Kusmi Tea

I wanted to try this by comparison now that I’ve had another violet black tea (Simpson & Vail). I’m bumping it up. I’m also bumping up the Simpson & Vail, but by a lesser amount.

If I’m going to have a violet tea in my stash, I think this will be the one unless something comes along that’s better. I prefer it to the Simpson & Vail for two main reasons.

First, while the Simpson & Vail has a stronger violet flavor (and pretty leaves with violets strewn among them whereas the Kusmi has no actual violets in it), there’s a lotiony quality to it that makes it feel oily and heavy in my stomach in a way that the Kusmi doesn’t.

Second, the base. The Simpson & Vail base is stronger, heavier, and more full bodied, but it’s also just not as smooth, tasty, and well integrated with the violet flavor.

So this was a successful experiment.

This is the first violet tea I’ve had. I don’t ordinarily think of violet as something edible, and I don’t think I’ve tasted it before though I’ve seen those violet candies in the little tin. I like the fragrance of violet in soap, but I tend to associate it with bath products rather than food. I haven’t tasted the violet candies precisely because I expect them to taste soapy, and that’s my primary concern going in to tasting this tea.

I also have to confess that I get confused between violet and lavender because they’re both purple and both flowers. I know this doesn’t make much more sense than getting confused between a peach and a plum, but there you have it. The way I get confused is that when I sit and try to conjure the smell of lavender, I’m pretty sure I can do it, but I conjure the same thing for violet. But of course, when I actually smell something scented violet, it clearly is different from lavender.

In the tin, the primary scent is floral. I don’t smell tea, I smell violet. Fortunately, it’s not soapy in the least. It’s like a little bouquet.

The tea’s aroma is violet around the edges, also not soapy, with a warm, slightly sweet tea in the middle.

The flavor is much more floral all around than the aroma. It’s like biting the heads off the flowers that made up the little bouquet. ;-) But it’s surprisingly nice. It’s a little frou frou but, I think, less than rose can be. Violets in general are less intense smelling than roses to me, and this is less intense as well without any of the oily quality that rose flavors can have sometimes. As it cools, the floral aspect becomes deeper and richer, and though I don’t think it crosses the line, I could see it becoming soapy if it were allowed to become room temperature. I’d advise drinking before allowing it to cool too much.

I’m torn on this one. I like it, but I have lavender teas and rose teas and jasmine teas and osmanthus teas and lychee teas and I wonder whether I really need another floral tea. But since when has reason prevailed in the decision to acquire tea?

Hiya folks. I’m baaaaackkk! I missed you. Please forgive me if I start where I left off and don’t go back to read two weeks worth of notes. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that time is still a little scarce and I’d rather spend the time with careful reading going forward than with skimming going backward.

We had lots of fun at Disneyland and No. 1 is now safely ensconced in his first grade routine. I must admit I have been drinking very little tea. It was blisteringly hot in D-land, and it’s been hitting over 100 degrees since we got back, which may have something to do with it. I have noticed, though, that when I do drink tea after not drinking it for a while, I enjoy it that much more. It’s almost as though I’d desensitized myself by drinking 20 or so cups a day, and until I stopped doing that I didn’t realize I had. Anyone else ever had that experience?

I took this tin with me to D-land and made some every morning in the little pot in the room before we went down to breakfast. I tried to use bottled water, but if I didn’t have enough I supplemented with tap water.

Anaheim water is weird. I thought the Pirates of the Caribbean ride smelled funny because the water was recycled, but then I noticed that the water coming out of the shower smelled similar, though hot instead of cold. It’s got a sort of marine/minerally smell to it, so the brewing conditions weren’t great. Since this wasn’t much of a favorite to begin with, I wasn’t too concerned about ruining it with bad water. And I’m glad I took it with me because I can now decupboard! Another to cross of the list and not to repeat, I’m afraid, but at least it contributes to the goal of getting the quantity of tea I have in the house under control. I will say that it grew on me a bit. I just got really used to it. But not enough to give it a point bump.

Hope everyone had a great end of summer!

I’ve been drinking this every morning for the last week and I’m still not sure why it thinks it is an Earl Grey. It’s a peppery black tea with a bit of citrus, but it doesn’ t have the classic Earl Grey bergamot laden taste. Note to self: tomorrow morning try this against one or two other Earl Greys just to make sure you’re not losing your mind. Which is entirely possible, seeing as you bought a full size tin of this before tasting the sample. Which you would not have done had you actually TASTED the sample first. See, this is what I mean by having so much tea I just can’t keep track of it. Sigh.

