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Another free sample from Good Life Tea. Looks like black tea leaves with some blue flower petals mixed in. It smells pretty vanilla-y, which is a good sign for me, since I love vanilla. Steeped 3 minutes.

It smells quite floral, which I didn’t expect. There’s definitely very a perfumey quality to it alongside the vanilla. It tastes quite perfumey to me too, which is not a good thing. And I don’t really taste the black tea at all, mostly just floral perfumey bergamot with a tiny bit of vanilla. Adding sugar helps but not by much. Overall, this is not a tea I would drink or purchase. The flavoring is just too floral and has an almost alcoholic taste to it.

Backlog from last night! The first of my free samples from Good Life Tea. I’m not generally a huge fan of chocolate teas, but this was included in the sampler that I chose, so here goes! The dry leaf is basically red rooibos with flower petals in it. Apparently it also has cacao bean pieces, but I wasn’t looking that closely since it was fairly late. I remember smelling it and thinking it was minty, which I did not expect…

It was actually better than I expected. The rooibos base wasn’t terribly offensive like it sometimes can be. The chocolate flavor was nice enough, definitely not a deep or complex chocolate but more similar to milk chocolate. There was a lot of mint flavor, which is not even listed anywhere in the product description, nor is it implied by the name. My one complaint is that I feel rooibos isn’t a great base for chocolate because the brew ends up being rather thin. Black tea would’ve been much better.

I do believe that it’s an issue that the mint flavor is not mentioned anywhere, and it’s at least as strong as the chocolate, making this more of a mint chocolate chip tea in my opinion. So I believe the name should be changed, or at the very least, the description needs to include mint.

I purchased this one from Shadowfall in her stash sale. I’ve become much more of a black tea drinker lately, but I do enjoy the occasional green and Verdant has such a good reputation around here, so I figured why not? And it’s a small sample size so it was cheap! The leaves are similar to the Yin Gou Mei “eyebrow tea” that I got in a Simple Loose Leaf box. They’re thin and very stiff, and they’ve been shaped into little loops and “u” shapes. The color is a dull green/blue/grey. I started out with a one minute steep and ended up going to two minutes total after testing it.

The aroma is surprisingly roasty, with sweet and buttery squash. I definitely taste toasted grains in this, specifically oats. It’s creamy and buttery in texture with a bit of mild squash taste. I definitely see where the vanilla soy milk descriptor comes from. There’s the sweetness of freshly shelled peas, and a lovely vanilla note near the end. The aftertaste is roasty and vegetal.

Definitely a different flavor profile than I have experienced in a green tea before! In a way, it reminds me of a milk oolong, but without the floral and fruit notes that green oolongs often have. I’m glad I got the chance to try it!

Also from Nicole (and I suspect originally from boychik). I figured since I tried the “regular” version of this, I might as well try the imperial grade next so I could compare! These leaves look like miniature versions of the others, but they have less golden color, which I found weird. The dry scent is very mild as well, maybe with a touch more honey? I used the same brewing parameters.

I get the same dark bread and molasses aroma, but with maybe a touch more earthiness and a more toasted scent. The taste is very roasty, which is amazing! Like a slice of dark wheat toast with a little bit of roasted unsweetened nut butter along with the molasses. And I love that so much about this tea! I also get a hint of raisiny goodness. The earth note is still there, but it seems more mellow and refined, I couldn’t compare it to smoke anymore. And I think I catch a hint of floral in the aftertaste? Couldn’t tell you what kind of flower it is, though.

There was a little bitterness in this brew, especially when taking multiple sips in quick succession. So next time I make this I might try a lower water temperature and/or a 2m30s steep. Very good though!

This sample came from Nicole. :) I thought I would try this one since I haven’t tried many Fujian varieties and I would like more experience with them and knowing their “typical” flavors. This one’s leaves remind me of a smaller version of a tippy Yunnan. They’re kind of randomly twisty, half golden and half dark. Their smell is quite mild; I can detect malt and cocoa notes with some honey sweetness. I let it steep for 3 minutes, seems pretty standard for western style.

The aroma is all dark things: brown bread, molasses, raisins, and bitter cocoa. And the taste is quite similar. I definitely get some toasted dark wheat bread with molasses over the top. There’s also a little earthiness that could border on a mild smokiness. The overall texture is very thick and it coats the mouth, further forwarding the molasses note. Overall, a very rich and tasty tea. I see definite similarities to Yunnan with this one, which I didn’t experience as much with Whispering Pines’s Fujian Black. It’s fun to compare! :)

I actually had this one last night, but I completely forgot to log it this morning as I had planned to. I made sure to include this in my recent order, since the last time I had it, for some reason it didn’t come out very well for me. And it’s so darn inexpensive! So anyway, I really wanted to try it at once, but I saved it for the evening since it’s caffeine free. I overleafed a bit on purpose (2 teaspoons instead of 1/2 tablespoon) just to make sure the flavor was strong this time.

