3398 Tasting Notes
*November 11 Sipdown Challenge Prompt – World Origami Day: drink a puerh and admire the wrapping job!”
Yes, this is really late. I got the prompt wrong and drank the entirely wrong thing on the 11th but better late than never. We really needed this today as we had pizza for lunch and at our age and with our stomachs we can always use help digesting pizza.
I have seen videos of puerh cakes being wrapped at the factories and it is so satisfying to watch. I try so hard to re-wrap it nicely after we drink some but to no avail.
I have had this cake for over a decade and when you break a piece off it really lasts, steep after steep. This is woodsy and sweet, without fishiness.
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I have a tin of the grade just below this one ready to open, but it is time to finish off this tin so even though we are having matcha lattes today I used the good stuff. We are having a little cool spell and the holidays are fast approaching, so I thought this would be a great afternoon snack with whipped cream and sprinkles on top.
I do plan to repurchase this one eventually. If I am having hot matcha whisked in the traditional style, I prefer this one, the “extra thick”. The “thick” grade is very good and I usually use it for great lattes since it is higher grade than one would normally relegate for such a purchase.
Tea gift from my daughter – for World Kindness Day!
I decided to have this with breakfast but was so struck by it that I made more after breakfast. When I went to add it to the database, I saw that it is presently sold out. I can see why!
This would be a great puerh for someone who is wanting to try shu but is a little apprehensive. Because I was having it with food, the first impression was that I was drinking an unflavored black tea, but then the taste of rich, pure, wet garden soil blossomed. Earth.
Some pu has lots of barn notes, or camphor, or outright manure. Most smell like freshly plowed earth to me at some point on some level, and some have cedar notes like an old country church whose pews have been polished with Murphy’s Oil Soap. I have had puerh that smells sharp just like the leaves of our pecan tree when they crunch under you feet in late fall. Some smell like the dry dirt in the crawlspace under a house and I like that, too.
For breakfast I made three steeps in a row and combined them in one pot. That was when I had the sense of black tea with soft hints of fruit followed by rich earth experience. fruit? But which?
This is not the dry dirt under the house at all. This is rich, like when I water the house plants that are in the east window, or the richest, most desirable garden soil, but a little more subtle. I was kicking myself for not at least giving a little sip to the individual steeps and decided to make more after breakfast so I can really notice more without distraction and competition from food. (It was a tortilla egg bake today.)
This is silky with a hint of cream followed by rich earth. I have only done two steeps so far and they were a little different but I absolutely can not pinpoint one thing I am tasting in the second steep. It is intriguing and familiar. It reminds me of the vibe of Brown Sugar Cubes from white2tea without tasting like it. (BSC had a lot more high notes and mint with camphor.) This is definitely a tea of middle tones – a mezzo soprano if you will. Any Dame Cleo Laine fans here? Not as thick and rich as her voice but definitely a mezzo.
Third steep is on and I am finishing steep two cold. Lots of high notes cool. Quickly warmed it and…found the elusive note. Blackberry – specifically the flavor of Mûre Sauvage from Dammann Freres, so much so that I had to think quickly whether it could be contamination of this pot, but it can’t be, so natural blackberry notes, it is.
Third steep – piping hot, I get the aroma of soil on the roots of a huge pile of weeds you have pulled, aroma of soil and plant and root. I find that the flavors of puerh blossom most for me after it has cooled for a few minutes. After letting it rest I get a rich earth taste that lingers well. No mushroom really. Maybe some sharper fallen leaf coming through now.
This is lovely and I would 100% buy it again.
November Sipdown Challenge Prompt – a tea with caramel or maple flavor
We opened this tin today and one-fourth of the sachets are gone already due to experimentation.
The aroma is light apple with a little dark caramel. The taste is the same and Ashman and I both felt it was very mild. It was milder than I wanted it to be. Toward the end of the first big pot we made it started getting a bit brisk and Ashman said that perhaps it was meant to have milk and sugar added. I think I saw something on the site or on the tin that said it is best taken without milk, but I could be wrong. We drank the whole large pot and it was okay with our cinnamon crunch bagel for breakfast.
After breakfast I decided to see if perhaps it would be better made with less water so I made a small mug. I tore open the sachet and measured and almost exactly a teaspoon of leaf was in it. That’s enough for a cup but not a big mug so perhaps using less water now was going to make it stronger and better.
