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Rating: 70

This is one of the packages of tea my friend Todd brought back for me from his China WorldCon trip, so I don’t have a lot of details about the tea or manufacturer. The only English on the packaging reads “Mountain Mengding Tea” (I think this is the brand?) with a Product Name reading “LvMaoFeng(green tea)”. The packaging also has “the water is from Yangzi River, the tea is from Mengshan” written on it. So… mystery mao feng style Chinese green tea!

It’s a very mellow and approachable green tea. Grassy and vegetal, a bit on the garden snap pea side but not too strongly umami. I’ve been mostly making this cold brewed, since I really like green tea prepared that way… I find it very refreshing in the hot weather. I typically add 6g to a liter mason jar and let it steep in the fridge overnight, then strain the next morning. It may be a little non-descript, but easy to gulp down.

My only complaint is these bags of green tea Todd got for me are 100g each, which is just waaaaaaaaay too much tea for me (I never buy such a large size for myself unless it is a heavy fruit tea which adds to the weight and requires a lot of material to brew) so it is taking me absolutely forever to work through this package, even making a liter every day! I’ve been working on it all summer and probably still have another 10-15 cold brew servings left. I’m starting to feel ready to move onto something else, but this also crossed the best buy date in 2023 so I want to use it up…

Flavors: Grassy, Vegetal, Garden Vegetables, Peas, Sweet, Mellow

I saw TeaEarleGreyHot has been drinking Harney & Son’s Black Currant tea recently, and it reminded me I’ve also been drinking that flavor as of late, albeit the one from Simpson & Vail.

The black tea base is pleasant and not entirely overpowered by the flavoring. It has a nice brassy edge without being too tannic, with some more subtle autumn leaf undertones. The aroma of the tea is a really lovely mix of fruity and floral, and the black currant flavoring is very nice; I always forget how grapey it tastes when I haven’t had it in a long time, and I’m really digging that particular flavor note lately. I get a grape-forward berry fruitiness that is sweet enough to smooth out the rough edges of the base black tea without being so sweet as to be cloying. Just the right amount.

This has been pleasant as a morning cup, straight-up with no additions, but also made a great batch of iced tea, as well. I prepared my iced tea by brewing 7g of leaf in 500ml hot water for 3 minutes, straining, mixing with an additional 500ml cold water, leaving it to cool on the counter for a few minutes, and then popping it into the fridge to chill overnight. I wanted a stronger, more tannic flavor so I opted to chill a hot brew preparation rather than cold brew, but I bet it would be tasty cold brewed as well. Something about that grape note just really jives with me for too-darn-hot summer weather.

This has been my recent coldbrew choice. The flavor was a little weak at 5g leaf to a liter cold water, but 6g improved the flavor greatly and that is what I’ve been sticking with. The tea tastes a bit like a combination of grape and black currant, which I’ve found very pleasant. The grape flavor leans a little towards grape candy, but not overly so, since the tea itself is not very sweet and the currant adds a slight tanginess. It’s not as good as the grape flavoring that Lupicia uses, but for the lower price and easier accessibility it is a servicable substitute. The white tea is pretty mellow beneath the flavoring, but does add a crisp and refreshing slight vegetal note. It’s been a very nice iced tea during hot afternoons.

One of my favorite teas as a Golden Mao Feng from TeaSource, which they stopped carrying. When I saw a Golden Mao Feng from Tea Runners, I had to grab it to see if it lived up to my memory… sadly, it appears Tea Runners no longer has this tea, either. I wonder if I’m just destined to always be chasing after this tea…

I love this tea, it exhibits so many elements of a Chinese black that I love. It brews up to a rich, malty aroma with a slight rosy scent. On the tongue I get strong notes of malt, copper, and leather, with a sweeter flavor of dark chocolate-covered cherries that comes out as the tea cools a bit. Sometimes I get a slight rosy aftertaste. It’s a bit tannic but not bitter… sometimes it is a little strong on my weak GI if I drink it on an empty stomach. The caffeine-hit is substantial, too.

This will be missed when I finish up the bag!

I made this as coldbrew when my friend Todd was visiting, and we took it along on a picnic in the Sawtooth Forest to see a hummingbird feeder site. This is a really lovely root beer tea! The flavoring is spot on and the green rooibos base doesn’t really impede the flavoring in any way, while coldbrewing like a champ. I think part of what really sells it is the tea is very sweet, really adding to that feel of drinking pop without adding any additional sweeteners. This is achieved by a high level of licorice root, however, which can be a contentious ingredient for a lot of tea drinkers, so if you are sensitive to it, this probably isn’t the tea for you. To me, the “sticky” sweetness left in my mouth just really sells the mouthfeel of actual root beer in a way the flavoring alone couldn’t.

