Red Blossom Tea Company

Had this tea hot to warm up to. I love the smell, to begin with. The dark color of the tea looked like coffee brewed and there was definitely a texture to the tea. I brewed it a little bit longer than I was supposed to (I got distracted!) but it never got bitter. I’ll reserve this for a treat on foggy mornings.

Floral vegetal smell reminiscent of brocoli. Taste was revitalizing with a subtle sweet note to it. Delightful cup of tea.

Another “thanks to sil” tasting note! Had a few too-stupid-to-brew-cuppa days there, which had me avoiding trying this, but today I was up to the challenge. (Totally sarcastic, both about the challenge and about being up to anything.) Anyway, I brewed this according to Red Blossom’s instructions – though I simply had to taste the rinse water, like the big child I am. (It was mildly pool-water tasting, I thought, so they were probably right to say discard it.) But then I was dutiful and did as I was supposed to.

I’m going to have to leave it rather vaguely as not as much to my taste as the Pure Aroma Teas Keemun Spruce, but a nice cup all the same. There was a bit less silky smoothness to the smokiness compared to the PAT one, which left it ever so slightly tasting of burnt wood, to me. Well, obviously, smoke comes from burnt wood but it doesn’t mean the tea tastes like the wood itself. Yes, this tasting note is FULL OF SMART. I could get slight sweet notes – a hint of cocoa/chocolate and maybe a hint of raisin, but they weren’t quite as strong as the burnt notes. Which weren’t strongly burnt, but still dominant.

Thanks again for the sample, sil. It’s great to have had the chance to try this Keemun!

This was my tea first cup of the day.
I oversteeped it stupidely as I get distracted by a phone call.
I had to add a splash of milk to drink it because it took a taste too strong for me, a kind of earthy taste.
I didn’t get the typical mellowness I normally detect immediatly in keemuns.But may be due to the oversteep.
With milk it was really pleasant. I have enough to try a second cup thanks to the sample kindly sent by Sil

Sipdown #1 (for the day).
This Tea was shared with me by Sil, so once again, thanks my friend!
Not bold or malty, but a mild cup that it somehow sweet & a little marine-like. What I’m getting is a slice of a good quality french bread slathered with lightly salted butter. Yup. There is also a hint of stone-fruit in the background.

This is another sample from Sil. Thanks!

Opening the baggie, it smells kind of fruity.
I measured out a heaping tsp & steeped for 3 minutes (after drinking I read the instructions, lol…suppose to be 2 tsp (1 sec rinse) X 2min steep…oops!).
The resulting tea was delicious anyway. It reminds me of french bread, with butter spread over it. It’s very smooth, a little malty, sweet even. There is a bit of an ‘ocean’ taste to it, nothing overly objectionable, but noticeable.
The resteep was very mild.

I’m having one of those days where I don’t really want to do anything.
I don’t have any students until 3:00. My neck is still kinked, but not as badly, so I was able to ease back into my yoga, very gently. Since then, all I’ve done is drink tea & eat a little breakfast.
There are tons of things to do, so I feel like I should be doing something, but maybe a hot bubble bath…maybe I just need another day off? Another cup of tea?

I picked this Keemun next because Sil just posted the Keemun I sent her, LOL, so why not return the favor? :)
I enjoy Keemun. It’s a nice earthy grounding kind of tea, lightly sweet, with a hint of smoke. It’s not at all like Assam & Yunnans, which are without a doubt my favorites, but it’s got this balanced taste, which I also really enjoy. This cup I’m having today has a nice sweet fullness to it, & it’s just what I needed.
Another sipdown sample!
Thanks Sil!

I really love a lot of different teas! There’s an old song from when I was young, “Love the One Your With”, LOL. That’s my relationship with tea. That’s not to say that I absolutely love every tea I drink. There are teas that I don’t care for. This is NOT one of them! I enjoy enjoy Keemun, & I can easily understand why the British were so in love with it. Gently smokey, with a hint of brown sugar sweetness, & although I usually drink mine straight, occasionally I’ll spike it with stevia & french vanilla coconut milk creamer. Today I’m drinking it plain. It’s just what I needed.

One of the things I love about tea trades here on Steepster is getting to sample a ton of new teas from companies I’ve never ordered from. Another thing I love is getting to share awesome teas with people who’ve never tried them. The very best part of tea trades is getting to know the person you’re trading with a little bit!!
I got this tea sample from Sil, & I’m really grateful for our recent trade! So many teas to sample! Yeah! Thanks Sil!

This is smooth, not at all fishy, and has some pleasant “river rock” mineral notes. The first steep made my throat feel somewhat dry. The second steep was darker and had a slight sweetness. There’s also a bit of a saltiness to it as well. Ok. My mind is going blank. That’s all I’ve got!

I’m only doing maybe one or two steepings of this tonight before bed. More to come in the morning.

My first impression is that this has a strong mineral aroma. It smells like wet slate. I do not expect it at all when I take the first sip and it is oh-so-smooth. It is devoid of any trace of fishy/pondy flavor that I associate with shou pu’erhs. Looking forward to many more steepings tomorrow…

Thank you to Eric for this lovely tea gift!

