Samovar

Last night I didn’t really fall asleep until around 12:30. This was as much because I was reading something interesting than anything else. And it really wouldn’t have been a big deal. But then, The Pregnancy woke me around 4:15, and it kept me up for the rest of the morning. I finally threw in the towel a little before six, and went to read until it was a reasonable time to get ready to go into work.

So, I felt totally justified in making a big cup of ryokucha to take into work this morning. That, and Spoon’s The Underdog, has made this morning less overwhelming.

So the tasting note? It’s really good tea. My favorite genmaicha at this point, is Den’s, and though this is really, Really good, I’m not sure it beats out Den’s. I think I prefer the extra roastiness of Den’s, though now I really want to make a small cup of each and try them side by side.

However, if I were in the mood for a genmaicha, but wanted something on more of the tea side of the spectrum than the toasty side, I’d definitely go with this. And I’m super pleased to have gotten a tin of this to keep coming back to it over the next few weeks/months. Good stuff!

Really nice tea. I haven’t had many Pu-erhs, but this is easily the best. Not too earthy or strong. Interesting and delicious.

I mug-brewed two bits of this with a few wild purple chrysanthemum flowers, and it turned out very nice. The heaviness of this tea brought the chrysanthemums down to a more afternoon-tea level, I think.

However, here’s the crazy part: when I finished my mug, I took a look at the unfurled leaves, and then I went and got my camera and some fresh tea for a comparison shot:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cait_tea/4585160941/in/set-72157623664718933/

How does that fit?!

I tried steeping this for longer this time, and it turned up a really bitter aftertaste. Sugar helped, but I really don’t think that “good vehicle for milk and sugar” is what this tea is going for!

Hmm. I tried this with the mini-steeps that Life in Teacup recommends for oolongs — they seemed like a good fit for my new mini-teapot! — but I think I might try this again with the long steeping suggested by Samovar next time.

This tea smells earthy; I can’t think of another way to describe it. With short steeps, though, it tastes lighter and feels heavier than that. I had four cups in four hours — not a whole lot, really, given how teeny-tiny omg adorable this little teapot is — and I felt full and weighed down! For the fifth steep, I went for three minutes, and the resulting tea changed quite a bit: it was more complex and it tasted a bit heavier. However, it also grew bitter very quickly as it cooled.

SAMOVAR, have my babies.

Please.

This tea was a total shock. Seriously. Total shock. I can’t believe how much I’m loving this. Really, really loving this. Obsessed with the amazingness.

I’m officially a Japanese green convert. I heart Japanese greens.

I could drink this tea all day. Seriously.

I just… oh man. This tea. Awesome. Incarnate.

Okay, okay, I need to calm down, that way I can write a coherent review. Phew.

I’m just so excited because I really thought this is going to be a throwaway. I mean, I’ve had yuzu before. One of the restaurants I went to a while ago had yuzu salt for their steamed edamame. I’ve had yuzu sorbet at another Japanese restaurant. Yuzu is a pretty bright and clean-tasting citrus fruit, and it’s pretty tasty. Sure, I’ve never had it as a stand-alone thing, but I’m pretty sure of the flavor.

Anyway, this tea is quite gorgeous. The sencha here varies from a very light green to darker green, it’s a bit powdery at parts, and it’s mixed in with a whole load of tried yuzu pieces. The smell of it is mainly that grassy sencha, mixed with a slight citrus note.

I actually put a teaspoon of this into my warmed pot, and the smell coming off it was awesome. Almost completely sencha, but really buttery and warm. Mmmmm.

So anyway, I steeped this up quickly, and I loved the clear, light-neon-green liquid that emerged. The smell I’m getting off of it is rich and creamy and grass and so very Japanese green. And the taste… man. Let’s rhapsodize on the taste, because this was an experience.

The main flavor here is definitely the sencha. It’s light, but full-bodied at the same time, and bursting with flavor. It’s very grassy, but so smooth and peppered with notes of butter and creamy goodness that it’s pretty awesome. The yuzu is a bright afternote of citrus that’s very clean and refreshing and invigorating. It’s clearly distinctly yuzu, as well. Not any other citrus.

The yuzu-citrus-sweet-tart builds as you take multiple sips in a row, mixed with a green sweetness that tastes like you just ate the most wonderful field filled with dew-dropped delicious edible grass.