I definitely love this tea! The aroma and taste are both spicy and sweet and darkly fruity. I love the way the elderberries end up tasting – dark and syrupy but still sweet and berry-like. The spice is perfect! I can definitely taste the cinnamon and I get a clove-like flavor even though there are no cloves. I have no idea what holy basil is, so maybe it’s the cause of that. Overall, the flavor of this tea reminds me of a nice mulled apple cider with a deeper fruity flavor. Delicious, and a definite must-have from now on! I can’t wait to sip this in the colder months.

Hooray, my new electric kettle came in the mail today! I could not have been more excited. I filled it up, boiled the water, then dumped it out twice just to make sure there was nothing weird inside. And then I selected this tea to try because I was curious about its contribution to the S’mores that I tasted yesterday. The leaves are very long and thin, twisty and jet black. Very dramatic! The dry smell is somewhat malty, somewhat fruity, and a little musty with some honey notes. Brewed according to package directions! :)

The aroma is not what I expected for a Keemun. For some reason I was under the impression the Keemuns are smoky and earthy. Apparently not all of them! It smells of sweet, syrupy raisins with a hint of spice, along with lovely malty bread notes with brown sugar. It’s like cinnamon raisin bread tea! :P On to the taste! The raisin is definitely here as well, and I think I pick up a touch of spice (cinnamon?). There’s a lovely light grain or bread flavor that segues perfectly into a lovely creaminess near the end of the sip. Somewhere in the middle is a nice earthy cocoa note that lends depth and richness to the overall taste.

This tea is not at all what I expected! Much lighter in color and texture than I thought it would be, and the flavor is not heavy at all. I can definitely see this being the graham cracker in the S’mores blend, with some help from the added cinnamon and marshmallow root. And it’s very delicious on its own too!

I figured since it’s now 9:00, I should probably lay off the straight black teas until tomorrow. Which is a shame! If only the mailman had gotten here sooner! So I chose this one out of my The Persimmon Tree sample pile to try. It’s a green tea and red rooibos blend with big spheres of caramel, genmai, crisp rice cereal, flower petals, and some little mystery seeds. Smells extremely sweet and caramelly.

The brewed aroma is… leafy, grassy, caramel. I am definitely not impressed with the taste of this one, which is surprising considering it has a fairly high rating for a flavored tea. The base tea tastes like either a low-grade sencha or a bancha to me. It’s very autumn leafy and rough-tasting. I do taste the red rooibos a little bit, but it’s very mild. The caramel flavor is strong, but there is a definite artificial aftertaste to it… It tastes plasticy or alcoholic. And I just don’t find that caramel goes that well with the green tea base. Nope, not for me!

YAY WHISPERING PINES ORDER! I was getting upset when I thought it wouldn’t come today, but it turns out the mailman just felt like being FIVE HOURS LATE. Come on, man! But seriously, I wonder what happened there… Anyway, this was definitely the first tea to try! I’ve already tried half of the teas I’ve ordered thanks to Nicole and my badly-timed sample order. This tea is very outdoorsy-looking. There’s bark and fluffy white things in there! Clearly it is mountain man tea. It smells quite smoky, and I was surprised by the amount of cinnamon. There’s cocoa in there too, of course.

The smoke aroma is much milder in the brewed tea. And there’s definitely a burnt sugar element (hello, marshmallow!) along with cocoa and spice. The smoke is quite strong in the taste! It blends very nicely with the cinnamon and in turn it becomes sweeter and less harsh. I immediately pick up on the graham cracker in this, so much that I had to check and make sure there wasn’t a Yunnan tea in here. There’s a nice unsweetened cocoa note that stands in for the chocolate, and I get a light sweetness at the end of the sip that, combined with the smoke, could definitely be a charred marshmallow. The aftertaste is refreshing, cooling pine.

Overall, I do get how this is similar to a s’more. But it’s definitely a s’more with bittersweet chocolate and a charred marshmallow. And it needed a little touch of sugar to really connect for me. I can’t wait to try Pine Peak Keemun and then try to identify which teas are providing which flavors in this (obviously the smoke is from the lapsang, and I would assume the cocoa is the Fujian, but what about the graham cracker?).

Sad sad sipdown… :( Drinking the last cup of this make me want to regret sending out samples of it to several people. But then I remember how much tea I have… And then I get excited because I now have an empty tin to use! Hooray!

I still really like this one, even though I’ve tasted a lot of different things since I last had it. I do find myself needing to add sugar because of the bergamot, but that’s more of a personal preference and I don’t blame the tea. I wonder if the Kusmi store does refills on mini-tins… :D