Samovar

Finally trying out my Ryokucha sample from Samovar. The toasted rice is the most powerful flavor (no, I haven’t had genmaicha before, why do you ask?), though I get more creamy green tea if I swirl before sipping (so the matcha isn’t all settled to the bottom). This is really nice, though not very… green, in taste. Very green in color! A lovely pale sea/spring green.

This has a serious caffeine kick, by the way. I can feel it going to my head, and incidentally, taking care of the headache I woke up with today!

Will update with steeps 2 and 3.
Steep 2, at 185°F, is almost identical to the first: a little less toasted rice and a little more green tea, but otherwise very similar. Pale green color, and still some matcha settling to the bottom of my cup.
Steep 3 had less matcha :( but was still pretty good

The aroma is like a citrusy solvent or cleaning solution. Intense and almost overwhelming. The taste is much smoother, like a very mellow earl grey. Rooibos and bergamot flavors are bright and fresh. Very little black tea flavor and only a hint of the lychee. No noticeable astringency. Medium copper in the cup.

Edit: I need to lower my rating as I’m having trouble finishing this. The aroma is really overwhelming for me. While the taste is pleasant, I just can’t get past the aroma. I think I’ve figured it out: Bergamot + Rooibos + Lapsang = Pinesol (for me anyway).

Brews up dark reddish brown. A sharp pine smoke aroma tickles my nose. The taste is dominated by a fine balance of smoke and lychee. The finish is cereal and resin.

Fairly mild for a breakfast blend. If I didn’t know it was a Yunnan, I would have guessed this was primarily a Sri Lankan tea. The aroma is salty and vegetal. The taste is a mild bread and butter taste like a buttered dinner roll. A gentle, neutral sweetness. Moderate astringency. Medium amber colored liquor.

This has got to be one of my favorite Samovar teas.

Just got home from a long day at work, feet are killing me, I’m just beat. I ended up having stir fry for dinner, and this tea makes a great after meal tea. It really helped offset the oily tastes from this stir fry. After eating a bowl of the stir fry, I was fairly full, but after drinking this tea, I now feel much more satisfied as far as fullness is concerned. This tea could definitely be a meal on it’s own.

The first sip, this tea has a nice nuttiness to it, like most genmaicha. But a couple sips after that the nuttiness gets a bit sweeter, and for some reason brings thoughts of Cracker Jacks, just with a little less caramel flavor. With the following sips, intertwined with the sweet/roasted nut/popcorn-like flavor from the genmai, are nice hints of mildly sweet grass-like flavors from the sencha.

I really enjoy genmaicha, I probably drank it almost half the time that I was visiting my girlfriend (she is a JET) in Japan (which wasn’t too long, about a week and a half, but what an amazing week and a half). So drinking this always kind of brings back nice memories. But with this tea, there is one thing that sets it apart from the others. There is an amazing full bodied milkiness to this tea due to the matcha. The sweet, toasty, creaminess is just amazing.

The color and aroma of this are both amazing. The deep green color is just amazing, I guess from the matcha. I can definitely relate the smell to brine with hints of grass. Almost reminds me of opening a jar of lotus root in brine that you would get from an international food market. While not one of the most amazing of smells, it is definitely recognizable.

2nd Steep: 5 minutes – Still nutty and a bit creamy. There is a little bit of residual matcha in this steeping. The color comparison of the first and second steep are like night and day. Second steep gives off a slightly green/amber color.

3rd Steep: 8 minutes – Pretty much tastes like a typical genmaicha, which is not a problem at all with me since I like genmaicha.

The vanilla flavor is light and very well balanced with the natural tea flavor. Beneath the vanilla, the taste is earthy with currants. The aroma is mild vanilla and oak. The vanilla is dominant in the aftertaste. Mild astringency. Liquor brews up copper colored.

How have I not had this one before? I would have paid more attention to it if I had know I hadn’t logged it before. Oops!

