New Mexico Tea Company

I got this tea as a sample on one of my trips to the store. (Because I yay for local tea shops!) Anyway, when it is first brewed, there a slight smoky scent. Not enough to bother me though. Then the flavour is cocoa and some dried fruit. It has a nice taste as it cools too.

First Steep 212, 4 mins: Tastes like a toned down chocolate stout. Excellent cocoa undertones and very rich feel.

Second Steep 212, 4 mins: Second steep is very different. Still very rich but chocolate stout is replaced by a sort of spicy, maybe cinnamon flavor

Third Steep 212, 4 mins:

This is my first Chinese black tea and I am excited to try more and may become a regular in my cup. 9/10

Sweet Plum goodness. This one I really enjoyed. This is one of the first plum teas that I have thought actually taste like plum. A lot of them come off as artificial. This one didn’t to me. Fresh plum flavor is what I got. I know a lot of other people have reviewed this particular tea and thought it was very fake plum tasting. Maybe they revamped the blend. This one isn’t going to last long in my house. The twins are already asking me for more!

In other news Constantine is possibly heading into Season 2. I don’t know if anybody else loved this show like I did, but I am happy that this show has a glimmer of a hope since NBC cancelled it.

http://www.cuppageek.com/index.php/2015/05/29/tea-of-the-day-plum-oolong-from-new-mexico-tea-company/

My tea stash has been dwindling lately, as I keep spending all my money on art supplies. Fortunately NMTC’s free shipping and modest pricing meant I could still squeeze this into the budget, so I picked up a pouch of over the weekend. A great morning standby.

So glad to have this in the cupboard again, definitely my earl grey of choice. Smells delicious too.

Sad sipdown of this :(

A very nice go-to tea, flavorful but not too sharp. I need something soothing today. My head hurts and this NaNoWriMo challenge is taking its toll, both on me and my tea stash. Apparently writing requires a lot of tea:

http://danamartinillustration.tumblr.com/post/133404850709/for-some-crazy-reason-i-decided-to-attempt

I got this as a sample a few weeks back, and liked it enough to make it my go-to earl grey. It is similar to David’s Cream of Earl Grey, but in this one the balance is tipped slightly in favor of the vanilla cream flavors, making the bergamot a bit less sharp. This is great for me, as I prefer the bergamot to be light (that’s why I’m drinking the cream versions in the first place).

Anyway, this meant a re-order as I soon polished off the sample. I got free shipping on this order, as I did the previous one. The first time I thought this had something to do with the fact that I’d only ordered tiny samples, but it seems that you can get free shipping from the New Mexico Tea Company no matter what size your order is (at least within the states, I’m not sure about internationally). So if you are curious about their tea, you can try it for only a couple of bucks, or possibly even for free. They have this page http://www.nmteaco.com/freesample.html where you can choose a free sample once a month.

Accidentally over-steeped this one, but it still turned out nice, with a good balance between the vanilla and bergamot flavors. Really enjoying whatever NMTC is using for a base in all these teas, as it is robust without between distracting. So many black tea bases have these weird acidic notes, but this one is very smooth.

This is a nice surprise. The vanilla teas I’ve had before lean towards this custard/yogurt sort of vanilla flavor. This one tastes like pure vanilla, like that good Mexican vanilla extract, even down to the hint of liquor flavor. While I could do with it a being a little stronger (vanilla teas never seem to be strong enough) the flavor does meld beautifully with the base. I think this is my favorite of the NMTC teas so far.

Finally got around to doing an iced tea steep off between NMTC’s Lady Londonderry and Metropolitan’s. They are very close, but I think NMTC is the winner. Metropolitan’s seems to have stronger flavor overall, but it is muddled; NMTC’s has a slightly lighter, brighter note, and it’s easier to pick out the lemon strawberry flavor. Neither one, though, is as strong on the lemon strawberry as I would like. They both smell absolutely heavenly in the bag, and while I do taste the flavoring, it’s a pale comparison to the aroma.

