The Persimmon Tree Tea Company

I love oolong tea and I love jasmine, so I had high hopes for this tea. Perhaps I was expecting too much because it was simply ho-hum. I brewed my first cup at 195 and the second one at 185 for 3 minutes. Both times I got a full-bodied jasmine flavor followed by a bitter aftertaste. Weird. I’ll stick with jasmine green tea for now.

This is a great herbal tea. I’ve had it two nights in a row, and now my sample is depleted. Time to order more! Enough about that, though.

I’m always on the hunt for a soothing nighttime tea with an interesting twist. This one fits the bill. It calms me after a hectic day and soothes my stomach. It’s a mild tea with subtle notes of ginger and chamomile…and something else. I imagine I’m tasting the ginseng, but I’m not sure what ginseng is supposed to taste like. Oh well. It’s a pleasant taste, and that’s all that matters.

Uh-oh. This smelled a bit soapy before I steeped it. I’ve heard stories about coconut going bad, and now I’m worried to drink this! Of course, I just showered, so it could also be that..
After steeping, it still smells of that delicious bakey coconuty smell that I was expecting. Maybe it hasn’t gone bad!
Hmm, so there’s definitely not as much taste, most likely because I’ve had this for a while, but it doesn’t taste bad. I’ll have to finish the rest of this off quickly just in case!

I drank this as a way to power through my three hour exam yesterday morning. I don’t remember much of the flavor, but I kept drinking it, so it must have been good! I do remember that I quite enjoyed the smell. One more exam to go for the semester!

On a side note, I’m going to be in Huston next week. Anyone know of any good tea places?

I’ve noticed a lot of the reviews of this mention an odd smell before steeping. Mine, however, was all creamy coconut with a bit of an earthy smell. Maybe there was a bad batch going around at one point? As soon as the water hit the leaves, I got this really delicious smell of some kind of baking coconut cake amazingness. I drank this along with my Greek chicken salad. I really enjoy the way the flavors are mixing together here. The coconut isn’t super strong here, it’s more subtle and adding a creaminess to the puerh than being a BAMINYOURFACECOCONUT flavor.

While waiting for tea to steep earlier this evening (er… last night more accurately, I suppose!) I noticed that these pearls were still sitting in my gaiwan, waiting to unfold all the way. I was in the mood for an iced floral tea so I thought why not brew up a cupful and stick it in the fridge!

I ended up using 5 steeps of this in a small glass, which I popped into the fridge and pulled out a few hours later. Delicious iced! And most surprisingly, that makes 9 steeps in total that I got out of these. Nine! And given how strong the iced tea was I’m pretty sure there were several more in there (though alas, I threw out my leaves already).

Perhaps most surprising is the fact that while the first 4 steeps were lighter on the jasmine it got more dominant as I went along. I can definitely see myself picking up a tin of these in the future, I mean you really can’t beat 9 steeps that are still strong on the jasmine! Upping the rating a bit~

I committed a tea crime with these beautiful pearls! I was preparing a tea package for one of my friends who is just getting into the wide world of loose leaf—I split a good chunk of my Ovation order with her, and I wanted to include some samples of other brands as well. She loves jasmine so I thought I just had to put in some pearls—my little sample packet of this was lying on the table next to the box and I thought perfect! But I had not tried them yet and that won’t do, so I put a cupful in the nearest thing I could find—my gaiwan.

Later that night I really wanted jasmine and was dead tired and didn’t feel like switching to my Ingenuitea which still needed a rinsing out, so I just brewed them up in the gaiwan! But I was not feeling like sitting around trying all the different steeps so I brewed them up 4 times and dumped it all in the same mug. Without tasting the differences! I know, horrifying. But it worked out pretty well!

After 4 steeps these pearls had not fully unfurled so I am saving them for a few more steeps later. This is a really light and sweet jasmine tea, the floral elements aren’t at all soapy and in fact they are very soft, not in-your-face jasmine at all (though that might be because of the steeping method?). This reminds me of the tea you get after a meal of really good Chinese food—fancy restaurant kind, not takeout, where they serve wonderful jasmine blends at the end (that are properly brewed—I have had some very bitter restaurant teas). Sweet green to just perfectly cap off a meal!

Trying this even though my mouth is contaminated with too spicy freezer pizza. I can smell cinnamon and apple in the brewed tea and that’s making me a bit reluctant to take a sip. I am not a fan of cinnamon at all.

And it definitely tastes of far too much cinnamon for my tastebuds. I’m quite impressed with the apple flavour though. It actually tastes like apple rather than just ‘sourish fruit’ taste. I just wish it weren’t paired with cinnamon, though I know it’s fairly common to do that in baked goods. The peach flavour really only lends itself to tasting some over the top fruity flavour which is not doing this tea any favours either. Don’t like. Glad I only had the one sample.

