Saïgon

Soooo, lotus.

I have never (or not yet) had plain lotus tea. I have seen it for sale, plain lotus on chinese grocery stores, but never quite dared (most of tea in the local chinese grocery stores seems to be intentionally medicinal and/or for slimming and taste even worse than you would expect. Very dangerous places to buy tea if you are not totally sure what you are doing).

I think I am learning what lotus brings as a flavoring by comparing mentally teas that I have had which have had lotus as a flavoring (this, elixir d´amour), though not sure that is leading to the right image. Sultry and floral maybe.

Barbara and I have been swapping teas and since we are both fans of Theodor teas, we have been sharing a lot of our Theodor purchases. This is an interesting blend she sent me, one which I have been half eyeing towards purchase. Green tea with fig, and named saigon, ah, tempting (though admittedly just about everything from Theodor sounds tempting). Barbara has warned me about being careful when brewing this. I got to test with the rest of the sample, but I think I followed close enough. The result was lovely but I think I am probably not a lotus person (if I can figure out what lotus is). The fig was maybe in the background a dried fig like flavour and it was mostly a sultry floral-type. I could not detect the lemon. The tea base was lovely and not bitter.

Not rating this right now, since I want to try brewing this a couple more times to figure out if I am really brewing this right. And what lotus is supposedly to smell like!

Thank you Barbara for sending me this sample!
It’s fruity, it’s floral, it’s something I can’t quite put my finger on. The smell of this tea brewed didn’t really stand out as anything unique, but the taste has much more depth to it. At first I thought I was tasting peaches, but now as I taste a slight perfume like freshness on the sides of my tongue, I’m thinking roses. Not the overdone synthetic perfume rose flavor, but a true fresh rose petal flavor. The more sips I take, the stronger it tastes. My mouth feels a little dry after each sip with inviting me to drink more.

Now I’m reading the description of the tea to see what the flavors were… fig and lotus! Fig?! I mistook fig for roses? Now that I know what that flavor was, I can clearly taste how it is fresh fig off the tree, reminding me of how much of my childhood I spent up a fig tree. It amuses me that fig and rose have similar taste qualities, something I had never linked in my head before and I wonder how well they would pair.

You have to be careful to brew this tea according to the instruction or the lotus and fig will not be noticeable. However with correct brewing temp and time it’s a wonderful and very refined tea.

I recently discovered Theodor and love the unique and often experimental flavouring and their packaging. I’m less thrilled by the fact that instead of lists of ingredients the website only gives a characterisation of the tea by way of a ‘story’ which does not always include a full recounting of the ingredients.

French Friday! Trying to finish off these samples this month since I’m so close to the end… I prepped this one last night as a cold brew, and strained and filled up my water bottle during my lunch break.

The tea had a sort of odd grapey scent in the dry leaf, and I’ve noticed a lot of these THEODOR samples that have “lotus flavoring” either smell or taste like grapes to me. In the flavor of this one, I do get a bit of that sweet grape flavor coming out, but mostly I taste a sort of floral-forward pineapple flavor. I’m not tasting the lemon or bergamot oils at all.

It’s nicely refreshing, it isn’t a bright and juicy sort of pineapple but a sweetly floral pineapple, and since I like pineapple and florals, I find it quite pleasant. It’s a tropical flavor with a sort of a rose and grape candy sweetness undertone. A pleasant enough cold brew.

Hello there…
my work is somehow more demanding than I thought, moreover no new teas being drank, so not much notes from me recently. Hopefully it will change soon, as I truly miss seeing the likes and sometimes even some comments from you.

I was in a mood of green tea today after work, and although I have a orthodox tea there (which I even had today), it is one of the oldies from White Antlers, which is just needed to drink, but there isn’t much to write home about anymore.

So, I have prepared this cup, and I think I have caught temperature just right. It produced wonderful green colour, very vibrant and fresh. I remember seeing a few pieces of pineapple when I was putting teaspoons in, but there weren’t much of them.

But, in flavours, it was a different story. It was very tropical, with very nice pineapple flavour complemented with grassy green tea, which tasted so fresh, even I have this pouch for 8 months already. Dustin, thank you so much for this tea. It has got some floral note as well, but honestly not sure if it is lotus, or anything else.

So yeah, this is a tea I would order myself. Hopefully one day!