Royal Wedding

Hmmm, this one is also old, and as a white tea I would expect it to age worse than its black counterparts, but I wouldn’t have expected it to gain an odd bitter note. I wonder if its the coconut? Other people have complained about coconut teas going rancid after a while (coconut oils not as shelf stable I guess?), so I wonder if this one is suffering the same fate? It doesn’t smell off or rancid though. That would be very sad if its the case. It did stay good for quite a long time, I just seriously neglected it.

Well, it was ok, just not as good as it once was. I wonder if I can steep it for less time and tame it a bit. Also will try cold steeping, as I always liked this tea cold steeped.

Uhm… I am loving the coconut flavour in this one. The first time I steeped it, I didn’t know that H&S teabags required 12 oz. of water, so it was way oversteeped and astringent. But I thought it had promise – I wasn’t wrong. This time, I used the right amount of water, and I’m pretty much dying at first sniff. Delicious, sweet, coconutty goodness. The flavour isn’t strong (I perhaps could have left the bag in there longer than 2 minutes), but it’s really quite tasty. The combination of almond and coconut invokes almost a white chocolate sort of flavour, which is absolutely delicious. I can’t taste any floral from the rose at all, which I’m pretty ambivalent about. I also can’t really taste the white tea, but honestly, I’m happy enough with just the delicious flavours.

Yum yum, thanks Lala for sending some of this to Sil (and to Sil for disliking coconut!)

ETA: Second infusion was very grassy/hay-y… perhaps I could have finished it, but I didn’t enjoy the sips I did take, so I dumped it. I guess H&S teabags don’t re-steep well? I could have sworn that I concluded the opposite when I brewed up both the Valentine’s tea and Tower of London.

My evening cup of tea (so far). I wax and wane with this tea, and am happy to say I’m in a wax phase (no, nevermind. Forget you read that, that sounds weird.)
Its tasty! Today its steeped up light and pleasant.

My bestie wants to expand her tea horizons and told me she wanted to find some green and white teas that she would enjoy. Her first green experiences were not so good, grocery store greens that just tasted like hot water and heartburn.

She tried Stash White Christmas and loved it, so when she came over tonight for tea I tried some others on her. She really loved this one, and I have a lot of it since I bought the bulk bag so I gave her a bunch to take home. She loves coconut, and she already liked Harney’s Wedding Tea. This is, I think, the same tea but with coconut added. She is a school teacher so she likes having sachets at work and uses loose leaf at home.

It is a hit! Yummy and creamy!

So this is a white tea…with coconut. As i mentioned to Kittenna after looking again at the teas i swapped with Lala i think i was channelling my inner kittenna that day. Not that I’m not happy to try new teas but i think every tea i picked had coconut in it or a base i don’t typically prefer lol.

However! This tea? It’s quite nice. I think the vanilla helps to calm the coconut down so that it’s not jumping down my throat. It still wouldn’t be a cup that i’d have every day but it’s a pleasant cup.

Thank you so much to Lala for this swap! Loving it!

This sounded so nice, I had to look past the almond and get a sample. Such a pretty tea, I can’t believe they don’t offer a 4 oz tin on the site. Thinking of this tea in a sachet makes me sad because it needs to be seen!

I really want to still be sleeping but I’ve been up since about 7:30, since the woman who lives above my boyfriend does not know how to move around silently, or at least close to silently, which usually doesn’t involve hearing vibrations in the ceiling, things hitting the ground, etc. Oh I should also mention I have no idea where my boyfriend is. So that’s cool.

I wish this tea would cool off already. It smells so good: creamy coconut, floral vanilla. But I don’t want to burn my tongue just yet. I feel like too much time has been wasted not having this tea, I mean its name makes me feel really slow on the uptake.

I have this coconut vanilla scented thing in my car, and this is how I imagine it would taste if it smelled less like suntan lotion. (I actually had someone ask me if I just got back from the beach, hahaha. I do still have my parking receipt from the one time my car was near a beach?)

First I’m glad it’s not all bitter/oversteeped because I didn’t realize this was a white tea until the water was boiling. The coconut is really creamy, so it almost gives the impression of white chocolate with the vanilla flavor. I wish it was a bit floral given the pretty petals in the dry leaf, but that’s really not contributing anything here.

This is delicious though, everything has a nice balance of flavor. I can taste the white tea in here and it blends in well with what feels like the vanilla. I thought it was going to be much sweeter than it is, so that’s nice too. It’s more rich than expected, especially for a white tea.

Would I get more than the sample? For now, no. But if I was ordering something else from H&S maybe another sample size would just pop into my cart. It’s good but not something I would want to drink regularly.

