Canton Tea Co

The dry leaf is so pretty! Thin black and gold strands – just lovely! It makes a beautifully dark, red-tinted cup. Sipping… I taste hay, sourdough bread and a tiny bit of dark chocolate. Not a whole lot of caramel here, but it’s smooth and sweet. I wish that I could taste more of that caramel as it would add another tasty dimension to the cup, but it is still very delicious.

Not robust enough in flavor for me tonight. I made a beautiful omelet with camembert cheese and caramelized onions, and I guess that this tea didn’t really stand a chance against it.
Oh well, I’ll see if I can’t give it a gongfu session later this week.

I only ordered 20g of this from Canton, as it was so obscenely expensive. But I was curious to try it. It brews a light silvery gold, and tastes distinctly like white rice, bread or wheat. It is naturally sweet, and looses flavor considerably when it cools, which only means that you shouldn’t linger over it. It is like Norbu’s Ya Bao, but even smoother and more delicate, and without any hint of pines. It tastes nothing like Bai Mu Dan or Silver Needle, it is indeed a class of its own in terms of white tea. If you don’t like white tea, then you’ll probably not enjoy this tea – it is very delicate, and shy in terms of flavor. If you, like me, enjoy white teas, then indulge in a small pouch of this. It is an interesting and very tasty tea.
Brewed western style, at 70C. Canton tea recommends brewing it at 75C, and after a taste at 70C I agree. The tea loses flavor considerably when it cools down. Zero astringency, don’t add sweeteners (it’s naturally sweet), or milk. Silky smooth but light body.
The leaves were dark greenish and silvery white, medium length, and twisted.
Points taken off for the exorbitant price.

A sample from KittyLovesTea! I’m a lemongrass fan, on the whole. It’s fresh-tasting, citrussy, caffeine free…what’s not to love? My most recent favourite has been Teapigs Lemongrass, but this is equally as good. The pieces of lemongrass here are much finer and more green than I’ve seen before, and they seem to make a more potent brew. It’s still a relatively delicate flavour, in the grand scheme of things, but I can taste lemon clearly rather than the just sweet, hay-like, vaguely citrus notes I’ve experiences with some lemongrass teas. I’ve enough of this left to make a few more cups, and it’s a very pleasant herbal for either morning or evening. Thanks to KittyLovesTea for making me reevaluate my lemongrass tendencies!

What a magical experience! It was my first time tasting a Longjing tea so I can’t really compare it to others but I loved it! It gave me a sensation of home, possibly because it had an aroma of a sweet corn & milk beverage I used to drink in my childhood. The tea is buttery, slightly vegetal & sweet (hits the spot), fresh and nutty. It’s the type of tea that I can drink at any hour of the day. I steeped it for 2.5 min at 70C and for the 2nd infusion, I steeped it for 5 min at 75C. The second infusion felt milder than the first but it was still great!

This is a sipdown of a sample I got as part of the Canton Tea Club. I haven’t had puerh in a little while now. It brews a honey-colored liquor. There’s not too much going on here. It’s got a nice astringency. It’s quite green, mildly floral, not smokey. Overall quite nice.

rich and dark caffeine laden goodness…yum…110ml gaiwan 8g tea…

I still love this tea. It’s a very mild, sweet, milk-chocolatey tea. This is the kind of tea that would pair with practically anything. It’s mostly the packaging that gets me, though. It comes as little chocolate square-shaped pieces which are wrapped in gold foil. So cute. Both the visuals and the smells remind me of the Cadbury fruit and nut bars my family would buy at Christmas. Definitely a favorite.

This tea isn’t well liked by the reviewers on Steepster, but I happen to like this tea. The taste is disappointingly mild for a black (at first), but the wet leaf aroma is really interesting. It has lots of typical Yunnan black flavors such as dark chocolate (possibly with a trace of orange) and caramel, but it also has some earthy notes sort of like wet forrest floor, but in the spring when it’s very wet and warm and all the leaves are decaying. The aftertaste is a lot like coffee, which wasn’t my favorite.

