Harney & Sons

This is a very mild tea. The coconut is extremely mild and in no way overpowering. Very mild notes of chocolate and I get a little bit of caramel as well. There are no harsh or strong flavors noted in this tea. Fortunately, there is no unpleasant aftertaste either (sometimes coconut gets soapy for me). Overall, this is a nice easy sipper. I wouldn’t mind stronger flavor but this is nice to relax with.

Middle if the road Lapsang Souchoung. Maybe a little too smoky; I think I prefer the Upton Lapsang. But this is not bad.

I actually got this tea by accident. I ordered Chocolate Chai Supreme and was sent this 4 oz tin of Chocolate Mint instead. I emailed Harney & Son’s and by the next morning the proper order was on the way and they told me to go ahead and enjoy this tea anyway. Great customer service! I gave it a try the next day and was a little bit underwhelmed initially. Not bad but just not amazing. I decided to have it again the next day and for some reason it really grew on me the second time. The mint is really refreshing and the chocolate is surprisingly strong. It reminds me of a guilt free hot chocolate and is very enjoyable. It’s frequently in my travel mug and it’s somehow become one of my favorites over the course of a week! A delicious happy accident.

My first Lapsang Souchong and second time drinking it. Very different from most of my other options but very lovely nonetheless. Strong smoked smell but much more mild taste. Very earthy with no discernible bitterness. Reminds me of a campfire or a fire in a hearth. Not my everyday drink but certainly an enjoyable option when I’m looking for something a little bit different.

Just a really, really pleasant cup. I can taste caramel, berry, and bergamot with each and every sip. I can see why this one is so popular!

Sipping this now and I taste absolutely no lemon or caramel. Nothing but a pretty average Darjeeling.

Would’ve loved for this to have a more prominent chocolate note, but unfortunately I got mostly mint. Adding cream and sugar helped, but the mint was a bit overpowering. I tend to dislike straight mint teas, but hoped this would be more of an Andes/dessert like-mint (which I do like). Unfortunately it was more of the former, so it won’t be a repeat purchase for me.

Unfortunately, this is a total miss for me. I’m not picking up any notes besides a very medicinal cherry. No stone fruit/plum. Nothing very complex.

I’m always on the lookout for a nice pear tea, and this definitely fits the bill! The fresh pear, and mild spices work very well with the white base. Very pleasant and mild, and the pear flavor is very authentic.

2nd tea for the day. The dry aroma was a beautiful mix of orange, cinnamon, and cloves,. However, I was disappointed that the brew only tasted of clove. The clove flavor was so strong that it turned very chemically tasting.

My first tea of Halloween day. I wanted something sweet and creamy, and this seemed like it would fit the bill. However, even with the addition of sugar and cream, it’s surprisingly astringent and a bit bitter. It has a lovely vanilla aroma, but it’s lacking the rich, vanilla flavor I was hoping for. Based on other reviews, it seems like this tea can be a bit finicky, so I will be retrying a few different temp/time combinations.

It’s a nice enough tea, but if you’re looking for something with a lot of maple flavor, I’d pass. The maple is very subtle, and you’re probably not going to really notice it unless you add sugar to your tea.

Also I think it tastes a little like raisins for some reason. I don’t know. Something about it’s just reminding me of Sun-Maid raisins. Weird.

I made this gong fu style first and wrote a review for Sororitea Sisters. The following day I served it at tea time made western style and that is what I will address here.

First of all, I read a lot of hype of JJM and had high hopes. It is crazy expensive – $75 an ounce. No, I didn’t pay that. I used my reward points to buy a sample pack. I got one gong fu session and two large pots of tea out of the leaves when you include resteeps. The sample was $10. The two ounce tin is $149.

This was….good but not $75 an ounce good. It was savory like Zhen Qu from Southern Season and had hints of Golden Monkey flavors. I tried regular cups and Jianzhen cups. It just wasn’t the over-the-moon experience I was hoping it would be.

I served an out of date Tangerine White from Revolution as the other tea at tea time, and my guest said she preferred that to the JJM, and she is a black tea lover, preferring unflavored black most of all. That kind of says something.

Again, it wasn’t bad, but there are $6 an ounce teas that taste as good or better to me. I feel bad saying it because I love Harney and Sons and they and their teas have been great to me. Maybe my tastes are not refined enough to appreciate this tea. That is quite possible.
I wouldn’t mind hearing from a real JJM lover who has tried several and see how this compares for them.

A touch lighter than their Lapsang Souchon, its OK, but close enough as to be the same for me. Now I really Like Lapsang Souchong, so that’s a good thing.

I’ve been largely unimpressed with mint chocolate teas in the past, so I wasn’t very excited to try this one. I like Harney’s Florence flavor, but all their other chocolate teas are kind of eh. I’m happy to say that this one is pretty nice! The mint takes the front seat and there’s just a bit of a chocolate base in the background. Nothing tastes fake or strange. This is actually very well blended, and I would totally drink this one frequently if it were decaf!
Thanks to AliceG for this sample! This might finally be the last of the teas she sent – it’s been fun trying everything!

The moment the air had even a hint of crispness, I ordered a lot of tea for Harney and Sons, and am now smugly sitting on a small mountain of teas.
This is a new flavor for them, and I tossed it into the cart excitedly. This tea was voted on to determine who would win, and I really liked the tea that won last year (Victorian London Fog), so I had high hopes for this one.
I like breakfast blends, and one with a touch of maple sounds brilliant.
However….. I cant say I taste any of the maple. Its a decent breakfast blend, but I am lacking that punch of earthy sweetness that I was expecting.
Hmm. Well, I’ll keep trying and see what happens.

Another tea I had failed to add to my cupboard, so here it is added in and I am hoping to have some more sipdowns to celebrate soon.

I had a couple of students today – two sisters who take both piano and voice. Both had colds and decided to just do piano lessons today so we had spare time before their mom picked them up. I offered them tea for their sore throats and let them pick from my cupboard. I ket them rummage through my cookie stash and make a cookie plate as well. The youngest is not allowed to have caffeine and chose Vanilla Comoro (spoiler – she loved it) and the older girl chose this because she loves Earl Grey and had never tried a white one.

She was really happy with this, saying that some white tea disappoints her because she can not detect much flavor but this was very flavorful indeed. She added milk and sugar, I drank it plain.

I concur that it has tons of flavor. The base is nice and smooth and the bergamot doesn’t get sour/puckery. I really really dislike Earl Grey with a Ceylon base because the lemony notes in the tea plus the bergamot just equal big yucky SOUR taste to me. And heartburn. Not so with the white tea base.

This was in sachets because that was what the store had available, but these tear very easily along the heat sealed line and I just pour the loose tea into an infuser.

Their mom came in and saw the tea table set and joined us for a few Coconut and Chocolate Milano cookies and tea. More on Vanilla Comoro to come….