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There was a great temptation to crawl back into bed this morning, but I had bought some lamb and needed to get Shepherd’s Pie made. Once the puppies had finished ravaging my kitchen, I decided to get it going before I could change my mind. I thought this tea from GMATHIS might help me stay on track and not slip away to the soft, soft down comforter and all those pillows…oh, wait, this is called Focus, right?

So I took a sip. Nice! I taste the tea, and there is the chocolate-y orange-y flavor nicely present but not masking the base. I don’t know if I have ever had chicory, so I am not sure if I am picking it up, but I do taste a touch of the mate. I would swear I taste a hint of something Ike cardamom. Is that the chicory?

Thank you, GMathis, for a lovely new tea to start my day with today!

I have been getting nervous because I am getting low on puerh tea and lately I have been craving it. I saw this on sale at Whole Foods tonight and grabbed it. I am not sorry I bought it, but I probably won’t buy it again. It would be great for people who are a little afraid of puerh, but I like the stuff!

On the plus side, there is no fishy odor to this one. On the minus side, they call for a whole tablespoon of tea to eight ounces of water and a five minute steep. At those parameters, I would expect this to have more flavor. It was good but not great. Earthy, yes, but I am not getting the saddle leather, mushrooms, or horse farm notes I love!

I really like their double lidded tins and always reuse them, but with puerh such packaging isn’t necessary. Puerh does best with a wee bit of circulation. I also like that this is fair trade and I like how they do business, I just wish I really loved this tea.

My oldest daughter asked me to order some white tea for her. She has only recently begun to drink tea, and only because she has read so much about the benefits, so she really isn’t going to be attracted by the TEA taste. Together we chose this one as her starting place for white tea.

The aroma is lovely and very light and…feminine? The vanilla dominates but isn’t really strong. The liquor is darker than I expected. I think she will love this. My first sips were reminding me of something and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first. Then I got it…wedding cookies! The ones dusted with confectioner’s sugar. As it cools the lemon steps forward a little more, but overall this is a delightfully restrained tea with great flavor and classic character. Give this to your guests who think they don’t like tea and you will probably make them into tea converts.

Oh, yes! This is the kind of green I enjoy most! The dry leaves smelled nice and vegetal when I opened the pouch…not quite as sweet as buttered squash, but maybe a bit like bok choi? The liquor is pale yellow. The taste is so so smooth. I am so glad a made a pot of this and not just a cup.

Long ago I wanted to drink green tea for my health. I bought grocery store bags and prepared them all wrong, drank what tasted like hot water and got a stomach ache.

When Sandy first took me to A Southern Season, I bought a dragon well tea because I had heard they were some of the healthiest. When I made ithe tea, it was such a far cry from the first bagged green I had tried that I could hardly believe it.

This is really excellent. The greens I have had this week so far have been astringent. This one is not. It is smooth, sweet, and wonderful. Here is another tea that needs to go on my Teavivre order. I can’t wait to have my daughter try this one.

Thank you, Angel and Teavivre! This is really hitting the spot!

When I made the last Ripened Aged Mini Tuo Cha from Teavivre it took until the third steep for it to really break up. I often do not rinse my tea if they seem to steep to a deep color right away. I hate to waste any of the tea so I drink it and enjoy, but that one really did need the rinse to be strong enough. This one, however, disintegrated as soon as the water hit it. As I poured off the rinse, it was at first very light and then quite dark at the end of the tiny pot.

I then added more water and did a short steep. Delicious! Earth and leather! It takes me back to my childhood when I owned a pony. This is the scent of the field full of horses and my little fellow freshly saddled. (I had prayed every night for a pony and one day a lady asked me to sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. Another lady heard me, started crying, said she was from West Virginia and asked me if I wanted a pony. I was about ten years old. I said yes. I named him Sam.)

