17480 Tasting Notes
Drank this bowl-brewed while reading the latest Eighty Degrees issue. The golden yellow flowers are, of course, very stunning. However, they also produce such a uniquely floral cup with a thick, syrupy liquor and strong, pungent notes of dark honey and dried medicinal and earthy herbs that evoke imagery of what you might see strung up in a sort of stereotypical medieval apothecary. The finish is rather peppery tasting, at least to my palate.
Though I’ve rarely enjoyed chrysanthemum tea in the past, this past winter I had some really positive experiences with a few different offerings that really challenged that bias I was holding. So, when I placed this recent order for Mountain Stream’s Spring oolongs I decided to continue pushing myself with this tisane and see just how much my taste for it has changed. I’m glad I did because, although I won’t be running out to mass restock more chrysanthemum tea any time soon, I did actually enjoy this cup quite a lot. I find that mix of golden honey and peppery flavour really soothing, and it was a very relaxing tea to drink while reading through some of the articles and photo series in this issue!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DI1p2_opiLE/?img_index=1
Also, I just have to shout out this yunomi cup from Ali Schorman because I’ve been eyeing her work for soooo long and am just really, really happy with this piece I snagged from Charlie Cummings not too long ago! Gorgeous attention to detail, really tactile, super saturated and beautiful sunset orange and pink colours… I’m just loving using it!
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBHusJ0BXxE&ab_channel=WILDERADO
Gongfu!
This is obviously a very beautiful looking tea, but the mix of fresh, aromatic rose with the notes of warm and lightly caramelized sweet rolls that the dry aroma gives off caught my attention just as much as the look of the leaf. Those fresh out of the over baked aromas are only amplified when the water hits the leaf, as are the tender, lush florals. It’s a very well-balanced cup, with a slightly heavier and cozier liquor than most other rose scented oolong teas I’ve had. Other than the flavour of sweet baked goods and pastries, it also has notes of darker honeys, a gentle and slightly woody-leaning roast, nuttiness, and even a smidge of cinnamon. More the warmth of cinnamon versus the heat. Quite a different rose oolong than I am used to, but wow, do I like it!! It would be so interesting to do a side by side with this tea and one with a greener and less oxidized base…
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DI64kkVSijB/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBzrVda54g8&ab_channel=ScoobertDoobert-Topic
Gongfu!
A little treat for myself going into the weekend. t’s exactly the smooth but darkly earthy tasting tea that I’ve been craving the last few days. It was so rich and muddy, but the good kind of muddy like the caked on potting soil covering root vegetables freshly pulled from the ground following a heavy spring rain. Garden carrots and beets wrapped in the clean, earthy petrichor. Cooling and camphorous in the finish, with spice notes pulled into the mix: allspice, clove, vanilla. A little woody. Despite all of these heavier, dense notes that paint a picture from below the ground, the liquor is so incredibly smooth with an almost velvety roundness. It was good for many, many enjoyable steeps!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DI4uUuuyhKa/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Woh0Euhkk&ab_channel=Glassio-Topic
Another of B&B’s new Earl Grey teas.
To the point I made in another tasting note earlier today, there seem to just be soooo many more floral tea blends in Europe compared with North America – and elderflower in particular was a flavour/ingredient we saw quite heavily!
My experience has been that, to the average North American palate, elderflower is not a very commercially well received flavour at all. However, personally I really like it so I was excited to see it used in this way. I think it works really well. The dry leaf is highly aromatic and very fresh, slightly citrusy and floral. A good mix of more heady florals/aromatics (ie. the bergamot) balanced by lighter, brighter florals.
Steeped it works out this way too. Medium to full-bodied black tea with a pretty typical amount of bergamot, but just highlighted by the fresh, bright and slightly sweeter and citrusy notes of the elderflower. Not too floral or heavy or perfumed. Quite well integrated. It very much feels like a more Spring-centric take on a classic Earl Grey. Of course, I would be very, very curious to see if someone less fond of elderflower than myself felt the same way…
B&B released a new Earl Grey collection while we were in Europe with four different EG blends, so of course we wanted to try them. In the end we picked up 3/4 – choosing to skip the chocolate Earl Grey because it seemed a little less interesting and unique to us.
