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Once again, a tea that I have opted to drink multiple times before writing about. Oatmeal is one of my favorite breakfast foods. My expectations were super high, so in order to have my expectations influence the tasting note over my actual perception of the tea, waiting on it seemed to be the best idea. I have had this tea with breakfast for the past few weeks and finally feel like I can write about it objectively.

The leaves are decently large and have oatmeal flakes mixed in with them. It looks like a tea lovers trailmix of sorts… The scent is very subtle. If I am not thinking directly of oatmeal and maple it just smells of black tea that is generically sweet.

Steeped the brew is dark brown and full smelling. It is a rich black tea. The black tea flavor (“assamish”) shines through pleasantly. There is a tenuous maple flavor that is in the end of every sip, adding to the sweetness of it. I found it more evident when sweetened. Also, perhaps my favorite part of this tea, is that it has a “texture” to it. It feels thick and rich, almost like the texture of a tomato soup. Of course, the texture is an illusion, the tea is not actually thickset. I think it is the flavor that makes your mouth think twice about what it is feeling/tasting.

I really enjoy this tea. It is one of the most interesting “feeling” teas that I have had in a while. It is a perfect hardy tea to have with breakfast. My only peeve is that it could use more maple and perhaps a touch of cinnamon. But all in all, I am a happy tea sipper!

On a side note, today is vacation in Ecuador! Hooray!!! Tea, boyfriend, doggy day!!!! : )

This tea is officially my favorite tea. I have put my order in for a pound! Frank has kindly said yes to my request and if all goes well with the mail, I will be receiving a beautiful pound of tea in two weeks!

It is just as delicious every time I sip it. I am almost out of my 2oz pouch that I received, not that long ago. The tea smells so rich and delicious. I love that the smell of the brewing tea invades my entire house. It could easily be confused for someone baking a blueberry pie. Delicious. 

It tastes sooo good. I finish my cup and actually have to practice self restraint in order to not make and finish one cup after another in quick consecutiveness.   
The sweet blueberry and the taste of fresh backed goods makes me smile every single time.

I can’t wait for my pound to arrive… I feel like it will be the first pound of many that I will have to order. It really is THAT good! 

On a side note— 100th tasting note!!!! Yay!!!

I bought this a while back, and have had a few times now. I keep putting of reviewing it because the experience was so different to what I was expecting. Either way, I bought a bunch of it, so it is about time that I write something about it.

The tea comes in little individual serving packages which in turn are double packaged to protect the tea inside. Like most people have already mentioned, it is quite a shock when you open the little package and are faced with a moist and sticky little bunch of tea. When Teavivre says honey, they really meant it. The odd part is that I expected it to give off a rich honey scent, but I only smelled Oolong. I even ventured far enough to taste the sticky liquid, but it lasted like a vaguely sweet Oolong, still not getting any honey.

Also, each little packet is good for a 8oz cup of tea. If you add any more water than that it is too watered down for my taste. So I used two little packets for my 16oz teapot and ended up with a yellow golden brew. The scent was rich and mineral. To me Oolong scent is similar to smelling a lake, that is the sort of mineral that I am hinting at. It still had a tiny bit of latex to the scent, like the last Oolong I had from Teavivre, but it was definitely less prominent. Surprisingly, a bit of honey scent snuck into the brew. I was pleasantly surprised. I absolutely need for something called Honey Oolong that is actually sticky to smell like honey, at least when it is brewed!! :)

The first brew is mostly mineral with a hint of honey. But more than a honey flavor it is a vague honey sweetness (I hope that made sense). I was expecting the honey to be in your face yelling “Here I am!” but I got the honey saying “Oh, hello, I am here chilling with the Oolong…”. I feel like the honey aspect is more of a hint of sweetness when the tea first hits your tongue more than a flavor itself. The aftertaste is more mineral than sweet. Though towards the end of the cup I got a bit of the sweet aftertaste that I love in Oolongs, just not very strong.

very evident. It is this magical transition that makes me love Oolong so much. I love the fact that the flavors transform as they travel through your mouth.

The third brew was a bit bland, I chugged it down mindlessly. It wasn’t bad, just not much there to sip slowly through.

