The Tao of Tea

Bought Tea of the month club for a friend (and BONUS, I get to sample new teas). I am not a fruity tea person but this was nice. Subtle. Not too “peary” not too much ginger. Took a few sips to get the taste of it but it was quite nice and summery. Would maje a great iced tea I think. I will have to talk her in to that for my next visit. Aside~ the tea of the month clug through Tao of tea is a great deal. They send you three nice sized portions of tea monthly in very cool little tins that I am sure will be reused and info on the teas that they send. Helpful emails of when they were shipped and Tea leaf points for free stuf fin the future. I have ordered from them a couple of times since then due to the fact that their presentation is very nice. Great for gifts!

I find that I can’t really begin to get the writing engine turned over in the morning until I’ve had a cup of black tea, with all of the brain-jolting caffeine it contains…but I’ve also found that my body is happier if I ease into my day with something gentler than that. Oolongs and whites have become my default, but oolongs particularly: they are rich enough that I often feel I’ve eaten breakfast.

Among the many kinds of oolong in all of their glorious variety, Ali Shan is one of the most rewardingly aromatic. I could sit (and have sat) for full minutes with my nose buried in the cup, inhaling the way they smell.

This one I got as a one ounce sample from Tao of Tea (somewhat expensive compared to their other teas at 7.25 an ounce! Thank goodness for their frequent buyer program). I stick pretty closely to a 1tsp/8oz. setup, and always use my 16oz cup; I got to have plenty of cups of this — it resteeps well even at that quantity of water. Obviously I am lazy — I never once wrote a tasting note.

I don’t think that this shatters the mold in terms of the type of tea that it is, but it is a very good Ali Shan. I prefer this tea to the Four Seasons I have (which is comparable as a green oolong, if not necessarily exactly the same). You have a light honey scent, with a delicious, welcoming depth of flavor (I tend to think of the smell of baked potato, but I’m not sure that’s completely accurate — still, something about it says ‘starch’ to me), and a pleasant floral high end.

I should really spend more time trying more Ali Shan.

I know I’ve had this one before, but for whatever reason, I didn’t log it. I didn’t even have it in my cupboard. Lazy sophistre!

Darjeelings are probably the type of black tea that I should focus on next in terms of training my palate. I can compare Assams and Keemuns without difficulty, Lapsangs are no trouble, but my memories of Darjeeling teas usually wind up blending together, such that I have a difficult time developing clear favorites. Given how much I’ve liked the muscat notes in some other teas, though, I think we should get along splendidly.

The cup brews to a lovely bright golden color that reminds me of hay in the sun…which is not a bad thing, as the flavor sort of makes me think of sweet hay with a very mild muscat, not strong enough to be tart the way it sometimes can be. When the cup was hotter (usually the time when the muscat tartness is strongest) it seemed almost like a citrusy note, but has since smoothed out immensely. Every now and then I get a glimpse of something almost spicy, but it’s very faint. It’s a very smooth cup, not astringent at all, and quite light. A nice way to inform my stomach that we’re awake and about to begin the Assamica assault so that we can get the caffeine bomb we need in order to write proper English sentences!

Just guesstimating on my steep time, today. 2 teaspoons in 16oz.

This has the honor of not being the first Matcha I have ever tasted. While it is better than some I have had it is not high quality. I enjoy most of the teas I get from Tao of Tea but this is only a little better than average.

A rather tasty Yunnan. The leaves are soft, long, light, and a pretty yellow color. The resulting brew is a little bit opaque, not crystal clear (but not ‘cloudy’ either), with an orange-amber color and a sweet, roasty Yunnan smell.

Someone else said ‘floral honey and apricots’, and I agree. Get the right amount of leaf and the right steep time, and it’s really very tasty…sweet after you swallow, and the sweetness lingers; the apricot flavor is separate but very, very prominent.

Another tasting note mentioned astringency on the finish, and I find that this varies for me…sometimes I have it, sometimes I don’t. More leaf and a shorter steep time tends to be helpful.

Wasn’t certain about this one when I plucked it from my cupboard at random this morning, but I’m glad I had it, now!

Yet another tea I’ve had in my cabinet and enjoyed for a while, but didn’t seem to have listed in my cupboard, or written a tasting note for. I’m so very lazy.

It brews up to a lovely reddish amber-gold, and the smell is sweet, sweet, sweet — that darker, chewy sweetness of sweet potato, with a strong backbone of malt.

In my experience, Golden Monkey is usually pretty easy to oversteep, going from bready malty sweet-potato loaf awesome to bitter and harsh in thirty seconds flat, but there isn’t a hint of that in my cup today. Just smooth, darkly sweet tea goodness.

A little harsher then other green teas. Slightly bitter, and very dry.

Smooth, Slightly sweet.

Tasty, light in color, slight sweetness.

So. Good.

I really like this flavor profile.