Smells of dark, exotic jasmine. Not overpoweringly but just strong enough. Really pretty. Mouthwatering. Mmm. The flavor is a lot like the smell. Very dark and exotic. Like a dark purple flower. If you ate it. Okay, maybe not, but if a dark purple rainforest-y flower had a non-flower taste, it’d taste like this. With a light sweetness of jasmine laid on top of it. I’m guessing that dark, lovely flavor is from the Silver Needle which is pretty nifty since I’ve yet to find a plain Silver Needle that doesn’t make me think of soybean water. So this makes me hopeful that I can find a SN that is yummy, not like boiled veggie water. Because this is lovely. My cup went away very quickly.
5.9g/12oz

The smell of this tea reminds me of a farm. Maybe that’s they hay that Samovar mentioned. It also smells lightly sweet.

Whoa, this is way sweeter than I thought it would be. It’s fruity and floral and I totally wasn’t expecting that. I can taste tangerine or some kind of citrus as well as just a hint of something floral. This is a great tea. It’s gentle and kind, but sweet at the same time. I can totally see myself ordering this again. This tea ranks very high on my list of favorites.

I wasn’t sure about the smell when I first opened the tin, but the flavor has turned out to be delicious. Very tart, but with enough sweetness to balance it out.

I think I drank this tea under it’s name of “Makai Black” direct from the Tea Hawaii Company, owned by Eva Lee and her husband. I received it from my sister, who lives in Hawaii, and I’m waiting to hear the story of how she obtained it.
See my tasting notes under “Makai Black” by Tea Hawaii.

What can I say about this savory little beauty? When I open my sample packet and took a sniff I thought " Oh wow, this smells yummy" as in orange, blood orange yummy it smelled not like an artificially orange flavor but like the real thing just not quite as strong. Then I did the pour water over (Yes I followed the instructions) and then the actual steep and I start to get the dreaded pu erh fishy smell but not as sharp as other fishy smelling pu erh’s I’ve tried. This fishy smell is tolerable it’s actually quite tolerable even. Then I take a sip and the orange pu erh taste fills your mouth and you think NOW this is a good pu erh! I have had other orange pu erh’s so I can safely say this is the best one I have tried. I own another orange peel ginger pu erh that is pretty good and I enjoy it too but the ginger feel in that Pu erh is like going to P.F. Changs and having a meal this pu erh it’s like an appetizer. You know when you order the appetizer and it’s sooo good that you think How can the meal outdo this I wish I would’ve just ordered more of this appetizer! It’s like that it’s the awesome appetizer that is better than the meal! If that makes since?

The color is beautiful it a dark red, orange black color. Back to the taste it also leaves an orange aftertaste and I really appreciate that as most other flavored pu erh’s I have tried just leave me with a pu erh after taste. I like this I may order more very soon!

Dry leaves smell like sandlewood. Wet, they smell like tomatoes. Liquor brews up pale reddish amber and has a bit of the tomato smell of the leaves along with a salty smell similar to the Adagio Irish Breakfast I had earlier. I’ve had other breakfast blends with a similar nose. Is this characteristic of Sri Lankan Teas? The flavor is bright but fairly neutral. I do get a hint of raspberries. A roasty aftertaste that dissipates quickly.

Okay so you all have me very intrigued by your awesome reviews of Samovar Teas. I placed an order of about 8 samples and got it in the mail today (yea!). I thought since it ‘s late afternoon I should start with something mellow sorta low key and so I picked Downy Sprout. As I believe it was Takgoti who mentioned the leaves are beautiful like green and fuzzy and they are beautiful I agree. I steep the leaves for 2 minutes and out came this champagne colored liquor (another quote from Takgoti’s tasting note) there’s simply no other color match that better suits it other than Champagne color. The nose is a cross between fresh hay and tea and I do love the smell of fresh hay so that’s a compliment. The taste is buttery and I don’t know why but I just want to say the flavor is calm? I guess because it is very relaxing not alot of flavors going on I mean it is an unflavored white tea so I didn’t expect alot of flavors to be going on and it’s quite pleasant nice actually. There’s a very light flavor that I can’t quite place which is probably because I haven’t had anything with this flavor. It has no bitterness and it seems almost like a honeysuckle flavor when I slurp it I definently get honeysuckle but when I just sip the honeysuckle is not so noticeable. A very classy cuppa in my opinion a very sophisticated tea (if tea can be called sophisTEAcated) So this tea note comes to end along with my first cup of Downy Sprout.

