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This is a lovely sample from Angel at Teavivre! I have a house full of teens again, Rock Lobster blasting, and the sounds of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 filling one end of the house.

I made an escape to my tea table sanctuary and turned on Pandora radio to Chinese Flute. As Jason recommended, I lifted my little cup with the words, “This cup is useful in that it is empty.”

The dry leaves smell strongly of jasmine and just as strongly of fresh green tea with a woodsy, lightly toasted aroma. The steeped tea has a light and natural tasting jasmine flavor, not a soapy perfume jasmine like the one I bought at Southern Season and can not drink. The green tea base has a nice touch of dryness with no bitterness. I tried two small cups of first steep and resteeped the leaves.

The second steep is lighter on the jasmine flavor and the green tea base comes out more. The tea base is a little nutty, reminding me of bok choy. Now that I have had two cups from each steep, I will mix the two pots together into my tetsubin, light the warmer, and sip on this throughout the afternoon with the music playing softly. I hope Sandy stops by so she can try it , too!

Open this package and you will immediately see the wisdom in double packaging these teas, as the aroma of this one was quite strong! If it had not been in the outer pouch it would have scented the other teas, quite surprising to me since I thought of white tea as being rather weak.

The dry leaves have a strong buttery scent, sweet like Dixie Queen corn but with a fruity note as well. The leaves are large and fluffy. The steeped tea has a lot of color for a white tea.

We enjoyed this with no additions. It is a warm and peaceful cup, very contemplative. We will be drinking it again tomorrow to further compare notes. A very flavorful white tea!

Thank you, Teavivre and Angel Chen for these wonderful samples! They just arrived today and I invited Sandy and my youngest daughter to join me sampling them.

We began with this lovely black tea. It is very smooth, lightly honeyed, and naturally sweet. The aroma is a very clean and natural tea aroma. I intended to try it plain, with sugar, and with milk and sugar, but by the time I had my third cup I realized I hadn’t made any additions. It doesn’t need them! But youngest always adds milk and sugar and she liked it that way, too.

I love that this tea is organic, and there is so much information on the pouch. I am looking forward to trying the rest of these! If you like Teavana’s Golden Monkey, you really should try this one as it is just as good or even better but costs less. You will save money without sacrificing quality or taste.

I had one bag of this and I blew it. First I got impatient and didn’t wait for the water to cool enough. Then I forgot about it and let it steep for too long, but not by much. Plus, I have had this for a long time and I was only going to drink it to get rid of it since I am doing a bit of decluttering, shifting, and repurposing for the holidays.

Even oversteeped this isn’t bitter, but it also isn’t very good. I seem to only like really REALLY good greens. I am not getting much mango, and that is probably because of the age of this bag.

I will just have to look forward to my upcoming pot (pots) of black tea with Sandy later today.

This is from a side by side tasting comparing this tea with Organic Rabbit Hole Chai.

Yes, I like this. When prepared chai style it really tastes like liquid pumpkin pie. The dry tea is made up of small particles, typical of what my Indian acquaintances use, with some cardamom seeds. Having had one or two other chais, I felt that I was cheating and not really drinking chai but rather a spiced or flavored tea.

Today we are drinking it made like any black tea and adding a bit of milk and sugar. The spices are much more subtle than Rabbit Hole. If you are looking for a good, fall tea that tastes like pumpkin pie spices, this is very good. Sandy says it would taste really good mixed with maple sugar or a touch of maple sugar. I’ll keep that in mind!

If you are looking for a chai that is as much a visual treat as an olfactory one, go with Rabbit Hole. It is 52% organic spices, and even though I did not increase the number of teaspoons in the pot the 48% that is tea base came through loud and clear, smooth and tasty.

The kids said, “This smells like Christmas!”. And it does!

Sandy brought lots of tea back from Australia and New Zealand and we are sipping our way through all these teas we reserved to try with each other.

This is a nicely spiced chai and not too peppery for me. I had some authentic chai made from the personal recipe of a friend from India and really didn’t like it, then someone else from India who had a recipe more like this one and found the other one horrifying.

At first I thought it was very similar to Harney and Sons Indian Spice, so we decided to do a side by side comparison. These are VERY different. Rabbit Hole Chai is organic, a giant plus. There are whole cardamom pods, whole cloves, and large pieces of cinnamon bark, as well as chunks of ginger and star anise. I agree with Bliss, there is something sweet and good in the base that does remind you of bubblegum, but in the best way possible, perhaps like the old fashioned gum you can hardly find anymore like Teaberry, Blackjack, and Clove. It is probably the anise and clove!

While spices, this isn’t a tea that burns, it is just warming and bracing. This is a very good chai! Another home run by Rabbit Hole!

I have had this tea a few times before, but today it was sandwiched between Chocolate Delight and Organic Tropical Paradise. Though it is a very good tea, that was an unfair position for it to be in. To bring it up to the level of body and flavor the other teas had today, I had to add milk and a bit of sugar. Still, a very good tea, especially if you like coconut and a hint of chocolate. Milk and sugar make it a strong hint.

It is hard to say enough about how good this tea is. I didn’t have my glasses on and couldn’t even see it, so I didn’t know it was a oolong. Even though I used nearly boiling water and steeped four and a half minutes it is perfect. As soon as I lifted the lid on the tea pot to take out the basket, I saw the huge, full leaves and knew it was oolong tea. And the taste is that of some of the very best dark oolong tea I have tasted. It is smooth and the added flavors are natural and subdued, adding just what they should and nothing more. They are a lovely complement to the tea but they don’t attract attention to themselves.

Whee! Another tea from Jenn to try with Sandy! I will try not to drool on the keypad. No promises.

Oh. Oh. OH! BOY! Cinnamon, yes yes yes! But the frosting on top is there, and the warm, soft, almost gooey bread! It’s all here in this cup. Please remember that I am that one human being in America who doesn’t like Harney and Sons number one selling tea, Hot Cinnamon Spice. This is the perfect level of cinnamon, with the perfect additions to taste just like a fresh, warm cinnamon roll.
Bravo, Frank! And thank you, Jenn!

Sandy was practically daring me to try this, so I made a tiny cup of it. She really, really, REALLY did not like this tea! I thought I was smelling menthol or camphor when I sniffed the dry leaves, but upon making the tea I find that I am tasting only green tea and wintergreen. In fact, I could easily believe that I made a cup of green tea and stirred in a teaspoonful of Ben-Gay. Good thing I like the smell of Ben-Gay!

I have never had (or until Sandy bought this, HEARD of) Feijoa so I looked at her link to the Wiki article. It mentions hints of guava, strawberries, etc. but all I get is wintergreen. The wintergreen taste is high in the nose and softly fills your mouth but it isn’t as strong as peppermint can sometimes be in tea. Overall, I like this pretty well, and Sandy says, “You can HAVE it!”. Thank you! I shall enjoy it!

Edited to add: Since Sandy cautioned me that this tea frightened her horribly, I steeped it very conservatively, using about 175 degree water for three minutes.