Christina / BooksandTea Send Message

I’m so close to finishing up my tin, and I didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, so I brewed some this afternoon. There should be just enough left in the tin to handle one more serving.

Anyways: I like this tea, but my taste in tea is changing – I can never add enough sugar to get this to taste the way it does in the stores, and I don’t really want to have the sugar anyway. I find that following Teavana’s instructions for oolong and mate, and then splitting the difference for this blend, makes it taste much thicker than I really want it to be.

Long story short, I’m gonna let this one run out, and figure out what other tea to store in the tin.

Catchup time!

I drank this a few days ago and it tasted odd. I tasted some strawberry flavour, but underneath it all it tasted like earth. I think I may have got the steeping wrong that time, as I used just-boiling water to steep it. The sample package Teavivre sent actually SAID to use boiling water, and to steep it for 3 minutes, so I followed the instructions.

Now that I’ve brewed it a second time at a different temperature, I realize that was a bad call. This time I used 85° water and did a rinse of about 15-20 seconds to wake up the leaf for my first steep. Then I steeped it for about a minute.

This time, it’s MUCH better. No earthy taste, and while the strawberry flavour is there, it’s not very strong. The first sip was very strawberry-like, but I think my tongue acclimated. Now it’s just nice and relaxing.

That said, I don’t know if I’ll keep this tea in my cupboard once I finish off the sample I got. At least I still have a bunch of other oolong samples to try!

You know, I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe this tea well until I joined Steepster. Now that I know better, I can more accurately describe this tea as being very brothy and savoury. Perhaps it’s a bit too heavy on the rice, especially since I think I overleafed it yesterday. Although the rice is roasted in this tea, none of it is popped, so there’s not much of a salty, light, popcorn flavour to this.

Every Thursday night I go to the Toronto Reference Library to meet up with my writing critique group. The Balzac’s Cafe inside the library is one of the only places I know of in Toronto to stock Mariage Freres’ tea, but I certainly wish this wasn’t the case – I’d love to get more!

I don’t have any info about the steeping parameters (temperature, water/leaf ratio, etc) since I purchased this from the cafe, but here’s what I remember about the first steep I drank this evening:

- Yellow-green liquor that shaded down to light amber as the tea steeped and cooled down.
- Vegetal, but not too grassy. Some of the flavours I picked up in the steep were hay, spinach, and asparagus. Because of this, I suspect that it might be a first-flush tea.
- This tea is rather astringent; as I progressed further into the cup, my tongue got that “dried up” feeling that sometimes comes from astringency.
- This wasn’t particularly brothy, but it was riding the cusp between savory and sweet.

I’d really like to get my hands on a full package of Fuji-Yama, rather than having to get it through the cafe. Even so, this feels like the kind of tea that’s best reserved for special occasions or when you have the time to sip and savour. This is not a “sitting in front of the computer gettin’ shit done” kind of tea!

Bottom line: this tea was so good that I saved my disposable cup and the teabag, and brought the teabag home with me so I can see about resteeping it tomorrow morning!

I’m just starting to branch out into white teas, but I’ve read really good things about this blend. I got a cup to go today at the David’s in the nearby mall – so I don’t have any information about amounts of dry leaf, water temperature, etc.

The main thing about this tea is that it’s coconutty – it smells overwhelmingly of coconut, but I got some berry and caramel notes as well. I drank it without sweetener – perhaps if I had added some honey, the berry notes would have come out more? Otherwise, it was still fairly light and nutty. The liquor was a creamy yellow.

Good for a winter drink, but I wonder how it would taste cold brewed. Apparently this tea is a favourite of one of the cashiers at the David’s where I ordered it from.

I am not a drinker of black teas (or at least not yet) but I enjoyed this. The dark chocolate flavour is the strongest, of course, but I could taste the tea in the background. I didn’t get the vanilla flavours that others have claimed, but the black tea adds a smoky hit that mingles very well with the chocolate. I’m also sensing something deep and fruity, which I assume to be the bergamot, but it doesn’t seem like a citrus flavour to me at all. It reminds me more of chocolate-covered cherries.

All in all, really nice and rich, but I think that the Earl Grey-ness of it all is lost on me.

This is my second brewing of this tea, and it’s also a sipdown!

First infusion was still fairly nutty. I changed the brewing vessel, though, so instead of using a small glass teapot for the oolong, I just put it all into a big mug. The tea’s continually steeping as I drink.

Because of this, I’m getting kind of a seaweedy taste, but it’s not unpleasant. That said, the nutty savouriness of this tea is still the most strongest element to me. Not astringent at all.

And now, the final sample from Tea at Sea. And it’s a sipdown, too!

Dry leaf: Dark and crumbly. It had a very tannin-heavy, tea-y smell that took me back to the kind of black bagged teas I remember. I definitely smelled notes of raisins and caramel. Please note that I am NOT a drinker of black teas, so getting a sample from Tea at Sea seemed like a low-risk way to try and expand my tea horizons.

Steep parameters: I’m not a black tea drinker and didn’t want to split the sample up into two steeps in case I didn’t like it, so I dumped the whole sample into a single steep. So: about 5 tsp of leaf to 24 oz of boiling water. Steeped for 3.5 – 4 minutes for the first infusion.

Liquor: The liquor was a rich, deep, dark amber. The smell reminded me of molasses or raisins – thick and dark. However, the taste was very different. I was expecting it to taste fruity and juicy, but instead it was thin, earthy, and smoky – I could totally taste the cedar notes, as others have mentioned.

Verdict: I’m still not a black tea person, but this was an okay tea. However, it has been extremely interesting comparing all three of the Tea at Sea examples that I got, and figuring out how the different oxidation and roasting processes change the flavour profile of the same tea. The green was floral, the oolong was nutty and mineral, and the black was woody and earthy. Definitely an interesting progression.

Another free sample from Tea at Sea’s forum thread.

Packaging/Instructions: Same as Tea at Sea’s Indonesian Green: a small resealable bag with the instructions on a separate label attached with a piece of string. The instructions here said 100°C water, and, remembering my steeping experience with their Green tea, followed their advice. I made 4 steeps out of this, each time with near-boiling water.

Dry leaf: I gotta say that the smell of the oolong dry leaf was much less apparent than that of the green, though they appear to be sourced from the same estate. It was sweeter, perhaps, but it didn’t have any of the seaweed smells that I noticed in the green tea leaves. They did look different, though – they were slightly lighter in appearance, and looked to be clumped up like knots rather than pellets.

Liquor: All 4 infusions tasted fairly similar – I detected some nuttiness, but not a lot of sweetness. Oddly, this oolong tasted more like a straight green tea than the green did, and the green tea tasted more like an oolong than the oolong did! The final infusion tasted more mineral than the previous ones did. Also, as the infusions progressed, the liquor changed from yellow with a green undertone to yellow with an amber undertone.

Verdict: Although I did enjoy it, I think I may not have brewed this correctly. I still have half of the sample left to try, so fingers crossed.

Day 2 of drinking this tea, and now this is a sipdown! My sample has been used up.

When I first received this tea, I thought the label’s recommendation for brewing at 85°C was unusual. Most of the greens that I know of prefer a steep a few degrees lower, and so my initial steep yesterday was at 80-81°. The third steep was done at a higher temperature, and I liked it a lot more.

Today, I steeped it at the recommended temperature, and it’s amazing what a difference that made. Where yesterday the first and second steeps were light and floral, today’s higher temperature has brought out a lot of nutty notes. It’s still sweet, but much deeper in flavour.

I don’t know if I’ll make this a staple yet, but it’s definitely better brewed at a higher temperature.