Sipdown no. 204. A sample. I thought I had tried all the Samovar green tea samples, but when I did my number on the tea collection I found this. Now, unless something got trapped under the drawer, I am sure this is the last of the green samples. I do have a few white tea samples, a couple of oolongs, and a masala chai, but all the blacks, greens, herbals and pu-erhs have been sipped down.
And oh joy! This is a tea that Samovar still carries!
I so love jasmine teas, and pearls are particularly awesome. So I’m excited by the prospect of this on a rainy evening, though this was another sample I saved well past what I’m sure was its prime.
The pearls smell richly jasmine and greenly tea, and they barely unfurled during steeping (I will steep them again, for sure). The tea is lightly yellow and very clear. The fragrance is a divine mix of jasmine floral and gently vegetal, sweet green tea.
Why did I wait so long to try Samovar’s jasmine? For shame. It is nigh on perfect, in my view. There is nothing heavy handed about this. It’s perfectly balanced between floral and tea, and for a type of tea that can be a very pleasant johnny one note, it has an amazing depth. I can only imagine how it would have been when fresh. It might have been my first 100 score.
Now I must sip down all of my lesser jasmines so I can justify ordering this in the convenient economy size.
Flavors: Hay, Jasmine, Nectar, Vegetal
Hehe, your last sentence made me laugh :D
;-)