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This is a nice, sweet Rooibos. As other tasting notes indicate, people like this tea. I simply cannot get aroused by a nice Rooibos, sweet or otherwise. But I am always delighted to try new teas. I’d like to get a really full scope of what I am rejecting (or accepting) before I make any final verdicts or slam the door shut on something that I might enjoy.

I love this tea. The dry aroma seems to arise from the dead ashes of last nights campfire with the assorted drippings of the barbeque’s mixed grill and even the s’mores.
The taste is smoky deliciously deep.

This is one of those teas that make me want to expand and expound like Walter Pater did in his study of the Renaissance period. He wrote: “A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike.”

For me, this tea burns with Pater’s gemlike flame. It seems ancient and wise as if it had witnessed the lichen growing on the rocks and the mosses forming around the firs.

Hey, who took the tea out of my tea? I think that my tastes have become more pronounced. I don’t like weak teas. I like teas to slap me around with smoke; to bang me in the face with a ton of spinach; to throttle me with riches; to have a body like one of those WWW guys and the education of a Rhodes scholar. I like a tea with an upbringing like Prince Charles including all of the eccentricities and the bite of his Rottweiler.

A few months of consideration and serious drinking has led me to reject the timid. I think that Cardamon tea on its own is a timid little lassie, unschooled in the ways of the world. I could envision serving this to children at a little tea party (note to self: I’m glad my children are now officially elderly and don’t need service, whatever they might want).

I think I’ll say that if you like Cardamon, the taste is there. I think I’ll save this tea and add it to a really rich full-bodied tea and see if I can make my own blend of Chai. Must pursue JacquelineM’s recipes for home blends.

This tea smelled amazing. I could detect the bergamot loud and clear. Upton Teas says that “artificial flavoring” is included. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps more citrus and maybe some smoky grapefruit? The tea itself is just “aight” as Randy Jackson might say. There’s nothing wrong with it at all, but that spectacular aroma set me up with greater expectations than Pip ever had.

Saint Isaac’s Blend turns out to be a very serviceable Earl Grey. Not a bad one by anymeans, but the dry aroma just does not translate into the steeped tea. It’s a nicey, but not a greaty.

Quite simply excellent. I don’t know how many orthodox teas I actually manage to drink, but this shows its pure pedigree. As Ricky wrote, it is a “complicated” tea in the best sense—each sniff, each sip, offers up a brave new world of taste sensations.

I would call it highly refined, elegant, and pure. It is smooth and sweet. I thought I detected a bit of chestnut, although others have not mentioned that. I think that this will be another tea that must always be here and will always be reordered.

I’m excited to be trying this sample that I purchased from American Tea Room, which offers nicely priced small samplers so that one need not dive deeply into the unknown and the pocketbook.

The aroma of the dry leaf is hard to pin down—floral and sweet is about as far as I can say. The brewed tea is a nice yellow. The taste is naturally creamy and sweet (I added no milk or sweetenter, by the way). This has more vegetal overtones than other oolongs I have sampled, but they are nuanced. In a blind tasting I might say that this is a green tea.

Overall, I anticipate extra steepings. There’s something I cannot quite capture here, but it is something amiable.

It’s not yet afternoon, but I decided to try this. I love my man, Jackee Muntz, and know that I have a limited number of dates with him. Will the famous lodgings of Baker Street bring me any joy?

And the answer is a resounding yes. This is a good smoky tea. I can see it joining the permanent cast of characters in my life. And it does conjure up a feel of the Holmsian sitting room. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson have been down in the country for a while tracking down the hound of the Baskervilles and the sitting room retains that masculine flavor of smoke; the Persian slipper containing the pipe-tobacco still hangs, but nobody has lit up for several days so the air is redolent but not noxious.

Upton Teas has an excellent blend here and it makes me eager to pursue my love of smoky teas.

The aroma of this tea took me back to childhood. My father used to open up a can of “fruit cocktail” and carefully divide everything into 6 identical servings. He had to use a knife to break down the coveted cherries and the grapes into smaller pieces. After about an hour he would triumphantly serve 6 identical bowls up to 6 little maws.

The aroma of cache-cache reminds me of those canned fruit cocktail treats of the Dwight and Mamie era. Cache-cache is a very fruity black tea. It is the opposite of smoke and the opposite of vegetal. It led me on a petite Madeleine moment for which I am grateful. It manages to be both upscale and bargain basement in its affect. It seems like a confection from Rumplemeyer’s (off Central Park and a paradise for children) and, at the same time, something from one of those bashed-up tins that you see your co-workers donating to “Food for the Homeless”. I may be imposing an identity crisis that the tea does not deserve. I think that the tea is perfect for parents and grandparents to serve children at an exquisite tea-party. I also imagine that it will elicit and draw out memories of childhood. The name means “hide and seek” in French, another evocation of childhood.

I have taken to sampling green teas and I like this. I don’t think that green tea will ever be a favorite of mine, but I like to have it occasionally. I ordered some samplers from Upton Tea Imports—-they have earned my eternal gratitude by providing 15 g. samples for just a little bit of money. The tea is bright, vegetal, flavorful. It is not an exuberant green that tastes like rolling around in a spinach field or in a huge vat of freshly mown grass. It’s restraint is a virtue, however.

Curious, I looked up the meaning of Yamoto and the ever-reliable (:-)) Wikipedia informs me that: “The term was semantically extended to mean “Japan” or “Japanese” in general, and carries many of the same connotations as Americana does for the United States.”

While I think I like this tea better than the other reviewers, I also doubt that I will select it as a “go-to” green tea. I’m still seeking that one green tea that I will cherish above all others and want to keep in stock.

SECOND STEEP: The second steep was very well-behaved; was neither too weak nor too strong. It seemed to have blossomed a bit more towards a slight floral note. Very aromatic.

Who doesn’t love a macchioto in Italy or elsewhere, even? “Macchioto” means “marked” and a traditional coffee macchioto is a deep espresso “marked” with a touch of milk, a swirl of white, a bit of milky foam.

Lupicia has a knack for naming teas and I found this irresistable. It’s an odd brew, but not an unlovable one. The aroma says coffee and the caramel is evident as well. I added some milk, but was too impatient to foam it. Bringing the cup to my mouth, I could swear I would be drinking coffee. But yet….it’s tea. And here I’m grappling with some cognitive dissonance. I think of Hamlet’s lines about “mighty opposites.” Can the mighty opposites cooperate and meld into one sweet brew? Or are they, like Hamlet and Claudius, in inherent opposition?

The “final Jeopardy” round is over. The buzzer goes towards opposition. This makes a weak coffee. It makes a strange tea. It makes me long for a full-bodied caramel tea.

I am not giving this a low rating, however, because I think it succeeds in fulfilling its intent. And I am looking forward to a second steeping.

SECOND STEEP: Looks, smells, and tastes like very weak coffee. I won’t throw this out, but will probably give the rest of the package away to a true lover of the “coffee tea” blend. In this case, I am a segregationist. PM me if you want this!