I’m on my last liter, and I added CO2 to this one, and I really can’t tell the difference from a canned root beer. This will definitely be missed!

A few weeks ago when my friend Todd was visiting, several days of lackluster sleep were starting to catch up with me, so I pulled this out even though it is a “newer” order (which I typically ignore to drink older teas first) just because it was only one of two yerba mate blends I had in my current stash. After opening the package I realized it was cut with rooibos and thus probably not the caffeinated bomb I was hoping for, but at that point I brewed it up anyway.

Todd and I both really enjoyed it! The tea smells like cinnamon and cheesecake, and the flavor isn’t far from that, either. The tea is very sweet, with strong notes of woodsy cinnamon and cream cheese. There is a little lingering spice in the aftertaste that I think may be the ginger, but it doesn’t really come out in the sip. I’m not sure if I could say I’m getting horchata specifically, though I definitely understand it. I think for me it’s more of a warm cinnamon bun with cream cheese frosting, which I’m equally down for! A very desserty cup. Makes a fine latte, as well.

I’ve really been enjoying this floral-forward Earl Grey from Simpson & Vail (speaking of S&V, I won their summer tea giveaway, a tin each of “Blueberry Limeade” and “Summer Breeze!” I’ll have to get to those soon…) It is very aromatic, with the bergamot and rosemary hitting my nose first, followed by undertones of rose and lavender. The black tea base is a Rose Congou which is rich, malty, coppery, and floral, with the rose coming out more in the taste as the tea starts to cool a bit. The bergamot is a good strength, leaving the cup with a deeply satisfying citrus note that isn’t overpowered by the other flavors. The rosemary is the secret star for me in this blend, as it compliments the bergamot really well, helps the lavender notes pop a bit more, and leaves a very satisfying aftertaste.

This is definitely a tea for floral lovers and not those toeing the line; I fear the highly aromatic bergamot mixed with a lot of strong floral flavors will come off either perfumey or soapy to some. I have an extremely high floral tolerance and every now and then I’ll get a sip that leaves a bit of a pungent aftertaste. I also found the one time I tried making the tea as a latte it did taste a bit soapy to me, but I’m not sure if that was due to the strength of the leaf I used to offset the milk or that certain floral notes were hightened from the sweetened vanilla almond milk. Even then, I didn’t find it particularly unpleasant. But now I enjoy it hot and straight, and I really enjoy sniffing the steam as I go in for a sip.

A while ago I had really enjoyed steeping a teabag of Tazo’s “Pumpkin Spice Chai” along with some straight houjicha, finding they complimented each other very well. I finished up the Tazo teabags before the houjicha, but when I went back to my local grocery to restock, they no longer had the Tazo “Pumpkin Spice Chai” so I grabbed a random other chai from what they had available, which was this one. And I found, as I do with most grocery store chai options, that I hated it. It uses waaaaaaaaaaay too much spice oils/flavoring rather than whole spices for my tastes. I sometimes do okay with the cinnamon flavoring used in teas with those sweet “cinnamon candy” sort of blends, but here it just comes off as really artificial… and the clove and cardamom oil tastes really strong. I like clove in tea (I realize it is a polarizing ingredient in chai) but this just punches you in the face with it.

Needing a way to use up the teabags (I hate being wasteful of food I’ve already spent my dollars on), I’ve been using them up making tea pop. My first batch turned out pretty awful because my CO2 canister was at the bottom so it didn’t fizz up properly and made the tea really bitter, so a fresh CO2 canister and a little added sugar syrup later and it’s servicable in pop form. Still a little clove heavy, but it works much better as a fizzy carbonated cold drink and I can use up the teabags four at a time making the base coldbrew. One more liter to go to wash my hands of this chai!

I purchased this at a local Natural Grocers under Natural Grocers packaging, but it is the same tea offered from Tiesta so I’m recording it here rather than creating a duplicate under the Natural Grocers name.

This is a chunky, sweet fruit tea, which I coldbrewed when my friend Todd was visiting so there would be plenty of ice cold tea on hand. The flavor is an amalgamation of mango and pineapple, but despite the name, I get far more pineapple than mango (which is fine by me, as pineapple is probably my favorite fruit). There is a lot of dried orange in the blend, but I find it doesn’t really add much tanginess to the tea; occassionally I’ll get a bit of the note toward the end of the sip. The tea is very naturally sweet, and I couldn’t imagine adding any extra sweetener. It’s very gulpable, but it takes a lot of the tea to brew up a liter; I got 3 liters out of a 3 oz. package.

It’s genmaicha.