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What was I thinking, back when I rated this an 80?

I was probably thinking that 80 was a good, solid rating. But right now my cupboard is full of good teas. And this is better than my recent sipdowns by a lot.

Bumping the rating.

Sipdown no. 11 of March 2019 (no. 46 of 2019 total, no. 534 grand total).

I just wrote an updated note on this one a few months back, so have nothing to add.

Sipdown no. 10 of March 2019 (no. 45 of 2019 total, no. 533 grand total).

It has been a hard few weeks. Work has been intense. The Bar Mitzvah preparations have been intense. I have been stressed, and I think the stress has been affecting me physically, which makes me anxious about my health and that leads to more stress.

Then this week, we had to take one of our cats to the emergency room. He was having trouble breathing. He turned out to have a mass in his abdomen they thought was probably cancer, but in any case, was inoperable.

His decline after that was steep and fast, and last night we had to say goodbye. It was something of a shock. He was 16 but he didn’t seem sick at all, while his sister and litter mate has been ailing for a while now and we’ve pretty much been expecting her to take a turn for the worse any minute for months.

Anyway, I feel really drained and not in the best shape. I don’t have a lot to say that I haven’t already said about this tea, other than that I made my sipdown goal for March with it, and most of this month’s sipdowns have been large or medium sized tins. So there is that.

Sipdown no. 9 of March 2019 (no. 44 of 2019 total, no. 532 grand total).

I drank the last of this as a cold brew. My initial notes on this tea are still ringing true to me, though I wouldn’t have identified a smoky note in the most recent cold brew, I don’t think. At least I’m not identifying it now.

It’s the sort of thing where I’d be happy to drink it, but I don’t need another tea like it. It’s solid but not distinctive enough to merit a permanent cupboard spot.

Sipdown no. 8 of March 2019 (no. 43 of 2019 total, no. 531 grand total).

I was considering keeping this around for the entertainment value of the pellets, but then decided I needed the easy sipdown more than I needed an entertaining tea.

I wrote the initial note on this one relatively recently and can’t improve upon it.

Sipdown no. 7 of March 2019 (no. 42 of 2019 total, no. 530 grand total).

Looking back at my original note on this, it’s clear to me I was trying very hard to taste things in this tea that would make me like it and also make me feel as though I understood white tea. And maybe I did taste all of those things and all these years later, the tea has lost flavor which explains why I didn’t taste those things in the tea I just sipped down as a take it to work tea for the past week or so.

If I was rating this now based on my most recent experience, I’d rate it somewhere in the 60s because I really taste very little in this that makes it distinguishable from hot water.

But I hesitate because I can’t say for sure that when I wrote that first note, the tea I tasted was fresh and that made a difference.

Anyway, it’s gone now.

Sipdown no. 6 of March 2019 (no. 41 of 2019 total, no. 529 grand total). A sample, with just enough for both a first note and a sipdown. I got this as a sample when I bought some tiny glass glasses from David’s.

It bothers me that there are so many different entries for the same drink. I have, on occasion, made a mistake and entered a tea twice even after checking to see if an entry is in the database, but usually I’m able to find an existing entry by taking a few minutes to do a few different searches. I chose this of the 3 or so entries because it had the most notes by far.

Note to Jason et al — if you want to give me merge powers, I’m happy to fix these as I come upon them.

Anyway. I was only about halfway to my March sipdown goal and it is almost the middle of the month, so I thought I better get on the stick and write a rare middle of the week note.

The rooibos smells strongly of cinnamon in the packet. Very strongly. At first I thought it was stick cinnamon I was smelling, but this is sweeter than that. It’s like Red Hots.

The liquor is a burnt orange color (hook ‘em horns)! After steeping it smells pretty much the same as it did dry. The aroma doesn’t even really smooth out like it often does after steeping.

There’s just a hint of clove in the sip, which is great because too much clove is… ugh. The rooibos doesn’t taste as sweet as its aroma suggests, but it is still very cinnamony. I imagine the apple is there to sweeten things up a bit. It isn’t really an independent flavor.

The rooibos is nicely understated. A slight reediness to the flavor, but no hamster cage chips.

It’s very nice after a long day.

Sipdown no. 5 of March 2019 (no. 40 of 2019 total, no. 528 grand total). A sample.

Trying to weed through my lower rated samples to aid the sipdown effort and this is my lowest rated oolong sample. I made the last of it Western style today.

My initial assessment remains spot on. Pleasant, but not in bowling over territory.

Sipdown no. 4 of March 2019 (no. 39 of 2019 total, no. 527 grand total).

I have had an inordinately busy weekend getting ready for no. 2’s Bar Mitzvah. I had several panic attacks this morning before I got out of bed. When I think about how after no. 1’s Bar Mitzvah I basically had vertigo for 6 months, I guess the panic attacks may be letting me off easy. And maybe all of this explains why I have been having headaches lately. Ugh. My body is crap right now.

So I haven’t hit the pu erh samples this weekend. I just drank some black tea — and since I’ve done all my initial notes on the ones I have, I was able to do that without any pressure, which is awesome.

I’m starting to get worried about keeping up the pace on sipdowns, though, as I am plowing through teabags and other samples pretty quickly. I went looking for some teas that weren’t rated in the 90s that were in sipdown range and found this one.

It’s quite enjoyable this morning and amazingly makes a good companion to leftover Chinese food (my breakfast). My initial note on this one is still accurate, so I’m just going to end the recording of the sipdown and go enjoy the rest of this cup before I have to run to get some clothing altered and buy some shoes.

Sipdown no. 3 of March 2019 (no. 38 of 2019 total, no. 526 grand total).

I struggled with whether to up the rating on this in my last note about it. It is a nice tea, and a subtle one which is hard to do with coconut. But at the end of the day, I don’t really disagree with my initial note on it (9 years ago? wow).

Astonishingly, it tastes pretty much as I described it then despite its age. It was a good take it to work tea.