Upton Tea Imports

I had intended to do a light steeping this morning, but got distracted and ended up with my usual pu-erh black tar. Yummy.

In trying to listen to fellow Steepsters, I prepared this today using a smaller pot, more leaf, rinsed the leaves for about 10 seconds, and then only steeped for one minute instead of my usual 15-30.

Certainly nothing wrong with the results, but nothing came out here that blew me away or made me feel like I’ve been misguided all along. I think these elaborate preparations may have value with real, true, aged, single garden type pu-erh, but I doubt very many of us are drinking such things very often.

This is my everyday, all day tea on week days when I am working. You basically cannot over steep this tea, and the resulting brew even from a single tablespoon of leaf is so strong that you can stretch it with hot water for several hours. I set up a pot each morning and enjoy it all day long. For me, this tea is as ubiquitous as most people’s daily coffee, but lacks the harsh bitterness, acerbic notes and cloying aroma that can fill even a large space with an overwhelming odor. Pu-erh is a tea no one will know you are drinking except your dentist (stains the teeth pretty badly, unfortunately).

This particular pu-erh is very, very smooth without being flat or boring. As I said, I’ve had this nearly every day, all day, for years now, and continue to enjoy drinking it each and every day. You’d pay about as much for a good coffee, but I’m using a single table spoon a day to drink this tea all day. If you took coffee as seriously, you’d be going through a pound a day. Which means at $16 and change for 125 grams, this is an unbelievably cheap tea, per cup considering how good it tastes.

Someday soon, pu-erh will become the new “it” tea for diet fads, health benefits and all the rest. Until that happens, enjoy these cheap, flavorful, mellow, rich teas while you can for pennies a day.

Steep Information:
Amount: 2 teaspoons
Additives: none
Water: 20 ounces (4 oz more than suggested for 2 teaspoons)
Steep Time: a little over 4 minutes
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: sweet (caramel-like) black tea
Steeped Tea Smell: bold black tea
Flavor: smooth and creamy, bold, black tea with a bit of astringency
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: nothing, clean
Liquor: nice translucent dark brown

Steepster Traveling Teabox Tea

It’s a nice clean bold black. I don’t quite understand what makes it so special? I mean it is a very delicious tea, and I am enjoying drinking it, but with all those abbreviations I expected something WOW.

Post-Steep Additives: lactose-free fat-free milk

No more astringency, just a nice creamy smooth bold black.

images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/02/upton-tea-imports-loose-leaf-black-tea.html

very strong fruity flavor- almost tarty like cranberry juice and just as red…

Hmmm- brought about 24 oz of this tea to work.. the vanilla flavor is very distinct in this tea and the black tea flavor profile is bold but not astringent. I will definitely re-order this tea.

Sweet and creamy. like a desert….

Along the great Path of Tea, we sometimes have the opportunity to taste a tea that is essentially perfect, at least for us. Such was my experience with Arya Estate’s autumnal flush from 2008. So when I realized a couple weeks ago that I was about to run out of Darjeeling and die, I ordered some of the current tea from Upton’s to tide me over until the first flush.

First of all, this is a gorgeous tea in its dried form—one of the prettiest I’ve seen. A nice mix of chocolate, olive, and silver in big, open, curly leaves. The tea brews up to produce a classic amber-colored liquor with a light rosy aroma. The taste is delicate, with the characteristic muscatel and rose, and maybe a hint of caramel. Not sure I’m getting the raisins that are mentioned in the vendor description, though. In fact, the tea is a little too delicate. The line between “delicate” and “weak” is such a fine one. Even brewed strong, I find myself wanting just a little more out of this one.

It’s a very good tea, but, knowing that the Arya Estate has produced some GREAT teas, I find myself a little disappointed. It costs more than my last batch of Castleton Moonlight (considered by some as the gold standard for second flush Darjeelings) and I’m afraid it isn’t as good.

Nevertheless, if you prefer your second flush teas on the light side, this may be just the tea for you.

I really enjoy this tea as a breakfast tea with a bit of sugar. I also take it to class with me in a thermal mug and the vanilla and cream elements really help make it feel like there’s more to the tea to keep me going when the class seems to be dragging on and on without a break. (Many of my classes are 3 hours long and fall over lunch.) It would also be a very relaxing evening cup on a cold night – sweet and rich.

I wanted to like this, but the tea and rose flavors don’t blend particularly well and I end up tasting something bitter and almost soapy. It smells lovely, it just doesn’t follow it up on taste. I’ll probably put the rest of my sample to use making some kind of face mask or toner with the cooled tea.

Hmmm..a light, smooth tea w/a mild rose flavor… great in the afternoon…

Very light and mild tea.

I’m giving this another try with the last of the sample so that I can write about it as I’m tasting it. I marginally oversteeped this time around because I was in the other room when the timer went off, and it is also possible I may have used too much myrtle in this brew, which I strongly advise against. The tartness is there, but on a second go it isn’t quite as I initially described. It’s sort of a sour mixed with a slight bitter, and there’s something else I’m tasting that I can only describe as a soapy flavor. In any case, it is pretty unpleasant. In this case, stronger definitely is not better.

In the search for an I Love Lemon successor, I ordered a sample of this. The dry leaves are dark yellow and have a lemony smell that is quite pleasant. It brews to a pretty light yellow color that also has a nice lemony fragrance.

My guess is that this would be far better as an ingredient in other blends than it is by itself. It’s not that it wouldn’t do in a pinch if you needed a lemon fix in a hurry and were willing to put some sugar in it. But I don’t use condiments in my tea or tea-like drinks as a rule (I don’t like the taste that much but mostly I don’t like the additional calories) and by itself, this drink is pretty darn tart. I drank it last night so it’s possible I’m exaggerating it in my memory, but my memory of it is that it was bumping up against sour if not over the line. Though it wasn’t as sour as drinking diluted lemon juice, it wasn’t that far from it either.

