Upton Tea Imports

Woke up a little groggy so this strong tea is what was called for. This is one of my favorite blends as I like the malty taste of the assams in the blend. Very strong, no bitterness and a touch of astringency. Its cold, rainy and a little snow here so a strong delicious tea is called for. My stash is getting low as I use this for iced also. Almost time to order more which is no problem as it is very inexpensive which is a plus.
3g/8oz

This is one great breakfast tea, brisk, robust, and has the astringency of an assam with just a little bitterness. I’m getting low and will have to reorder soon.

This tea is brisk, robust, and everything else you want in a breakfast tea. It has the astringency and the slight bitterness that you would find in an assam tea. A very nice tasty tea to wake up to in the morning.

This tea really hits the spot this morning. This is not a meek tea, its brisk, robust, while having the astringency of a breakfast tea. It will wake you in the morning. I’m getting to the bottom of my tin which means I have to get more. I love it hot in the morning and my wife loves it iced. This is a tea that will always be in my cupboard if I have anything to do with it. It is a fantastic tea.

I awoke sleepy this morning and I just had to have a cup of this wonderful eye-opening brisk, robust tea. You can taste the assam and ceylon teas and the malty taste. It has the slight bitterness and the astringency of a breakfast tea. Very nice.

Back on the ice tea kick again. I made this for my wife and she loves it. She said, “buy more of this tea”. I blinked and looked at her and said, “your kidding right”. She said, “Nope, I’m serious, this makes fantastic ice tea”. I may make a tea drinker of her yet. I just used JacquelineM’s recipe and used splenda instead of sugar. Now I have to go and buy more tea.

Yeah, I made ice tea also using JacquelineM’s recipe. Its just as good as she said it was. I left out the tazo and used splenda. Been drinking this and watching basketball all day.
The only thing different is I can still buy more tea.

This tea has a lot of flavor. Its robust and brisk and has a thick malty smell and taste like assam teas. It actually reminds me of coffee in the morning. The mouthfeel is there along with the caffeine kick. This is a great tea to wake up to.

This has to be one of the best breakfast blends I have drank. I can taste the assam and it makes for one brisk robust cup of tea. The tea steeps up a dark amber color. It will really wake you up and its a very clean cup of tea. Its very smooth with no bitterness and just a touch of astringency. This very well may become my go to breakfast tea.

I bought a bunch of samples from Upton, and this certainly seemed intriguing. I used about half the 6g sample packet in a mug of 100°C water, steeping for 8 minutes.

Given that this is just an unblended single herb, the aroma is incredibly complex. There are notes of mint, cinnamon, and other spices. Brewing the tea mellows it out somewhat, melding these different notes. It’s an okay evening brew, but it won’t be replacing peppermint tea in my cabinet anytime soon.

I’m going to try the other half of the sample with some sugar to see how that works out.

Very light and creamy with a small hint of pear. Yummy evening treat!

Finishing this up and decupboarding.

There’s not a lot to say about it except that it’s a really nice spearmint, if you are looking for plain spearmint. I had fun tasting a hot cup of plain spearmint tisane a few times, but mostly I found myself adding peppermint and tarragon to this and trying to hit the combination that would mimic Tazo’s Refresh. I never quite found it and frankly, I think I’d be much more likely to buy Refresh as a “plain” mint tisane even though it’s a blend of three flavors, just because I like how they play off of each other. I’m not likely to buy this again, just because if I were going to have a single mint tisane I’d pick peppermint.

(backlogging)

Very smooth and mellow, not at all earthy-tasting. A nice, straight up spearmint. Though I prefer peppermint in terms of flavor, this gets high marks for being good at what it is.

Got this from JacquelineM Thanks! This oolong brews up to a pretty ambery red color. The smell is like a roasted tea smell more of the roasty smell than actual tea but you do smell the vegetal notes as well.
It’s a basic oolong and as I have been drinking so many flavored teas lately this one just isn’t doing it for me. Don’t get me wrong it’s not bad it’s just plain, it is a great intro into oolongs but I prefer silky, milky oolongs. The flavor in this one is not weak by any means in fact it is strong it’s not a bad tea I am just not finding alot to add to the other tasting notes here.

I would say the description of this tea is dead on, except for the tinge of jasmine I am getting. I don’t like jasmine. I’m giving this a low rating for MY reference.

Today was another long day in the laboratory. I was excited to come home to some new teaware. I received the Tea Forte Kati double walled ceramic tea brewing cup-thing. I decided to make some oolong and this came to mind.
It tastes like lentils and that’s all I have to say.

Finished up my last of this tea, and it went out with a bit of a whimper rather than the hoped for bang. Ah well, a day with oolong is better than one without.

Having this today at work since I have no sweetner and a lot of black tea that needs to be sweetened. Sigh. I got to find out how forgiving this tea can be – because I forgot I was brewing it for steep #2, and it went long – and yet is still drinkable.

Nice tea.

Nice, clean tasting oolong. Smells woody and rich. Yummy. It’s a great workplace tea (Multiple resteeps, doesn’t require sweetner or cream, looks pretty). Not that much of a complex flavor, but nice and warm.

The dry leaf smells slightly smokey, the steeped leaf smells seaweed-ish. The brew is browny-green, and it smells.. not really seaweed-ish nor really green. A mild scent of green tea with a hint of something more, and a hint of seaweed.

The flavor is on the bitter side, and vegetal. I need to try this again with a thermometer – I just used the pouring cooling method to get it close. As it is, I’m not fond of this tea.