464 Tasting Notes
Thanks, Greenteafairy, for this tea!
As I drink this tea, I feel like my tongue is covered in vanilla cream! What the heck!? It almost feels numb and I can barely taste anything else. As I keep drinking it, it spreads and my whole mouth is coated by cream. It’s the oddest sensation coming from a liquid.
There is more going on once I actually get over the creamy sensation. The tea is darkly sweet, just barely roasty, and with a light floral note I can’t identify.
As I near the end of the cup, the creamy sensation deteriorates and gets slightly chalky or gritty- almost like my mouth is fighting the illusion of creaminess. This is when it becomes more like creme brulee.
This tea definitely took me on a sensation roller-coaster that was more texture than taste. Interesting tea! I’d have to try it again to see if I really like it or not.
I’m so glad I bought this tea on Sunday! It’s decadent, sweet, and roasty. It makes me feel warm and cosy all over! My co-worker, who I am sharing it with, feels the same way. It’s our moment of calm in a very busy week of switching over to a new scheduling/billing system at the hospital where we work.
I have to say that I’m really liking the teas I’ve had from Nina’s. They are probably some of the best blends I’ve had that come from a company that markets themselves as traditional tea blenders. Not only is each tea great on its own, but each tea is very different from the other blends. For example, Kusmi and Le Palais Des Thes are both companies that market themselves as traditional “fancy” tea blenders. The teas from each company all seem to taste the same to me. The bases are of all the kusmi teas seem similar and the flavors don’t seem very different. Palais des Thes has this kind of awful flowery green base for most of their teas. Nina’s blends are different from one another.
This tea has exceeded my expectations. There’s a lot going on with this tea that I thought was pretty straight-forward. This time, on the first steep I was picking up on some pepper notes. They kind of came out of nowhere and it can’t be contamination from any other tea because this was my first tea of the morning out of clean cup. After the pepper tones, I got a lot of the fruity flavors that I had the first time I had this tea. On the second steep I got the more vegetal, semi-creamy side of the tea. It was still very fruity though.
The only way I can describe drinking this green tea is by comparing it to the revelation of seeing clearly the first time you put on glasses after a lifetime of seeing things in a fuzzy haze. The notes in this were so fresh, clear and distinct. Did it have some of the seaweed type flavor I’m not fond of in greens? Yes. But the texture of that same taste was so different from every other green tea I’ve had with that same taste. It was somehow smoother and crisper, not quite as jarring and jagged as I usually find that flavor. It also seemed to work more harmoniously with the other flavors in the tea.
There were some very substantial dark green notes that reminded me of brocolli rabe With this was a very distinct and powerful lemon flavor. I usuallly pick up some generic citrus notes in tea, but this was in your face, make you pucker and tear up lemon!The flavors mixed together remind me of how my Mom makes soup by adding lemon and an egg whipped together to make the broth light and add some tang.
I often find myself drawn to teas that are well balanced with dark and light notes. Well this tea is a perfect example of balance- lightness and dark. Bitter, yet plesantly so, with a lightness to mellow it out.
This is a very interesting tea. I had it both yesterday morning and this morning but didn’t have time to log it. My first thoughts were that it had the sweetness of an Assam and the fruitiness of a Cylon. The more I drink it though, the more leather notes I pick up on until that’s the only thing I taste. Weird! I’ve never really tasted leather notes in any tea before. I knew they supposedly existed before, but this is the first tea that made them stand out to me. This is a smooth leather. It feels like how I would imagine licking a saddle or smooth leather bag (not that I do that). I’m not 100% sure I like thotes, but I have plenty of this tea to experiment with and maybe now that I know what to look for I might pick it out. More in other teas.
Oh no, not leather! I’ve never had a leather-y tea before, I don’t think, but I get strong leather notes in some red wines and really don’t enjoy them. I’ll have to try this one soon and see (er, taste) for myself…
I couldn’t resist breaking into this tea after bringing it home from the tea meet-up!
The base to this tea is strong, malty, and smoky in the way that I always imagined smoky teas to be, but never experienced before. The smokiness is warming and comforting, not obnoxious and overpowering like lapsong souchongs. The woody cedar and the deep, sweet juniper berries further mellow out the smoky aspect.
The pine in the aroma and aftertaste reminds me of summers in Maine! It’s so relaxing! I really like this blend. It really makes me want to try White Wolf, which has cedar in it, when it comes back in stock.
This is definitely my favorite from Davidstea’s fall line. It really tastes like a gingerbread cookie! I had this one to warm me up after getting home from the color run I ran in this morning. A fun tea for a fun day!