Update: Bumping up rating I steeped it for the second time this morning and it was more enjoyable.

Bumpin’ this down a bit. Not because it’s not good — it is — but because it doesn’t any longer belong in my ‘gotta have this on-hand’ bracket. There are a few other places I think I’ll be going for my savory-sweet-spicy-floral-buttery TGY or Ali Shan fix instead. It’s expensive leaf all-around, generally, but a few others I’ve tried have had a fuller flavor profile, and I miss it when it isn’t there.

Won’t have any trouble going through this though. I’ve been unusually heavy on the leaf because I’m trying to clear it out of my cabinet and don’t feel the need to be so miserly with it anymore. It brings out that soft spice beneath all of the floral, which is fun.

And now, a public letter to my zorapot:

Dear Zorapot,

You are fun. I like to watch my oolong leaves rehydrate in your belly, and your stainless steel lines please me, but why must you occasionally leak? Why must it be so difficult to be certain that your mouth is sealed on the rubber when I close you up?

Please do not leak all over my desk, and especially do not look as though you aren’t leaking when I check you, then wait to leak until I leave the room to get something, then begin leaking copiously near the laptop that I’m writing a novel on.

Smooches,
Maggie.

Yum.

I’ve actually had this one before now and not gotten around to logging it. It’s one of those teas I tend to reach for when I’m frazzled or overcaffeinated or exhausted or the weather is grey and awful and I want to hibernate — and I live in Boston, so this is often — and all of those states usually result in a total lack of interest to write coherently about what I’m drinking. This morning I eagerly took my tin of A&D’s Caravan down from the shelf thinking I’d like to try it, only to discover that the stupid Zojirushi was on 175. Foiled! What could I have at 175 that would…

A-ha.

And so, this tea. It’s a beautiful oolong. Samovar recommends 1-2 tablespoons for 16oz. of water, just shy of boiling. I deviate from this in about every single possible way. 2 tablespoons in 16oz sounds incredibly overpowering — I do two teaspoons in 16oz, and the resulting cup is never watery. One day, when I have a good yixing teapot to devote to this kind of thing and I want to super-saturate myself, I will try two tablespoons…but for now, two teaspoons seems to be more than enough.

I also can’t bring myself to use very hot water on the tea. I’ve thought about trying it several times just to see what would change, but these cups are rather pricey, and I know that I like this cup at 175, so I’ve been uninclined to chance it.

It brews up beautifully…that delicate yellow with the faintest edge of pale green that you get with a ti kuan yin or ali shan. Those are the oolong types that this reminds me of: buttery, a bit floral — gardenias are a good comparison, but this floral is less ‘waxy’ and not quite as cloying as gardenias can get — with quiet undertones of something oolong-nutty as well as a chlorophyl green-ness. What I like most about this tea is that the chlorophyl-ish taste — which they’re pinning as ‘clover’, and I can definitely see that — isn’t an astringent sharpness toward the end of the sip, the way that I’ve experienced with some other similar oolongs. The tail end of this sip seems to round itself off in my mouth, remaining buttery and full-bodied rather than thinning out to threads of super-green vegetal flavor…if that even makes any sense. The mouthfeel is substantial, very heavy and smooth.

Ahhh. So good. It will almost be a shame to obliterate the aftertaste of this tea with a cup of Caravan.

No time to worry about that! Onward and forward into uncharted territories!

Ignore the fallen! (/Harbinger)

*edit: Ha. Note to self: close-tags on steepster interpreted properly. Whoops.

The amazing takgoti sent me this tea!!! My first Samovar tea!!!

I made a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing this weekend, and we had two pieces left – I thought that this tea would go well!

First off, the scent is heavenly. The tea tastes almost like it has spirits in it! A vanilla bourbon flavor that is different than any vanilla tea I’ve ever had. It combines with the sweet maltiness of the Yunnan for such a full bodied taste! Having a high quality tea base really makes a difference. It also held up well to the dense dessert.

I KNOW it didn’t have any alcohol in it, but I feel a bit tipsy! I must be drunk on deliciousness!!!