1295 Tasting Notes
I’m on a Butiki bender tonight in an effort to make room for/justify another order. To avoid spamming everyone’s dashboards with Butiki-only tasting notes, I will write only one tasting note per tea regardless of how many cups I actually drink.
So as usual this tea is fabulous. I’m picking up more apple than potato this time around. Very apropos for the fall season :) The aftertaste is savory and buttery – almost apple pie-esque. One more cup left in this bag, which I am planning to sipdown tonight and make some cabinet space for more tea. I still have another full bag though!
Sadly, this is one of the few Butiki teas I just never enjoy. Something about the flavors just never meshes for me and it ends up tasting kind of chaotic. I still drink it because
a) caffeine boost yay, and
b) I stupidly bought 2 ounces before even tasting it and need to finish them off.
I always brew precisely per the instructions, so I know that’s not the problem. I’ve had this in a regular mug at home and in my travel mug at work, so context and ability to smell the tea aren’t the issue. The only thing I haven’t done is try this with sugar, which might do the trick. Unfortunately, I almost never have sugar in the house. Maybe honey? Suggestions welcome.
Mmmm…
This is exactly as advertised and well blended. The honey and lavender mesh together nicely. The mint comes out as a nice tangy aftertaste. Very relaxing and very pleasant. Also a lot fewer ingredients than most Yogi teas. This is a nice change of pace from my usual bedtime teas.
sipdown
Would you say it’s very floral in flavour? Would somebody who doesn’t much care for floral scented teas be able to drink this, do you think?
I don’t mind florals, so it’s hard for me to say. The lavender flavor is prominent here and lavender is a flower. The ingredients also include passion flower extract. I don’t taste that as a distinct flavor, but I imagine that its purpose is to supplement/amplify the lavender flavor. In short – I don’t know. I guess it depends on whether your dislike for floral teas is uniform or flower-specific.
You can try out a sample here: http://www.yogiproducts.com/ecard (it’s the “Rest” well-wish).
Those are US addresses only. I’ll have to see if I can find it in a shop here abouts. I don’t even know if that’s possible yet. I was just attracted to the honey. :)
I’m not sure about floral though. Sometimes I find it tolerable and sometimes it’s impossible to drink. I know I don’t like jasmine, but I don’t have enough experience with other flowers to know for certain. Rose seems to be generally okay for me and orange blossoms. But I don’t know if it’s a question of not disliking those particular flowers or just having had them in more balanced blends in general. It could just be a floral strength issue.
This just tasted sort of generically fruity/berry-ish today. Lots of hibiscus. I’m not sensing any passionfruit flavor at all. The underlying green tea is grassy and a bit dry – neither terrible nor astounding. Overall, this has too much hibiscus for my taste right now. Also, ssssipdown!
Interesting. This definitely tastes like a nice fresh strawberry. There seems to be a whiff of hibiscus in this too, which I’m not enjoying as much. I’m also not getting the cream aspect. I do like this as a strawberry tea, but I wish I was getting more creaminess out of it. I still have some leaf left – suggestions are welcome!
Thanks to Laurent at Nina’s Paris for the sample.
Now this. This is the taste of victory. I won the stressful thing at work, got my travel mug back, and had a lovely little reunion with my training class (all unrelated but wonderful events). I spent my entire commute home looking forward to celebrating with this exact tea (don’t worry, I take the train; wouldn’t want to risk tea-dreaming and driving!). And it is just as fantastic as I remember it. Just a nice, natural watermelon flavor over a light base. Resteeps quite nicely. I thought it would go well with apricot raspberry thumbprint cookies, but it’s just too much fruity sweetness. Maybe it would work if the cookies were homemade instead of store-bought, but I’m not much of a baker.
Many thanks to Stephanie for the swap!
Oh boo. I wasn’t paying attention this morning and ended up overbrewing. The result was still drinkable, but the magic was gone :-( It was just kind of generically green and black. Smooth and not at all astringent, but…meh. Which I suppose doesn’t matter much, because I ended up losing my travel mug. My awesome, spill-proof, keep-tea-warm-for-ages travel mug.
Go a few days without constant easy access to high quality tea? Whatever shall I do? ::promptly orders a new travel mug::
Thanks again to whatshesaid for the sample!
This is really pleasant tonight. I’m having it after some Bailey’s Irish Cream and it’s actually a great chaser (to the extent that tea can be a chaser and Bailey’s needs chasing). Next time I think I’ll just pour the booze right into the tea. How have I not thought of adding creamy alcohol to dessert-y teas before?!?
I had what I believe to be a sipdown of this tea earlier today. I see from my previous tasting note that I enjoyed the ginger flavor. Unfortunately, I could barely taste the ginger today. It just seemed very weak all around – maybe the water wasn’t hot enough? I did let it steep for a good long while…
Oh well. I have better ginger teas and better Wissotzky teas, so it’s no big loss to be done with this one.
