Art of Tea

I’m simultaneously excited and apprehensive to try this tea that has so much love here on Steepster… but it also has rooibos. The dry leaf smells sweet and tart. Like a pear tart with devon or heavy cream on it. Yummy. Decadent. But when I pour the tea into the cup, I can smell the rooibos. I smell sweet and tart underneath it but I might have to relearn that rooibos is not evil before I can enjoy this cup.

Yeah, this one is going to have a learning curve (tasting curve?) for me. I taste a little something sweet on the front end – honey and pear intermingled I think – but it is quickly replaced by rooibos. And this isn’t just a straight woody rooibos. This one makes me think a bit of moldy wood. No, it’s not quite that strong – freshly dampened wood. I am getting a little light caramel hint at the end so that gives me hope that after a few cups, this tea and I might come to a non-rooibos-focused understanding.

Holding off rating for now to see how this relationship develops
2.5g/6oz

reminiscent of pine.

The dry leaf smells creamy. I can occasionally catch a whiff of pouching greenness. But the foremost smell is creamy… something. Vanilla, a hint of dreamsicle-like citrus and something that reminds me of calendula. A tingle or something. Hard to describe so I’m really just stuck with calendula.

And duh, I just read the tasting notes and it says it has marigold. Which I think is the same (or similar?) to calendula. So whew, not crazy.

Brewed up, there is more of a pouching smell and that makes my mouth water. Then I get vanilla and calendula spikes with a little dreamsicle sweetness. So pretty much exactly what the dry leaves smell like but in different proportions.

The taste literally made me go ‘wow’. Very creamy on the front end. Very. Then it mixes with a soft calendula and citrus/dreamsicle, then the pouchong buttery green freshness at the end and then, after the sip, a little tingle on the tip of my tongue from the calendula.

Honestly, I’ve gotten to the point that I’m not a huge fan of calendula in my teas, but I can totally work with this. The tea is unrepentantly creamy and thick tasting, – like the thickness that differentiates whole milk from skim – it is thick and it coats my mouth.

It’s a pretty distinct tea so it’s going to take a few times for me to figure out exactly how much I will enjoy this – crave-ability, addiction level, etc – so this score is a bit soft, but I’m pretty sure it will only go up once I better get to know this tea.

ETA: Second steep @ 2:30 and 195°. Pretty similar to the first steep, sweeter once it cooled a little. Third steep @ 3:30 and 195° poured into a cup then into the pot – I’m tempted to dub this the money steep. The sweetness pops a bit more and the calendula tingle is almost non-existent but the flavor of it is still there and blends well with the very faint dreamsicle thing that’s going on.
3g/6oz

good strong rooibos…with chocolate sludge in the bottom?
i made 1 cup at a time this time, 2 tsp, 4 min

Steep Information:
Amount: 4 tsp
Additives: none
Water: filtered boiling 1 cast iron teapot full
Tool: Cast Iron Teapot with Mesh basket strainer
Steep Time: a little over 7 minutes
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: Banana (MilitiaJim Fake banana) chocolate if you look for it
Steeped Tea Smell: woody
Flavor: woody, banana, sweet
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: banana
Liquor: deep cloudy reddish brown

This was a gift from Teaplz

I am sadly not getting any of the chocolate, very little of the banana (it might be a brief flirt at the beginning but then gone), the apple I think just sweetens it.

In summary, smells better than it tastes, it doesn’t taste bad it just tastes like rooibos and after that smell you expect and want something more.

I have enough left for another pot, perhaps more, I think I’ll try a shorter steep.

Post-Steep Additives: none

images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/03/art-of-tea-loose-leaf-rooibos-tea.html

I was right: to extract any flavor from this, you have to use a lot of leaves. I’m at 1 Tbsp per 12oz cup. This is sort of sensible: because the leaves are so big and fluffy and loosely packed, maybe this is actually less tea by weight than I use with other teas. I don’t know.

So the most amazing thing about this tea is still the smell of the dried leaves. It’s all vanilla-y and some citrus and wow. The tea, once brewed, tastes pretty much the same, albeit less so.

Maybe I’m still being unfair because the dried leaves smell of such promise: if someone just gave me a prepared cup of this tea, perhaps I would be more impressed, but as it is I’m still not loving this as much as some of the other folks here. Still, it’s not like it’s undrinkable or anything.

