1154 Tasting Notes
Drinking this while I write up a few tasting notes. When I opened up the pouch, the scent of fall just wafted up: apples, cinnamon, and maple all in happy harmony. Yes, it’s a hot summer day right now, but still this seemed appealing somehow. It’s one of the few Adagio teas I’ve really been wanting to try. Disappointingly, the flavor balance feels quite off. The maple is here and pleasant enough, and there’s a nice apple note. Not sure about any creaminess, which is definitely a miss when it’s in the name of the blend. But the real problem is that the cinnamon is too strong, to the point of being biting. And I LOVE cinnamon – I use an appalling amount of it on yogurt, ice cream, etc. But in a blend like this, the cinnamon should really be a supporting player rather than the prima donna. This is still drinkable, but primarily because I like cinnamon so much; I think someone else might find it difficult. I had such high hopes for this blend – an oolong in my flavor profile sweet spot – but it just didn’t deliver.
Flavors: Apple, Cinnamon, Maple
Sipdown – I finished this off a couple of nights ago but apparently didn’t write a note. I never did find a temperature or steep time that made this blend particularly enjoyable for me. It’s just sort of all-around tart, sort of generically red berry and hibiscus tart with not much sweetness, while also having a thin mouthfeel. So it feels unbalanced and not super intriguing. Unfortunately not a fan. It’s drinkable, but not much more than that.
Sipdown! Added some oat milk for creaminess. Woodsy rooibos, clove, cinnamon, and maybe a touch of cardamom. I see the ingredients don’t list clove, but maybe clove oil is part of the “natural flavor”? Not the greatest chai I’ve ever had but really hit the spot tonight.
Dammann Freres advent calendar day 12. After the terrible experience I had with Christmas Tea Vert, I was filled with dread about this one. Opening it up, though, I was encouraged to find that the dry leaf didn’t smell like bubblegum. Instead, it smells like sweet cherry, marzipan, and a hint of ginger. So, ok, maybe the brew won’t taste horrible!
It’s better than the vert, for sure, but I can’t say that I really like it. It doesn’t taste like bubblegum, which is a massive point in its favor. But it has a very strong maraschino cherry flavor, with a hint of marzipan in the background and a gentle whisper of ginger coming in on the back end. Somehow the mix of the cherry and marzipan also makes me think there’s orange in here, even though the ingredients say there isn’t. Somehow, I just don’t like this. I can’t quite place my finger on why, even – I don’t like cherries but I do like maraschino cherries and Shirley Temples. This just super isn’t working for me as a hot drink. I’m letting it cool to see if it’s more enjoyable cold.
[hours later]
I let this cool and topped it off with seltzer for a tea soda, which definitely made it more palatable for me – enjoyable, even. The sweetness of this particular cherry flavoring makes for a good soda flavoring, and works well for a cool refresher. Very much the opposite of a northern hemisphere Christmas vibe, but c’est la vie. I’m going to cold brew the second steep of this for another tea soda.
Sipdown for ashmanra’s National Cherry Day sipdown prompt. I prioritized finishing this one off because it came in a clear cellophane baggie. With the light and air exposure, I knew it would lose quality faster than most, and I didn’t feel like moving it to a tin. I enjoyed this one to the last. It’s good for multiple steeps and tasty hot or iced. Filing away “sakura leaf” as an herbal worth picking up every spring!
Dammann Freres advent calendar day 11. Day 10 has gone missing! I have searched high and low to no avail. I don’t know whether I drank it and forgot to take notes, moved the teabag for some reason, or the bag has gotten lost inside the calendar. It definitely makes the part of my brain that needs to do things in order feel itchy, but I’m trying to just accept that I might never find it and move on.
As soon as I opened the packet for this blend, Day 11, there was a strong whiff of almond-y alcohol. The teabag itself smelled nicely of almond and soft vanilla, so I still had high hopes for this when I brewed it up in a spacious mug. It does taste like almond, with a nice lingering vanilla note. However, there’s a jarring alcohol aspect with that almond that just throws the whole thing off for me. Which is a bummer. because these are flavors I really enjoy otherwise.
We went to a really good teppanyaki restaurant while we were in Taiwan – so good that we kept going back. The only problem is that it puts everything like it back home to shame. We’ve got hibachi places but they’re the standard fare. I love that, I grew up on it being the fancy “going out” meal for my family, but now I’ve had better and I want more of THAT. They served buckwheat tea with our meals. Tea-averse partner was super into it, so I bought him a couple of buckwheat teas from Yunomi to try out at home. What I really want to do is find out whether I can brew up the buckwheat that’s in my pantry cabinet, but that’s an experiment for another time!
So this tea! It is really hot right now, so I made a cold brew pitcher. It sat in the fridge for a few days because tea-averse partner kept drinking other things (insert eye-rolling emoji and crying emoji). Eventually I just started pouring mugs of it and putting them in front of him, mostly because I wanted to try it too! The great news is that this really can’t oversteep. It just gets deep, nutty, and roasty. Basically tastes like childhood. And really nice as an iced tea on a hot day. Partner approves too!
Another old note I haven’t posted, for Day 9 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar that I’m taking a very long time to finish. Yet another black tea from this advent. The dry leaf smells delectably like juicy mango, vanilla, and cream. It’s been a long time since I’ve had lassi so I can’t speak to how accurate the flavor is to its namesake. The beginning of the sip features the dry, woody, almost cinnamony base. A gently juicy mango flavor comes in mid-sip. Unfortunately, I can’t detect any vanilla or cream notes. I hoped that would change as the tea cooled, but it didn’t. The base stayed prominent, the mango got a little juicier, and I suppose if I thoroughly stretched the imagination I could find a creamy note, but not really. I had high hopes for this one based off the scent of the dry leaf, but it just didn’t carry over into the cup.
This tasting note for Dammann Freres’ advent calendar day 8 has been sitting in my drafts for months but I never posted it. This blend is delicious! It tastes like wild strawberry jam, or a high quality strawberry gummy. I am getting tired of the Dammann Freres advent having so many black teas, but it’s a good base here since it seems to have a caramel or brown sugar aspect to it. I made the first steep hot and the second as an overnight cold steep. Both were fantastic.
So I’m working through a few half-finished advents and countdown boxes, and the Volition/Yao Cha Tiger Box Year of the Tiger tea collection is one of them. This is Day 11. The dry leaf smells like malt, yams, and molasses. I’m always torn about how to brew teas from Volition – the instructions say to use a mug, but given the quality of the leaf I feel like it benefits from gong fu brewing. I did the first steep precisely per instructions and it came out tasty but just a tiny bit thin, so I switched over to gong fu after that. Even that first steep tasted like the dry leaf smelled, with absolutely no astringency or dryness. Subsequent gong fu steeps maintained that sweet potato and molasses flavor, but also felt just a little less robust than I’d ideally like for this flavor profile. I got a ton of steeps out of it though, and the good news is that this is a black tea that doesn’t hurt my stomach. If I had more I would experiment with using a bit more leaf than recommended.
