The Tea Spot

Mmmmmmm… noticing since it has dried out that it has a wuyi-like toastiness.
I put in an absorbent pack after the store because the leaves were quite pliable.

Very sweet and delicate white tea with hints of apricots and pine needles with slight refreshing astringency.

I like to alternate between black and green teas in the morning so as not to over-caffeinate myself. This was what I chose for my morning green. The leaves smell rather sweet, they are quite long dragonwell leaves.

In taste, I get a sweet rhubarb, but not much strawberry or pure vanilla flavor. The dragonwell base comes through strong in this one and the fruit is more of an aftertaste. I smell the vanilla and strawberry in the wet leaf, but just don’t taste it. This is a decent cup, I’m glad to have tried some. Thank you Jaime for sending some my way.

Thank goodness it’s Friday. I rolled out of bed, went to the kitchen to pour my tea (bless whomever thought of/invented/perfected the One-Touch), and stood staring at the cup for a bit. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what tea I had put in last night to have this morning. Couldn’t do it.

Upon sipping, I remembered. And I also remembered telling myself that I didn’t like this tea as my first morning cuppa because of its sweetness. It’s fairly tasty, not my favorite, but won’t linger in my cabinet for years, either. I just really can’t handle being slammed by this much sweet first thing in the morning.

I realized I hadn’t made a green tea in my One-Touch yet, and decided I needed to fix that situation this morning. I picked this one up earlier this week whilst on a trek to Whole Foods for tea (though they didn’t have the one I wanted). I’d never seen tea with rhubarb in it before, so I grabbed it.

The smell is very berry, and chocolatey, with some grassy in there, too. I taste the rhubarb first, and then the berry/fruit (not sure I’d call it a true strawberry), and then green tea (which has a very good green tea taste). It’s extremely sweet, almost as though syrup has been added. It’s not bad, just very different for me, since I don’t sweeten tea. This tea would be good as an after-breakfast dessert tea. I think for me, though, it’s way too sweet to have first thing after rolling out of bed.

Found this tea to be very flavorful, fruity with hints of vanilla. I like it better as a iced tea.

I really like Tea Spot teas because they are simple and unpretentious but of a good quality. Their large tins provide a great value for a decent quality tea.

The Green Roasted Mint is a bit unusual. In fragrance, you have the obvious mint (which is very clean with no artificial qualities) but there’s a note I liken to aged paper which is probably from the roasting. Once brewed, the fragrance is a faintly smokey.

In flavor, the mint and the tea are well balanced. This is one tea that I will occasionally sweeten to bring out more of the mint.

I’ve made this iced as well and it’s pretty decent.

It’s funny that the merchant’s description includes the line “the perfect tea to help kick your coffee habit” because this IS the tea that sent me on my way to starting a tea habit.

This brews up dark and bold and can easily satisfy a coffee drinker. You know you’re drinking tea, but there’s enough body and kick that you don’t care. It will stand up to any amount of doctoring that a new tea drinker may need to apply and won’t suffer for it. There is a subtle chocolate note, but this is simply a great uncomplicated “starter” black.

This tea is one of the best things I have ever put into my mouth, including teas, foods, desserts, and wines. The trick is to use exactly the right amount of water (8 fluid ounces) and exactly the right amount of steeping time (5.0 minutes) to let the three key ingredients meld together then let it cool enough to hold it in your mouth. The chocolate finish is heavenly.

Fairly quick flavor, not much body, slight astringency at the end.

Thanks to Lena for sending me this yummy breakfast tea! I would add my own tasting note but as I read through the notes Carolyn’s note was pretty much to the TEA (lol at my own corny joke). So on this I have to say DITTO CAROLYN!!!!!!

HInts of chocolate puerh and a great black tea I really like it.

There were slight hot chocolate like aromas hiding underneath as I was finishing this one up from my stash…DH tried it as well…said he wasn’t sure about it but it did have a unique taste and he did finish the cup. I think what he wasn’t sure about is the little bit of pu-erh he was tasting this this offering as he has never had pu-erh ever before in any amount.

SIPDOWN!!!!

