Le Palais des Thes

I liked the rather fine taste of the green tea. I noticed it was very important to limit the brewing strictly under 3 mns, as the tea turned bitter quickly otherwise.
It’s definitely not a breakfast tea according to my taste.
The cherry blossom flavor was nice, though on the long run I got weary about it : too strong, a bit too artificial. I personally did not relish the taste of this tea once it turned cold and tried each time to drink my teapot as soon as possible.
I honestly had some difficulty to finish the second-half of the 100 g pack I had bought and will not buy it again, hence my average rating.

Trying to finish this tea as I’ve had it for a while. Still tastes great!

I’ve now tried quite a few oolongs from Taiwan but most of them are a greener style. This tea, which I believe is usually called Bai Hao, is much more oxidized, approaching black tea. Lightly sweet honey and woodsy flavors combine without much of a musty quality. A nice honey taste lingers on the palate for a while after drinking. Some descriptions I have seen of this type of tea note a fruity taste, but to me it doesn’t have the fruity quality you might find in, say, a Dan Cong. I would also add that fans of Darjeeling teas might enjoy this one.

I’ve found it is nice and smooth if you use temperatures below those you would use for black tea as it can get bitter quickly.

This Yunnan was shared with me by Auggy and I have to say I’m sceptical as soon as I see the word ‘Yunnan’. However, as you may recall, I had a rather nice Yunnan the other day which didn’t have that flavour of hay, and it reminded me that all Yunnan is not created equal and that some of it is actually quite nice. So therefore I am going forth with this, safe in the knowledge that Auggy has come to know my tastes very well.

So is this one of the nommy Yunnans or one of the meh ones? The aroma isn’t really giving me much of a clue. It’s quite chocolate-y and sweet spicy, but there is also a tinge to the spice note that say, “hay, there!” (Did you see what I did there? Teehee!) Mostly though, it’s sweetie-like in the aroma so I go forth, still not completely put off.

So that was the leaves. The cup after steeping smells less chocolate-y and far more sweet spicy. I have to say it reminds me most of all of ‘brunkager’ 1 which is a very traditional Danish Christmas biscuit. Funny to find that in tea! On the tail end of summer no less. It does indeed bode well for the flavour, especially as you can see that I didn’t find any of those hay-like notes here.

So flavour. Disappointingly the association to Christmas biscuits stop here. And yes it was a disappointment, because the aroma in the cup was SO like it, that my tongue was already preparing itself for that particular flavour. And all it got was tea. Which is all good and well but not really what it was looking for at this point. How tricksy this aroma is!

Rather than a spicy biscuit, it’s actually more sort of broth-y. I’m still getting the spicy notes, but it doesn’t show itself as so sweet here in the flavour. My first and foremost association is actually to a time when I was served a soup which was spiced with these same spices. There is a whiff of that hay in the background, but it never really comes out in any significant manner, and there also isn’t any of those cocoa or chocolate notes that have tended to be a good sign of a Yunnan that I would actually enjoy. There is a pleasant sort of malty, creamy aftertaste though, which pulls the whole thing in a third direction.

This one comes out fairly in the middle of the two experiences with Yunnan that I’ve had and with a pointer towards a thirdk and that makes it difficult for me to work out what to do with it. I think I’m mostly enjoying it, but I probably wouldn’t go out and purchase it. I expect with those spicy notes, from a Danish point of view it would work excellently in a Christmas blend.

1 http://www.food.com/recipe/danish-brun-kager-brown-cookies-13614 2

2 Look, Nik showed me the other day how to do footnotes! Isn’t that neat?! :D

Sipdown tea #4! Thanks goes to momo.
Aaahh today has been so relaxing and nice :] I have done absolutely nothing but drink tea, do yoga, and make raw tomato bread. Lovely :]
I still love the aroma of this tea. And apparently so does my cat. The flavor is light, fruity, and doesn’t hide the green base.

Thank you to Amanda for sending me this sample! I finally have some time to myself to catch up on the samples people have sent me.
This tea smells wonderful! Hmm. Maybe I used too little tea to the amount of water? Or temperature.. but anyways it was a bit weak but it was still pretty tasty! It reminds me of a tea from The Tea Grotto. It has a light fruity flavor but you can still taste the green tea base. I really like it. I like the mellowness of it.