On the heels of the Mariage Freres Earl Grey Imperial, which I’m pretty close now to drinking my way through, the Kusmi seemed at first a welcome respite. In the sample tin, the fragrance is of bergamot, but also of a strong spicey smell I can’t identify. Pepper maybe. Yeah, I think that’s it. The spicy smell is more prominent than the bergamot in the smell of the dry leaves.

Steeping brings out the aroma of the tea more than the spice or the bergamot. The pepperiness would suggest Yunnan, but apart from that it smells quite like the aroma I associate with Keemuns (no smoke, but there’s a baked goods quality to it). Liquor is a dark amber, sort of a brandy color. I had high hopes that this would be a nice, mildly bergamot flavored, Earl Grey.

But alas. The flavor is pretty interesting. But it’s not what I’d expect from an Earl Grey, even one that is relatively easy on the bergamot. To my tastebuds it has a stronger flavor of pepper than of bergamot. I do get a shadow of citrus, but it’s not readily identifiable as bergamot.

It’s not bad, it’s just not what I am looking for in an Earl Grey. If I stand back and judge it without the Earl Grey label, it’s still not something I could see myself picking to drink over other blends. In the end, I’m having to rate it lower than the Mariage Freres because at least the Mariage Freres, as much as it is not a favorite, is definitely an Earl Grey.

Sipdown no. 11 of 2020 (no. 606 total).

A little smoky for my taste in cold brew, but no. 2 loved it. I couldn’t keep it in the fridge for more than a day.

See previous notes for more detail.

Hope everyone is safe and healthy.

Sipdown no. 1 of August 2019 (no. 87 of 2019 total, no. 575 grand total).

It was surprisingly OK cold, but the more I drank it the less enamored I became. I am bumping it down a bit more.

I don’t know if it’s the smoke and summer not mixing or that as smoky teas go, this has more ash and less sweetness than I tend to like.

In returning to this tea (as I’m now up to the 81-82 rated non-tisanes in my cupboard) I am thinking it is more good than great. Maybe it’s that smokiness and summertime don’t mix all that well for me, or maybe it’s that compared to the other 82 rated teas I’ve been drinking it isn’t my favorite. In any case, bumping it down — which also makes it a prime sipdown candidate.

It’s more than slightly smoky. But that’s a good thing.

The leaves have a lapsangy smell to them, but the aroma is milder. It isn’t tarry or resiny. It’s smoky but on the gentler side of smoky.

It’s a surprisingly chewy feeling tea. Pretty thick on the mouthfeel. A nice smokiness in the flavor, but also has a shining tea note coming through. Like a light at the bottom of a dark well. And some degree of sweetness, though not as much as some other smokies.

I’m liking the aftertaste. I was a little worried after reading Angrboda’s note that I’d taste ashtray, but fortunately I’m not experiencing ashtray here. The thickness of the mouthfeel translates into a coated feeling in the mouth, but not in a clingy way. It’s kind of interesting and not unpleasant. The aftertaste is surprising. I wouldn’t expect anything fresh about it, but somehow that’s what I get. Like the taste of cool air on an autumn night when fires are going in neighborhood fireplaces. And a little sweet burst at the end.

Smoky teas, like black teas in general, are another area I’m having a hard time narrowing down to a stable of staples. I haven’t yet met one I detested, which makes it hard. I think in general I tend to prefer the softer smokies rather than the straight lapsangs, though there are times when I can go for the resiny, tarry, pineyness as well.

I can’t rightly remember how this compares to other Russians, though I know it isn’t up there with the A&D Caravan. It’s probably about on a par with the H&S. I must try that again to see.

Sipdown no. 8 of 2020 (no. 603 total).

It was sort of weird as a cold brew. Weirder than I thought a cinnamon tea would be.

Why was it weird? I guess the part of my original note that mentioned the subtlety of the cinnamon flavor is closest to coming up with a reason. There isn’t enough cinnamon flavor for it to be obviously cinnamon, but there’s obviously something other than tea there. The puzzlement is what makes it weird, I suppose.

But the kids must not have had the same thought because they plowed through it pretty fast, particularly no. 2.

I hope everyone is staying safe — we are good so far. The stay at home is getting a bit old, but as our household falls into several risk categories I would rather stay home than risk our collective healths.

Not sure what possessed me to buy this one. I do like cinnamon but it’s a sort of a second or even third tier flavor for me behind chocolate, nuts, fruits and vanilla. I think I probably thought it would be interesting to taste a tea where the primary flavor was cinnamon (without any others in the mix) and also to see how Kusmi managed this one.

Since I originally put this into my shopping cart, though, I’ve had two cinnamon black teas, so curiosity 1 has been satisfied. That leaves me with curiosity 2.

In the tin, the cinnamon smell is rather subdued. It isn’t red hot strong like the H&S, and it isn’t cinnamon stick strong like the Adagio. It’s really just a hint, but a nice one. The tea’s aroma is a similar, subdued cinnamon.

