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Like many others, I’m pretty surprised at how strongly the pu-erh taste comes through on this one. The basil and mint add a really nice texture, but the overall strength of the flavor comes from the pu-erh which is a) really good and b) pretty commendable on Numi’s part.

All of these black teas from Teavivre have been KILLER. This one is no exception. The dry leaf looks itself looks and smells incredible. Once steeped, the tea has a reddish brown color, and I can ACTUALLY detect notes of chocolate in the taste. Most of the time when I read the “notes” people detect, I think it’s mostly bogus, because I can never pick up on anything, it just tastes like tea. But with this one, again, I could actually taste chocolate. So that was cool.

I finished off the first sample pack of this today. I decided to steep it just a bit longer and the smoky character definitely made a bit more of an appearance in the actual taste of the tea, which was interesting.

Again, I don’t imagine I will ever buy any Lapsang Souchong in bulk, but it’s nice to try it when I can, and I was really happy with this one.

This is by far the best Teavana tea I’ve tried, and they had it for 75% off, so it only cost me a few bucks. The brewed tea is EXTREMELY light in color – the first time I steeped it, I was really confused, it looked like there was just water. The taste and smell are really unique, though. Supposedly, it’s supposed to have that “umami” flavor/smell. I don’t really know what that’s about, but there’s definitely something different about it. It also takes VERY well to multiple steepings, I’ve found that the second and third are often better than the first.

Overall, I highly recommend this, it’s given me a bit of renewed hope for Teavana.

I got this as a free sample from Tea at Sea last week. They seem like an awesome company, I actually found out about them through a steepster discussion feed where they said they would send free tea samples in exchange for reviews. I feel like that’s a pretty fair deal, and I’m always happy with free tea.

They sent their Mountain Organic Indonesian Green and Mountain Organic Indonesian Black. I figured I’d start with the green. Overall, it was a perfectly enjoyable experience. It was not by far the best green tea I’ve ever had, but it still tasted great. It actually reminded me a lot of Sleeping Dragon by Adagio, which is kind of my go-to “nothing fancy” green tea.

It had a smooth, buttery nutty taste to it – not grassy or vegetal at all. Towards the end I could KIND OF detect a hint of the fruit notes they claimed, but honestly, it’s really hard to tell.

So, honestly, I probably won’t be buying any more of this, but I was very grateful for the opportunity to give it a try, and I wish Tea at Sea all the best.

This is only the second Lapsang Souchong I’ve ever tried, and while I’m pretty sure I don’t prefer them in general, this was still pretty great. I’ve found that the “smoked” quality of the tea affects the smell much more than the actual taste; where the smoky smell is quite strong and overpowering, the tea itself is pretty smooth with a pleasant astringency.

This came as one in a sample pack of five different Chinese black teas from Teavivre, ALL of which have been completely fantastic. I think I’ll definitely be looking to Teavivre for black tea from now on.