Overall, I dis enjoy this tea. I had super high expectations, that just weren’t met. It is a tasty Oolong, and worth trying. I love the originality of it and the surprise you get when you first open it. I have had it a few times now and I still enjoy opening the small packets of sticky leaves. So far, I have loved Teavivre’s green teas, but their Oolongs aren’t quite my favorites. I really need to try their blacks teas! The sound sensational!

I love artichokes. They are my all time favorite salty food. Green tea with artichoke? Sounded promising… Must try it. Tonight, finally, I get around to this sample. It has been a very busy couple of weeks and I have managed to get carpel tunnel in my right hand from typing… So I believe my tasting notes will be a bit shorter than usual for a while. 

The dry tea smells vaguely fruity. It reminds me of a mild version of Adagio’s Guanabana tea. The leaves are bright green and inviting.

Once brewed it smells a bit like artichoke, but not enough. It is tasty, but not quite artichoke tasty. It has a pleasant sweet aftertaste, similar to the aftertaste of an artichoke. Still taste a bit of fruitiness.

I have to confess that I decided to add a dash of salt to see what happened. Turns out it was a bit more savory, but also reminded me a bit of drinking sea water…. So probably won’t be doing that again. I rather not feel like I am sipping watered down ocean… 

Adagio gets points for coming up with this amazing idea. It still needs some work before it is perfect, but I enjoyed it plenty. 

Enough typing for now. Time to rest my aching hand… Argh… Why did I work so hard!!! : (

This is officially my first tea to be rated 100. It is, in my opinion flawless… The only issue I have related to it is that it isn’t in stock. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that Frank is willing to revive a tea if you order a pound of it. Is this true? If is, well Frank, I think I need a pound of this! I am in love with it! I saw that it had been revived and for sale on Iheartteas.com, so I couldn’t resist ordering it to try. It is by far the best dessert tea I have ever tried, and believe me, I have tried a whole lot of them.

The dry leaves are black and accompanied by the occasional huge luscious looking blueberry. The tea leaves are large and beautifully unbroken. The scent is… majestically scrumptious, temptingly delicious, absolutely indulgent… A think scent of blueberries is surrounded by a heavy sweet pastry scent. It is the supermodel of all blueberry tea scents. 

Once brewed the tea keeps most of its scent and the blueberry will invade an entire house. My brother actually woke up and wandered down to the kitchen to ask what I was making that smelled so much like blueberry. He was shocked when I told him it was tea! We don’t have blueberries in Ecuador, so anything blueberry flavored is a great and rare treat for me! 

The taste is amazing. It tastes like a blueberry danish. Heavy on the blueberry, just the way I like it. The flavor is so smooth that there is no need for any additives. I added sweetener just out of curiosity and I barely even noticed it was there. This is one of the rare teas that taste sweetened without actually being sweet. It is, in my opinion, the sign of a truly well made dessert tea. 

I am so happy I have found you blueberry danish tea! Where have you been all of my life? Frank, I have to say that this actually managed to beat the tastiness of your pancake tea (which is super super tasty!)

Everyone who likes blueberry HAS to try this. You have no idea what you are missing!

It has been a while since I have written about a tea… This one is worthy of the attention! I have had a tough tough week. I am in charge of the marketing in my company, and with mother’s day coming up, all craziness took place. It is finally over, and now I get to sit back and watch things happen (if I am lucky, watch things sell)! It feels great to see your work finally all come together. So for now, time to go back to relaxing with my tea!

The dry leaves are a beautiful mix of coconut and black/brown tea leaves. It smells smooth and coconutty with hint of bitter tea which in my opinion rounds it up pretty well.

Once brewed the dark liquor retains most of its smell. It tastes smooth and creamy. It would be better with a hint of vanilla, but thankfully that can easily be arranged. It is a bit astringent for coconut tea, so I added a bit of milk and sugar and it was delicious. Creamy and sweet coconut tea is exactly what I needed this morning! So yummy in my tummy!

I finished this cup too quickly… I wish it had lasted longer. It is a tasty tea, but I can’t see myself drinking it too often due to the milk requirements I seem to not be able to do with out. Worth trying if you are looking for a coconut tea that will stand up well to milk!

Now back to tea sipping and relaxing!