By the third steeping I brewed it for 3 minutes to get a stronger flavor. The fourth steeping was about 4 minutes, and was too long. The fifth steeping was only 10 seconds and seemed like just the right amount of time. You really need to adjust the time for how little or how much the tea brick has separated. I like this tea pretty well, but it certainly wasn’t the rich, sweet taste I was expecting from the description.

The harvest date for these was Autumn 2012. I am considering ordering some of the spring 2013 bricks from Yunnan Sourcing. I tend to find that I like spring Yunnan blacks better than other harvests.

I have been meaning to try this for some time now. I bought it as a novelty item and it has sat on the shelf staring at me until today. So, it’s tea packed into aromatic bamboo. The first problem was how to get into it without scattering tea everywhere. The website suggests stamping on the open end of the bamboo, so I did, and it worked and with a bit of extra effort and a lot of risk of trapped fingers, I managed to get into it. Looking at the tea inside the bamboo made me think of soil samples being brought out from the drilling rig. Possibly not the best mindset in which to taste the tea. The tea seemed quite chopped and there were a lot of stalks in there too. So, the important thing was how it tasted. At this point, my vocabulary begins to fail me. There is an iron edge to it that I associate with shu more than sheng. There is also a camphor or pine note. I’m not getting the floral notes that the website suggests should be there but there is some smokiness to it. It is also very cooling. I can feel my face cooling down as I drink the tea, and that is accompanied by a slight feeling of light-headedness (but not enough to give you my bank details, Bonnie!). In most respects it is very different from the other shengs I have tried, which must be a result of the processing. I cannot really decide about this one. It’s an interesting tea, but is it really good? Based on reviews elsewhere, I get the impression it is a bit finicky, so I shall need to try it again and see how I fare in the future.

I can’t believe I have not written a tasting note on this tea before. I try to write one on each tea that I drink, although it is rare that I write more on a tea I have already written about. This is a tea I received as part of my Canton Tea Club membership last Christmas. Ah well, time now to scribble something quickly.

The wet leaf has a roasted floral aroma and is very dark. The liquor is dark orange and has the same roasted aroma, but is more nutty. Tasting it, the roasted flavour comes through first followed by a floral nuttiness. It lingers on the tongue, transforming some of the taste into sweetness as the aftertaste develops. I could not imagine drinking this tea every day, but it is the right tea for the moment, and worth keeping around for when those moments occur.

Its been a while that i made a tasting note but thats because i had a busy time the last weeks…

This rukeri black tea is a tea from canton’s tea club. My first rwanda tea and only my second african tea ever. I brewed this with a teaspoon of leafs and used near boiling water. Brew time for my first cup is 3min and delivers a cup thats in color a bit ess dark then most assams. Taste wise this is a strange one, its malty and strong but with a light after taste… i can’t really place the aftertaste but its good.

I’m not 100% a big fan of this rukeri black its a very good black tea, but i have so many blacks that this one doesn’t really stand out the way i tought it would…

Quick notes on this one. I’m watching Breaking Bad (on series 4 now) and I ordered an Indian takeaway and felt like having a black Indian tea while we wait. This one is nice, it’s bold, malty, smoky and wooden with a slightly dry after taste. It does has some astringency and the more I drink the dryer the after taste becomes and it also has a leather like taste.

I like it, not one of my favourites but a nice Indian black all the same. The strength would also make a good breakfast tea.

Found a packet of this at the back of the cupboard while looking for a green tea to cut the caffeine headache from too much coffee and not enough sleep this week. I think it arrived as part of my Tea Club membership (now lapsed). Anyway, it’s doing the trick. It’s light, chestnutty and the aftertaste goes on for a while. The liquor is almost clear and the dry leaf has a pork chop smell to it that I have noted before with other Long Jings. It is doing the trick, so I can get back to focusing on editing without coffee jitters. Yay! Boy, do I know how to live! ;)

Another tea from Sil.
I almost bought some of these same mini bricks from Yunnan Sourcing, just out of curiousity. I’m glad I didn’t. They aren’t anything I’d want to have around. Worth trying though.

My first ever green darjeeling, and boy this tea is good stuff!

