Tavalon Tea

This is a sample in a tea bag that I got with a Tavalon order a while back. I didn’t pick it, it just showed up.

The bag looks like a little evening bag. It has a string that attaches in two places rather than one, so it looks like a little gauzy pocketbook. The bag itself looks scarily like a bandage. On the plus side, it has an opening that is folded over, and if you feel curious you can peek inside and see the tea rather than having to hold it up to the light to get a feel for what the tea looks like.

This genmai cha has more “popped kernals” than others I’ve had. It really does have a popcorny look about it, and I should know, having just eaten a bag at Toy Story 3 last night. (Great movie, by the way. Enjoyed it at least as much as my kids did.)

I’m having this at work, and yes, I did forget to bring a thermometer yet again. I have a mental block about it, I think. I figure the water quality is going to suck anyway, so trying to control for other variables isn’t going to make the brewing conditions perfect no matter what I do.

The tea’s aroma is curiously sweet, giving the tea an almost kettle corny smell. Almost. I don’t mean to suggest it’s bordering on cracker jacks by any stretch.

It has the expected toasty rice flavor over a mild, slightly buttery green tea. It’s not as toasty and nutty as some other genmai cha’s I’ve had, but it has more tea flavor than some others.

I suspect I’m going to settle in on Den’s as my genmai cha provider of choice with an occasional dip into others like the Samovar Ryokucha, but I’m glad I got a chance to try this.

LiberTEAs thank you so much for letting me sample this one!

This has your typical tropical scents but I’m smelling more of a cucumber aroma overtop and more in the forefront on this one. It’s very interesting and very refreshing to sniff.

All of the flavors ‘play nice’ with eachother and nothing is too overpowering. It’s nice island type taste and it’s pretty yummy. I’m drinking hot but think it would be good cold, too.

As it cools for a few I am smelling a little bit of a banana smell which scares me because I hate bananas but we will chalk it up at the blended tropics crossing paths or something. It doesn’t taste like banana – thank fully!

I am finishing off the last of my Kashmiri Chai, and you know what, I am going to decrease my rating on this. The reason is because after trying some other green chai blends after this purchase, I am finding that there really are some better green chai blends out there… this one doesn’t really deserve such a high rating in my book. (Sorry Tavalon!)

Don’t get me wrong, it is still tasty, but there are better green chai blends out there!

Enjoying another cup of this today – I had some yesterday (I think it was yesterday!) and it was so good that I decided to have another cup today. The combination of spices is softer and smoother than in a black tea based chai, but, just as satisfying.

Enjoying a cup of this before switching to iced tea… didn’t do a latte though. I was just in the mood for something a little spicy and this one fits the bill. The cinnamon is the strongest flavor, I do wish that the almond flavor was a bit more pronounced though.

I must admit that I caved with the Tavalon Steepster Select last week. The Summer Fruit tea sounded so good. But… while at the Tavalon site, this one sounded even better… It was the photo that got me… all those almonds and huge chunks of spices. Had to try it!

I got out my frother and made a lovely, frothy chai! And I am really liking this chai blend. One of the better green chai teas that I’ve tried.

I am not going to get really descriptive with this tea at the moment, because I am enjoying this with a rather spicy pizza, and I feel that the spices from the pizza are affecting the flavor of the tea.

I am really enjoying it though!

Yesterday, I brewed what I had left of this sampling and chilled it for iced tea. I added a little agave nectar to sweeten it up a little and I also added some “True Lime” (crystalized lime juice). These additions, and perhaps the chilling, really brought this tea to life.

It still doesn’t taste like a mojito, and I suspect that it is the lack of rum flavoring (thanks to Cofftea for pointing that out). However, it is still rather tasty now that I can taste a little lime and the peppermint is a bit softer because of the cooler temperature. I can even taste the green tea now.

So, I am going to bump my rating up by just a couple of points, because while this isn’t the best HOT tea I’ve ever tasted, it does provide a nice base for a tasty iced tea.

I received a bit of this tea from a tea friend.