Well, it wasn’t bad but I can’t say it seemed much stronger. So time to try again.
This time I made a small mug of tea and added a teaspoon of maple syrup to sweeten it. It already has light caramel notes. The maple syrup just didn’t mesh and meld well with the tea, so I actually preferred it unsweetened. That is how we will finish this off and it won’t take long since there are only twenty sachets in the tin and the sachets only contain 2.5 grams of tea. I might play around with steeping parameters a bit, and while I don’t hate this blend, it just isn’t worth the price to me and there are better teas out there I would rather drink.
It was okay and the name had me excited for a real treat, but not a repurchase unless it just happens to be already included in a hamper I want next year.
November Sipdown Prompt – tea from your highest shelf/drawer/storage
I have to use a step stool to get these down.
I am drinking this every day at lunch now in an attempt to cut back on my sugar intake, as normally I would have sweet iced tea. I am moving around a little less since surgery and don’t want to consume a lot of needless calories, opting for high quality ones instead.
It is pretty hot for November and I am still harvesting tomatoes although it is mostly cherry tomatoes of different types now. There will be a few more slicing types but not many. So iced tea is still very welcome.
This one is disappearing pretty fast now and I am almost sure I have two other types of their black cold steep blends somewhere, or maybe just one. Locating it will be a project soon when this one is gone.
This is particularly good as a cold steeped tea and has not been too brisk for me. It is one of their most economical teas as well. I did try cold steeping it and then heating it as a hot breakfast tea, but that was not the best use of this blend. It will remain a cold steep tea for me, and one I enjoy a lot and look forward to, which I can not say of many unsweetened cold black teas.
I’m jealous of your fresh cherry tomatoes! Store bought never taste as good as home grown.
Agreed! I have dried a whole bunch of them in the oven to use throughout fall and winter. We put them in omelets and on pizza.
Our plants are hanging on with lots of covering and coddling. Our late-bloomer red bell pepper plant has two big’uns that are just starting to turn if the frost will hold off.
November Sipdown Prompt – a tea that reminds you of fall
I have been looking for the email telling me that this is back in stock as it is a seasonal tea. I got an email for fall teas and I checked and I did not see this one listed. Today I got curious and checked again, and there it is.
Now the dilemma is whether to hurry up and order before it sells out, or try to wait for the Christmas teas. They do have the Christmas Collection 2024 page up but it is still empty. Last year I purchased my Christmas teas on November 11, so I think I will take a chance and save Momijigari for that order. If I miss out, it isn’t like I have no other tea to drink…
This tea is my fall go-to to drink alone, because I adore it and Ashman said it was just okay to him. So this one is reserved for my tea alone times. It contains actual maple leaf, if I understand correctly, and has a delightful apple scent. It is so perfect as it is that I do not resteep this one, not even to combine steeps. I don’t want to decrease my pleasure in this one in any way, and the one time I combined two steeps the apple flavor was definitely diminished.
Love love love it
I had to order, I like to collect the Momijigari tins so I’m not risking it ha ha. I noticed they have Takibi this year as well, which is unusual.
I hadn’t noticed that one. Now I tempted to add it to the order. Enabling is so easy here…
Ha ha, sorry not sorry! XP
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November Sipdown Prompt – tea from your lowest shelf/drawer
A favorite tea and we won’t have to miss it for too long because it is almost time for this seasonal beauty to come back. Ashman and I both love Carol and we didn’t want to be deprived of strawberry black tea at night so we try to get enough of each to last a year.
Backlog from yesterday:
My daughter surprised me with this tea for Author’s Day! I was very surprised to find that it wasn’t in the database yet, but she says it is a newer blend that hasn’t been out long.
As I expected, this is mostly lapsang, and I enjoy lapsang. Although the description says there is whisky flavor, I am not getting much of that. I would say there is light cherry here, and I definitely pick up on the hibiscus.
Ashman does not like Lapsang tea at all, but he insisted that he wanted to try it so I made a big enough pot for the two of us to share. He did say that when there is smoke, he just doesn’t taste anything else, but he did finish a cup or two of it.
Next time I have it, I want to try it with a little maple syrup and see if that brings out the whisky flavor. I think it might!