This is a sample that I received from Auggy in swap, thanks Auggy! Being a rooibos, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up on my own, but I am really happy to get a chance to try it since I do love coconut. It is pretty to look at with the red rooibos and abundant coconut pieces. I sniffed it, and it smelled super coconutty with an aftscent of feet… Sweaty feet… Needless to say very confusing and unsettling. This didn’t stop me from continuing with my brew… The show must go on…

While it brewed the scent was creamy and coconut filled. The odd rancid scent was still there in the background. Now I start worrying… Is the tea going to taste like that? Oh dear…

First taste, unsweetened, was awful. It was pure rancid coconut. I sweetened it and it was bearable, but still had the rancid aftertaste. I added milk, still undrinkable. Since I was in my Mom’s company while I had my tae, I let her try it. She didn’t taste the stinky feet, but didn’t love it eather. I sadly ciuldn’t drink it and had to be dumped out.

While it was a disturbing tea experience, I am still happy I got to try it! Who knew that something that everyone loves I wouldn’t like at all… Oh well… There are still a bunch of things on my list to try! : )

I followed Bonnie’s suggestion and tried this as a latte. It is a beautiful rainy day today. I love rain and most of the time it makes me smile more than sunshine! It is so relaxing to watch it rain, also the cold makes it a great idea to curl up and have a nice hot cup of tea! Somehow I stumbled upon this sample (Thanks again Indigobloom!) and decided it was time to finish it off.

I brewed it strong (almost 3 teaspoons that I had left of it for 10oz of water) and added my homemade latte mix. Most importantly, this tea is strong enough to peak through the milk and sweetener. I tasted the white tea and smiled, it held up to the black tea! I realized that I had never had a white tea latte before. I can’t see myself doing it too often, but it was an interesting experience. I tasted a bit of chamomile, the black tea and the creamy coconut flavor. Sadly, no chocolate.

All in all, it is much better as a latte, but still not a tea that I would buy! Tasty experience nonetheless… : )

It has been a strange week so far… To start off, on Monday I assisted in my boyfriend’s endoscopy (I studied medicine…) and the Doctor found a huge hernia (it was the biggest I have ever seen…). So we now have an operation that needs to be programmed… Tuesday and Wednesday bunched together in my mind and I am glad that it is almost Friday… I can’t wait for the weekend… Thankfully I get to go the Roxette concert tomorrow which should make Thursday easier to digest… Now to actually review this tea.

I love rose flavored things so when I received this from Indigobloom in a swap I was super happy. The black leaves had a few rose petals scattered amongst them. The scent of the dry leaves wasn’t very rosey… It reminded me of a Pu Erh without the fishiness. I got a pleasnt leather note in the scent.

Brewed for 3 minutes it was a bit weak, so I brewed it for an extra minute. It smelled of new leather with a hint of rose. Somehow this appealed to me. The extra minute of brewing made it a tad bit bitter, but it wasn’t bad at all. A touch of sweetener fixed it all up. The flavor was leathery with the perfect amount of astringency. The after taste was a mouthful of delicate rose. Sweetened the after taste was enhanced for a delicious tea experience. It really was like a Pu Erh with all the fishiness removed leaving behind leather and sweet smootheness. I really enjoyed this.

I would recomend this to anyone who is looking for a lightly flavored rose tea. Yum… I wish I had more. : )

This morning I woke up early, for no reason in particular. Since I was up I decided to make myself an early breakfast and a nice big cup of tea. My tea of chioce was this one (yes… I still have some left from my 12 days of Christmas boxes… In my defense, I did have to boxes…). Some people (Angrboda in particular) loved this one, I enjoyed it, but definitely not loved it).

I brewed it nice and strong and added some of my home made latte mix (delicious if I may say so myself…). Since this was the second envelope of it that I opened I got the chance to compare them. There was more flowers in this one, and even though it has sat around a while, I got a pretty strong vanilla smell.

The tea was dark and creamy, and once I added the home made latte mix is was a pretty enjoyable cup of tea! No sparks are flying and no hearts are floating around the room, but I am happy with how this brew turned out.

Right after I drank it, it was time for ice skating training. Yes, even after not being able to walk for a few days, I decided to go back and train once more. I did more than last time, so I am probably am going to be even more sore than last week, but it is really worth it. I feel so free on the ice. Ice skating and tea all in one morning and doggy and boyfriend in the afternoon. I loved this Satrday!