This smells so good. But it hardly tastes like anything (or, more accurately, it does not taste anywhere nearly as strongly as it smells). I used about 1.5 tsp for about 12oz water, but the tea is kind of loosely packed, so maybe this is not enough. I’m going to try it again with more tea and see what happens..

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, pear.

WOW.

Perhaps it is merely sense memory, but I swear this tea is textured like a perfectly ripe pear.

This is so good!

It’d probably be expected here to write something about how this tea is keeping me warm in the great big snowstorm we’re currently having here in New York. But let me be honest: I’m working from home and the heat works just fine. So let’s talk about the tea instead.

The best way I can think of to describe the tea is to say that it tastes like Earl Grey tea, only more so. They obviously put more than the normal amount of bergamot. (Also, has anyone ever seen an actual bergamot fruit? Do they have any uses other than flavoring tea? Why does the Firefox spellchecker insist that bergamot is not even a word?)

The vanilla, while present, is definitely secondary to the bergamot and the tea itself. It serves more to enhance these other flavors than to stand on its own.

Other posters here have suggested that this tea is especially nice with milk. I don’t usually like milk in my tea, but I suppose if I have some milk in the house then it might be worth trying.

Overall a nice, easy-to-drink black tea. I’ll certainly be drinking this a bunch in mornings when I need help waking up.

Oh man. Oh, oh man. Been looking forward to this tea after having read through everyone else’s tasting notes. Picked it up in Select last week. My first from Art of Tea.

Let me keep it simple: if you like pear, you’ll love this tea.

Now, I happen to be a big fan of pears so that works just fine for me. As far as the other elements, I’m thinking about the caramel in particular, I didn’t get much of that. Really, just pear. In fact, when I sought a particular flavor out that I thought might be coming through I was just hit with…more pear. Mind you, this is not a bad thing. In fact, this is easily one of the better rooiboses I’ve had in a while, if not my favorite. It’s a lot of fruit, without being too much fruit, if that makes sense.

If you’re looking for a nice fruit blend and have had enough of the citrus, apple et. al, definitely give this one a shot! Great after dinner tea.

Still more backlogging from the weekend, I slacked with posting this weekend severely, but never fear, I drank tea!

This tea could not be more aptly named. “Mandarin Silk” describes this tea almost perfectly. The mandarin is slight, it is extremely light in odor and flavor. However, it flows through the tea easily. The tea is creamy, smooth and silky. It is sweet without being sweetened and creamy without having any such product in it. I would best describe this silk as the creaminess and smoothness associated with milk chocolate; that melt-in-your-mouth texture and flavor.

The flavor is difficult to describe. You do not taste mandarin, but you can smell it. This is probably because the mouthfeel of the tea is overwhelming, the silky smoothness, is really the only thing you can absorb when drinking it. A faint sweetness lingers in the tea that makes me think more of a white chocolate confection than a tea at all.

This tea was delicious, however, the body and aroma of it were not my cup of tea (pun intended). Worth a try, but I am glad I did not buy it.

I decided at the last second to throw this on my Art of Tea order and I’m really very glad that I did.

From dry leaf to steeping liquid to final product, this tea’s scents remained rather consistent for me, excepting a variance in intensities. That, and the wet leaf took on an unsurprising vegetal quality. What I smell is, also unsurprisingly, mandarin orange. It mingles somewhere between actual mandarin oranges and those mandarin orange gummy slices, but as I enjoy both of them it’s not an issue for me. The warmly fresh and sweet citrus scent combines with the scent of some kind of baked good. This tea uses pouchong, which I am beginning to identify as one of my favorite types of oolong, and I’m pretty sure that’s where the bake-y portion of today’s tasting is originating.

How many people have had fruit tart? Raise your hand.

Sorry, that was very Blue’s Clues of me [though, if you actually raised your hand, then please wave it around like you just don’t care]. The reason I ask is because the taste of this tea made me think very much of the base pastry that has been used in fruit tarts that I have had. If you haven’t fruit tart, then imagine, perhaps, a sugar cookie with about half the sugar. If you haven’t had either of these, may I suggest that you expand your dessert repertoire immediately.

Mandarin oranges have always had a bit of softness around them in the taste as opposed to navel oranges, which aren’t biting in flavor but read as sharper to me in flavor and acidity. The orange taste in this definitely treads solidly in mandarin orange territory, and the rounded flavor of that meshes very nicely with the warm, buttery, doughy qualities of the pouchong.

