Tavalon Tea

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85
drank Jasmine Dream by Tavalon Tea
175 tasting notes

If you drink it hot it has a bitter after-taste, but if you let it cool a little the jasmine becomes a little stronger and the bitterness becomes much much weaker.

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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85
drank Jasmine Dream by Tavalon Tea
175 tasting notes

A nice strong jasmine. While I’m no expert on jasmine teas this is about the best one I’ve tried so far.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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70
drank Too Long Oolong by Tavalon Tea
236 tasting notes

Dry, this tea boasts twisted leaves of slate blue, dark green, and brown. The brewed tea is has a sweet floral smell with a strong vegetal component and a very slight resinous note. The strong vegetal comes out in the tea along with the sweet elements. Perhaps I need to brew this at a lower temperature.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 2 min, 30 sec

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70
drank Too Long Oolong by Tavalon Tea
911 tasting notes

Screwed up so badly with the brewing of this, I can’t even begin to guess the parameters. Sadly, this is my last of this tea and this brewing is (hopefully) not an accurate judge of taste. There are hints of goodness in it, but ultimately it tastes more like soggy honey nut cheerios than anything like what I remember from last time. I won’t adjust my rating though since I know the soggy cereal taste is most likely my fault.

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70
drank Too Long Oolong by Tavalon Tea
911 tasting notes

Okay, my nose is stuffy. I’m having trouble smelling pretty much everything. So dry, these leaves smelled like nothing. But after a quick rinse? Kapow! I can smell that! I’m horrible, however, at saying what things smell like when 1) I have a stuffy nose and, especially 2) when it is a dark oolong. I just don’t have much experience with them. But this smelled a lot like Adagio’s Wuyi Ensemble – if pressed I’d say it smells like a pleasant smoke smell plus a dark honey (plum or something) but I feel like I’ve been saying that about everything (either that or ‘bake-y’) so don’t push me to actually say what it smells like other than Adagio’s WE, k?

I’ve overfilled the glass so I’m going to have to wait a bit for it to cool a little so I don’t pour freakishly hot liquid down my front. On the plus side, it gives me the chance to notice the pretty color. Like apple juice. Or clear cider. Very pretty in my Bodum cup.

Okay, it’s cool enough now… Oooh, this is good. Sweeter than Adagio’s Wuyi Ensemble and a little more complex. Not quite as dark. Smoky at the front then a fruity taste (peach? DH mentioned apple… maybe pear? it’s not very strong and mostly comes across as sweet) then the finish gives hints of what this would taste like as a less oxidized oolong. Very sweet. Very smooth.

So yeah, this one kind of flies in the face of my belief that I’m not a fan of smoky or darker oolongs.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 5 min, 0 sec
Jillian

I use ‘bake-y’ too much aswell – mostly in relation to oolongs, but I have no idea how else to describe them. shrugs

takgoti

For whatever reason, the darker oolongs are tough for me to get a handle on as well. It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that they’re…tough. Guess that just means I need to drink more of them. I have no problem with that.

Auggy

Bake-y is a good word to describe teas apparently. :)

The first oolong I ever tried was a dark roasted one – I hated it. I’ve had a few here and there and never really liked them until I had a Honey Orchid Dan Cong which was pretty good. So this one brings me to a grand total of 3 darker oolongs I have enjoyed.

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87

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87

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Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec

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87

Winter always seems to make me crave black tea.

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 5 min, 0 sec

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87

This tea seems hard to over-brew (or whatever the technical term is), probably because the smokey flavor is so strong.

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec

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87

Everyone needs to try this tea. (It reminds me a little of smoked fish.)

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec
Marie

That totally reminds me of Thomas Keller’s French Laundry approach to food, except this would be tea. Who says tea needs to be sweet and creamy anyway? Why not fish? Why not beef? Why not car metal? I think the rabbit hole goes waay deep on this one. ;)

Cofftea

My 8th grade history teacher gave lectures at least weekly on how to get high by inhaling over a barrel of buring leaves. This is the drink version lol.

