Lychee Fruit

From the Great Canadian TTB.

It is so hard to find a GOOD lychee tea. There are some good ones out there but a lot of them are very perfumey. And a lot of them are not specifically a black tea.

This one smells delicious. It is quite authentic lychee smelling with a bit of floral smell, but not perfumey at all.

The brewed tea is delicious. The black tea is light to moderately bold. It is smooth. There is a very light lychee flavours that just pokes out over the black tea. Again, to me it tastes quite natural lychee. There is a bit of fruity floral taste that mixes well with the tea. No perfume, no chemical, no astringency, no artificial tastes. Just deliciousness!

There are a few other blends from Silk Road in the TTB and I am excited to try them. Fingers crossed they are all was good as this one.

I was really excited to try this tea as I’ve been looking for a good lychee tea for ages and have been unsuccessful as the lychee flavours are never strong enough for me.
When I smelled this tea, I smelled a very faint lychee scent and something very odd. Tobacco maybe? Yes Tobacco, but also something else, something I can’t quite put my finger on.
Every sip I took, I could smell that odd scent and it took me a few sips to figure out what it was, it was stewed tomatoes! When I came home today and started logging today’s teas, I noticed that someone else had described the smell of a different silk road tea as stewed tomatoes. It must be the same black tea base as this tea. Luckily, it doesn’t taste like stewed tomatoes, but the lychee flavour is not very strong, well not strong enough for me anyway. This tea is good none the less, though not something I would order again. My hunt for the perfect lychee tea continues….

This is a really nice black tea that is not too sweet. The lychee aroma is wonderful brewed up, and takes me back to this past summer and exploring Chinatown in Victoria where I came upon the lovely Silk Road store. The Chinese black tea has a great earthiness to it that combines and is well balanced by the lychee fruit extract. It’s a well-crafted fruit and floral combination. Oh and it’s organic too.

how is it possible to be chronically busy? even on weekends? even in free time? it must speak to a time management issue or a problem with prioritization, and yet….

i got pictures of a snake basking in the sun today and got chased out of an urban exploration photo shoot yesterday by drug dealers… i found the snake much more relaxing, let me tell you! the rcmp and i are getting to know one another quite well ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MNANgFCYpk) lol.

as i review this tea i am drinking a dreadful one, but that’s just the way it goes….

the first note i observed about this blend once the water was poured was a light wood essence. it verged on smokey, but didn’t quite cross the boundary. light sweet wood… maybe balsa by comparison. i wasn’t sure how that would factor into the tea. the smell of lychee wasn’t as strong as the wood element.

everything changed with sipping. i realized what silk road had been striving for (i think)… they weren’t trying to recreate a lychee flavour, they were looking to create a lychee experience. the wood element built the suggestion of the lychee’s woody rind in china town, the warmth of the beverage reminded me of the boxes of lychee fruit basking in the sun, the lychee notes themselves had a NEARLY overripe quality, almost bruised… that ‘peel and eat me as soon as you get in the door’ urgency.

impressive. if you’ve spent time in china town (1 block down the road from silk road teas) then you know that this tea is less a flavour and more a spring scenario painted for your nose and tongue. very clever.

back to being busy… royal roads begins at the end of august so it isn’t going to let up anytime soon, lol.

(This one turned into quite the monster post, so if you just want to read the bit about the tea jump down to “begin tea log”)

First post in forever I know… It’s been a busy couple of months; coordinating weekend sessions, upgrades and new projects at work, the usual medical fun… Oh and let’s not forget the best one of all, a “surprise” special assessment (for those of you don’t both live in Canada and in a condo/strata location; a special assessment can be levied when there is work that needs to be done to the common property (roofing, siding, pavement, etc) whose cost is greater than that budgeted in the maintenance/reserve fund. Extra costs are then levied through the use of a special assessment to the strata owners (in this case myself and my partner) to cover the extra expenses. Fun times… Not).

On the plus side we just got back from a 12 day vacation (planned just over a year a go now, so we’ve been looking forward to it for a while :D) and we had a blast! Did 5 days out in Portland, OR and then another 7 on Vancouver Island. Which, incidentally, is what prompted this post; as while we were in downtown Victoria we stopped by Silk Road Teas. (great place! I highly recommend anyone passing though the area to take a look at it!)

While there I couldn’t help myself and picked up a few “mini-tins” of teas to try. One being this one. I had my first Lychee tea experience a few months back, it wasn’t bad but I had been hoping for something less “in your face” than the one that I tried. So with hesitant hope I took a quick sniff of the sample for this tea and decided yep I’m gonna give it a shot!

begin tea log
The best part about this tea for me is that it contains just two “simple” ingredients: Chinese black tea, and lychee extract… That’s it, no artificial flavors or anything, so right off the bat I had great expectations. The scent of the tea helped to back up those expectations; sweet and fruity with just a slight floral note, the lychee was pleasantly there but not overwhelmingly so. In fact I got some good hits from the black tea, which let the dark, rich malty notes counter balance the bright super sweet ones of the lychee.

Once steeped the liquor was dark caramel brown in color and clear. The scent remained subtle but still presented some lovely lychee aromatics, sweet and almost floral but like in the dry scent, not overly so; and unlike the previous lychee tea that I tried not it was not perfume like or cloying. The darker notes from the black tea nicely complemented the lychee notes.

The flavor in this is quite interesting, the sweet bright notes from the lychee really work well with the malty notes from the Chinese black tea. There’s no bitterness or astringency and the flavor is well balanced. The finish of the sip is where the lychee really shines through but it doesn’t hang heavily at all. The mouthfeel is warm, rich and creamy, it almost coats my mouth.

I have to say that I really, really like this tea; sweet and fruity, yet dark and malty at the same time, it just really speaks to me. I definitely consider this to be an indulgent tea, for those times when I’m looking for something special.

Great Canadian TTB

Thank you AshleyElizabeth for including this. It smells amazing!! However, it steeps up a lot more subtle. Nonetheless, it still has a nice lychee flavor and I am happy I got to try it.

GCTTB!

oh noes. this is NOT the lychee tea for me. this is way too floral and not so much at all like lychee. I vastly prefer the one that i tried from Lupicia back in the day. This one is just… no. no. and uh…no. :)