It’s seriously delicious.

The second steep (:20 secs, 160 degrees) was just as good, if not better than the first. I’m serious. Because now the yuzu and the sencha have sort of swapped places on the flavor totem pole, and the yuzu is more strongly highlighted. It’s almost lime-y sweet, not bracing or biting, but calm and smooth. The sencha notes are sublime here as well. It doesn’t taste tired or weak.

It just tastes like pure awesome.

takgoti, how do I love thee. Let me count the ways. You’ve introduced me to one of the best tea companies ever, Samovar. You’ve sent me amazing samples of tea, such as this yuzu sencha, which wasn’t even on my radar because it sounds so… MUNDANE. But it’s totally not. It’s a flavor festival of epic proportions. It’s grass shot through with sunshine and golden happiness.

I am on such a tea high right now. I am so giddy right now over this stuff. LOVE. LOVE LOVE LOVE.

Ohhh my…
Nutty and sweet. It first I thought is was going to just be a nice white tea like all of the others… and then I hit the after taste.
I’m getting hint of floral sweetness and honey? I feels like a richer sweet than just sugar…
In a couple of days I’ll have this tea all figured out but, until then I’m just gonna sip.

mmm today this tea is reminding me of gouda cheese… isn’t that horrible.
I think it’s just the smokiness of it.
Again this tea is very smooth with nothing in it but, today the smoke has a sharpness to it.
Still yummy. Still not an every day tea.

Well! I have finally ordered something from samovar! To many glowing recommendations not to honestly.
So this is my first tea from them ever!
It smells smokey like a lapsang. I really was not expecting that but, it’s all cool man.
Since my boyfriend likes bacon so much I called him over for a sip and his first comment was that it smelled weird. I explained what a lapsang was and then he got it. Suprisingly to me, he didn’t like it. I figured he wouldn’t mind it since it was more manly. Oh well.
Anyways… I tried it plain first and I am really pleasantly surprised by the fact it needs absolutely nothing for me to enjoy it. Usually I need smokier teas to have a little sugar to bring out the under lying sweetness and take away some of the tannins.
This needs nothing at all to be extremely flavorful and smooth.
The flavor hits in three parts with an initial smokey burst followed by a smooth black tea impression and then it’s surprisingly sweet.
I’m gonna go enjoy my pot now. Yum.

Brews up an intense lemon-lime green color. Smells roasty. Silky smooth mouth feel. Tastes liked puffed rice and sea weed with a little vegetable sweetness like carrots.

Smells intensely lavender with a bergamot zing. Tastes smooth and sweet like honey with neither the lavender nor bergamot overpowering. A little more bergamot in the initial taste and more lavender in the finish. Brews up deep copper.

I’ll be honest, I’m normally a darker tea kind of guy… I like deep, complex flavours, and as I’ve recently discovered I’m not a fan of added novelty flavours like caramel or coffee because they don’t taste like what I expect…

That said, this is a very light tea. A very, very light tea. However, somehow it manages to be on the right side of the “tastes like water” fence. It has just enough going for it to give it a unique, calming tea with almost some sort of buttery finale.

I had some sort of food poisoning last night so my body was recovering from a long battle (that it lost). I wanted to treat it to some sort of soft, calming tea.

I believe I chose the right one for the job.

It is spring break at the University I work at, and no students = no work! I am bored to tears. I have already tidied my desk, organized my email and read the entire internet, and it’s only 2:20!!!

I’ll make some tea!

This one courtesy of the amazing takgoti too!!!!

The first thing that I noticed is that the leaves are gorgeous. Long dark and wiry!!

I am taking some sips before I add any additions because I filled my cup up too much! Mmmmm!!! I am getting a smooth lemony flavor. I have now added some sugar and milk and it’s a little weak for my tastes. I’m getting that lemon powdered sugar that I get with teas that aren’t as robust as I like. I think I should have taken it with a touch of sugar and no milk. Noted for next time because I have about 2 teaspoons of leaves left :) This will be nice to try for the days when I don’t have milk with me at work but want a black tea. I bet this would also be super iced.

Smells earthy and raisin sweet. Tastes of cocoa and sage. Not as sweet as the fragrance suggests. Mildly astringent. Liquor the color of cherry wood.

