2816 Tasting Notes
I am trying to not let myself get sucked in to the world of expensive, gourmet tea. Seeking out cheaper alternatives is a must have. I am very impressed with this. I’m not gonna lie to you and tell you I heard angels singing or the earth moved but this is an excellent value for the price ($4.00/oz as of today’s writing).
I steeped it for 2 minutes and used near boiling water with about 2 tsb of leaf and 10 oz of water. The website said to use fairly hot water in order to bring out the flavors. Very pleasant nectarine and peach flavors are coming through here. Not a trace of bitterness at all which can sometimes be a problem with these darker oolongs. Perfect for daily drinking…
Preparation
Another sampler packet from Harney and Sons. Steeped Western style for 3 minutes with boiling water. A little afraid of oversteeping after yesterday’s Kenya experience.
This is delightful. Medium body tea with a definite strong fruity finish, a bit of caramel. Naturally sweet. Comparisons to wine are pretty appropriate for this leaf. Probably more of a spring/summer than a fall/winter tea for me but I am adding it to the Shopping List as something to remember for the future.
Prepared over the stove with traditional Indian manner, cooked with soymilk. My apartment smells great!
This does remind me a lot of hot chocolate and I am finding it tasty enough for my liking. There is lots of cardamom in here and also something slightly pungent (I assume the long pepper). I’m not a huge fan of mate so I’m finding that a bit distracting from the overall blend here. Overall this is very good and it definitely warming the frost from my Saturday morning as well as waking me up. :) I’m not sure I would buy it again but that’s also because I love the more traditional chai flavors.
Preparation
The “like” is for the Chai and the pepper in the Chai, but as much as I try to like it, I can’t seem to get mate (roasted) to work for me. At least the last time I tried it I wasn’t crazy about it. I still have 90% of the bag from years ago. Amy, have you tried to reduce steeping to 3 to 3.5 minutes? This could reduce the bitterness of the mate. OK….obviously I find mate bitter. :))
Another thing I wish I had bought more of. My first experience with Tulsi, the Holy Basil herb of India. I wanted to get this in loose leaf form instead of those teabags you see in stores everywhere. This herb is supposedly an excellent adaptogen and good for stress relief. I am trying to find alternatives to caffeine all the time.
When I look at the picture of the tea on Tao’s website is a light yellow. I did not know how much leaf to use and I brewed this up STRONG! Mine is a dark orange… lol. Wow. It certainly is potent, I will need to scale back next time. Cooling is a very appropriate adjective for this herb. It reminds me of mint. I do not taste a lot of orange in this blend. I believe it is mostly tulsi with a very strong fennel aftertaste. I actually like fennel a lot so this is great for me, but be forewarned. I can see I will need to do more tulsi experiments soon…
According to Tao’s website: “Supporters of Small Organic Tulsi Farmers.
We work only with small-scale Tulsi growers that need
assurance for their harvests. As such, we provide up-front guarantees to purchase their produce and help sell it through a market-education development approach. As we grow, we envision our ability to help more small-scale and marginal Organic farmers in this process. Most Tulsi is still grown conventionally and the transition to Organics is recent. We hope to be among the few Tulsi companies that are in the forefront of this movement”.
Good for them!
Perhaps it is the power of suggestion but I already feel better after my potent tulsi tea…
Preparation
I like both Nilgiri and Lemon Myrtle so I was pretty sure I would also like this blend from Tao of Tea.
It really doesn’t smell like much when you open the bag. I brewed this for 4 minutes with near boiling water. I think I may have oversteeped it a tad so I will go for slightly less next time. It smells and tastes very lemony but is not too tart. Having only two ingredients helps here I think…. The nilgiri makes a nice counterpart to the lemon. I can’t help but wonder what this would taste like with a darker and more robust black tea. But I am liking this quite a lot, it is pretty tasty and I’m sure it would make a fabulous iced tea as well. I am wishing for some cookies to dunk in this tea. Check this one out if you’re a lemon lover.
Preparation
Sigh… I am really not a fan of this unfortunately. Do I even like drinks made with ginseng? Probably not. To me it smells like a stinky old root, which is actually what it is. I imagine this is a very good health tonic with ginseng, licorice and apple. It’s a little too much on the sour side with too much stinky root. A little too medicine-y so it will require sugar. If you like ginseng you may want to give this a try. Otherwise I can’t say I recommend it.
Second steep: it is fairly easy to pick out all the apple and ginseng so that’s what I’’m doing. it’s not a total loss. At least I’ll have a nice oolong.
Preparation
Backlogging – this was my most favorite thing I ordered from TeaGschwender – it has been gone for ages. Very smooth, sweet-ish, chocolate-y, rich and delicious. I should like to have some more of this someday.
This is a pretty nice English Breakfast tea from TeaGschwender. Very well balanced and flavorful and nice for this rainy morning in San Francisco. This is not really my favorite type of tea – I looked in the cupboard this morning and thought: “Gack – is this STILL here?” But it is pretty good, I just need to stop neglecting it… :)
Lately I have heard angels. LOL
I’m trying to save my angels for special occasions… :)
Every second is a special occasion
The great thing with oolongs, is that even if they cost a bit more, you can get multiple steeps, and the flavour can change the more you steep it, so it does balance out a little, cost-wise.
Toasty oolongs are a great variety for finding reasonably priced stand bys for day to day cups that won’t break the bank.
Ahhh…….Da Hong Pao, avery enjoyable tea.
As I understand it they aren’t “clones” but are grown from clippings, the same way grape varietals for wine are taken. This is where the idea of “generations” comes in. A tree made from a clipping from the originals is first generation. A tree made from a clipping from those trees is second generation, etc. Supposedly, generational distance impacts quality, mostly because it usually means that where the new tree is planted is probably (probably, not necessarily) less and less like the original location in terms of soil, sun, elevation etc.
Mostly I’m just curious if the truly early generation stuff is so rare and expensive that it is still the sort of thing given to presidents as gifts or kept by the PRC for governmental use or whether we could actually get our hands on such things. I have no idea how many first generation trees exist to know whether that’s a rare thing or a not so rare thing.
@ Jim – according to the show Charles was referring to there are something like 5 of the original Da Hong Pao trees and the tea made from those trees is kept in a vault. It is very rare and expensive & the DHP tea we get now is all from the 2nd generation
Well, there are second gen, third gen, fourth gen… DHP has become extremely popular, and to keep up with demand, more and more generations of bushes are being produced — to the point that anything fourth generation or later is referred to as Xiao Hong Pao (small red robe) or simply Hong Pao.
So I guess the most pointed way to ask the question (which I actually asked on a different tasting note) is whether Verdant’s leaves are 2nd gen or 3rd. Supposedly it makes a big difference.
Jim, That’s a question for David Duckler….
We’ve already made way more out of it than I intended. :-)
Hot debate going down….
ahh. why is this coming up here, it isn’t even one of Verdant’s teas? And yes, I agree just ask David if you need to know.
I don’t know, either. Like I said, it was a passing question, I think there was a misunderstanding about the information I wanted, it’s gotten completely over blown at this point, and I’m moving on.
iTea – no one’s debating anything.