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87

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87

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87

Made a cold pitcher. Even weak the taste holds up pretty well.

Preparation
Iced 3 min, 0 sec

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87

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Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 3 min, 15 sec

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87

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Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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87

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87

The difference between drinking in hot and drinking it lukewarm is still somewhat startling to me.

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Cofftea

Good? Bad? Ugly? How so?

joshuasbones

Peppery hot and lemony warm, both good.

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87

When it’s still very hot the taste is more peppery than lemon, but if you let it cool down the lemon taste becomes much stronger and the pepper taste mostly disappears.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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87

Wonderful lemongrass tea. There is a great sweet aftertaste that I find unique.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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72

A little too sweet by itself. I normally mix it with something.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 5 min, 0 sec

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72

Mixed with My Morning Mate, 1 tsp of each. 208 degrees in the Zoji, 5 minutes steeping.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 5 min, 0 sec
Russ Goerend

Yup. Mine’s a 4 liter, though. I bought it with birthday money this year and I’m so happy I did. Hard to convince myself to buy a water boiler in July, though. :)

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70
drank Genmai Cha by Tavalon Tea
55 tasting notes

This weirded me out with the puffed rice mixed in with the tea, but it was a really complex, nutty flavor. Nice for a cold, gray, Fall afternoon.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Khürt Williams

I have not had genmacha since college when my Japanese room mate introduced me to it. It was one of my favourite before I discovered the joys of coffee.

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71
drank Kama Chai Sutra by Tavalon Tea
19 tasting notes

I got this as part of a black tea sampler. Hardly!! It’s Chai.

Although I’m not a fan of herbal teas I like this quite a bit with lot’s of milk and sugar.

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 5 min, 0 sec

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50
drank Dragonwell by Tavalon Tea
260 tasting notes

At the suggestion of many, I dialed the temperature WAY down. Like to the top of the first white zone, which I’m thinking is somewhere around 160 degrees. [1. I really need to get a thermometer. 2. If you’re just tuning in and have no clue what I am referring to, I use a utiliTEA.] I put in more tea – like 1.5, maybe even 2 tsp – and I let it sit for 2:15-2:30 minutes.

MUCH improved. Of course, this is a completely different company, so I’m not sure how much that played into it [I’ll have to try Adagio’s again], but this was much more aligned to what I was expecting.

There is a distinct smokiness to the scent as it rises off the cup, which I don’t enjoy but don’t hate either. It’s almost gunpowder-y? Kind of like that smell you get from a log-burning fire, but with more of a peppery tone to it.

There is still some of that saltiness to it, but it’s not too pronounced. This is definitely a tea with some subtleness to it, but this cup had that chlorophyll-sweet taste to it that I enjoy. The sweetness becomes more obvious as it cools, and the aftertaste towards the end is somewhere between roasty and smoky.

It’s an interesting tea, and I want to continue playing around with it a bit, but I think that I’d enjoy it more if I were eating something with it. Something with complex flavors and a medium kind of intensity to it. Balducci’s makes this smoked ham, pear, and gorgonzola sandwich that would likely pair masterfully with this. I think I know what I’m doing tomorrow.

Carolyn

This sounds completely different than the Dragonwell Spring that I bought in Chicago from Dream About Tea. My Dragonwell Spring is light, sweet, and virginal with no smokiness or pepper. It is fascinating to me that the same tea from different companies can have such different qualities.

Would you like me to send you a bit of my Dragonwell Spring for you to compare? (And report back on.)

Jack

Same here — the dragonwells I’ve been drinking are on the lighter, fresher side. From the photo these look a little more aged than the stuff I have though. Sounds interesting!

takgoti

Carolyn Oooh, sure! I can send you some of mine, too, if your interested. Email's heather.takgotigmail.com.

@Jack Cheng It was rather interesting. Of course, the day after I tried it I came down with a pretty awful cold, so I’m not sure if it was the tea or my taste buds starting to go haywire. I’ll have to try it again once I’m not congested.

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