Of course the almond is in full effect now so meh.

Like Jenn, I have QuiltGuppy to thank for this. Also, like Jenn, today seemed like a good day for this. I love the delicate nature of this blend. It almost demands the best china to be used when serving. So I broke out an heirloom cup and saucer and made it my profile picture. That is Royal Wedding in the cup. (I did this days ago, but just felt inspired enough to log it)
I love the color of it after steeping, a rich gold in my cup. There is a hint of vanilla or maybe a note of honey. I agree with Jenn, the floral aspect is very light. This tea is formal, detailed, even complex, but wonderful. I can count the white teas I have tried on one hand, if they are all this good, I may be adding to the list!

Chinese mutant white tea buds, with almond, coconut and vanilla to tas- Wait, what?

Oh Mutan! Riiiiiight. Anybody could’ve made that mistake!

The dear QuiltGuppy included this one in the package she sent me a little while ago. I was dead-lucky with that one because it contained among other things a number of things I had been curious about and one thing that I’d had before and liked. And she didn’t know anything about that when putting it together, so I’m thinking she must have access to some powerful psychic powers.

This has been widely appreciated across Steepster and I’m glad I got to try it as well, even though it’s been a long time since the actual wedding took place. I’ve got some pretty high expectations of it. Of course I should have actually looked it up before putting the kettle on, but at that time I hadn’t chosen a tea yet. And then I discovered it was a white, so I had to wait for my already boiling water to cool so that I could heat it again. It sounds pretty stupid put into words and it felt pretty stupid too. (And as for why I didn’t just get new tap-water, it’s because I filled the kettle all the way so that I can just press the button the next time I want tea water. It’s easier, and while I’m aware that I’m technically supposed to use fresh tap water every time, frankly I can’t taste a difference, so why bother?)

Now, let’s get down to business here. This cup is important as it’s also the first one I’ve had all day, and I’m finding the fact that it smells like a Bounty bar extremely up-lifting. It’s not my favourite type of chocolate bar at all and I’m not generally one to have a lot of luck with coconut in tea, but anything that smells like sweets surely must get a goodly amount of points.

And you know what? This is actually one of the few where coconut in tea works for me. It’s there and it’s very obviously coconut, but it’s not assertive. It’s just sort of standing there, a bit to one side of the room, making a presence of itself but not causing any sort of fuss. Just quietly minding its own business and chatting with the almond, which is behaving in the same way.

The vanilla is a bit more lively, but not as obvious. As opposed to the coconut, the vanilla is trying to get the attention of the room, but failing spectacularly which in turn causes it to behave in an adorably desperate and cheerful way. Refusing to accept that nobody has discovered what it’s trying to do.

Let’s stick to this metaphorical room of party-goers and turn our attention to the white tea itself. It’s quite grassy in flavour and nicely framing the rest of the flavour profile. The tea obviously represents the room itself. The surroundings. The barkeep, polishing pint glasses and asking younger notes for ID. The decorations. All those guests that are there, but you don’t know who they are.

All in all, as befits the name, this tea is a party in a cup, and therefore it’s probably not quite as bizarre that it’s reminding me strongly of carrot cake. With coconutty icing on it. Gosh, I wish I had some carrot cake to go with this.

Not bad for a mutant tea. ;)

Thanks to ashmanra for sending me a sample of this so I could face my fear of roses in tea.

Since this was in a sachet, I can’t say much about the tea prior to steeping. Once prepared, the fragrance was of vanilla, carrot and banana, with the faintest floral note. I may be carrying the wedding metaphor too far, but the overall aroma can be summarized as clean linen.

The tea was pale amber in color. The taste was on the grassy, vegetative side with a slight astringency- but no rose. (Yeah!) While it’s a blend, everything is so well balanced that it doesn’t come off as noticeably “flavored.”

The ingredients list includes coconut and almond, but these didn’t present themselves until the cup cooled. However, they lingered providing a pleasant aftertaste.

This may turn out to be one of my favorite H & S teas. (Which would figure since I just placed a large order and didn’t include this one.) I hope they keep it around past the Royal Wedding this weekend!

Another from Tea Box B. I’m always willing to try any of Harney’s teas! This is a Bai mu dan which is a more tolerable white tea base for me. But this one isn’t as nice as I thought it would be. It had an off taste to it. I did steep it for over the suggested five minutes though, which seemed wrong anyway, even at a lower temp, but the flavor wasn’t bitter at all. But I liked the coconut/vanilla/almond flavor… very cake like! Those three flavors combined together (you know, like a cake) so it was kind of tough to distinguish them separately. Less almond, more coconut & vanilla for me. There is enough left in the teabox for maybe one more cup!