200 Tasting Notes

85
drank Eight Candles by Della Terra Teas
200 tasting notes

Before all the hype about this tea, I just wanted it because it was a Chanukah tea. It could have been a totally unappealing flavor, and I would have still wanted it because it’s a Chanukah tea. It really doesn’t take much to market to me, eh? But then this tea was getting all rave reviews so I knew I HAD to try it. They sold out of this tea pretty quickly during Black Friday, but lucky the lovely Jackie T was able to send me some so I could see firsthand what this tea was about.

This tea is very nice, and I’m not the biggest fan of black teas. You can taste the marshmallow in there, definitely. I’m not sure if I like it hot or cool better- both are really good. Plus, it looks so sparkly and shimmery. I don’t know if it’s an every day tea for me, but it’s definitely a good desert tea.

Hopefully this tea will inspire other tea makers to come up with other Chanukah teas. I’m lovin’ all the Chanukah love.

Jackie O

Teas with visual appeal suck me in…it was the sparkles in this that got me :p

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86

Thanks to Nature’s Tea Leaf for a sample of this tea.

For my first steeping of this tea, I noticed it said to steep only a minute. Well, I started steeping it… and then promptly forgot about it. One of these days I will learn to set a timer instead of faking it. Five minutes later, I went back to try the tea – prepared for the worst – and it was actually pretty good. Wow! I’m impressed. Normally green teas are way too fickle to handle a five minute steeping.

This tea is a nice flavor. It almost taste like a white tea and has a very soft taste. Definitely not vegetal at all and a good green for people who don’t like grassy greens (and have a tendency to forget their tea is still steeping – LOL)

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77

Thanks to Nature’s Tea Leaf for a sample of this.

I’d heard of Jasmine Pearls before, but I had never heard of Jasmine Daughter Rings until I stumbled on their site. They’re very similar, but rolled into an “O” shape instead of a ball. It reminds me of the paper curls I used to make out of boredom by rolling a piece of paper onto a pencil. As they unfurl, they lose their curliness and get more flat. The tea is definitely fun to watch.

Even though they are billed as jasmine flavored, the jasmine isn’t overpowering. I found the flavor a little bit off and I wasn’t liking this as much as some of the other teas. I think it might have been the green tea base that I wasn’t too fond of. It tasted a little flat to me. I think I still prefer the flavor of jasmine pearls a little bit better, even though they can be more intense.

Side note: Nature’s Tea Leaf also has a “Dragon Pearls” tea that is NOT jasmine that is actually not that bad. They have lots of unique teas.

ashmanra

Yes, that non-jasmine Dragon Pearl was sooooo exquisite. I must order some! We love it with Asian buffet take out!

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93

I originally suggested this flavor to Stacy when her “create your own flavor” contest was going on. I was thinking of unique flavors to replicate in tea. Chanukah was coming up, and there seemed to be an endless amount of Christmas teas coming out, but no Chanukah ones. So, I suggested this flavor based on one of my favorite Chanukah foods. I thought Stacy would laugh and say, “What a terrible idea!” but I think she was actually intrigued by the challenge.. and so this flavor is born.

(Thanks to Stacy for sending a sample of this my way, btw.)

The smell of the tea is definitely a nice applesauce base. When it’s brewed, without sweetener, you get this nice soft apple flavor with some very faint cream and potato notes. It’s a perfectly nice flavor all on its own and it doesn’t really NEED anything, but… just for kicks I’m going to add salt because I want to bring out those potato notes.

And adding salt definitely changes the taste of the tea. Those apple notes are pretty much gone and it turns into more of a broth soup type taste. How crazy! It’s a transforming tea.

The best part of the tea is that after it’s steeped, you have these real chunks of potato and apple in your steeper basket that you can eat, which I did. 

All in all this is a very interesting tea that is unlike anything I’ve ever tried. The flavors can be subtle, but make for really interesting combination. So glad I suggested it!

Kittenna

This one just sounds too cool to not try.

Butiki Teas

I love challenge and this one was pretty challenging but also fun. Thanks for the suggestion! Maybe next year we will try the jelly doughnut.

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88

Thanks to Nature’s Tea Leaf for a sample of this.

I’ve been having all sorts of random health issues lately, and when I saw this herbal tea, it really intrigued me. It’s supposed to work for a variety of things including IBS and sore throat, just to name a few. I had never had it before, but I was willing to give it a shot.