The lemon in this lemon-strawberry combo comes from lemon balm rather than lemon peel; I consider this a happy change as lemon peel is often so bitter. While the strawberry and lemon balm are delicious together, the flavor is so faint! I feel like I’m smelling this but not quite tasting it. I don’t know if I got an old sample or need to revise my steeping methods? There aren’t any instructions on the bag, but black tea is usually pretty straightforward. Hmmm, I’ll experiment more with this one another time.

Drinking this classic tea while I cyber-shop for more tea. Living the dream.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. If you’ve been online much lately, you’ve probably already seen the Net Neutrality posts, but just in case not, this site gives a run down: https://www.battleforthenet.com . Basically the FCC is trying to use this holiday season to throttle the internet. I hate to bring politics onto Steepster, but I’m not sure we’ll even have Steepster for long if this goes through.

Somehow I drank all the black tea in the house without even noticing? So I rushed to pick up a little from NMTC. I like this one even better than I remembered. SO COCONUTTY! Why did I ever let this run out? Delicioius!

My small order of sample packs from New Mexico Tea Company just came in. Super fast shipping, even with the long weekend! I’ve never had anything from NMTC before so I’m really excited to try them.

First up, the coconut one (given my weakness for coconut, this was an obvious choice.)

It smells amazing, it’s like opening a bag of Mounds. As far as flavor: the base tea is pretty strong in this, so while I taste the coconut, I’d say I’m getting 65% base flavor, 35% coconut.

I can’t help comparing this to my other coconut black tea, David’s Buttered Rum. The Buttered Rum is definitely more nuanced, since the coconut in that is toasted and the whole tea is designed to evoke a couple of flavors, not just coconut. The Coconut Dream is more straightforward — just tea and coconut as far as I can tell — but the flavor is nice and fresh, so still a very enjoyable tea.

I will update this once I try more whites. So far, this seemed very bland and maybe average at best.

First infusion (185, 3 mins): Bland, very very light hint of honey. Feels very creamy smooth in the mouth.

Second infusion (185, 3:30 mins): Even more bland, hint of honey was gone.

First steep (2 min, 160): I mostly tasted black pepper, and is present in the after taste as well. Some smokey flavor as well.

Second steep (2 min, 160): Very similar to first, I may try a third steep to see if the flavor changes then.

This is my first gunpowder green, not very offensive so I’m guessing a good first start.

The dried tea has such a rich cherry scent that I was tempted to just forget the hot water and eat it out of the packet. :D Once brewed there’s a strong cherry/mixed berry flavor, although IMO too much of a tart hibiscus aftertaste. But if you’re okay with that sort of thing then I definitely recommend it.

This was my free monthly sample when I ordered from NMTeaCo online . (I love cherry but don’t like hibiscus-based fruit teas so it could have gone either way.) It’s quite a generous sample, the packet looks like it has at least 4-5 servings.

I got this on a whim when stocking up on my African Summer. The flavor is not too sweet, not too minty. While it smells very strongly of chocolate, it mainly tastes like a smooth (non-bitter) black tea with a slight chocolate aftertaste. Could probably be turned into a “dessert” tea by adding milk/sugar, but as-is it’s pretty good as a breakfast beverage.

The package of loose tea had two chocolate chips nestled on top. A cute touch (but probably not meant to be brewed).

Happy St Paddy’s Day. Since I really like Irish Breakfast, I picked this up at the store a few months ago. There is sweet scent, and a bit darker than I’m used to. The flavour is bold and smooth, with just a hint of sweet malt. Went well with my Irish cream bread pudding.

My Monday morning malty mug. There is a light maltly scent. The is dark, and bold flavour , along with being on the sweet side. Makes for a very good breakfast tea. Glad I picked some up when I visited the local shop.

It’s loud, brassy, and heavily spiced. Too much punch from the base tea; not enough balance. Lot of clove. Bitter. So bitter, and I didn’t even use boiling water. I wish I could provide a more thorough note, but I dumped this after the first few sips.

On dark and stormy mornings, have this tea. It goes well with apple pancakes and Dresden Files. There is a nice yam scent with hints of cocoa. The flavour has a nice amount of malt, sweet, yam, and a bit of chocolate. Very good. Especially in this weather.