So the search continues….

Was reading last night about Oolong and forgot that I had some left from my last Upton Tea order. Added some honey tonight, which I rarely do. Delicious and relaxing.

This was my first time brewing oolong at home and I am glad that I did not screw it up! I don’t have a thermometer that is suitable for testing water for tea brewing, so I had to guess with this tea, which is supposed to be brewed at about 190F instead of boiling.
I was not impressed with the appearance of the dry leaves, which included a lot of stems. The catalog photo looked nothing like what was in the pouch. Fortunately, this did not appear to have a negative effect on the tea when it was brewed.

Not excellent, but very good for the price and no sour aftertaste like some cheap teas.
The leaves have a light fruity smell. The closest I can get to describing the smell is the earthy smell that permeates the cardboard in which bananas have been shipped (without the “banana” part, just the leafy/earthy smell). The leaves also look rusty.
Strangely, the tea does not smell or taste fruity (although it does have a mildly earthy/peaty in flavor). The rusty color of the leaves didn’t transfer to the brewed tea, either, which paler in color and weaker in flavor than I expected. I think I might have to put in an extra teaspoon of leaves next time. With a splash of soymilk, it was a comfortingly mild early-afternoon cuppa. I’m not sure about the company’s assurance that it is a “powerful cup” because I took a 90-minute nap right after drinking it, but then I’m not very sensitive to caffeine.

Tasty and naturally sweet so no need for extra sweetener

Sipdown no. 54 of 2017 (no. 335 total).

Upton no longer carries this, and since it’s the only apple herbal that I’ve had that isn’t basically a vehicle for cinnamon and other apple pie spices to be delivered, I had hoarded it.

It’s just apple. Which is awesome, because sometimes you don’t want cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, etc.

I wrote to Upton to ask about its not being on the web site, and they explained they’d discontinued it because it had artificial flavors.

Hey Upton — can you find a Turkish Apple that doesn’t have artificial flavors? Or create one?

I was relegated to sleuthing for another source on the web, and eventually ended up on Amazon. It turns out that Turkish Apple is not the same to everyone who sells it. The only place I could find that had a fruit tisane with the same ingredients was a company called Teaf in Germany. It cost about as much to ship my order as it did to buy it, but I ordered from them.

My guess, frankly, is that Upton was sourcing from Teaf because their Turkish Apple said it was from Germany. But this is just me drawing a conclusion. I have nothing to base it on.

Anyway, at least I have another Turkish Apple. So I can continue with the project of clearing out aged tisanes now that I have a bunch of fresh ones.

I have not had this in a very long time but I find it really enjoyable. It’s apple juice for grown ups—not sugary, not sticky, not thick—but sweet enough without adulteration and an aftertaste like the aftertaste of fresh apples.

I used a lot of the mix, about 2 teaspoons per 250ml of water, which made for a really flavorful drink.

The peanut gallery was persuaded to try it and both gave it a thumbs up, though given the recent track record of “I like it, I don’t like it” I’m not holding my breath on this one.

I’d been hankering for an apple flavored herbal and so I ordered a couple of alternatives. (Thanks Steepsters, for the suggestions.) This was the first to arrive.

The apple bits are chunky and pretty in color, ranging from brownish red, which I take it are the parts of the apple with the skin, to a yellow, almost neutral color, which I take it are the parts of the apple sans skin. They look sort of like chopped walnuts, but more colorful. I chewed on a piece just for laughs, and it’s basically… dried apple. And yummy. Who would have thunk it? ;-)

The aroma prior to steeping is very apply and a little on the tart side. Once infused, it’s a pretty, light golden-yellow color, reminiscent of the skin of golden delicious apples, and slightly dusty-looking. Some browner fruit residue sifts to the bottom of the cup.

I didn’t find the infusion itself to be overly tart. I was steeled for tartness, and pleasantly surprised to find it more neutrally apple-tasting than I expected. If anything, it leans more toward sweet for me though not as sweet as baked apple. I’d describe it as ripe apple sweet. It’s not an incredibly strong flavor, which is part of its charm. It’s very obviously apple, though — you can’t miss it.

The thought crossed my mind that it could even be something kids might be convinced to try, and might even like, as an alternative to the sugar-laden apple juices they tend to favor if it could be made strong enough to withstand icing. The thought of iced tea today is incredibly unappealing given the cold and rain outside. Note to self: try an iced version when the weather turns hot.

But until then, enjoy the apply warmness.

Looking to expand my black-tea repertoire, I ordered this tea based on Carolyn’s tasting notes. Sure enough, it’s sweet and smooth, a nice change from more stimulating teas like my usual Assams. It also takes a bit of milk well, although it’s so mellow that it doesn’t need it. The only negative is that it has a hint of a dank, wet-leaves note that reminds me of the way my tea used to smell by lunchtime after sitting in my thermos all morning (ah, memories of second grade and my lunchbox with the pink French poodle on it!). But once I get past that and begin sipping, it’s pure pleasure. This was my first experience with a Bohea and has motivated me to explore these teas further — I just ordered Upton’s Bohea Supreme with high hopes!

Adawatte is a classic Ceylon and all that. Steep it less than four minutes and you’ll get an excellent cup. This one and Kenilworth OP are taking turns in my mind as the characteristic Ceylon, and lately Adawatte is impressing me slightly more.

The one non-standard taste I’m picking up in this one is Necco wafers. You know those things. I think this is more like the brown ones, the ones that are supposed to taste like chocolate but really don’t. Upon Googling, it looks like they changed their flavors around last year, so just for the record I’m talking about pre-2009 wafers.