I went two steeps deep on this one, and the flavor had noticeably faded on the second steep. When I have more time, I may try lengthening the steep time on the second steep even further to see what that does, but the tasty first steep is reason enough for me to keep this tea around and perhaps even re-order once it’s gone.

I haven’t been impressed with some of their other offerings, but with mandarin silk and caramelized pear on my tea shelf, I don’t really need anything else from Art of Tea to wow me. I’m pretty happy here.

Oh yeah, I’m drinking dessert tea for breakfast and you can’t stop me!

…This tea tastes and smells exactly like banana taffy! And yet my teeth aren’t stuck together. Tea for the win!

I bought with my Dessert Tea Sampler pack from Art of Tea, and it’s my least favorite from the medley of other flavors they provided. By itself, it’s an interesting fruity rooibos with a hint of weight (chocolate + peppercorn + banana). However, I think the fruity notes and heavier ones get muddled and don’t come through with enough clarity. The brew is slightly cloudy with a lingering banana note.

It’s a balanced brew that doesn’t leave the mouth dry and doesn’t overwork your tastebuds, but doesn’t wow you either.

Pleaseexcusemyomgit’scoming…. tea*GASM*. Phew thanks. I just needed to break the ice with that.

Well this little ravishing thing is definitely a tease on the taste buds. I had the ecstasy of taking a sip of this tea a few days ago paired with a bag of Archer Farm’s Cinnamon Apple Pie trail mix. Um, until this point in time, I’ve always considered myself a prudent girl… however this whole little threesome between the tea, the trail mix, and my tongue was enough to make me into a permanent sinner.

I bought this along with a few other teas in a Desert Sampler set from Art of Tea. I haven’t gotten around to them, but if all the teas in that set are half as good as this one I might just quit my day job and take up teanography. Hmm.

The first few sips are a lovely heavier bodied rooibos with a hint of cinnamon. Later gulps (cup licking?) result in a fantastic end note of pears and other sweet ditties I just can’t place. It’s definitely smooth on the way down, not a single thought of dryness. (Haha.. dryness… smooth… [AHEM]).

Me and my little friend went for about 4 rounds (i mean cups, naughty thinker ;]), afterwards it degrades into a plain ’ol rooibos. I am definitely ordering more than 2 ounces because this little sample pack is NOT going to tide me over.

MMMMMMM!!!

This Earl Grey is the BEST tea to make a latte/milk tea out of. It has plenty of body and flavor to stand up against the milk and sugar, yet still soothes the tongue with bergamont in a pleasant non-citrusy way. (That makes the tea sound heroic, don’t you thinkk?)

This is basically the gateway tea for me in Art of Tea’s other loose leaf. I CANNOT WAIT until I get my dessert tea sampler set.

I got distracted from this tea (I know, I know) and forgot all about it until an hour after it was brewed.

I don’t find it anywhere near as good cold. You can taste hints of caramel and fleeting bits of pear, but overall the rooibos comes out more – which does not endear it to me.

I’ll need to make more tomorrow night to remind me of why I like it. (Oh dear, I have to drink more good tea. Boo hoo! :) )

Still feeling sick today, and even though I’m dead tired, I didn’t want any caffiene. And I had a small container of this at work. So I’ve been drinking pears all morning. It’s just as good as I remember. Yum. I think I’ll try sweetening with honey for my poor sore throat rather than the splenda I usually use for my next cup.

Yay.
Oh yay.

I ordered this on a whim after reading the other glowing reviews. I like pears, and I LOVE caramel. Rooibos – not so much. I’m not into the wood flavor.

Opening this bag, I actually swore out loud in joy – it SMELLED SO GOOD. So totally pear like. So yummy. When I walked it by a co-worker this morning, she said it smelled like pear skin and honey.

Brewing, it’s a beautiful brown-red. And then the flavor was amazing. When I first tried it, I wasn’t as excited as I was once I added a tiny bit of sweetner. I do like my teas sweeter. And for me, adding the half pack of splenda made it sing. The pear jumped out, and the caramel was extra creamy then.

I like this tea. I like this tea a LOT. Yum!

This is the most pleasant smelling tea I’ve smelt. It has sweet fruit and floral scents.
The tea has a nice hint of citrus, very light and refreshing. The goji berries really add a lot to the tea and give it distinct flavor that I haven’t tasted in any other tea. To date this is my favorite white tea.