This year being my first ‘TEA’ Holiday time (I wasn’t even a tea drinker last November or December), I’ve been slowly purchasing favorite tea’s for my family. Now that you can get sample sizes from Verdant, I can get flavors to use as stocking stuffers. Little added goodies in my holiday boxes.
It will be so easy to send tea to California and to my Niece at Cornell University.
But, I just couldn’t help getting something for myself. You know how it is.
I couldn’t resist this Eight Treasures Yabao Winter Blend for ME!
I’m one of those people who loves the Yabao Pu’er!
This morning I brewed 2 pots of tea Western Style with the same leaves (aprox. 24oz). NO Rinse.
The wet leaves for the first pot smelled like roast chicken, and the second pot smelled less meaty and more like juniper berries.
The aroma of the liquor on the first pour was amazing! Lilies and jasmine, so fragrant that the vapor was like incense. I felt like I had stepped into one of the hot houses at Filoli Gardens (one of my favorite places to go in the S.F. Bay Area).
It felt like was close to the gardenias with the steaming scent of orchid and jasmine filling every scent receptor. Almost too much really. This was indeed intense!
I took a sip of tea which was sweet from the Yabao and Elderberry but I couldn’t taste any other flavors.
Being an experimenter, I poured some tea into another glass cup and added some honey which wasn’t very good, then milk in another cup which I didn’t like either and finally a little sweetening which was just OK.
I didn’t feel that I had a very good experience with this tea.
For all the quality ingredients, I wasn’t tasting what I should
have and I knew there had to be some reason for it.
I thought it over step by step.
Spring Water. Maybe my water was the problem because I had used tap water, and maybe I should have rinsed the tea leaves first.
So, I emptied the electric kettle, poured fresh Spring Water in and began again. Rinse, steep and pour.
Aha, this time the flavor was smoother, with Jasmine, Juniper, Yabao a little Lemon and the Tulsi was way off at the finish. (Not a taste but a coolness.)
The Vanilla taste wasn’t there at all. I think the Vanilla added a balance that kept the blend from getting acidic. As the tea cooled you can feel a creamy texture and the Elderberry aroma and flavor appear.
The second pot of tea was like moving out of the hot house onto the
garden path around the reflection pool…a quiet walk through cool gardens with the wafting scent of flowers, citrus and mint.
I learned a lesson that you can’t cut corners with tea! My oops!