This is definitely one of the more fun herbal teas. The tea “leaves” themselves are really interesting. It reminds me of cotton. You’re supposed to get 2tsp of it, but it’s really difficult to get exact. I just plopped a bunch on measuring spoon and called it a day. The tea brewed up this nice light-pinkish color. Very intriguing, since you don’t see that too often in tea.

The tea itself has a nice taste. There’s this light sweetness that I enjoyed. It doesn’t really need any additional sweetener and it’s fine on its own. The tea did have a nice soothing effect, as well.

If you want to have some fun, I recommend this fun little experiment:
Brew this tea in T-Sac. Steep as normal, and then take the T-sac out when ready. Let it cool. Then, when it’s cool, feel the t-sac. It has this crazy jelly/gelatin like feel. It reminds me of one of those fun toys at the Science Center. Call me crazy, but it provided amusement for me. Your mileage may vary.

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Thanks to Jackie T for this tea.

This was actually tea that I acquired for my boyfriend who loves banana teas. He chose to brew it today, though, and as a tea lover how can I turn down a sample of free tea?

If you love banana flavor, this is a very good tea. The banana flavor is definitely strong in this. Someone once compared it to “Banana Runts” and I think that’s a pretty spot-on comparison. It does have sort of an artificial/candy taste to it. The flavor does work surprisingly well with the genmaicha, I’m actually quite impressed. I don’t taste the cheesecake flavor much when hot, but as it cools that creamy flavor comes through.

If you’re not a banana fan this tea won’t necessarily turn you into one, but it’s very interesting indeed.

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88

Thanks to Zen Tea for this sample.

This is yummy green tea that looks very interesting, too. It has a nice green tea taste that’s not too vegetal, although there are some notes there. It’s more buttery than anything else. It is not overly floral, which is nice since I find a lot of these hand-rolled teas can sometimes tend to be.

A very smooth tea with no bitterness or astringency. Definitely a pleasant tea for green tea lovers like me.

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73
drank Sakura Allure by Teavana
200 tasting notes

Originally I wasn’t going to order anything from Teavana, but then I made the mistake of looking at their sale and seeing their awesome prices. And then I caved. My order is still in processing (and I’m still waiting on an e-mail from them). This tea is not from this order.

I thought I had ordered this tea, but I looked at my receipt and saw that I didn’t. I was NOT going to go to the mall, but I really wanted this tea, and customer service was not answering. So, I called up my local Teavana to ask if they still had this tea in stock. Sure enough, they did (and lots of it), so hi-ho to Teavana I go. I probably could have picked up some other teas had I just waited, but eh. Here’s hoping my order ships all right because a few of the teas aren’t even showing up anymore.

I also wanted to go to Teavana because I bought a Yixing mug on black friday at 40%. It was discounted to 50% the day after Christmas, and I wanted to get a price adjustment since I was in my return window. Well, I learned that you can’t return sale items (boo). But the manager took pity on me and gave me free tea (yay!).

I almost didn’t pick this tea up at all. So many of this on sale teas had mixed reviews. This one got not so bad reviews. I was warned that this does not have a strong green tea flavor and I will repeat – it does NOT have a strong green tea flavor. I can’t taste any tea at all. The hibiscus is strong with this one, and it’s definitely a fruity tea. It’s a good tea for people who don’t like tea, but from reading the other reviews it also appears kinda finicky. I bet this would be a really good iced tea. I hot brewed this, but maybe next time I should cold brew it.

It’s not overly tart, though, which is nice. I’ll give it a somewhat higher score and cold brew it and see what I think later..

Ze_Teamaker

I really do like this one iced. It is kinda like cranberry juice minus all the sugar.

I know what you mean by the sales they have going. The tiger cast iron pot I have been looking at for a while now is half off, but I don’t have the cash for it. BOOOOO. I am just worried it will be sold out and then I can never buy it. I can’t seem to find it sold anywhere else on the internet.

Babble

I think your description of “cranberry juice minus the sugar” is spot on. And yeah, I think I will be icing this one from here on out.

Have you checked World Market at all? They have some very affordable cast iron pots!

Ze_Teamaker

True they do, but it is the tiger design that I adore; I really like tigers….

Autumn Hearth

But it’s not a return, it’s a price adjustment. Grr!

