White Pear

Ah, it’s nice to revisit an old favorite. I unearthed this while sorting through my tea cupboard in an attempt to: a) arrange things so that I don’t risk an avalanch every time I open the door, and b) sort out what I might like to donate to the Travelling Teabox (and yes, Angrboda, I know I’m #25 – it’s your own fault for getting us so excited about the whole thing). ;)

I THINK Hesper June sent this to me…if I goofed…so sorry!!! Thank you! This has been on my wishlist for nearly 2 years!

The one store regionally I have seen Revolution Teas in – only sells about 5 of them and THIS is never one of them!

This is subtle in every way! It’s certainly pear!

I oversteepted this too just to compare the flavors and when I over steeped it the one thing I did notice is that it got a little bake-E like a Danish. So…like…a Pear Flavored Danish. I like both attempts.

Sometimes…I just need a little pear break.

I’m always excited to try pear teas – I love pear! Unfortunately, it doesn’t always translate well in tea … let’s hope that is not the case with this tea.

Well, I can SMELL the pear, as well as the sweet hay notes of the white tea. Yes, the pear flavor is there. It is soft, but, then, the white tea typically a soft flavor too, so they seem pretty nicely paired. (peared?)

I love this. It is sweet, light, and the flavors are really nicely balanced. The light flavor of the bai mu dan is gentle and hay-like, but I agree with TeaEqualsBliss – I can taste the “baked goods” kind of taste in there too… YUM Pear Tart!

Pear pear pear. Unlike the Doctor (both the Tenth and the Seventh), I like pear. Love it, actually. Especially canned (although I find that many people dislike canned fruit due to the sugary syrupness); it goes well with vanilla icecream. And I needn’t bother with the skins when they’re canned. Plus, the brine is delicious to drink.

The smell of the dry leaves was faint but pleasant. The wet leaves and the tea itself hold a much stronger pear flavour, although it is slighty sugary (that is to say, more similar to canned pears than fresh pears).

Although if you really stick your nose in close, it smells more ‘fresh pear’.

This is another tea from Jillian (how did she know I loved pears!), and I got two teabags instead of one, so at least I have one more to try after this before I have to remove it from my cupboard.

The colour is darker than I expected it to be (I haven’t much experience with white teas except in Numi’s flowering white teas, which brew quite light), sort of a pale black tea colour. The pear smell is delicious, and I think I get a tea smell in there too, but fainter.

Don’t know what to say in terms of taste. Again, I barely remember my last experience with white tea, but this is light, like a very light black. Not vegetable and green (luckily!). There’s pear in there, and it’s pleasant and not artificial and too sweet. I’ve heard that whites can get quite bitter. The pear taste isn’t confined to an aftertaste, it’s there during the sip, but it’s very pleasantly light.

Daaaamn, I quite like this and I only have one teabag left. I wonder how many times you can resteep a white. Hmmm.

It rained yesterday, crescendo style. Drizzled all morning, and gradually became stronger until by the time 8 PM rolled around it was heartily Riverdancing on the rooftop. My sleep schedule is so screwy right now; I’d planned to go to bed early but there’s no way that was going to happen. So I went upstairs to catch up on some TV.

About 15 minutes into it I decided that I wanted some tea, but I was too lazy to go back and get some so I ransacked the cabinets instead. The findings were meager, since I don’t really keep a lot of stuff in the kitchen, but I found this and thought, eh, sure.

I was pleasantly surprised on two accounts. One, that I could taste it at all. [Seems I’m seriously on the mend, which is cause for my own Michael Flatley impression.] But two, that I found it enjoyable, because, being honest, I was approaching it with the mindset of wanting something hot and steaming more than expecting something good.

The steep time is SHORT. Like 30 to 60 seconds, which is something that I can’t recall coming across before. For someone with my kind of limitations on patience, however, this is a nice bonus. I let it go for the full 60. I also don’t have the means to gauge any temperature besides boiling in the kitchen, so I approximated as best I could and shut the stove off when I saw steam.

The ones I had came in a little round sachet, but didn’t have a string attached with which to pull it out. It was a minor nuisance, but maybe that’s common-ish practice with bagged tea and I just don’t drink enough of it. It’s also a rather flat package. Tea Forte is really the only bagged variety I drink on the semi-regular, and I know that a number of other brands are starting to offer the pyramidal bags now. I can’t imagine that the tea has a lot of room to expand in there, but I didn’t examine it too closely because I wanted to get back to my stories.

And so I found myself sitting on the floor, watching Castle [which is awesome and I highly recommend it], with a blanket and the rain calling a war meeting overhead and a cup of tea in hand. It made for a lovely experience. [Especially since the show open of this particular episode – the Halloween one – made me whoop out loud.]

The tea was light and warm, which suited my mood quite well. It was also sweet in an almost granulated kind of way, but there was some fruitiness to it as well. It wasn’t pear that I was picking out of it. It was something that bore resemblance to fruit, though. The tea on the whole didn’t have a whole lot of depth. The taste was pleasant, however, and I wasn’t looking for complexity. Apparently there are actual pear bits in it, too, so I might need to give it some extra attention on a later date.

It is so very hard to concentrate on anything else when Nathan Fillion’s on the screen, being all funny and Nathan Fillion-y.

This was another of the samples I received, and I’ve been surprised at how much I enjoy it as an iced tea. I made a very small batch up and took it to school in a water bottle. It’s nice and subtle, a smooth white with just a hint of fresh pear in the aftertaste.

I really like pear flavored things. It seems that even the most artificial pear flavored things taste good anyways, like jelly beans and yogurt. So, when I got a sample tin of White Pear in the mail, I was terribly excited (mostly for free tea). I apparently had a cup over break, as the package is now one shy of full, but I have no recollection of drinking it. With a new cup in front of me, I don’t recall the previous sip.

Tasting it now, I initially get that its a white tea, but tones of pear. After a bit of searching, and I get a faint idea of it, but not the juicy richness I have come to expect from even the most pathetically pear-flavored things. It is most apparent when I swallow, and lingers briefly on the back of tongue. I’m thinking I might have under-steeped it (3mins) but after reading a few other notes on it I’m not as sure.

The base tea of this is nicely mellow and soothing, but I still want more from it.
Not to say this is a bad tea, its just uninteresting. A pleasant cup for a busy day or a low key change of pace from my usual fair of black tea.

Bottom line: If I’m mellowing out with a little jazz, but still need the focus of the caffeine, its a hit. If its a normal day of enjoying high stress I’d pass it over.

A palatable white tea, but where is the pear? I ended up ripping open 3 bags and infusing them in a 400ml pot and still there wasn’t a pear in sight. Perhaps my expectations were too high after the bar set by the delightfully juicey and full-flavoured White Peach? Either way, a sad and disappointing tea experience on a dreary and cold Saturday afternoon.

THANKS TO REVOLUTION TEA FOR THIS SAMPLE!
This has a distinct pear flavor, which is good. Not too pear-y. Really light, but I think it would be better iced.

This is the tea you want when a hurricane is bearing down on your dwelling – sweet, light and soothing.

I don’t detect a lot of pear flavor, but I suspect that is what is adding the sweetness.

The package recommendation for steeping was 2-3 minutes. My first try on this was 4 minutes. The color was a little stronger than other white teas I’ve tried, which may be due to the longer steep.