This tea tastes good, although it is quite different than I expected. Typically, when I think of a mojito, I think of the mint and lime cocktail.

Of course, I can taste the mint in this blend… and it is a very crisp, refreshing peppermint. I can also taste the green tea, although it does sometimes seem to lose its way in this cup – that is to say, the mint somewhat overpowers the green tea.

But there is no lime! There is lemongrass which provides a citrus-y note and a tart appeal to the aftertaste. Even with the lemongrass, I find myself missing the lime.

I find myself enjoying this blend, and yet, at the same time, my palate seems to sense that something is missing. This does make a very delicious iced tea – and I think that is what I am going to do with the rest of this.

I love this tea when I am looking for something fruity. It has a wonderful fruit taste that is very refreshing.

Like Brian wrote, I agree that the peach flavor is delicate, doesn’t overwhelm, and lingers in your senses for awhile between sips and afterward – in a very pleasant way. I drank my first cup yesterday and I’m drinking another cup today as I write this. I could drink this tea on a regular basis and enjoy it immensely.

This Peachy Oolong arrived as one of two teas with my first Tavalon Tea of the Month subscription. I’m so glad to have gotten this one, and I’ll definitely drink it often and purchase it again.

This is a unique, interesting, soft, delicate flavor tea with a sweet, delicate aroma. I just subscribed to the Tavalon Tea of the Month and this was one of the first two teas I received (the other is Peachy Oolong). As someone else wrote, the pineapple and coconut do seem to meld together and in a pleasing way. I tried it as is and also then added 1 tsp of organic agave nectar, which seems to bring out the pineapple and coconut in quite a pleasing way.

I do like this tea a lot. It’s not my most favorite tea ever that I’d want to drink every single day, but it’s quite good and I’ll drink this whenever I want a light, tropical tea.

I received this as a bagged sample in an order from Tavalon. Seems like a pretty standard breakfast blend. I would drink it again, but I’m not in love with it.

The bag is interesting. I can’t find anything on their website to say what it is, but it doesn’t appear to be paper or cloth. It’s like interfacing material, if you sew. It’s not sealed, it’s just folded over. Didn’t seem to interfere with the brewing, though.

In other news, the water cooler at work was FINALLY fixed so I can start having tea at work again – that’s one reason I haven’t been on the site much recently (also travel).

I wasn’t really expecting this to be as good as it is. I threw it into my order when I got those tea/fruit-flavored gummi bears that were on Steepster Select a while back, just hoping to get some more experience with Assams. But it’s actually a great cup with milk and sugar.

If I had to compare it to some other highly-ranked teas, I would mention The Simple Leaf’s Amor and A&D’s Thomas Sampson. This beats Amor and comes close to Thomas, IMO.

This is a solid, but standard, Assam. Something like a Thomas Sampson without some of the pastry-like syrupy notes. Still a very good morning tea, I had a nice cup of it today.

I made a big pot of this tea this morning. I just noticed that there was still 16 oz left! Of course it is no longer warm, so I put some honey and ice in it. It is excellent as an Ice Tea ! Once again, I brewed this tea at 1/2 tsp per 8 ozs of water. Yummmmmmmm !!

Drinking Lapsang Souchong while snacking on pretzel sticks dipped in Jack Daniels Horseradish Mustard. I am a flavor hound, big flavor! This time I steeped the tea in my large cup (16-20 oz?) with only one teaspoon of tea. The flavor was quite pleasant !! Not as overwhelming as before.

Wow! I now know why they say you will either like this tea or you will not. BIG smoky flavor! So smoky that you will not taste the tea in the first infusion. Oh, but the second, third, and fourth infusions are great !!! After the fourth infusion, you really don’t get much out of it. I began by brewing this 3 minutes at 185°, which is not as recommended. The recommended temp is 212°, which is fine if you like astringent tea. I do not like astringency, so I cut the temp to about 195° and that seemed to be perfect for me. I would suggest that if you try this tea and you do not mind the taste, but just find it to be too overwhelming, toss your first steep and try it at the second or third steep.