Backlogging…

I had a cup Sunday Night and it was much like my last cup…both of my last two cups were much better than my first.

My Husband and his brother both had a cup each as well – both with a good amount of sugar in it – and they both really liked it as well!

Since I had two satisfying cups in a row – I’m increasing the rating again…I think my secret was to double the amount…length still the same tho!

So I tried this a few more times over the weekend and enjoyed it much more than I did previously. I infused for less time about 2-3 mins – max 3. I will increase my rating for now. It’s not to shabby cold either. Actually I think I might like it a bit more cold than hot.

Prior to infusion it smells like a chocolate black flavored tea. During Infusion…Pu-erh…eeeek…BUT…the Pu-erh smell decreases the longer it steeps. Post infusion it smells of both Pu-erh and cocoa.

First sip I made a funny face…mostly because of the overwhelming Pu-erh taste.

After I let it cool just a little and decided to sip it quicker it seemed to taste a little better. Yeah…as it cools it tastes better…more even!

This is ‘ok’ and I thank Auggy for letting me try it!

I want to thank LENA for sending me this delightful tea. I liked it quite well although not enough to want to buy it. I thought of Maiden’s Ecstasy by Samovar (with which Bolder Breakfast shares some traits) when I was drinking this. The tea is, as another reviewer, the wonderful Auggy described, a pu-erh with training wheels and there’s certainly a place for that for tea-drinkers. The tea is robust and has some chocolate qualities. And yet I ask myself what is missing here?

I am not sure what it is I want. I want more of something—a je ne sais quois—to be elucidated here. Maybe I want more pu-erh or maybe I want more of the chocolate to step forward. This is a tea that may (or may not) stick in my memory and call forth an urgent order in a day or two or a week or two. That has happened to me a lot here: I’ll give a tea a good but not rave review and after I while I will find myself wanting to return to that particular taste and revise my opinion upwards.

I added some milk and a small lump of sugar.

Just holding this cup up to your nose gets you rose and jasmine smells. This is one of the few teas I have had that tastes like it smells. You get jasmine with hints of rose notes. Its a very nice sipping and relaxing tea for a Sunday afternoon.

I found this on sale at my supermarket on clearance for 3.99. The date was good so I bought it. This is a very interesting tea, you can smell the jasmine and rose petals. It is kind of an aromatherapy. The jasmine and rose flavors are light and mixed with the white tea. Its not heavy Jasmine like Andrews and Dunham Jasmine. Its a very nice tea for relaxing and sipping during the evening. This is not a tea I would drink everyday but it is good for a change of pace.

That’s the end of this sample aswell. Okay so the tea wasn’t rave-inducing, but it still made a nice difference from the Celyon/Assam/Yunnan black teas that I’m more familiar with. It makes me interested to sample other Nilgiri teas to see how they match up with this one.

Given this tea’s superficial similarity to a Darjeeling I was a bit leery about adding milk to it. Actually it turned out to be not too bad. It gives the tea some toasty-ish notes at the start of each sip and then works its way into that sort of muscatel-like flavour as it moves across my tongue. The milk colours the tea nicely too and makes it looks like an English Breakfast of some sort. It doesn’t get that cloudy, greyish colour some teas get if they don’t mesh well with milk.

The more I drink this tea the more I’m picking up the similarity to a Darjeeling. I find it interesting that two teas grown in different regions under different climate conditions could be so similar.

This is another one of the teas I got from TeaEqualsBliss in a trade.

I don’t know much about Nilgiri tea apart from the fact that it supposedly has a bit of a citrusiness and that 52Teas uses it as the base for their black tea blends. The dry leaves are so small that at first I thought they were CTC, but on closer inspection they’re just small leaf pieces. It doesn’t seem to have much of a scent, either dry or while steeping. I stood there for like a minute sniffing the tea and probably looking quite silly, but all I could pick up was a bit of a faint, sweet and slightly woodsey scent.

The brewed tea looks very red in my white ceramic mug; it’s a lovely deep shade that reminds me of red wine. The taste is fairly light for a black tea, with the start of each sip reminding me a bit of Darjeeling tea -but not as astringent. Then it turns slightly toasty before ending with an almost fruity note.