310 Tasting Notes
I’m not big on flavored teas, but some chais do grab me.
I ordered this one mainly because it was decaf and I’m limited on my caffeine intake by doc’s orders.
I’m so glad I bought 4oz of it before they ran out of stock. It is delicious.
It smells strongly of the cinnamon in it when brewed.
The taste is such a mix of its ingredients I’m not sure how to describe it… if you like sweet and cinnamony blacks with that mouth-tingle that cloves can give, you’ll like this.
It was tasty on its own, then to try it milked up I added just the slightest touch of Pacific Select Low Fat Vanilla soymilk. Heavenly. This will be a regular cup for me.
Very flavorful on it’s own or milked. Gulpgulpgulp.
Preparation
Trying this one gongfu style for a change up.
Very vegetal. Quite pleasant.
Second steep is even stronger vegetal flavors and starting a hint of bitterness. Still nice, though.
Third steep and not any noticeable change. This seems a pretty one-taste-tea, though I’m going to steep it a few more times.
It is quite tasty if you like those vegetal tastes to your whites.
I’m on my iPad so can’t really do the rating and time and such with those darn drag lines, so: a rating of 50-60, 25sec steeps, water of 180 degrees.
This one’s a weird one. A strong white tea… that puts me in mind of bubblegum. Not that it tastes like bubblegum, it’s just that after swallowing for some reason my mouth says “bubblegum!”. As I said, weird. A tiny, tiny bit of chocolate to it, too.
A strange and pleasant cup.
Preparation
This has a strong cocoa flavor to it, it also makes the very front edge of the tongue, back of the lips area water a lot. A bit of tobacco and I don’t know what… a taste that I can’t quite place.
As with the 1973 Baozhong I bought from Red Blossom, I like this much better than most oolongs. I think from now I’ll try to stick to aged ones as I don’t find much flavor in newer oolongs. Both this and the 1973 are very good.
Preparation
I bought this and another aged Oolong from Red Blossom because I’d never had as old of ones as they had available and wanted to try them. I’m not a huge Oolong fan so I was curious is these would be different for me.
The smell of this tea is very “basic oolong” to me. It doesn’t have anything special about it. So I was worried it’d be another hum-drum cup for me, as I find most Oolongs tend to end up IMO.
The taste is another matter. It has that mint zing in the tip of the tongue and back of the throat. The raisin they mention is really there in the top of the mouth. The finish is the raisin/honey taste up in the nose. It’s a short finish, but pleasant.
It definitely not a standard oolong.