Eric from Happy Lucky’s (like he has no other life than that) went to San Francisco after Christmas and brought back a tea gift to me! What a nice young man he is!

I’m going to review ERIC! (Hahahah)

Eric is a Scientist! He only works part time at Happy Lucky’s but his main job is as Science Instructor at Frontrange Jr. College, until he get’s his Ph.D.

Eric is SUCH a great fellow tea nerd! One of the most endearing things about him is how much he knows about tea and how off-hand he is about it. He knows so much about the science of tea and the history of how tea has been produced and spews out information as though the rest of us know what he knows. Uh, no we don’t Eric!

What he brought me as a gift, was one of his favorite tea’s, which made me feel special.

I prepared the tea in my Gaiwan, just the way Eric would have done.
A short 30 second steep created the scent of flowers and Chinese food. (Something you might smell in the Summer walking by an outside cafe)

The flavor was sweet roasty stonefruit, water on granite rocks and very clean.
I decided to lengthen the steeps which made the flavor more roasty and woody than before with persimmon, peach and apricot sweetened with honey.Cinnamon spice punctuated the finish.

Those were a lot of flavors packed together, but this was a smooth tea. The flavors blended together like an old fashioned stone-fruit pie (my stone-fruit pie) with only the best ingredients, packed full of fruit and dripping with natural juices and a little spice kick.

(This tea is supposed to have an orange flavor but I didn’t taste any orange. I smelled the aroma of orange wafting around the cup.)

Delightful tea made more special by the giver! No wonder this is a favorite of Eric’s!

I’m not going to rate this one, because I really don’t drink enough white tea to know what they should or can be. As I poured this one I could smell steamed sugar snap peas. The wet leaves had a astringent smell that I really only usually associate with black teas. There is a unpleasant lemony note note mid-sip. As it cools down a bit, this improves. The aftertaste is a bit metallic, but not in the worst way… :-/

I let this sit for a couple of hours and then made a fourth infusion. Now the floral notes are dominating the aroma.

A nice way to end to a wonderful evening.

Tea swap sample provided by @Amy Oh

This turned out to be a very interesting experience. I didn’t really expect such a dark colour and bold aroma from white tea. That being said, I wasn’t confident enough to write tasting notes, because I was so focused on just enjoying the tea.

So I’ll pass on rating it, and maybe purchase some in the future. It seems like the sort of tea you’d have to make a few times to appreciate.
On a scale of I hated or loved it, this is somewhere between this is really cool and I liked it a lot (not loved it).

100ml gaiwan, 5g, 6 steeps
(Sorry for the vague tasting notes!)

Very good tea!! thanks for sharing Amy! yummmmm.
Light, bright, and very sweet without any additions. Fresh tasting, remnicent of something floral. Could that be the rose? I can’t tell.
I also get something honey like, bakey even. I tend to notice that when there are claims of “apricot” so it makes sense to me!
There is something savoury in there as well but I need to sit down with a gaiwan before making any declarations on that…
I made it through three steepings, each a little softer and sweeter than the last, becoming more like spun rather than raw honey.
Overall… A lovely tea. I highly recommend!
Steepster won’t let me rate this for some reason. I’d give this a solid 91!

I haven’t had one of these in ages, it’s a combination of pu’erh and black yunnan tea molded into these little tuo shapes. I find this has a definite malt flavor with honey notes and tastes like what you’d imagine a blend of yunnan black and shu puerh would be like.

I don’t love it, but it’s nice on this foggy and cold winter day. Might need to try this for breakfast sometime…. I see that Red Blossom no longer has these on their site.

I am holding off on rating this for now because it caught me off guard – I thought I was getting a pu-erh but it’s actually a combination of a pu-erh and a yunnan black tea and I have no idea how to steep it. I did drink two cups of it this afternoon and it tastes more like a straight black tea that’s slightly bitter…

Delicious. Rich, dark, earthy, complex and full. It smells great and tastes great. I have very limited experience with aged oolongs but this was was very pleasing.

However, I do have to add that I’m a little disappointed that the tea doesn’t have very good “legs”- you really only get a couple good infusions out of it- which are satisfying, but it quickly dies. I am on the lookout for an aged oolong that lasts longer, I have a feeling a really good one will go many, many infusions.

This is a quality Dan Cong by my estimation. I do not have a wealth of experience with dan congs but they are beginning to become my new tea category to explore. Xing Ren Xiang (Almond fragrance) has been really enjoyable. The leaves are twisted style and dark when dry.

My favorite part of brewing a phoenix oolong is getting my gaiwan nice and hot, emptying it and filling it with a heavy volume of dry leaf, replacing the top on the gaiwan and letting the aroma accumulate before I remove the top and stick my nose right into the warm gaiwan. Phoenix oolongs have an awesome stone-fruit aroma on the dry leaf that gets me excited. This one from Red Blossom is no exception.

This tea does have a tendency to go bitter if brewed too long, or with boiling water. I’ve been using water that’s around 190/195 I’ve found that to be ideal. Does it go bitter because that’s simply a characteristic of this tea? Or do I need to find a higher quality Dan Cong that won’t get bitter?

Any Dan Cong (Phoenix oolong) fans out there I can learn from?