Interestingly, this seems to me to be one flavored black tea where less really is more. Though I found the various Kusmi chocolates and the bourbon vanilla too quiet and disappointing, I prefer the less in-your-face cinnamon flavor of this to the Adagio by quite a margin.

Like the Adagio, it’s a more herbal version of a cinnamon than the H&S, and it doesn’t have a candy sweetness. Unlike the Adagio, the tea seems to be steeped in a cinnamon fragrance, rather than to be a base to which cinnamon has been glommed on heavy handedly. It works.

It may even work, for some purposes, as well or better than the H&S (a much stronger flavor, a much sweeter flavor, a much candier flavor). It really depends, I suppose, on what you are looking for in a cinnamon black tea and since I tend to like stronger flavors I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this.

Still not sure I’d buy more than one cinnamon tea for the permanent collection, but if I did, this would be a contender.

I found this hanging out in the back of my cupboard, so who knows how old it is. I can barely taste a hint of spice and the chocolate just reminds me of the slight cocoa taste I often find in black tea. Nothing remarkable really. The hint of spice is only serving to make me crave 52teas’ Mayan Chocolate Chai (which of course I am out of). I’ll finish the cup but I don’t see myself craving or even remembering this tea later on.

This is finally living up to its name of being a Spicy Chocolate tea. It tastes better today than usual, too bad it doesn’t re-steep well.

I shook up the bag and steeped the tea longer today. It is spicier than last time, but I still wouldn’t say it was spicy unless I knew that is what was intended. The taste is much more full-bodied and coffee-like as well as a stronger chocolate flavor. This is pretty decent but I’m not sure it tastes good enough today to adjust the ratings – I just really don’t like when tea does not re-steep decently.

Unfortunately, this tea does not seem to resteep well. The flavor is weak and the color is extremely light compared to the first infusion. I will have to dock a few points because a black tea that can’t handle 2 infusions is a bit disappointing for me.

TTB 1.2

This tea smells absolutely divine – rich, creamy chocolate. The resulting tea is smooth and not at all bitter with a fairly strong chocolate taste. I added a bit of milk and sugar which just intensifies the dessert quality of this tea.

Overall, this tea is a nice surprise. I wasn’t sure it was going to be strong enough on the chocolate for me. Although it could stand to be stronger, the chocolate level is adequate and absolutely delicious. I’m not sure if it lives up to the name “Spicy Chocolate” but it is a decent chocolate tea nonetheless.

I had my first cup of this in a café and fell in love with it. Smells like Cola, tastes spicy and reminds me of some candy.. Then I bought a tin of loose leafs, the smell is still here, but way lighter and the taste ! I just get black tea with a vague hint of spice.

I might try to steep it for a shorter time after reading Rijje’s comments, hoping to find my prince again :D

Sipdown no. 195. A full sized tin.

I had just enough for hot tea this morning. I’ve mostly been using it to make cold tea since it isn’t a favorite. It’s decent cold, though the vanilla flavor in the cold version takes some getting used to.

I’m bumping down the rating some. I find that I sometimes rate things based on my mood at the time and I am not an overly harsh grader. This is objectively a good tea because it’s Kusmi. But in the end my ratings have to reflect my tastes, and I’ve had vanilla teas that truly knocked my socks off. This is not one of them.

This is actually my fourth tea of the day, it’s just that the other three have been the subject of several notes already and I don’t have exciting new discoveries about them to record. I thought I’d give this one another try. It’s one of the lower rated Kusmi’s I’ve already tasted and I’m lowering the temp and increasing the time to see if that makes a difference (195, 4 minutes).

Kusmi makes an outstanding caramel and some really terrific fruity combinations, but I don’t care for what they do with chocolate. My recollection is I had a similar reaction to their treatment of vanilla though not quite to the same extreme. It’s been a while though, so we’ll see.

I’m pretty much in agreement with my first tasting note of way back when on this one. The lower temp and longer time may make some difference, but it’s not extreme. The vanilla is definitely present, but in a subtle way, and it’s definitely more present in the aftersip than during the sip.

On the other hand, it’s not the bakey fakey vanilla that really gets my goat and that I tasted in the Numi and the Adagio oolong. It’s not a bad flavoring agent, I’d just prefer there was a bit more of it as it seems to me to get lost in the tea base.

I’m considering taking this one to work when I need to bring in some more tea, which will be soon. Since it’s not a favorite, I’m not concerned about getting the temperature just right, and I have a lot of it, which seems important in a work tea. Otherwise I have to remember to schlepp in new stuff constantly.

