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Oh good, back in I-love-all-Yumchaa-teas mode now. Thanks to cteresa for the sample! I didn’t both reading the notes for ingredients for this one, just assumed it was a green chai. I prefer chai as proper industrial-strength black or the other end of the (caffeine) scale and rooibos, but my mind was open to a Yumchaa green chai, and this turned out to be lovely. I love ginger, cardamom and pepper, and love them together (usually with cinnamon), I love Yumchaa’s green tea bases (this one is sencha) and I love spearmint, but I’d never have thought the spearmint would go so well with the other tastes.

It’s going to be interesting, choosing from the growing list of tried-and-loved teas for the next Yumchaa order! Thanks again, T!

Another quick note, as I didn’t want to leave my only Bluebird Tea Co tasting note the not-very positive one on Vicky’s Sponge Cake, after I’ve enjoyed some of the other teas I got from them. This is probably my favourite, as I’ve not had the jasmine & spearmint combo before in a green/white, and it’s a real winner. I may have been a bit over-cautious with water temp, as it was definitely below 80, and the smell is stronger than the taste, but it’s such an utterly wonderful smell that I’m not complaining. Nice blend of white (which I’d guess to be a white peony?) and green tea for the base, and overall balanced and delicate blend.

I didn’t want to edit the tea info (which is the same as the website) as I’m not positive about this, but the ingredients on the package say orange flowers, not orange, and I’m definitely not getting any orange taste. There are lots of beautiful flowers in with the tea & spearmint leaves, though I didn’t have time (or probably, knowledge!) to spread them out and decide what type they were.

Oh, happy days – another new-to-me tea I really like! I’d never, to my knowledge, had a straight Keemun before the other day, so again had no idea what to expect. I ended up getting a sample of this and a small bag of the Keemun Orchid from Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co. at around the same time. I tried the Kent & Sussex first (I’ll add that to Steepster eventually), expecting at least some of the promised “sweetish flavour”, the honey, plum and orchid. Getting instead the very mild smokiness I now know is characteristic of a Keemun, with a woody flavour and slight sharpness I didn’t find very pleasant, I decided to brew up a cup of the Pure Aroma Tea to compare. They say it’s delicate and “perfumed”, but given that the K&S was called orchid and the PAT was called spruce, I expected more sharp woodiness rather than less. Instead, I got a lovely cup of smoothness. The touch of smokiness plays nicely with the hint of woodiness, but here there’s no sharpness at all, rather a taste that balances beautifully this side of sweet. I wouldn’t describe it as perfumed, but that’s not a bad thing. I drank a bit without milk, as per the notes on the package, but then enjoyed the rest with a splash of milk. (I’m kind of funny about black teas, because of drinking so many strong Irish/English breakfast blend types daily over so many years. Sometimes a taste can be nice, but I get a bit agitated if I can’t find the right strength to drink it with milk, or perfect taste to drink it without. This was unusual in that it was easy to enjoy the same cup both ways.)

Thanks to Sil for sharing this one! Only a short tasting notelet, as I probably oversteeped this one (no brewing instructions on the website and I figured a Ceylon should be okay for 4 minutes, anyway). The smell was amazing, and I now know that I must have an osmanthus tea somewhere in my cupboard, though this may not be the osmanthus for me. The taste was much weaker, and as the tea base was rather bitter, it was hard to get anything else. I’ll try again shorter and maybe cooler.

Finished the last of my sample today, which was sad. Especially as I’d ordered a Russian Caravan from the Kent & Sussex Tea Company (lots of Russian customers, figured it should be good), and found it very disappointing. I’ll order Pure Aromas again, maybe trying smoky and unsmoky, but just wanted to add that I enjoyed my last cup with the addition of a half teaspoon of honey. Not just any honey – Sarah’s Warming Honey with Cinnamon. (So, HTML doesn’t work. Okay then: http://www.mileeven.com/products.) It was an amazingly good addition, which didn’t make me feel I could only enjoy the tea that way, but added a fun other way to drink when in the mood.

(Backlog, I have one. Should be doing teas that have no tasting note yet, but what can you do when the mood to talk about a particular cuppa strikes?)

I’m feeling the need for Steepster to allow searching for people by region (Ravelry has it, Goodreads has it, can’t be that impossible!), after adding this small Irish tea company. Hello, Dublin??

Anyway, bought this in Fallon & Byrne’s the other day, totally intrigued by the list of ingredients, and always willing to pick up a new tea. When I drank it, it was an enjoyable but horrendously confusing experience – there is so, so much going on there it’s hard to describe! Also, I’ve never tasted green rooibos straight, so don’t know what that’s adding to the mix. Nor do I know what mallow blossoms, pomegranate blossoms, sea buckthorn berries, or even ginseng taste like. It ended up tasting very fruity, mostly some fruit that’s rather tangy – almost like Ribena without the sweetness, but not as far on the tangy scale as hibiscus. Apricot is not a heavily apparent flavour, though it could be part of the tangy fruity! With a little floral and — I don’t know. Slightly embarrassing admission – I dissected the leaves & other material after I’d finished. Lot of goji berries, but they aren’t that strong a taste even alone. I like it, despite its confusion-inducing properties, and made it last night and Cara also liked it, despite etc. It’s not my ideal fruity rooibos, but it’s tasty and keeps the taste buds awake!

[Thank goodness I thought to copy and save this note before trying to post. Don’t need any more frustration to this day. Here goes second try…]

Made this for Cara and me in the middle of yesterday’s fun times </ sarcasm>, and was very disappointed. Packaging was cute as could be, and everyone else had such positive reactions to it. Hard as I tried, all I could get was a faint tang of raspberry, which does not a Victoria sponge cake make. Cara didn’t even get the raspberry, but said “If it’s got CAKE in the name, it should taste of CAKE. Because — CAKE” We didn’t even get enough vanilla to let imaginations supply the cake. I tried it without milk, then with Cara’s almond milk (mine is the unsweetened), and Cara drank it with regular milk, so no almondy flavour would interfere. I’d give it another try, but think it makes more sense to send it off to someone who might like it much more.

(Steeped exactly as per instructions – can’t get those right now.)