SIPDOWN from before…good while it lasted…see previous notes.

LiberTeas Thanks so much for this one!

I seemed to be such a ‘decision’ to choose my tea this morning…oye! I must be a Fickle Pickle! Many of you know I usually start my day with a black tea or flavored black and ‘move and shake’ from there.

Dry – I could smell a very hidden Apple/Cinnamon combo. Once the hot water is added the aroma doubles – at least! It does smell like a nice Holiday-Type Tea…very festive!

The Ginger/Cinnamon is very warming as I swirl it around in my mouth. The apple is nicely done…sweet and slightly mouth-watering. The vanilla adds that little bit of creaminess to it. The Almond I can pick up more in the aftertaste.

This isn’t overly flavored but the flavoring it does have is complimenting and comforting.

I like trying odd teas like this. I’m not expecting too much, but I did enjoy Kusmi’s seaweed tea blend so I figured I probably wouldn’t hate this.

I love how this tea smells! Like really good nori sheets – the kind that has a bit of soy sauce or additional flavoring to make it just a little darker, a little richer. Such a great smell. LOVE.

The taste is very much seaweed, too, just like the smell. Unlike Kusmi’s Algotea which has a green tea base, this has an oolong base and I think it makes it smoother. The Kusmi has a tendency towards mineral-esque astringency at the end, but this is almost silky. Based on the smell and liquor color, I assume it is a dark oolong but honestly the taste of the seaweed is dominant.

In the second steep (1min), the oolong base pokes out a bit more. The smell is a bit more smoky and peachy with the nori smell taking a slight step back. The taste, however, very similar to the first steep though with the nori perhaps being a bit more balanced by the oolong.

This is a funky but awesome little tea. It’s definitely not for everyone. If you wouldn’t consider nori as a legitimate snack food, I’d probably pass this one. But for me? I love it!

First point of advice for this tea: DON’T LISTEN TO THE COMPANY’S STEEPING SUGGESTION! I had a momentary flash of insanity and steeped the first cup of this for 3 minutes, per the suggestions on the bag. How could I have been so silly? I mean, look at these lovely leaves (See? http://flic.kr/p/cSiS9C Lovely! Well, okay, a little luster-less but I still find them pretty – long and twisted in a way that reminds me of roll your own cigarettes). So if you want to take these pretty things and turn them into a big one-note cup of acidity and harshness that is basically an attempt to be coffee instead of tea, then sure, go ahead, steep for 3 minutes (or more). But that wasn’t what I was looking for with this. Cutting down the time drastically for the second steep didn’t give me what I wanted either, so I decided to give this another go with fresh leaves.

This time I went for one minute. The overall result was much better but still not quite what I was hoping for. Let me explain: the dry leaf smells so lovely. Like when I visited the brew store with the husband and got to smell (and sample) all of the lovely malted grains used for home beer making. Sweet, musty, grainy and just delicious! So I had this marvelous smell – and I wanted it to come across in the taste. It definitely doesn’t at three minutes – it’s harsh and almost burnt tasting and way too tannic.

At one minute, the taste more matches with the smell but it isn’t quite as light as the smell lead me to believe it would be. It’s definitely more of a stout Yunnan, but it has nice notes of sweet malt and a dab of honey. It’s enjoyable but for the fanciness of the leaf and of the price, I was expecting for something a bit softer.

Instead, this reminds me a lot of Adagio’s Yunnan Noir. Don’t get me wrong, I like Yunnan Noir. It’s kind of my go-to tea when I want something stout and energizing without needing to add milk or sugar. So I like this. But $19.50 for 3.5oz or $12 for 4oz. Well, I’m sure you can guess which tea will (continue to) be my go to stout Yunnan.

(I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll be sniffing the leaves a lot on this one, though.)

The smell and taste reminds me of bubblegum. It’s fruity and slightly tart. Not bad but probably not my favorite.

Today my old Zodiac blends were deleted so they are no longer available. Wondering if it’s possible to delete them here as well.

This tea smells phenomenal! The reason I bought it was because I got to smell some of the dry leaf in the store. It has a smell that promises a sweet fruity flavor once brewed. Unfortunately I personally feel that the smell remains once brewed but that the flavor isn’t quite as strong as I was expecting. To me it tastes like green tea that has a little bit of something else, but I can’t pin the other flavor because it is so subtle. Maybe it’s the watermelon, since I personally don’t think watermelon has much flavor in general. I liked the tea though, especially the smell, I just can’t claim it tastes like much other than a light green tea.