I do not have the most sensitive or educated palate in the world, but I am not finding the rose flavor. Like KS, I feel that it may be there or it may exist only in my imagination. It may be lending a ghost of a hint of sweetness. The rose bud is pretty and I think this will make a beautiful tea for my son to give his girlfriend for Valentines Day, but the bud is tiny and I just don’t find the flavor of it in my cup. I agree that it might be a good thing.

The bottom line: this puerh has no fishy or shrimpy aroma or taste. There is rich earth and also saddle leather. On the third and fourth steeps the liquor is still quite dark (it was inky black at first) and it is becoming rich, plowed farm soil in summer sun. This is one of the best puerh experiences ever. I may try to have their plain puerh again a little later today to compare and see which I want to put on my order. I definitely want to keep this around, and need to since three frequent visitors to my home have become hooked on it.

This is my first Chun Mei, at least as far as I know!

The aroma and look of the leaves was completely different from the green tea I drank yesterday. This was not as brightly green, and had a completely different aroma. No wet cooked turnip or mustard greens here!

I accidentally used too much leaf. The first sip was astringent and a little sour, my fault. I had already resteeped the leaves so I did what I had read in an article on serving tea in Britain through the years. I read that sometimes tea was made extra strong and the hot water pot was used for people to adjust the tea to their liking. I picked up the kettle and added water until I had the right amount for the amount of leaf I used. All better!

This is still a drying tea, as it is supposed to be. It is neither bitter nor sour. It makes me think of sunshine on dry hay. I made four steeps and combined them all into one pot after tasting a sip from both the first and second steep unmixed. There is plenty of flavor left. I shall enjoy having this as my morning green!

Thank you, Angel and Teavivre!

I made a pot of this for tea time with my girls today because I wanted to compare it to the Premium Keemun Hao Ya from Teavivre that we drank yesterday. This is weaker than Hao Ya A from Harney and Sons which, to be honest, is too strong for me. Maybe I need to make it differently.

This Keemun has less delicacy than Teavivre’s. I didn’t like it plain and added milk and sugar. Once we started our snacks I had a second cup with just a splash of milk. It is certainly chocolate-y and a little smokey, but for the price difference and the taste I think I prefer Teavivire’s. This one from SS is $4.75 an ounce. Teavivre’s works out to $3.20 an ounce, resteeps well, and tastes good without having to be tamed by additions, at least for me. If you love bold, brash keemuns, you might prefer this one, and Harney and Sons more so. I prefer Teavivre’s.

This is from the new tea box that just arrived from Teavivre. Thank you! I am also grateful that it was the excellent puerh they sent me that set my son and now his girlfriend on the tea drinking path. Neither of them liked tea until I gave them the Ripened Mini Tuo Cha Puerh.

When I opened the pouch, the dry leaves smelled strongly of spinach or possibly even cooked mustard greens or tender greens. Quite aromatic! The leaves are a very rich green color, thin and twisted. I was surprised when I peeked in the pot and saw how much they had unfolded. They are not as big as oolong leaves, certainly, but unfolded to impressive size considering how they looked dry.

The tea in my cup stills smells very much like spinach or mustard greens, milder now. The liquor is very pale, a light yellow that is almost clear. The taste is not mild or hidden in any way. The first grocery store green teas I tried years ago tasted like hot water. Not this cup! The liquor may be pale but the flavor is bold, the tea astringent and palate clearing. It is not bitter at all. The taste lingers.

Both steeps were two minutes. I think I would enjoy this even more going to the conservative side of their suggested steep time and stopping the first steep around one minute.

The second steep is much the same but just a wee bit milder.

Thank you, Angel Chen and Teavivre, for the opportunity to try your wonderful teas!

This is a resteep of my sample from SimplyJenW. I used boiling water and steeped for about 3 1/2 minutes. This still has a lot of flavor, but the puerh flavor is still very much in the background. The citrus flavors are very good and still have pretty decent strength. If you want to drink puerh but don’t like it, give this a try. If you want to taste puerh, this might not be the best choice for you.