Slow morning. It looks like this week will be more normal since I’m not sick anymore, nor the husband. Though, the weird thing is that my husband’s work contract ended, and during his downtime, he’s farting around the house. Maybe this be a good time to teach him how to make me a good cup of tea?

I haven’t had a good Earl Grey in awhile and I found myself craving it this morning. I took a chance on some bagged earl grey on the ship and it was disgustingly bitter and flat citrus. Yum, luckily I have good earl grey at home! I like the creamy and the smooth black tea base. No flat or bitter at all! I dug up my blog review on this tea if you want to read more http://oolongowl.com/earl-grey-heaven-from-the-persimmon-tree-tea-review/

Oh yeah, this tea just hit the spot!

I’m having pumpkin bread pudding for breakfast. I opened a can of pumpkin the other day to make pumpkin snickerdoodles, but had so much pumpkin leftover I made pumpkin pancakes the day after, and today is pumpkin bread pudding (with my own homemade bread of course!)

I took one sip of Earl Grey Creme and was like “Daaannng this is good.” So smooth! I added some soymilk and honey to mellow out the tea and bergamont. Great pairing with the pumpkin bread pudding. Oh man I love bread pudding!
(recipe? http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pumpkin-Bread-Pudding-240275)

Another sleepy morning. Brazilian Jiu jitsu was really tiring last night. And sweaty! UGG! In BJJ we wear thick gis, which absorb the sweat (ew) – when we do no gi (so just workout top and shorts) the sweat is everywhere. So, my last sparring partner’s clothes felt all over like a wet towel. EWWW! After that, it was shower, crawl into bed. Wake up, crawl out of bed for breakfast and tea.

Mmm, earl grey creme? This came out really good and is waking me up. Love the creamyness and that nice wave of bergamont! My cup cooled as I went for tiger balm and petting my bunny Benson – EGH is still creamy and yummy!

This is the best loose leaf Earl Grey I’ve had so far. I love the creamyness and the good level of bergamont flavor!

Full review on my tea blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/earl-grey-heaven-from-the-persimmon-tree-tea-review/
I’m super happy with the close up shot I took of this tea!

I have not ventured out very far into the world of green teas, so this was an interesting one for me. I like rooibos, but have never tried a green tea/rooibos blend. The flavor is pretty earthy and then follows up with caramel at the end. The caramel comes out a bit more as the tea cools. I’m just going to keep drinking and see how it goes. Thank you yappychappy!

Last cup of tea for the night. Thanks Alphakitty for this sample! This tea smells entirely of fresh, soft coconut. There is really nothing artificial in the smell, and it reminds me of the aroma of coconut water. The flavor is very vegetal to me, but is followed by a fresh, true coconut finish. The flavor becomes a lot more mellow and smooth as it cools, and it looses some of the white tea flavor. I’m enjoying this cup right now and am glad I got a chance to try it, but I don’t know if I would add it to my list to purchase. Maybe a small pack to have a cup of every once in awhile!

-Dry blend has large fuzzy green tea leaves, slivers of coconut and small blue and orange petals.
-Dry leaves smell faintly of nutty coconut. Tea liquor aroma is of soft fresh coconut.
-Tea liquor is a bright medium yellow color.
-Vegetal flavor with a real coconut finish. Smooth mouthfeel.
-Best with sweetener.
-Very good tea. Light true coconut flavor that becomes more bold as it cools.

I received a sample of this from someone. I don’t remember who because it just got mixed in with all of the other samples D: So thank you to whoever sent me this!!
The aroma is nice. I’ll admit I kind of like the rooibos and black tea together. The rooibos gives it that baked kind of flavor. To me all of the flavors kind of blend together. Not really impressed with this tea.. I just like it. It’s an ok tea.

I think I got this sample from momo but I’m not entirely sure. I opened the envelope from her last week and then it got mixed with other stuff.

Anyway, I didn’t realize this was a pu-erh tea. Generally I do NOT like pu-erh teas, but I haven’t tried a flavoured one before now so this may be what the doctor ordered. Possibly a gateway drug into the world of pu-erh? I had another sample of this directly from The Persimmon Tree, but since I got this sample from my trader friend, I sent that one off to someone else. The sample I got was just enough for a normal sized pot for me, maybe a little weaker than it nominally would be, but that’s not a bad thing.

I’m drinking this now and while the coconut and cacao work well together and taste good, I’m still not liking the base tea very much. It adds a flavour to the taste and especially to the aftertaste that is musty and earthy and very pu-erh if that makes sense and it’s just not to my taste. It is an interesting tea though. Definitely weaker than I might be expecting otherwise but I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to finish this pot. Just had a big gulp and it made the pu-erh flavour worse.