I’m drinking more black tea than I would ordinarily today in the hopes it will keep me awake enough to do some writing. I just realized I have a couple of weeks before a deadline I’d like to make and I have a story that’s is in the awkward tween stage after the beginning and before the middle that I can probably finish and polish in time if I get on the stick. Then again, I won’t be able to get any quiet time until the kids are in bed and a lot can happen between now and then to affect my awakeness level. ;-)

I read Lauren’s note after I’d already made this and discovered that I, too, made it too hot. Makes me want to go back to all the Kusmis I didn’t find very successful and try them at lower temps to see what happens.

In the tin, there’s a fairly mild scent of vanilla over earthy black tea. The vanilla is not strong in the aroma. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it isn’t present though because I’m under the weather, and my smeller and taster could be somewhat off today.

The vanilla in the flavor is kind of sneaky. I don’t taste it much until the after-sip, when it kicks in, sort of like the tail on the Caramel. Just sort of pops up and sweeps over the tongue, like a wave of flavor. And, like real ocean waves, some are bigger sweeps than others.

I do want to give it a shot at a lower water temp and see what difference that may make. It’s not as disappointing as the chocolates were to me, but except for those sweeps when the flavor really pops out, it’s not a stand out vanilla. I’m still liking Black Orchid and Vanilla Dian Hong for stand out vanillas.

Ah, this is more like it. After a raft of Kusmi chocolate let downs, they’ve redeemed themselves.

The tea in the tin smells marvelously of fruit. I think I can get all four of them. Definitely getting raspberry and currant on the front end, strawberry in the middle, and yes! There’s the cherry on the back end.

They’re more mushed together and indistinct in the aroma of the tea, but it’s quite nice and fruity all the same. The taste is subtle as others have said, but it works here in a way that none of the chocolate blends did for me, probably because I just can’t abide subtlety in chocolate. Really, I see no point in it. Chocolate should be rich, thick, and sinful. Fruit is what you have when you can’t stomach rich or thick, or are trying to be virtuous, and so it is just fine subtle, as long as it isn’t too subtle as to be totally dissatisfying.

I get all four fruits in the flavor as well, and in the same order as in the fragrance of the dry tea. Another nice thing this tea has going for it is a soft, silky mouthfeel, which somehow goes extremely well with the flavor. It’s sort of parfait-like if you don’t dwell on the tea, which by the way, also works nicely here. It’s as though the tea and fruit flavors are supporting each other here, each giving the other a nice little boost, where in the chocolate blends it was as though they were pulling each other further apart into weakness.

I’m so glad to find another Kusmi I like, as I really adore everything about them from their tins (gaudy though they may be [wink to Auggy) to their name.

Finishing and decupboarding this one today. It remains my favorite among the Kusmi chocolates, but the Kusmi chocolates remain not my favorite Kusmis as subtlety and chocolate do not go together in my book. Still, the spice blend is nice on a chilly day and it’s not that the chocolate isn’t there, it’s just a second-seat to the spices and too much of a second seat to be what I’m looking for in a chocolate tea.

I finished and decupboarded the Chocolate Mint before leaving for a couple of weeks on the east coast, and I’m now revisiting the other Kusmi Chocolates.

I’m all about subtlety for a lot of flavors, but not when it comes to chocolate. Chocolate is my comfort food and the stronger the flavor, the better. I was sort of hoping I’d taste this and say “wow, was I wrong the first time” but I find myself standing by my original reaction. I don’t get a lot of chocolate flavor. It is there, but barely as far as my tastebuds are concerned. If I didn’t know there was supposed to be chocolate in this flavor, I doubt I would have noticed it except in the aftertaste, and then not as much as I’d hope in a chocolate flavored tea.

At least this is called Spicy Chocolate rather than Chocolate Spice. The spice is definitely what I taste the most, almost exclusively. The spice flavor is quite nice on a chilly day, but alas for the too quiet chocolate, which would have really hit the spot.

Hmm. Yes, it’s better than the plain Chocolate and probably the Chocolate Mint as well, but I’m not getting a strong chocolate flavor here. It smells divine and very promising in the tin, but the taste isn’t holding up the bargain for me.

The steeped tea does have an undercurrent of chocolate in the aroma. Mostly the spice flavor I get from this one is clove and cinnamon, perhaps a bit stronger on the clove.

The flavor doesn’t deliver much chocolate. It delivers a fair amount of spice, but it’s not a hot spiciness so much as a baked goods spiciness but without the sweetness I’d want from a pastry.

Now that I’m done sipping, there is a little spicy kick at the end.

I’m surprised, but I much prefer the Upton Melange de Chamonix as a representative of this genre.

Thankfully I’ve now tried all the Kusmi chocolate teas, so I can move on to something they (hopefully) do better.