Babble

Should they have been able to do it? The manager said that it couldn’t be done. I also forgot to mention this was an online order, but it DOES say I can return it in store too.

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My local tea shop had a blending class for the holidays, and my awesome boyfriend actually bought me a spot in the blending class as an early Christmas/Chanukah gift. To thank him for such an awesome gift, I decided to make a tea specifically for him. I really REALLY wanted to make him a banana tea, but they only had so many flavors and add-ins, and I had to abandon that idea. But while blending and mixing teas, I came across another great idea. My boyfriend loves candied nuts, but they are not the healthiest thing around (plus they are pricey, yo). So I decided to make a tea blend out of it, instead. I also got to cup it along the way, which was nice, but after cupping teas 10 or 15 times, you get a little stick to your stomach. :-p

For this tea, I used white peony (white tea) as the base, added in some chrysanthemum to help give it some nutty taste, and I added cornflower petals to make it look pretty. We had a few flavoring oils we could apply, so I used an almond and caramel flavoring. The almond was nice, but the caramel really gave it that candy coating.

I unveiled the tea at Christmas yesterday and my boyfriend was so excited he had to brew it tonight. The tea has a very strong scent (maybe too strong), but when you brew it, it mellows out. It’s actually quite nice.

The tea master who taught the class thought that mixing such strong flavors with a white tea was a bad idea and I should have stuck to black or rooibos tea. But, whatevz. My boyfriend and I are not fans of black tea, and white tea can be pricey. Plus, white blends are fun. The white tea does take a back seat and you can’t really taste it, but that’s not such a bad thing.

All in all, it’s not bad for my very first tea blend with flavorings. I don’t know if I’m going to become a master tea blender anytime soon, but I think I did well.

ashmanra

Wow! What a great gift he gave you, and what a great gift he got in return! Sounds inspired to me!

Sil

great story! sounds like a lot of fun

LiberTEAS

what a lot of fun! Your boyfriend is a keeper!

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83
drank Buccaneer by SerendipiTea
200 tasting notes

Merry Christmas (and happy late Chanukah). I got this tea, along with many others, for my boyfriend for Christmas. He was originally drawn to this tea because he is a fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneer football team (which didn’t have such a great season this year). He also likes rooibos. I was originally going to buy this tea online but hated the idea of having to buy 4 oz at a time, so I eventually just gave up. Then, one fateful day on my vacation to Austin, Texas, I was browsing in Central Market (a very awesome grocery store) and saw this tea in bulk. Hooray! I could buy a small amount of this tea afterall.

And so, this was the first tea he decided to try tonight of all his lovely teas. It also didn’t hurt that it was late and it’s best to have a caffeine free tea.

This tea is quite pleasant. Rooibos is not always my favorite tea, but this tea is quite nice. I’m definitely getting creamy and some subtle chocolate too. Not really getting much fruity in here, but that’s not okay. There’s a slight bitterness, which is probably from the black tea that I didn’t realize was in here until afterwards – oops. But this tea is still quite lovely.

My boyfriend says, “It has a nice buttery aroma and has a strong rooibos taste. I like it.”

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Bio

So the short story is, a few years ago I was VERY MUCH into tea. And then a lot of things happened, and I got out of tea for a while. And now, I’m back.ⁿ

To me, tea is the missing puzzle piece for my healthy lifestyle. When I drink tea I am encouraged to eat healthy and be active. I drink tea because I simply enjoy the taste, but the health aspects are just an added bonus.

I love all types of teas, although greens and oolongs tend to be my favorite. I’ll drink herbals if I’m feeling a little under the weather. And recently I’ve been getting more into young shengs (also chasing that elusive “cha qi”).

Unless otherwise stated, I drink my teas straight. I’ve been doing gongfu mostly these days, so I use a ceramic gaiwan with an electric kettle. For greens and some oolongs, I’ll do a western style with a glass mug or regular infuser. I try to specify if my brewing parameters are outside the norm.

I’m kinda strict when rating my teas. I rarely give a tea above a 95. Teas that I really like I keep in the 95-85 category. I’ve yet to give a tea 100 yet. So, if you see a tea about 95, that means I thought it was an amazing tea!

ⁿ – Note: I did step away from tea for a while.. again. But now I’m back for REALZ. Usually I have to put this interest on hold when real life takes over, so I’m hoping for no major life events these days.

Location

Florida, United States

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