Glad I got to try this but it just confirmed my feelings on pu-erh tea.

I remember not loving this tea the first time I had it. I didn’t necessarily dislike it but the citrus was too strong and a bit bitter—either I got a weird batch, there was some cross-contamination in the sample, or I over-leafed my cold brew. But this has such rave reviews I wanted to give it another shot, so I threw a sample of it into my last Persimmon Tree order.

So much better this time! The vanilla is sweet and creamy, they could totally call this “vanilla pudding tea” it would be quite accurate. Delish! And the cirtusy vibe is softer now, in the background and cuts the vanilla a bit making it a light and refreshing brew despite the dessert-y quality of the vanilla.

I think DavidsTea’s Vanilla Orchid is my current favorite vanilla oolong (and boy are there a lot of them!) but this is close behind. It reminds me so strongly of the Tea Merchant’s Silk Dragon, but if you look closely between them, Persimmon Tree and Art of Tea many of the blends are near-identical! Persimmon will always be my favorite though because of their great customer service, sample sizes and loyalty program. It’s funny how much difference things like that can make when you’re shopping for tea!

Thanks to Azzrian for this sample! This has been on my list of teas to try for a loooong time, yet somehow I always forgot to order it. In fact, I placed an order at Persimmon right before I was sent this and somehow didn’t put a sample in my cart. Ah, my brain is a funny thing. Anyway, this one has such amazing reviews and I love oolongs so there’s no way I could pass it up!

I think I did something wrong here, so I am going to hold off rating it for now. I cold brewed it for the usual 12 hours, and the vanilla was totally overpowering! There was a nice citrus note in the background and the oolong base was lovely and bright and floral, but I found my palette overwhelmed by vanilla. It was… frosting-y, which is quite weird since pretty much everyone else says there’s just a hint of it. I have enough for a few more tries though!

Thanks to The Persimmon Tree for including this sample in my order. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have ordered it myself so this must be a freebie.

The jury is still out on whether or not I actually like jasmine. I had some Jasmine Phoenix Pearls the other week that were pretty good, but I’m liking the jasmine in this one much less than that. The passion fruit is nice and the green tea is strong but bearable (I only like a few green teas so far). I can’t really taste that there is black tea in this at all. The jasmine is quite strong though.

I guess this is a good blend. I don’t hate it and I’ll drink the rest of my pot.

Sample, thanks to Kasumi no Chajin! TY!

Soo thirsty, but I got really distracted watching korean dramas and browsing red bean pancake recipes. Decided to give this sample a go – Iced because I wanted something.. iced. So, I steeped this over ice and orange slices. No sugar.

Pretty good flavor. It’s tangy and tart with some mellow chamomile. I don’t pick up the mint, but bit of a herb taste. Probably my orange slice is messing with flavor a bit, but is a good, unsweetened iced tea. I don’t think i’d order this, but hey – was good to try!

First off, from reading others’ reviews just now… I really have a craving to try this blend iced now!!

Ingredients: Organic White Peony Loose-Leaf Tea, Organic Strawberries, Marigolds, Ginger Root, Natural Flavors, Guava White Tea

Smell: A very mild scent, not too strong at all. It is a blend that you would have to come up close to the cup while it steeped to get a nice smell of it. It is a refreshing smell, sort of like a small citrus forest.

Taste: Subtle flavouring for sure, but it is nice like that. I prepared this blend with no sugar (thankfully) because it has a very sweet base to it. If sugar was added, I think it would make a great iced tea mix for those cool summer days. However, I don’t really taste as much as the strawberry flavour I would usually like. I tasted the ginger more than the strawberries (my boyfriend tastes less ginger and more strawberries though, lol). Overall, I think this is a great light tea, with medium caffeine intake and if you usually enjoy guava there is no reason why you should not try this excellent blend.

First Sip Thought: I started to sing Mellow Yellow in my head. (tea brews into a beautiful yellow colour)

www.theteacupoflife.blogspot.ca

Yummers…will prob sip on this until I cannot sip on it anymore…see other notes…have a great weekend!

I believe it was Azzrian who sent me some of this and I had it yesterday and remembered to jot down a few tasting notes about it to add them here today. I was not able to find this tea on their site, however. Regardless it was tasty! It was a nicely done tropical flavored tea as well as a nicely done flavored green. The green tea base was not too grassy and not too floral…it was just right. The Tropical Flavors were at the right level of intensity as well! I was pleased with this one!

Thank you alphakitty for this sample.

Though green teas are not my favourite, this is a pretty tolerable green tea. The green is especially forceful at the beginning of the sip with the caramel coming in toward the end and strong in the aftertaste, which lingers briefly. The flavour is stronger and brighter when cooled, sort of smothered when hot. I don’t want to drink this again, but I’m glad I tried it. It’s been a green tea day.