Butiki Teas

Not sure I’m quite enjoying this as much as I would have had it been fresh. I’m not getting much pistachio, mostly just green tea with a hint of…something. It’s a decent green tea though, grassy but mild, the way I like it. I just need to power through all this old tea in order to actually buy some new stuff.

This is a fantastic tea, even as old as it is, and I love it and it makes me miss Butiki so much! I love the fact that it’s just eggy vanilla eggnog flavouring rather than all the spices because cinnamon is definitely not my favourite thing at all and it’s just lovely the way it is. I have maybe 1 or 2 more pots of this (small pots, like super big mug sized pots). The leaves really didn’t want to scoop though so I have no idea how much I actually put in because all of my spoonfuls were half to 1/3 full and I just put in until it looked like ‘enough’. Still. Delicious.

Can you tell I’m trying to drink down my old Butiki teas? I wanted something I know I like so out came the Raspberry Truffle. The raspberry scent in the dry leaf is still pretty strong. If nothing else, I store my old teas well, even if it takes me forever to drink them. I’d really like to get to a place where I feel comfortable buying new tea again.

Anyway, this tea was a reward for cleaning the shower drain. Tasty and nice. I enjoyed this pot.

This is actually the second time I ‘ve had this in the last 2 days but yesterday I oversteeped it by I don’t know how much since I was trying to vacuum at the same time and it came out bitter and bleh. Today, I was much better about timing and it came out okay. Just okay though, I think this one is suffering from age. The tea is sweet and there’s a bit of chocolate and I can kind of taste the raspberry. It tastes like Valentine’s Day, if that makes sense, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

Sipdown (519)!

Thanks again to Kittenna for the sample of this one! It’s another that I missed during Butiki’s prime – straight teas generally weren’t often on my radar at that point in my ‘tea drinking career’ so I likely just skipped right over it.

I definitely enjoyed it a lot though, which just makes me all the more sad I missed this one in its prime. It was super bright and refreshing, though! Really, really strong and lively citrus notes and jammy red fruit undertones, with a sweet caramelized sugar and freshly baked bread sort of finish. I find citrus notes in black teas, Kenyan ones in particular, can be awfully brisk and often emulate more of a citrus peel or pithy citrus kind of flavour but this was sweet and juicy, more like the flesh of the lemon without any sourness – and I deeply appreciate that sort of lemon note in a good tea; black or otherwise.

It totally made the whole cup.

How is this still good after so many years? The cream flavor has faded but the delicate rose scent and taste is there, along with an undercurrent of bubbly champagne. I’m on my third solid steep of this beauty and glad I still have a little left. Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/BfH4cjtlJoo/?taken-by=try.all.the.tea

How old is this tea Sarah? I can’t believe I’m even drinking it.
It might have been good 3 years ago, but bletch…
As a person who doesn’t usually care for flavored teas, I find this one to be bitter & kind of cloying.
And of course, it’s no longer available, unless someone wants this last tablespoon ?

A good tea with good-to-great taste profile.

Slightly grassy and floral flavour.

SIpdown (514)!

Big thanks to Kittenna for the sample! I don’t actually remember this one at all from the good ‘ol Butiki days – I think it was just something that at that time I just wasn’t that into. My tea world has since expanded and I just looked over the reviews for this one and it seems like something I’m gonna be quite into!

Steeped up and… wow! It’s really good!

I’m actually surprised how incredibly accurate it tastes to Stacy’s description of it – especially after so much time has passed. It has some really bright, sweet and juicy Bartlett Pear notes. So succulent, and smooth with floral undertones. The rest of the profile is very autumnal and malty; with a sweet and nutty finish that reminds me of hazelnut. It’s so put together and I LOVE the juxtaposition of the orchard fruit notes in the top of the sip against the nuttiness in the finish.

Wow.

Sipdown (487)!

Another Butiki tea courtesy of Kittenna – although this another that I never got a chance to try. If I remember correctly it was a ‘mystery’ flavour that Stacy released during her closing sales? I can’t remember exactly what flavours it ended up being in actuality, though.

To me, however, I’m getting really robust and sweet notes of almond, cream, and red fruits such as strawberry, cherry, currant, and pomegranate. A mix of all those sort of red fruit notes though to create one big and somewhat more generic “red superfruit” instead of super clear distinct notes of ALL those red fruits. The almond cream mix makes me think of marzipan though, and I also get grenadine a little bit from the overall sweet, syrupy quality of the red fruit notes. It’s impressive how rich and robust the flavours are given the age of the overall.

The base itself is pretty strong too; it’s a CTC grade which means a lot more leaf surface to water when steeping which is automatically gonna make it a really intense, full bodied brew but it’s still quite smooth with rich notes of malt and a brisk, clean finish. Hints of cacao, and a bit of bread like taste too. It works well with the added flavours.

Loved this one overall – it was a REALLY strong, pleasant cup! Glad I got to experience it!

Sipdown (482)!

It’s been a long time since I’ve had new Butiki teas in my cupboard; or ‘new to me’ at least. However, I just got several from the always overly kind and generous Kittenna as part of a swap. Teaware for tea samples, though.

I can’t remember why I originally skipped this one when it first launched years ago; maybe just ‘cause there were so many other Butiki blends to try? And I definitely had a smaller tea budget. I’m glad I’m trying it now.

It’s kind of weird, to be honest, but at the very least the dry aroma works for me. It actually still smells really strongly of melon after all this time – but I actually thought it was watermelon over cantaloupe. It smells more like watermelon to me, almost exactly like Watermelon Xylophone but with this malty/earthy undertone to it. Less creamy than Butiki’s white based melon teas, for sure.

Taste wise it’s not as strongly melon as both dry and steeped aroma are; but it is there. I imagine it would have been a much more punchy flavour when this one first came out, but the subtle watermelon in the body of the sip is still nice. I don’t get malt so much; in fact I get more of an earthiness – so much so I actually had to double check this one was a black tea and not a shou. It’s also a little salty, and I can’t place where that’s coming from. I’m actually really into it though – salted watermelon is very much a lovely and delicious thing and to me this is just reading as a fun recreation of that treat.

I wont rate it ’cause I doubt this is good representation of what the tea was intended to be like, but I had a fun time experiencing this one!

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbnVMSYVbvA&list=WL&index=5

So, it feels almost blasphemous to me to not be listening to some Pink Floyd with this one but this is what was speaking to me when I steeped up the tea. I’ve been on an indie/rap kind of kick lately. Actually, though, I think I may have picked this one kind of because of some word association though; the album image for the track is of a horned melon, so…

Just tried this at a local tea house. Incredible

Still delicious, even as old as it is. I still have quite a bit of this so it’ll take a while to sipdown. Backlogged review from last week.

This is super old at this point but still very tasty, even if I did oversweeten it since I figured out that the entire contents of my favourite teapot fits into my huge deadpool mug at once. Makes for fewer trips to the kitchen anyway. Makes judging sweetener more difficult so far. The fact that I was simultaneously drinking a Dr Pepper probably didn’t help but this was still good. Stood up to 2 steeps. I wish Butiki were still in business.