture too.

The first few sips tastes like jasmine, which at first was “Yeah, this is good, but I’ve had this before with my Jasmine Pearls, how is this different?” but after a few sips, along with the perfumy jasmine, out comes this sugary sweetness almost like candy! It’s really sugar-tooth satisfying really. :)

The sweetness recedes a bit when it cools down though, so best to drink it hot. :)

Edit Second infusion at 3 minutes: The jasmine has receded a bit, and the tea has become even sweeter! :D It brings to mind those old fashion candy sticks, which I love so I’m loving this cup even more than the first!

Probably shouldn’t be drinking another tea at this time, but oh well. I wanted to give it a try. At least I didn’t choose the Yunnan White Jasmine. Now that would’ve kept me up all night. That’ll wait for tomorrow to be sampled.

Anyway, this tea isn’t joking around when it says ‘rose.’ In fact, there’s probably around three teaspoons of tea in this 1oz pouch, haha. But it was sort of the point to be a blend, and laoshan black is very potent, so if you want to taste much of anything else it does kind of need to be toned down.

Anyway, this is very nice! For some people who found Laoshan black too roasty, and don’t mind a rosey floral taste, this may be a good alternative! The rose petals and the bergamot make this much sweeter and it’s not really roasty at all. You taste just enough of the laoshan black to get the chocolatey taste.

I’m not sure I’d order this again, but I’ll be able to to finish this no problem. I’d like it more if the laoshan black was a bit more prominent.

I had a panic moment at first when I poured in the water. “Shoot!”, I thought, “I forgot this has oolong in it too,” because I’d just poured 200 degree water over the leaves. I only have this as a sample size, and I’m making a big enough cup that I just dumped the lot into my infuser.
Worried I’d just scalded half the leaves in my cup, I looked up other tasting notes and was relieved to see that everyone else seems to have done either 200 degree or boiling water too. Phew.

The liquor is very pale. Taking a sip now, all I taste is … oolong. lol. No laoshan black, no chocolate, no toasted rice, just oolong. Which isn’t bad, I like oolong. The oolong used in this blend is one I’ve been wanting to try. But I kinda hoped to taste the aforementioned too. I’m wondering if maybe my sample wasn’t balanced enough with the other ingredients? None of the wet leaves look like Laoshan Black leaves really, and after drinking 8oz of that in a month and a half, I definitely know what they look like! xD

So erm, yeah. Enjoying the cup, even though it’s totally not what I was anticipating. (Again, I like oolong) I’m thinking I might grab a pouch of this on my next Verdant order to be safe though. I really think my sample might not have been balanced. The oolong is much gentler than a cup of Laoshan Black, so I’d imagine it’d overpower the oolong if anything, but I don’t taste it at all. Withholding rating until I’ve tried this another time.

(at least it’s not peppery ;) )

Alrighty, so I’ve ripped open my Verdant box, hehe. :)

This tea is quite complex. It’s smoky, it’s malty, it’s bready, it’s slightly chocolately, it’s potatoey and it’s also … peppery Augh! DX Sorry. On my last couple Butiki orders I had a few blacks that were a bit peppery, which was fine. It was a new experience and I did like it. But then after that, everything else I was trying seemed to be peppery too. All the teas I decided to give a go from Teavivre are, and a few random teas I didn’t log that I tried in other places. So I’m really sick of peppery blacks. I like sweeter blacks, or even blacks like Ceylon that are a bit grassy, but I’ve had enough of pepper. xD; The last several days I’ve been working on drinking through my peppery Teavivre teas, so I’ve had my fill this week.

All the other flavors are quite nice, and aside from the peppery part, I must say this tea is very unique! :) I just wish I wasn’t turned off by that aspect. If I had this again several months from now when I haven’t had a bunch of peppery teas, I’d probably enjoy this more.

Upping my rating. Although the robust setting with basic grade makes for an undrinkable bitter taste prepared traditionally, I really do enjoy this being shaken in cold milk. So much so that it’s become a morning ritual of sorts this past week. This morning as I sipped it I savored the caramel sweetness and the gentle vegetal notes combined with creamy 2% milk. I realized after that that this deserved a higher rating. I would give this a better rating yet if it tasted good warm too, but I’ve had a change of heart to the point that I’ll definitely be placing another order in with Red Leaf, probably in July or August. (Depends on how my Verdant order goes, if I want to do a second one in a row)