It reminds me very much of Royal Garland, the ‘white oolong’ (okay, my term for it, but it’s actually fairly accurate, as it turns out) from Samovar that I adore. The leaves look very different, of course, as they’re not white buds processed as oolong; I assume they’re leaves…they lack the fuzzy yarn look of the Royal Garland.

It has that sweet, fruity, tropically awesome taste though, and the aroma is so juicy and inviting. Roasted pineapple and plantains, nectarines, a bit of darjeeling-esque muscatel that doesn’t seem as sharp or bitter, no astringency. I loved this assembly of flavors in the Garland, and I loved it (even faint as it was) in the Tankha I bought, and it’s no surprise that I love it here.

The description suggests very little leaf and longer steeping times, but based on Ricky’s tasting notes for Phoenix Oolong and his experiences with finicky leaves, I decided to err on the side of caution and use more leaf at a very short steep time. Thirty seconds seems like hardly enough time to steep tea leaves to me — I’m so used to black teas — but the resulting cup doesn’t lack for flavor in the least.

I’m very much looking forward to playing with this one.

When I opened the tin of this, I was intrigued by the smell. Smoke. Not as intense as a lapsang, but more obvious than most Keemuns I’ve tried. The other person to write a tasting note about it compared it to Bohea, and I think that’s a pretty apt comparison, actually.

I was a little bit concerned about the amount/quality of the smoke scent when I steeped it. It seemed vaguely ash-tray to me. I detest the smell of cigarette smoke, so making that mental connection was going to be a very, very bad thing. I had to determinedly tell myself that it wasn’t ash-tray, it was just smoky tea…

The smell is still a little bit worrisome (to me), but the taste is really lovely. It brews to a light amber, and now that it’s cooler the taste is a bit bready and easily the sweetest of any smoke-heavy tea that I’ve tried. The sweetness really blossoms on your palate after you swallow, and sticks around. It’s sort of making my mouth water, actually.

Absolutely delicious! Set the rating for this one at 87 or so, but I think the sweet flavor will merit pushing the rating upward.

Sometimes my life gets so distracted and busy that I forget I ordered tea, and when it arrives, I feel like I just got presents. Today was one of those days. Stuff from the Tao of Tea and, coincidentally, the Sticky Rice Tuo-Cha from today’s Select company. That’s probably worth investigating before the Select ends! In the meantime:

What an interesting Assam.

When I think ‘golden tips’, I think Golden Spring, those amazing, delicious, fluffy spirals of black and bright gold sitting in a can on my kitchen counter. That’s sort of what I expected when I opened this can, but alas, such was not to be the case…the processing for an Assam produces the same very dark and brittle tea-splinters as usual, though there’s no difficulty in seeing the tips, they just aren’t as dramatic as I (erroneously) anticipated.

The smell of the dry leaf reminded me a great deal of figs. Steeped, the tea has that same figgy, prune-y, raisin-y quality that most Assams have, malted but somehow lighter than the other Assams in my cabinet. I feel as though the tea is missing a ‘bottom end’, if that makes any sense, or has less of one than the extremely punchy teas I’m used to now…which may just be a factor of this tea’s lack of astringency. It has a very mild bitterness (I may need to reduce my steep time from 3 1/2 minutes), but that bitterness isn’t astringent at all — this is a very smooth cup.

As it cools, there’s more sweetness lingering at the end of the sip, which I like.

All in all, it’s a tasty Assam and a bit lighter than what I’m accustomed to drinking, but it has a nice aftertaste without the mouth-drying qualities of the stiff Assams I cling to for dear life in the morning, and I think it will make an excellent option for my afternoons.

Edit: The tepid, room-temperature tea — half an inch — left in the bottom of my cup had the most incredible scent of liquid turbinado sugar…a sweetness that was, of course, not really reflected in the tea, but…yum.

Finished off my tin of this and the big bear of local honey for lunch. It comes out with a lot of birch and smoke notes with this new kind (White Mountain Apiary). Maybe I can get a new tin while there’s still fresh peaches…

I was feeling woodsy for post matcha hydration so my go-to forest green was the usual choice. Although afterwards I behaved oddly. Water was cooler and, once brewed, I let it cool to room temperature. Given how good this is hot, I kicked myself a few times then took a sip and sat down.
Oh. My. Sacred. Stars.
In that timeframe, it somehow transformed into vanilla cream butter. There were notes of coconut, honey, some of the usual vegetation. Had I made sencha by mistake? Could someone had used my cup for milk and some dried in it? It was so rich tasting I had to put it down and sip at it.
The second infusion I tried to replicate the steeping temp and a bit more time but the water must’ve been a smidge hotter. No sencha, no cup contamination, there was still vanilla creme although a darker wood taste fought with it. And won. But it was still delicious. Definately a daytime dessert.