This was the one I was most personally interested in, and I have to admit it’s left me perplexed. The ingredient list is interesting to me. Licorice root I understand the inclusion of both as a natural sweetener and because it’s very mouth/throat coating properties will likely enhance the feeling of this being a more rich and caramel-like blend. Cardamom, on the other hand, seems out of pocket to me. Though, I have to admit the dry leaf smells INCREDIBLE with such a buttery toffee aroma, and you do also clearly smell cardamom too and it seems nice and complimentary…
Steeped I’m not mad about the taste, but it left me questing who this was for customer wise. If I’m attracted to this profile because of the Earl Grey, I think the bergamot note in the blend is actually maybe a little too light – that’s a quality that I personally appreciated, but that I could see bothering others. On the flip side, if I’m attracted to the blend because of the caramel (like in my case) I also feel like the caramel could be richer. It is a sweeter leaning profile with the buttery quality of the caramel and the licorice root acting in the way I expected both flavour/mouthfeel-wise. But I just want more caramel. Particularly a deeper, thicker caramel note. A bit less bright/aromatic.
And the cardamom. It’s there. You can clearly taste it, and honestly it’s nice. It compliments all the flavours pretty solidly. I just don’t understand why it’s in a Caramel Earl Grey. That’s still so confusing to me.
…so I’m definitely torn with this one!
Sipdown (2902)!
I loved the dry leaf aroma of this blend. Just so, so juicy smelling! Steeped it was good too, but quite rooibos forward and more of a cooked orange sort of note versus something more sweet, lively and fresh. Though, the quality of the rooibos used was very nice. I really appreciated that it was a little honey and nutty. Were it more mineral I think that, combined with the orange notes, it might have come off as very medicinal and vitamin-like. So, I’m glad that was avoided even if the taste wasn’t totally the same vibe as the dry aroma smell…
Iced!
So nice to have this blend restocked, and so quickly after running out too! At this point I feel like I just don’t have anything new to write about it, but it’s become such a quick and easy go-to in my stash that I want to make sure I keep logging it to reflect the frequency I’m drinking it…
Flavors: Berries, Juicy, Pomegranate
This was a very, very soft and mellow herbal blend with a mix of baked apple notes with a bit of floral elderflower and then a lot of linden. It wasn’t unpleasant, but I definitely wanted to like it more than I did. The fact it was so gently flavoured wasn’t really a contributing element to why it didn’t land for me: delicate apple and elderflower is actually a really beautiful combination for a calm, quiet feeling blend for the evenings. I just, unfortunately, don’t enjoy the taste of linden very much and there is a lot of linden in this blend. Obviously. I mean, like, it’s in the name.
So just something less for me personally.
Tea Pop!
We saw so little matcha during our trip because most shops we visited were sold out, so when we saw Whittard had a flavoured but unsweetened matcha we were excited to pick it up and give it a try. It was vacuum sealed in the smaller 30g tin it was purchased in with one of those pull tab/pop tops. So, I was INCREDIBLY disappointed to open it up this morning and be met with a super, super dull and chalky looking powder. Not very fresh seeming at all!
Unfortunately it didn’t taste very high quality either. The vanilla flavour was totally fine, but the matcha itself was very dull, bitter and grassy. I ended up pouring most of the matcha I’d made into a cup with ice and then topping with a coconut flavoured La Croix, which definitely saved the drink big time. You could still taste the matcha a little, though the vanilla note was heavily masked by the coconut. Better overall that the matcha on its own, though…
I guess it was a Whittard day because I also drank this one today along with two other Whittard blends. I didn’t love this one though. It was very oily and fatty in mouthfeel from all the coconut shreds in the blend, and even though I intellectually know this is just a result of using real coconut that doesn’t mean it makes the experience much better for me. The coconut flavour itself was very mid to me, but I did like the cream flavouring that was paired with it a lot. Between that and the slightly nuttier taste of the oolong base I kept thinking a lot of coconut cream pie.
In the end I left what was probably the last half of my mug sitting at my desk for most of the day, only coming back to it as I was wrapping up my work. At that point it was very cold and a lot of the coconut fat had solidified around the walls of the mug. That was gross, but I actually liked the taste of the tea much better when it was cold. Maybe iced latte would be a good brew method for this tea next time…