I’m comparing this tea to a yellow gold, or any other green oolong tea. I know its a green tea, but the creaminess and freshness from these curled leafs are wonderful.

Sweet, light citrus in taste and a bit creamy… one off the best green tea’s i drank in recent times. Have to say that u can easily get 3 and if you brew long enough even a 4th cup out off one teaspoon of leafs.

I used a 2m15 sec brew time for my first cup, upping the brew time with 1min for each cup after that. The color of this brewed tea is a light green that gets a bit intenser in color after more cups and longer steep time. Only downside was that this tea is on the expensive side… but i had some luck i ordered this with canton’s sale a while back and i’m happy i had the opportunity to afford it.

Oh, btw i used a 70°c water temperature for all brews. Like recommended on the packing info.

This Oolong consists of varied sized balls from roughly 4mm to 1mm in diameter. They are dark green with some brown and medium green in places with a few pieces having quite large stems still attached. A quick sniff-spection reveals a dry and perfumed floral scent.

The liquid once steeped is very light yellow. It has a sweet and floral flavour with a dry after taste. Very delicate but it does have a buttery element present though honestly it’s a little ruined by the overwhelming dryness. I don’t mind some dryness from an Oolong but this one feels like it leaves a powdery substance in my mouth after each sip.

Also as it cools the perfumed element becomes stronger as does the dryness which I didn’t think was possible.

I usually prefer Ali Shan to Li Shan and this was no exception. I had high hopes for this tea and while it was still a pleasant enough Oolong it just is not for me.

The leaves are a beautiful dark autumn brown with a few furry golden tips amongst them. On average they are a few mm long and thin with a sweet malt and currant scent.

Once steeped this tea is golden brown in colour and has a honeyed malt aroma.

Flavour is very light and sweet with essences of: malt, honey, sweet flowers, raisins and fresh wood.

It’s a nice subtle black tea with plenty of charm and sweetness. Definiately a black tea that you can drink and relax with. Also considering there were only a few golden tips present I would have guessed there were more if not entirely golden tips.

I would consider buying this tea for a change compared to my beloved Dian Hong golden tips but honestly it will not be a favourite of mine.

Got this tea as a sample with one of my orders with Canton Tea Company. Its a interesting tea and one of my first Wild tea’s. The dry leaf are pretty large and a bit curled, bigger then i expected to see from a black tea.

I’m brewing this tea with the half of my 5gram sample, so that i can make a second tryout with different brew times. The color of the infusion is a light almost golden/brown, once again its lighter in color then i expected. I would try to describe the smell but because i’m having a mild cold i’m going to skip that part.

Taste wise i’m finding this first cup very soft, almost creamy like with some hints of caramel. To my opinion its almost not malty, tough they mention some maltyniss in the description.

A very good tea, but for me its not strong enough for a black tea, but i’m enjoying it a lot!

I only have a small sample of this tea, as it is extremely expensive, and unavailable in anything but samples at the time. It is an interesting tea, with robust flavour for a white tea, and it does diverge slightly from the usual white tea palate of cucumber/hay/barley/wheat to a more oolong-ie palate of fruit, minerals, and creamy greens. It is also not as light bodied as white teas usually are. If you really love white tea, then you probably won’t rate this tea among your favourite whites. I love white tea, and Norbu’s Ya Bao is still ranked as my favourite (yes, I have tasted Verdant’s Ya Bao and I don’t like it as much), with Tea Palace’s Bai Mu Dan second, and this tea is ranked with Verdant’s Ya Bao as “an interesting white when I’m looking for a more aggressive flavour”. For me, white teas are soft, soothing, a relaxing way to end the evening in mellow sweetness. Both this Ye Sheng Wild White and Verdant’s Ya Ba have a rough edge to them that makes them more interesting, but also makes them fit to fill my white tea cravings. If you are not a white tea person, and you think that white tea is bland – this is the tea for you.

I just finished my third cup of this amazing black tea. The sugar touch gets less and less but the tea itself keeps giving! It transformed to a more normal black tea thats mild and sweet… Usually i always drink 2 cups of a black tea only some can make me make 3 or more cups. This is one off them a very good third cup, amazing!