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This is another sample we have from Tealet. This is an Indonesian oolong. A few things about Indonesia. It’s quite mountainous, the soil quality can be excellent, really any area that has this particular type of volcanic activity typically has nice soil, and the climate is good. All this stuff is promising for tea production, especially good oolong tea. This tea is rather good. The smell from the infused leaves is like that of a nice bath. It smells like expensive bath products, in a good way, not in an icky soapy kind of way. The taste is vegetal, with notes of honeysuckle, orchid and that rather familiar and welcome floral taste that is the hallmark of these types of oolong. There is just the slightest touch of astringency as well. It’s not the best oolong I’ve ever drunk, but this is still a very, very good tea and I’d gladly drink it regularly and not become disappointed.

This is a tea that was made more for an experience rather than taste. The mint is a subtle, very subtle cooling of the mouth, and that juxtaposed with the hot tea is very interesting. The mint builds and builds the more you sip on this tea. The green tea base is a Hunan yun wu, otherwise known as a cloud and mist green tea. On its own this tea has a slight mint flavour and is a wonderful green tea in and of itself.

I brewed this tea gong-fu style, without a rinse, first steep was 10 s, 15 s, 30 s. I have yet to do subsequent steeps, but the leaf has yet to fully hydrate and unfurl so she has more life in her yet. The smell of the mint in the dried leaf is strong enough that you know that it is present, but when brewed the resultant liquor only has a small hint of mint. There is a slight bitterness to this tea that I like. The same bitterness is also present in the base tea so it is not a result of the additional flavouring.

This follows in the footsteps of our other teas. Subtle flavouring, where we focus on the tea rather than the adulterants. Though starting with base ingredients such as this green tea, it is difficult to mess things up.

Today my order from Taiwan Tea Crafts arrived, after a long delay. I have been excited to try a Yuchi wild mountain black tea for a very long time and now I can! I cannot say I’m disappointed. From the first smell of the dried leaves to the first sip I’m completely blown away. Those little leaf-hoppers are the unsung hero of the hour!

The initial smell is, I kid you not, cinnamon rolls. This tea smells exactly like walking by the cinnamon roll stand in the mall, only better. I opened the package and immediately told my wife “you must smell this, now!” She didn’t, because she was too busy drinking some other tea and didn’t want to ‘ruin that experience’. News-flash, drinking this tea ruins all subsequent tea drinking experiences.

I weighed out 4 grams and poured 240 ml of boiling water over the leaves and immediately, again, the smell hits me from the tea pot, candy apples, cinnamon, unicorn tears, who knows, it is just glorious. Those 4 minutes cannot go by fast enough!

I pour the tea, I’m busy signing into Steepster to get this review ready, my wife tastes it first, her face lights up, “You need to try this now!” The taste is ineffable. So unbelievably good. There is cinnamon, wine, apple, candy, brown sugar, caramel, no bitterness, no astringency, other flavours that I cannot even put my tongue upon.

I will literally move Taiwanese mountains to find a supply of this tea to sell. Nothing comes close, all other teas should just pack up their leaves and go back to tea-island because this tea, hands down, unequivocally, and I say this without compunction, kicks the absolute fucking crap out of every single other tea that I have drank. I’m at the bottom of my cup now, and it is really, really sad because it had to end, and I knew it had to end when I began. My wife is smelling her empty cup because it smells good, make another infusion god-dammit!

I can honestly say that none of this is hyperbole.

Breakfast time! And what better way for a non-morning person, I know it’s 8:44am, to attempt to greet the day than to have some Early Bird tea. This blend was created because we found a lot of breakfast teas contained tea that was low quality. This gave the drinker the illusion of a strong brew because of the level of turbidity within the liquor. Turbidity is just the measure of how cloudy a liquid is. In tea this is caused by dust and other suspended contaminants. Good black tea should never be turbid! The other issue I had was the generic taste these teas had, so we wanted to try to create something a little different, but still recognizable as a breakfast tea.

This tea is a blend of a whole bunch of different teas, in varying ratios. A lot of testing went into getting this right. In this tea we have keemun, lapsang, FBOP1 ceylon, a second flush darjeeling and an assam. Whilst most breakfast teas I’ve drunk have been ceylon/assam blends, ours is mostly keemun and darjeeling with half that again of assam and ceylon. There is a little tiny bit of lapsang there just to give the tea some balls.

The brewed tea is a nice clear, red liquid. There is a slight smoky scent. There are some hints of the floral darjeeling and berries. The taste is robust. There is a good mix of the pine from the lapsang and maltiness from the keemun blended with the summer berry taste from the assam. The ceylon gives this tea an astringent characteristic, which should, in my opinion, be present in all breakfast teas. There is also a slight bitterness.

I like this tea a lot. It’s my go-to breakfast tea now, unless I’m in the mood for something lighter.

It’s funny, prior to discovering Butiki teas my wife and I had a wonderful silver needle tea from Teavivre and we both tasted watermelon. We both thought that watermelon and white teas would work extremely well together. So when we discovered Butiki Teas and realised that they made a watermelon tea that had a silver needle base we ordered that, along with a lot of other teas.

What can I say that hasn’t already been said? This is a very well flavoured, well balanced tea. My only criticism is that there is too much watermelon I wish it were more subtle. It’s really a tiny, tiny criticism and quite frankly does not, and should not, detract from this epically wonderful tea. Cannot wait to try this as an ice-tea! One of my favourites from Butiki teas.

The second last sample provided to us by Tealet! The dry leaves are a little ugly, but this is by virtue of how this tea is produced, see description below. The dry leaves have what can only be described as a creamy odour. The infused tea smells very floral, and very much like cinnamon. In the mouth it becomes very smooth, silky, and creamy. The dominant tastes are, sweet floral cinnamon and a subtle hint of peaches, with something else that I just cannot put my finger on right at this moment. A wonderful oolong, from a grower whose teas have yet to disappoint me.

I decided I’d give this tea a trial by fire. So I steeped 100 ml for 6 minutes at 95 C. The taste? Wonderful. The negative, the tea states that it is a genmaicha but I do not get any of the traditional genmaicha notes, other than a generic’roasted’ taste. But that is not a bad thing at all. There is a beer like maltiness to this tea, almost like a strong ale. The dark chocolate notes dominate and meld beautifully with the roasty malty flavours. This is a triumph of a tea. I really enjoy it steeped for this amount of time, even though Verdant tea recommends 4 oz for 30 seconds …

So in closing. Roasted beer flavoured chocolate tea … when steeped for 6 minutes with 100 ml of water.

Tired, sore head, not feeling great. But I feel much, much better after this cup. Chocolate and orange is one of those classic pairings that works so well. When I heard of it being used in a tea, I was very sceptical. Not any more, at least with what Butiki teas has to offer! The dried leaves are long black and wiry. The smell is, for anyone familiar with British confectionery items, is just like a jaffa cake. It’s the first thing I thought when I stuck my nose in the bag. The infused tea smells exactly the same. The taste is the same too. Jaffa cakes! I can see how this tea would be a bit divisive, a lot of folks dislike citrus in their tea, but not me. This is wonderful.

This was interesting, you could definitely taste the cheesecake, plum, and a hint of the brandy, but it was distorted with a bitterness that I didn’t remember being there when I first sampled this tea. A little bit of sugar fixed that, to a degree, but the bitterness remained. I don’t mind a straight tea being bitter, actually I really enjoy it in a lot of ceylon teas that I’ve drunk, but with a flavoured tea it can throw your palette off.

I followed the brewing instructions on the bag to a ‘t’. Still really delicious, the bitterness was just a little odd.