Based on a true story:

The life of the would-be author is as stymied in the modern era by a blank screen as those who went before found themselves daunted by the empty page. The subconscious processes data in images, symbols, rather than words, and so words are in themselves merely placeholders for symbols, and symbols are powerful things. We assign them omenic power over our creativity, but perhaps none of them are so potent as the empty page, significant not for what it contains but what it does not.

The difference, one supposes, is the readiness with which the screen can be made to do distracting tricks, all of the colorful, noisy glamour of the modern era at the touch of the button. Procrastination is practically effortless.

A piece of paper will simply lie there and stare you down. I’m not disciplined enough as a writer yet to win that particular staring contest. Not that I can claim to have beaten the blinking of an upright cursor yet either, mind you; that infernal flickering line is fairly adept at marking the endless stretches of minutes during which absolutely nothing of any value occurs to me to type about or, worse, I find midway through my typing that what I’m typing has none.

Blast it.

I have to be in the mood for this tea. There are times when the immense pressure to create something (see: sludge into a diamonds) sends me running for the cabinet in search of something comforting. You’ve (I’ve) got to get out of the trenches, abandon the maginot, and convalesce.

Sit. Sip. Ruminate. You get to a point where you think in words, after a time, which would be horrifying if you didn’t like them so much. If you didn’t enjoy them beyond the point of practical decency, even; to a point of near-obscenity, nursing a deep and secret love of language at the very real peril of turning your lexicon into a purple, frothy, reprehensibly verbose mess. Place them mindfully onto the page, don’t sick them up everywhere, for the love of all that’s holy! But these words exist, anyway: bituminous, intaglio, abrogate, effulgent. Mental snack food, chewy and easy to over-do it with, completely without substance in and of themselves.

Still, you sit and sip the tea and indulge in a few minutes of shameless inventory of various adjectives to describe it, and finally arrive at the right one.

This tea, I think to myself, when properly timed, is sublime.

So you stop, and mull, and look into your cup.

Sublime: it is a word that has roots of slightly muddy origin. Generally assumed in casual conversation to be synonymous in many ways with ‘divine’, there is a great deal more to the nature of the word than first appearances suggest; its etymology connects it to ‘lintel’ (Latin: ‘limen’) — the crossbeam that forms the apex of a doorway. ‘Sublime’ must therefore be extracted thus: to pass beneath a threshold, therefore through a door. The awe and divinity encapsulated within the word are very specific, then, as pertaining to the exaltation and rapturous euphoria one experiences as they pass into the unknown across some threshold, real or imagined.

In this roundabout way, you come across the hot iron of a fresh idea, and strike. The tragedy in the tale is that the cup of tea that served as your muse for the evening sits nearby, nearly-and-not-quite finished, and goes cold, but in a surprise twist, is every bit as sweet on the tepid finish as it was a few minutes — no…what, really?…make that…two hours? — before, when it came to your rescue while you flagged at the keys.

Admittedly this is not the first time I’ve had this tea. The first time I tried it, I’m sorry to say I didn’t even finish my cup.

And it’s a good tea. There’s not really any debate as to the quality of it, or that it promises you the sweetness of osmanthus blossoms alongside the subtle sweetness of a fruity white tea. Those things are all present and accounted for.

It’s the matter of what osmanthus blossoms smell and taste like, and whether or not you’re in the mood for them, I suppose. It’s a very particular sort of floral, in the sense that jasmine tea or rose tea are a very particular sort of floral. Above and beyond the vague description of ‘floral’ for things like oolongs, there is no way to escape the fact that osmanthus infuses every last corner of this tea. On my first encounter with it, I think I was entirely undesirous of steeping myself in that particular aroma and taste.

Tonight, a different story. It was good enough to brew twice, as a matter of fact, and I enjoyed the taste both hot and cold. When the cup has cooled you’re free to find a little bit more of the sweetness they promise, but I would still not call this a particularly sweet white. Osmanthus seems to hint at honeysuckle and apricot without delivering a tangible sweetness, as though what you experience is more like the memory of those things rather than their presence.

All in all, a good and subtle cup, and one I’m glad I gave another chance to…unique and different, and probably inimitable, the only tea that will do when this is the tea you’re wanting.