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I had no idea how to brew this, so I checked the other (two) reviews for pointers and went with 3 minutes at 80C. I barely ever read individual tasting notes right before trying a new tea, though, and I have Dag Wedin’s ‘powerfully fruity’ comment with me as I sip this. Heh. Let me just say it’s pretty obvious which one of us drinks flavoured Japanese fruit teas on a regular basis.

In the bag, this smells so sweet; there’s a special sweetness to it – a new, hay-like sweetness I haven’t encountered before. I don’t know if it’s even possible to get this to come through in the steeped tea, but I did not succeed. As has already been pointed out, this doesn’t look like the average white tea, and, in my opinion, nor does it taste like it. It’s light, but it has a bit more depth than I’ve come to expect from whites. Flavoured or unflavoured, they often come off very light and fluffy to me – much like drinking a cloud.

The contents of my cup went down smoothly, but there is not enough personality or character for me to be intrigued or excited. I won’t remember this tea. My rating reflects this, rather than the quality of the tea – I’m sure this leaf would be very pleasing to someone who enjoys a clean, fresh, uncomplicated white.

[Sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]

I tried this tea partly because of Project Unflavoured Green, and partly because it’s so pretty. The leaves look like little hedgehog spines. I like hedgehogs. (A lot.)

In the bag, the scent is definitely vegetal, but with a little more punch to it than the green I last tried. This seems more robust. The slightly savoury note carries through into the brewed tea, which smells vegetal and a little brothy, with a metallic undertone.

To me, the taste seems like a very accurate reflection of what I pick up in terms of scent. The aftertaste adds a light, toasted/smoky note to the whole.

Overall, definitely a pleasant tea, but not one that strikes me as very original or that appeals to my personal tastes beyond the ‘I wouldn’t turn down a cup’ level. This is more like something I would enjoy drinking with food than on its own.

Thank you for letting us try this, KittyLovesTea!

[Sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]

The remainder of this sample was just enough for a pitcher of iced tea. As expected, this worked quite well cold. It lost a surprising amount of the apple/date character of the hot tea, but it gained some floral notes, and, most surprisingly of all, a peppery aftertaste which was very nice.

[Sample from Ysaurella, spring 2014.]
[Sample polished off in Rome, February 2014.]

Whenever I’m in Sweden in late spring or early summer, my foremost summer-is-really-here ritual is to have soft serve ice cream with sprinkles. I tend to favour the chocolate sprinkles, but every now and then I go crazy and pick the tutti frutti ones. This tea, in the bag, smells exactly like that – the first ice cream of the season. Thick with creamy vanilla and studded with refined sugar-powered sprinkles.

It smelled so ridiculously good, I really had to try it. I generally go for fruity, floral rooibos, and I’m kind of sick of that now, so I figured it might be time to graduate to those birthday cake-y ones everyone seems to be raving about.

I have to admit I really like this one, which, hilariously, makes me feel a little dirty. It’s so unabashedly artificial it’s sort of like the Texan Beauty Salon Makeover of teas. Flavour wise, it tastes exactly as it smells, it’s like a melted vanilla soft serve ice cream with sprinkles in a cup. Spun sugar seems all wrong – it’s doesn’t even come close to that level of cloying sweetness, and it has nothing of the slightly caramelized, burnt note of good, freshly made spun sugar.

It’s vanilla-sweet and delicious and will definitely make me more open to dessertier rooibos blends in the future.

[Sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]

Lavender Earl Greys are yet another of those tea categories I’m not quite comfortable with (I’ll probably need a good rest at a spa or something after this swap box sampling round.) but want to make some kind of final decision on. I decided to go with the steeping suggestion from KittyLovesTea’s review of this, as the full six-minute steep seemed too steep (Hue hueee. I guess we are doing puns this month. ) for me and my black tea issues.

The dry tea is all about the lavender to me. It efficiently drowns out any other scent notes, except possibly some small hint of the tea base. Steeped, the tea base acquires significantly more potency, and it’s roughly a 50/50 lavender/tea base (I don’t love) balance.

