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A sample I got from an order some months back. Just getting around to giving it a try.

This is pretty good. Mild and smooth. No bitter, no astringency. Not sure how to describe the flavor. It pleasant, though not on the top of my list for gotta have.

Had a gift card I had no clue what to do with and so decided to try a pu-erh since I had never tried one before.

First off with the sniff test. It smelled like plain tea. Unwrapped it still just smelled like plain tea.

So, I did a quick rinse, dumped the water, added new, walked to me desk and stopped the steep. If it was a full minute, I would be surprised.

The resulting liquid was a very deep black, similar to coffee. The smell was . . . fishy. not a smell that sits well with me. I grew up in the mid west. That smell triggers the “bad fish, do NOT eat” alarm. I tried taking a sip anyway and it tasted like . . .bacon.

What the . . .
Oh yeah, I had just finished eating the last little bit of my breakfast, which happened to be bacon. :) Rinsed the taste of bacon out of my mouth with some water and tried again. And it tastes fishy, and not the good fishy kind of taste.

I knew going in that this was a possibility but hey, you never know until you try.

Maybe I will try again sometime when I don’t have 15 other things demanding my attention and I can afford to sit around playing with bathroom toys and contemplating my navel. Which will be maybe when I am a retired widower some decades down the road. We’ll see. I am not heavily motivated.

I am very much driven by mood when drinking tea. This is not usually a problem. Keep a decent stock of some variety, and I have something to pick regardless of my current mood.

Sadly, because I am not wild about bergamot, I have horribly neglected two lone little tea bags of father’s Day since summer. They have been sitting in a small little zip lock bag with as much air pushed out as I could, but there’s no longer that great aroma when opening and sticking a teabag right at my nose offers almost no scent.

I steeped it anyway. I can smell a little bergamot now. and I can taste it in the tea. The Whiskey scent is gone and I do miss it because it gave such a wonderful balance to the bergamot. Still a very passable cup of tea.

I’ll probably do a reorder come spring when I will be more interested in the flavor combination.

A semi try#2.

I pulled this one out again late yesterday. (I have been making way way too much tea in the shadow of yesterday’s events). I opened the tin, was overpowered by the scent, and closed it.

I then pulled out my remaining 2 teabags of Harney and Sons Father’s Day. Very sadly I have been sitting on these for too long. I’ve stored them in a small zip lock bag with the air pushed out (2 tea bags, one giant cannister that screamed for repurposing), but they have still faded. Still passible tea. And guess what. I can smell and taste bergamot.

I don’t understand how this Earl Grey Moonlight neither smells nor tastes anything like its specified ingredients. It reminds me of someone who decided to make a tea out of marzipan and skipped the almond and orange. Its like a temple to perfumed sugar, but there’s no sugar. I don’t even comprehend.

Day 3 and the smell still makes ne nauseous.

Serious. Where is the tea. I can’t taste it. I sift through the bits from the bag and can’t see any either.

Tried making a cup this morning with maybe a pinch or two of the Masala Chai along with a normal amount of tea leaves from a pleasant, inoffensive Keemun.

I steeped for 90 seconds with boiling water. I took one sip, grimaced. Took another sip, and then dumped it down the drain and proceeded to worship at the altar of PTA.

My thought was that maybe I could mix it with a decent black base and make something that actually tasted like a spiced tea instead of someone having thrown a handful if spices into a grinder and called it tea.

Maybe it would work better if I brewed tea as normal, and then tossed in a pinch of this for the last 30 seconds? Would it work? Would it ruin any attempts to resteep for additional cups? is it even worth the hassle.

Two strikes in a row for Tealyra. I’m not impressed. I’m also really annoyed now that I wasted a gift card on this stuff.

I’m not a huge Earl Grey fan. But a coworker had been talking about how much he loved vanilla Earl Greys and I had a gift certificate I had no idea what to do with, so I thought I’d go a head and give this one a try.

First off, I can’t really smell or taste bergamot. I can’t really smell or taste vanilla either. There’s a whole heck of a lot of smell and taste (overpoweringly so), it just doesn’t seem to have much to do with its stated ingredients. It feels very artificial, though that may just be caused by my dislike of the overpowering flavors and odors.

It both smells and tastes somewhat floral, though I can’t imagine why it would do so. there’s also a kind of a bitter aftertaste in the back of the throat. There seems to be no sign of the tea base at all. The smell is actually making me feel queasy.

I was hoping for something warm and mellow this morning. This is not that.

I’m happy I used a gift card for the order. I would feel pretty bad if I had spent my own money on it. I won’t toss it yet. Maybe I will have a change of heart at a later date.

I went through a phase some years ago where I craved a good masala chai. The problem was, I really strongly dislike clove and almost every single masala chai out there is like being smacked in the face with a 5 lb bag of cloves. shuddder

For some reason, every single time I try to drink a tea containing clove, it brings to mind something my mom would make over the winter. She’s put a pot of water on the stove and set it to a a temp that would allow it to steam, but not really simmer or boil. Then she’s put in an old manky orange that was due for the trash, a cinnamon stick, and a bunch of cloves. In her words, it made the house “smell nice” and added some much needed humidity.

To this day I still associate cloves with mushy, pulpy, disgusting oranges.

Anyway, Painted Desert seems to be seriously satisfying that craving I had for a masala chai that didn’t overwhelm with clove. I have a feeling this is going to turn into a seasonal staple.

Revisited Leatherbound again today and suddenly I can taste the caraway. Funny how that works.

Its still eliciting the same reaction from me, especially when this morning started with rain, hail, thunder, and similar. Oh if I could only go home and curl up with this tea and a good book.

I wonder how different this tea is from what it had been almost 8 years ago (time stamps on all the other reviews). I don’t get fruit, but I do get florals. Similar in aspect to a black jasmine, though not exactly like it. It completely passes my astringency and bitterness tests, which is a plus.

I think my problem is that its a gray, rainy, and cold Seattle October day and florals are absolutely not what I’m in the mood for right now. Maybe come early spring when the bulbs are starting to bloom and I’m more in the mood for something perfumy.

Right now I’m craving warm, cozy, and spicy.

I am incredibly mood driven, so I’m not going to rate this right now. lets see how I feel come march.

To add to my previous review

At the end of the day, while I was cleaning out my infuser, I finally smelled the caraway. :)