I am obligated to increase the rating for versatility. This tea tastes so amazing and swampy and floral on its own it took a few cups to even consider the addition of monofloral honey but it was a great idea. I’ve tried a couple different kinds of honey and they’ve all paired perfectly with this tea and created amazing flavor profiles well worth the slurped sugar intake. A blessing for my constantly partched throat, as this is one of the few teas I have that I’ll sweeten.

In innerchild terms:
This tea + Honey= superb!
My favorite combination is carob tree honey or blackberry. The carob creates a rich red, fruity layer to the tea’s grassy malty tones that tastes a bit like cacao nibs and one of my favorite chocolate bars: Pralus’s Madegascar. <3

I was really excited to try this tea as I’ve been wanting to try Indian green teas. And a tea that bills itself as sustainable and a perfect pairing with chocolate? Who could resist?
The dry smell is like seaweed, cut grass and swamplands. It intesifed while steeping. I brewed it in my green teapot (Green forest-friendly tea in a green teapot? Why not?) so the red-brown color was a nice suprise while pouring. Even better, the tin’s instructions were fairly close to the times/temperatures I find satifactory.
The taste is musty and vegetal with tones of what I think is oak, a bit of a malty Assam, like the tin says. It very much reminds of Florida everglades. I’ve gotten five good infusions from this tea before it slides away from strong and musty to vaguely herbacious, but still drinkable. I can only hope they harvest this every year for a while.

My mouth is pleased.

I have a habit of steeping my teas in to hot of water, but it didn’t seem to do much damage to this herbal blend. The color is a beautiful deep red, the taste is slightly sweet and fruity. I have to say I probably enjoy this tea over ice more than hot.

I am trying to kick a soda addiction, so in the evenings I need something decaf, fruity and sweet. This tea may be it.

Backlogging from yesterday.

15 second rinse, boiling water

1st infusion: 2 minutes, boiling water
The color is a deep, deep maroon. It was so dark I couldn’t make out my spoon at the bottom of the cup. A lovely color but I’m afraid I might have over-steeped. But when I went to take my first, hesitant, sip my eyebrows flew up and my eyes got wide. It wasn’t over-steeped at all! In fact, it was rather pleasant! The liquor had a mellow, earthy flavor with a hint of apricot. It reminded me of a sun-warmed woodland floor, complete with moss, ferns, loam, and crumbling dead-wood.

2nd infusion: 2 1/4 minutes, boiling water
The color is the same but now I’m getting something like…almond? And an unpleasant sour-bitter taste. I think the extra 15 seconds were too much at this point.

3rd infusion: 2 minutes, boiling water
The color is still the same deep maroon, the almond note and bitterness have disappeared and the apricot is much more prevalent than before.

4th infusion: 2 1/2 minutes, boiling water
The color is perhaps a tad lighter and the flavor is definitely lighter. Now it’s more like fresh-harvested hay or wheat with a slight raisin note.

5th infusion: 3 1/2 minutes, boiling water
Definitely a lighter color now and the liquor tastes a bit like plum.

6th infusion: 4 minutes, boiling water
The color has lightened to a lovely peachy-brown and the wheat/raisin flavor has returned.

I probably could have gotten another infusion or two out of this. I must say, this is much better than my first pu’erh experience. I’m glad I still have four of these little touchas left.

Sadly drank the last of this today. Will absolutely be getting more!

once again, a very nice bottle of cold brewed tea!

not bad as a cold brewed iced tea.

This is one of the many teas Rachel sent me…thanks so much, girlie! :)

This is a nice flavored black with sweet rose in it. Many rose teas seem bitter to me. I think that i why I like Teavana’s Rose Marzipan Delight because it has the sugar counteracting the bitter. In this case it’s not bitter. It’s sweet instead.

I can taste the English Breakfast type black tea taste the production description from Tao of Tea described. But the thing that I must mention yet again…is the rose petals are NOT bitter in this…they are sweet. This is nice. I like it.

Back-logging from Monday.

1st infusion: 4 minutes
Color is a deep red-brown and it tastes very much like the unsweetened iced tea you get at restaurants…and that’s WITH a teaspoon of sugar. I think 4 minutes is too long for the 1st steep. Otherwise it tastes malty and woodsy.

2nd infusion: 2 3/4 minutes
The color is only slightly lighter but the taste is much better. Sweet, malty, woodsy. should have done the 1st steep at this amount of time.

3rd infusion: 3 minutes
Color is golden-brown. Flavor is malty, woodsy, and a bit peachy.

4th infusion: 4 minutes
Color is a dull brown, lighter than previous. The flavor is lighter as well, the woodsy tone has mellowed to something more like loam.

Just enough for a super small cuppa! I totally forgot I had any of this left.

It’s muggy outside and stormy but cold inside because of the air conditioning. BRING ON THE HOT TEA!

See previous notes for more of my feelings…in the meantime…SIPDOWN!