This is a really, really difficult one for me. It tastes so much like a fish dish I made once – it was oven-baked cod with rosemary and some kind of creamy topping. It was the strangest blend of really disgusting and really good – I still get freaky little cravings for it on the rare occasion. What made it problematic was the perfumey quality of the rosemary combined with the fish, and this strikes me as similar. The black tea base is pretty savoury, and to me that really collides with the perfume notes of the lavender. I think for a lavender EG to work for me, it needs to be far more delicately blended, and with a more complex taste structure.

Let me emphasize that the rating in no way reflects the quality of the tea, but my own severe hangups in terms of lavender EGs.

Thanks for sharing, KittyLovesTea!

[Sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]

My profile says, ‘No peppermint.’ so obviously it’s time to give peppermint another chance. It’s 2014! The year of tea bravery! Besides, I would really like to learn to enjoy minty teas.

In the bag, this smells very fresh and light; it’s all crisp, cool peppermint. In the cup, the scent seems much thicker, a little dirty – a gritty mint. The earth tone reminds me of gardening; a few years ago they sold me peppermint plants instead of regular mint by mistake and I didn’t notice until they started growing bigger (they were very small from the start) and I had to dig them up and banish them to a less coveted spot. (Don’t look at me like that. Think of the poor orphaned mojitos. Priorities, people!) This is exactly that – garden soil and crushed peppermint leaf.

Steeped, it’s… fair. It’s not the most aggressively evil peppermint I’ve tasted, but it’s not super mild. It doesn’t leave that minty coolness mouthfeel I have such a hard time with, and it’s consistent throughout the sip, taste wise. Unoffensive, fresh, clean and a little earthy.

That much said, I have not been converted – peppermint teas might just not be for me. Overall, I feel mint should be served in very small amounts, preferably inside some form of chocolate casing.

It was good to try, though, and definitely nice to add Bluebird to the list of tea companies I have tried. I’d never heard of them, but will consider placing an order with them after this – their website is great, the packaging pretty, they ship fairly cheaply within Europe, and they blended a peppermint tea I could actually finish a whole cup of. Definitely worth a try.

Thanks, KittyLovesTea for adding this to the box!

[Sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]

I’d already committed to this one before realizing it was one of those nightmare samples.

1. It’s not in the database.
2. It’s barely googlable and not available to purchase online.
3. It turns out it’s an in-house (but possibly sourced) blend at this three-locations-in-the-entire-US coffee chain.
4. If I love it, there’s no way in hell I’m ever going to be able to score any more.

So let’s steep this sucker and hope for the worst!

In the bag, it smells really, really delicious. It’s strongly coconutty, but also a full-on, really gorgeous pistachio. I know it’s supposed to be almond, but this smells exactly like Sicilian pastry filled with pistachio cream. Sorry, almond flavouring – you and pistachio were switched at birth. In addition, this is a really, really beautiful tea – long strips of coconut, lovely shades of green. I’m sold.

In the cup, incomprehensibly, this just gets better. Coconut wise, this is as fresh as it comes. David’s Tea’s coconut always has a slight oiliness to it – I’m not saying it’s stale, but it’s mature coconut. Lupicia’s coconut is all coconut cream, a complete piña colada experience. But this? This is all fresh, crisp, pale, natural coconut.

Flavour wise, it’s not over the top, but definitely present. It’s a complete mouthfeel experience – I love how some teas are there, unapologetic, throughout the entire sip. This is definitely one of those – tongue tip-to-aftertaste delicious. It might just be the natural sweetness of the coconut, but I also get a vanilla-esque smoothness right at the end of the sip.

Well, this was completely awful. Who has an uncle in Blowing Rock, NC?

I would have loved to hold on to the remains of this, but since it seems so rare, I’ll drop it back into the box – I’d say the sample is good for about three more cups. Thanks a lot for sharing this one, KittyLovesTea!

[Sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]

This is the second lemongrass I’m trying from the box. This one is a herbal, and as such (I never drink herbals! I have no idea why. It might be the lack of actual tea. Is that elitist? Eli-tea-st? Are we even doing puns this month? I’m so out of touch.) I had no idea how to brew it, so I used Scheherezade’s steeping parametres – 4 minutes at boiling.

In the bag, this didn’t smell like anything specific, just a vaguely citrusy whole, but fairly subtle. Brewed, though, it’s half Fox lemon toffee and half lemongrass, which is somewhat confusing, seeing as that’s about as broad a representation on the artificial —> natural scale as is even possible. After I let the cup sit for a few minutes, the scent slid all the way into lemongrass territory, however – again, confusing, seeing as lemongrass equals food to me, rather than beverage. I’m expecting this to be a savoury broth, but it’s not.

The confusion prevails as I sip my way through this – my brain thinks it’s having a plain broth to cleanse the palate between courses, and it refuses to accept that we’re actually drinking tea. It’s looking forward to a scented towelette in the near future. It’s anxiously anticipating the green mango salad and also, if possible, something cashewy, please. Is this a fusion place? Are there fancy cocktails to be had? Are we on a date? If so, do we get to make out later? And when is that salad coming?

It’s good; I’m glad I got to try some. It’s just not teaful enough to suit me.

Thanks to KittyLovesTea for sharing!

[Sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]

One of my tea goals for 2014, in addition to Not Buying Any Teas in January (check) and Trying All The Peach Teas (working on it) is to try more unflavoured greens. This tea fits the bill.

My aggressive lack of knowledge about various tea regions and leaf types really puts a hamper on things, though – it’s very hard to discuss something completely out of context. I feel like I’m a kid at one of those Kid’s Day at the Art Museum type events – you know, a four-year-old pointing at a Mirò, howling, ‘Nana spilled lemonade on the wall!!!’

Cute? Yes. Helpful? No.

With this tea, for example, there is a dominant scent and flavour I can’t quite place – it’s not like something I’ve had before, but it’s sweet, and light, and subtly perfumed. It seems too easy to always retreat to ‘grassy’, or, ‘vegetal’, or ‘buttery’, or ‘hay-like’, because most unflavoured greens (and oolongs) have those characteristics to varying degrees.

I don’t quite know what to do about it – is this a typical LongJing? How do I know unless I drink more LongJings? Where do I find a LongJing to compare it to around midnight on a Sunday in Rome? (It’s probably best not to ask, there’s no telling what goes on in the park where I live after dark.)

It’s a little frustrating. I know I enjoyed the f*ck out of this cup and that it made me happy and smiley and that I really want to drink more unflavoured green teas.

That’ll just have to do for now.

[Sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]

As you can tell, I’m box-sampling way outside of my comfort zone this time around. Next up, lemongrass! There were two lemongrasses (uh) in the box, so I figured I’d compare, even if one is a yerba maté (this one) and the other a straight-up herbal.

I was surprised that I liked the scent of this one so much in the bag – I keep avoiding citrus, but it seems it’s just one of those Brian Roberts/Sally Bowles (Cabaret) situations, where those three girls were obviously just the wrong three girls.

Flavour wise, I get a slightly medicinal citrus – the tea reminds me so much of a type of citrus candy (I honestly think they were cough drops) my grandmother used to keep in her handbag. Aw, gramps. I remember how you always used to say, ‘If someone pokes you, KICK them in return!’ Always equally hilarious coming from a small Miss Marple-like old lady with a huge purse.

Strangely, though, I enjoy it. It’s sort of herbally and citrusy with no clearly distinguishable notes of any specific type of citrus, although I think it’s much closer to grapefruit than lemongrass. I could absolutely drink a few cups of this, and I have a feeling this is one of those I might experience a small, weird craving for in the future.

Thanks for sharing this, cteresa!

[Sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]