My first tasting note :)
I had this tea hot at a restaurant over the summer and loved it so much that I simply had to find the store and buy some. I wanted to reserve the tasting note until I had a chance to really enjoy the tea at home though.

Last night I decided to try making an iced version, after seeing other steepsterites say that it tastes better cold. So I brewed 4 cups of water (32oz) up hot at 160 degrees (closest thing I had to recommended temperature), let it steep with two of the tea bags for 3 minutes, let it cool, then poured it in a pitcher with ice and stuck it in the fridge overnight.

As an Iced tea the green tea flavor is dominant in my opinion, but I love subtle green teas so that isn’t a problem for me. During the actual sip I noticed the green tea first, then a slight sakura/cherry note. The cherry flavor came out more in the aftertaste than the actual sip. Oddly enough in my second sip the cherry flavor came first, then the green tea, and then a subtle note of sakura at the end. I noticed that after drinking my mouth had a bit of a dry feeling, which wasn’t bad, just very interesting. No bitterness though!

After I had made my batch of Iced Tea I also decided to try resteeping the teabags to drink hot. I was a little worried because they smelled really bitter, but I thought I’d try it anyway. I used the same parameters (but less water) and it still wasn’t bitter! woohoo!!! I didn’t notice much of a difference in flavor from the first and second steep. All in all I’m glad I purchased it, I like the green base, and the hints of sakura and cherry are intriguing.

This tea must have had some poor storage along the way, as it is fairly weak and lacks robust flavor. Maybe the tea was not so strong to begin with and 12 years was too long to age it

Some notes of wood, but very little sweetness. Their green teas were much better than their pu

This quite mild and and quite smokey, perhaps a bit too much smokiness for my taste. Still pretty enjoyable. When cooling down even more smokiness comes through.

Made a Pinterest board matching Zodiac teas and books: http://pinterest.com/moodsappetites/tea-books/

Very long lasting taste in the mouth, lots of rose. A really delicious and invigorating tea.

I made this for myself and my coworker today. She’s been letting me foist tea on her all week, AND I get to choose! so I haven’t been logging notes much, since these are all teas I’ve a) already tried, b) I am choosing them for H, not me, and c) I’ve been a little harried!
Bah. So H, well, she loooved it. The peach notes really came through this time and I gotta say, it was GOOD. Dang good.
Anyhow, it was my last day at work so I was all over the place, saying my goodbyes, thinking of last minute training items etc. When it was all over, I needed a distraction, which was readily available in the form of a tea event! (you were missed Sil!)
http://ancienttearoads.eventbrite.com/?utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=event_reminder&utm_term=event_title
It was amazing, I quite enjoyed it. So the event is free, but they wanted people to sign up for the “tea of the month” club, each of them a pu-erh. $15 for a 100g cake, including shipping. Not bad really. This will be one of the first things I do when I find a job.
The talk from Jeff was inspiring as well. He spoke about the people of Yunnan and about how the first tea of the month, he had trouble acquiring it, since the village people make only enough to sustain the village and send as occasional gifts.
There were pictures of said villagers available for purchase as well. Masterful, soul peering pictures that made me want to take them all home.
Anyhow, I am off to bed after a day that was longer than the Nile. Night all!

Thanks for the sample Azzrian!
What an interesting green tea. It’s light, and very smooth. Fruity and just mmm! I can’t pick out any particular flavour. Something spicy? or is it roasted? but above all I get fruitiness. Maybe banana or kiwi. definitely not watermelon.
anyhow, thanks Azzrian this is a winner!

Working on a design for Antique Silver company selling unique 19th century silver pieces (many tea sets as well) so it seemed appropriate to brew some Rose tea + had a small piece of cranberry scone.
Wondering why my butler doesn’t show up …

Nice as usual. One of my favorite flavors. I had it with a Japanese cream puff.

Rose tea just makes me happy. Rose adds some smooth subtle sweetness to the tea. The smell is intoxicating.

I bought this tea in Dublin. The shop owner offered this tea, so i bought ‘Theophile’. It wasn’t that bad(or good either) but doesn’t taste like ‘green tea’ but more mango flavour.