Balade a Shanghai

After my quiet cup of tea, which was Magicienne by Nina’s, I went outside to do a tiny bit of work on the new fence we are putting up. I didn’t stay out long because it is hot and humid and buggy out there! I am tired of Mosquitos!

When I came back in, I thought it was the perfect time for a cup of my sample from Nina’s. Summertime is the perfect time for mint teas to me. The mint is so refreshing, even when you serve it hot! But I have not been a huge fan thus far of straight mint tisanes.

Fortunately, this is nice and minty but you can still taste the green tea. I didn’t look at any special directions. I just prepared it as I do most green teas – 175F water for three minutes. This does not taste smoky to me. I know some people mention Moroccan Mint style teas being smoky, but I didn’t pick up on that. The green base is dominant, or at least as strong as the mint. I felt like the mint came out a little more as the tea cooled, but it still didn’t overpower the green base and make you feel like you had a herbal tisane.

I believe I detect spearmint in this, although it could be Egyptian mint, which I have never had separately from spearmint so I don’t think I could identify it on its own. I had that Wrigley’s taste, so I am pretty sure it was spearmint!

This was refreshing and cooling. I didn’t try it iced or sweetened yet, but I bet it would be good both ways!

Thank you, Nina’s, for the sample!

ETA: Nina’s has offered to send samples to reviewers, so if you haven’t tried them yet, please do! They have some excellent teas!

Welcome to Sipdown Central
This was a sample sent from Nina’s.
I used to drink alot of Moroccan Mint over ice, especially during gigs. It’s very refreshing!
Today I chose to drink this hot. I had the first cup plain, then I tosses a few fragrant Rose Buds (Frontier) into the pot, ala My Friend Rashad’s comments, & that was tasty too. It very much reminded me of an herbal tea from back in my Hippy Days, “Nuclear Casual Tea”.
I’m not always a fan of mint in my tea, although I enjoy it in my salads.
Thanks to Laurent for this sample.
This is a Sipdown, bringing me back down to 300 teas!

Thank you to Nina’s for this lovely sample tea!

Many of the friends that I had to leave behind in California when I moved to Colorado are from the Middle East and North Africa. They taught me to make (and love) gunpowder green tea with fresh mint and LOTS of sugar! (I am not exaggerating at all about the sugar!)

One of my favorite memories was sitting with my friend Randa in an Arabic Tea House in San Francisco, sipping mint tea and eating pastries. We talked for hours as our tall teapot of mint leaves was filled and refilled many times with boiling water. The tea tray had a large bowl of sugar on it to suppliment the sweetened tea in the pot.

It was wonderful!

I always grow mint just so that I can recreate that tea experience when the mood is right and the day is hot enough. (The tea is best on a hot day!)

Prepackaged mint tea’s are usually not strong enough. Mint has a way of losing it’s punch when dry.

I decided to brew the tea in my Verdant glass beaker steeper, which holds 7oz water because the leaves are rolled and I wanted to watch the tea expand.
1TB dry tea soon filled the beaker with green leaves and golden tea, which when drained was half filled with expanded leaves.

The golden liquor tasted stronger than I had expected, with mint and slight smokiness from the gunpowder tea.

Right away, I heavily sweetened the tea as my friends do.

Although I much prefer the fresh leaves (and who wouldn’t), this is pretty good. I’ve only had one other mint tea of this kind that had enough body to drink in the traditional manner.

(Now my mind is beginning to wonder about culinary applications…)

Another Sample from the wonderful Nina’s Tea! Seriously folks, take them up on their generous offer and try a few of their samples! because i have a number of teas on their way and because of Bonnie’s tasting not today, i was inspired to try this one out. I don’t usually drink mint teas unless they’re chocolate mint teas but i can say that this tea here is a good one! The mint in this isn’t overly intense but it’s still obviously a mint tea. I really find this to be a smooth, refreshing tea! Thank you Laurent!

Sample sipdown! This one must have been hiding in my desk at work for a LONG time!

I had a bunch of leftover Indian food for lunch and now I’ve got curry breath! Ack! I’m leaving work early to get my tattoo touched up so I need something minty and refreshing to fix me up. This is perfect! Super GREEN tasting between the mint and the gunpowder tea :)

Thank you Nina’s Paris for this fantastic sample!

The dry leaf has an intoxicating spearmint fragrance that is absolutely fantastic. I love spearmint things so I’m assuming already that I’ll thoroughly enjoy this tea.

Yummy! It’s a refreshing, soothing tea. Something that I’d imagine would be wonderful iced for a warm spring day. This is a perfect “de-stressing” tea, because to me, spearmint helps me relax!

Went out for a wonderful dinner tonight. I ate far too much and still came home with enough food for my lunch tomorrow. Oy!

Since I had over indulged I decided to skip dessert and coffee at the restaurant and have this at home instead. It’s a nice Moroccan Mint. I like that the mint doesn’t overwhelm the tea. I do wish there was more smokiness from the gunpowder green, but the tea was still nice without it. For people who want to try Moroccan Mint but don’t like smokey teas this could be a great option.

This isn’t my favorite Moroccan Mint, but it is a good one.

Sample sipdown! This sample courtesy of Laurent at Nina’s Paris.

The dry leaves are so small they look like fannings. Some time in hot water, though, and the leaves unfurl, showing themselves to be a lovely green leaf. The tea has a delicate minty scent. There is a nice dry mouthfeel to this. As for the flavor, the mint is present but not overwhelming. Actually, it’s a bit light for my taste. I like this better cold – the coolness lends some oomph to the mint.

Overall, glad to have tried it but I wouldn’t buy it myself. It’s a good tea but there are other mint teas I like more.

I’m getting through these Nina’s samples, and they’ve all been pretty good. Some great.

This is a smoky gunpowder with mint.

Baladé is the french word for walk, but it’s also the name of a Lebonese restaurant in New York City. That’s very fitting, because to drink tea with mint is a very Arabic thing to do. More precisely, drinking tea with mint and rose water is a very very Arabic thing to do. That’s how I’m enjoying this tea right now. Insha’Allah

Let’s try this again. My computer is having a little temper-tantrum and shutting off on me again. Oh well.

I was expecting a plain green tea with this one, but when I poured my water over it I thought I smelled mint. I was correct and my first sips were mint. It was a plain mint. Nothing really stood out about it. It had a nice toothpaste clean mouth feel after it. But I wasn’t really tasting the green tea.

It cooled down a little bit and the green tea finally stood up. You can still taste the mint, but it isn’t as strong as it was at the beginning of the cup. It is slightly astringent. When it cools more you can really feel it at the back of your throat.

I’m not sure I like it as much as I did when I first took a sip. The green tea is a little rough for me this time and the mint is having a strange aftertaste in the back of my throat. It is nice and light and delicate. I think I would drink this with smaller cups though instead of in the big mugs of tea I normally have.

So, I don’t think I would go out and buy it for myself, but it is nice to drink. I like their Japon tea better.

Edit: So people are classifying this as a Moroccan mint type of tea? That’s interesting because I keep thinking of how nice it would be to mix this with my gunpowder green to see how it would turn out. That’s funny!