I thought I’d brew some more of this so that I could sit down and write a review of it for the Tea Review Blog. This time, I used a little more leaf, as the last time I had this I felt that the tea was a bit softer than I wanted. I feel that this tea definitely benefits from a little extra leaf.

The flavor is nice. Certainly not my favorite white tea, or even my favorite tropical tea, but it’s still pretty good. The pineapple and coconut seem to meld very well here – almost to the point where it is difficult to discern one from the other… rather, they seem to become “one fruit” if that makes sense.

My order from Tavalon arrived today! Woo hoo! I mainly ordered from them so that I could try their green tea latte almonds (those just sounded way too good), but I also ordered a little jar of this tea too.

It’s nice! The flavor is soft – as is usually the case with a white tea – and the tropical flavors are equally as soft so not to overwhelm the taste of the white tea. I don’t detect much from the roses except for a slight floral note in the finish. The flavor is very delicate – pleasantly sweet. I like. I’m off now to begin working on a review for it for the Tea Review Blog!

I tried this tea at the recommended steep time, amount, and at 25 degrees bellow the recommended water temperature on the jar. I would usually only do 1 tbs of oolong per 8 oz of water but I figured that maybe for this particular tea it needed a higher amount for a stronger flavor. As far as taste, in the conditions I prepared the tea, I felt like the tea had a very nice aftertaste. It was a little bitter and smokey but in a good way. The peach comes in smoothly at the end. I feel like 220 degrees F (the recommended temp for this Tavalon tea) is a little too much for any tea, I fear burning the leaves. 195 degrees F was just right, next time I may prepare it at 1 tbs per 8 oz.

It’s very smooth not bitter at all. However coconut flavor and smell is very overpowering. You can still kind of taste the pineapple and rose but all flavors are kind of lost to the coconut flavor.

The peach flavor is delicate, it doesn’t overwhelm. The taste lingers in your mouth for a while between sips which is nice. The roasted oolong comes through slightly.

Tavalon’s recommended 2 tsp, 3 min, 8oz is a tad light tasting to me. I use about 2 heaping tsp w/ 6oz water.

Overall, it’s a decent mildly flavored oolong that’s a nice change of pace every now and then.

Not as spicy as Adagio’s Masala Chai, this one is smoother, silkier, calmer. It has more “tea” taste instead of “spice” taste. It’s good, but when I want chai I want something with stronger spices.

Hrm. After all of the excitement of this afternoon, I needed something to calm down with. So I rifled through the teas that takgoti sent me, and surfaced with this little caffeine-free number. Serenity! That’s what I need right now!

It’s a very pretty tea, definitely, with the sunny chamomile framed by red rooibos and the stalks of lemongrass. The whole scent of it is very herbal. I’m mostly getting chamomile in the nose, but there’s a hit of sweet-tart from the lemongrass.

So I steeped this one up, and it makes the mess only chamomile can make. It steeps to a very pretty light yellow liquid, and the smell… the smell is a bit bizarre! Slightly medicinal, which I think is probably coming from the combination of the chamomile and the rooibos. There are vague sweet hints as well.

The taste. Hrm. I think this is something that could grow on me, but I’m not enjoying it to the utmost degree right now. This is very refreshing, and if you’re into iced tea, I think this one might be a winner. The chamomile and the lemongrass are definitely the star players here, alternating between apple-sweet and a sort of smooth-tart. Lemongrass has that very specific taste that I associate strongly with Vietnamese food, which was definitely welcome. I think the rooibos added an earthy sweet component. I couldn’t really pick up any vanilla, and the peppermint was less in the flavor and more in the afterfeel.

Mostly, though, the components mushed together in a somewhat odd way. Not dissonant, but not symphonic, either. At points this got almost too sweet for my tastebuds, in an almost cloying way. I can’t imagine craving this. It’s almost… too herbal-ish. And I like a lot of night-time teas better (like straight peppermint and chamomile, or even something like Ocean of Wisdom). So yeah, I’ll finish this up, but I can’t imagine ordering more from Tavalon of this.

Thanks to takgoti for sending some over, though! :D