Upton Tea Imports

I like this with a teaspoon of sugar per teacup and I brew it like a regular black tea as opposed to infusing in milk. It’s probably one of my favorite Chai blends of all time. Nicely spiced and perfumed, with prominent but not overwhelming clove, cinnamon and cardamom.

I know a few people who like to add a little bit of black tea to this to bring the tea notes out further. I don’t find that necessary, but it’s worth mentioning.

This is a really excellent tea. The Upton description is right that it’s mildly smoky—oddly, I am usually not too wild about Darjeeling or Lapsang Souchong teas, but somehow this mix balances the smokiness of Lapsang Souchong perfectly to my taste. Darjeelings often taste very floral to me, but I don’t get that with this blend — not sure if it’s because of a low amount of Darjeeling, or it’s a nuttier one. A hint of smoke, a hint of nuttiness, and a nice full Keemun background tying it all together. I definitely recommend it.

It snowed here in Michigan this week—just an inch or two, which is a light dusting by midwest standards and by no means a “snowpocalypse.” I shoveled the driveway this morning and it was the first time in weeks I’ve been out in the cold for more than a couple minutes (sans automobile).

Anyway, let’s get on with the tea!

This was in my first order from Upton. The other tea that came in the box was a wuyi golden monkey, which I’ll get to reviewing in the near future, but this golden tip yunnan has taken over my mornings and early afternoons. One reason is it still holds up after 3 or 4 steepings, so I just keep refilling.

The liquid is a rich brown and the taste is sweet. You can tell it’s going to be sweet just by giving the bag a whiff. I don’t get the spicy/pepperiness in the description on the site, but there is an amazing caramel (or maybe toffee… I need to get some caramels and toffees from the store to compare) finish. This really comes through at around the second infusion, and it’s so pronounced that I almost can’t believe this is an unflavored tea.

I’m leaving for a cruise (with family to the Bahamas!) tomorrow morning and considering smuggling some of this aboard in case I suffer from withdrawal. Anyone have tea-related cruise experiences?

I haven’t had a moment in a while when I’ve been able to say, “wow, this is a really good tea.” And that doesn’t really change with this tea.

http://bit.ly/4tTVGo

I know Keemuns are supposed to be among the best black teas and I’m certainly a black tea kinda guy, but I’m just not getting all the Keemun hype. I’ll still take a good Yunnan, one that’s malty like Rishi’s Golden Yunnan, or one that’s caramel-like, such as an all-bud Yunnan, over just about anything.

This tea had a nice hint of deep chocolate, but the rest of the flavor was all smoky-tarry. When I’m in the mood for something smoky, I’ll go for some Scotch-smoked salmon on a bagel. Just not sure I’m looking to replicate that sensation in a hot beverage. (And I so don’t get the whole lapsang thing. First time I had it, I thought someone had accidently extinguished their cigarette in my tea.)

For all my bashing of this Keemun, it has a nice rich texture, however. But I think there are better things out there — maybe even among Keemuns.

A nice tea with a buttered vegetal fragrance and taste and that slight nutty taste I’ve come to associate with Sencha. There is the slightest bit of something that might turn into bitterness if steeped too long or at too high of a temperature, but in my cup it is just fine and good with a slight tang.

I blew through this stuff—just drank my last this morning. They aren’t kidding about it taking milk well, it’s a really nice morning cuppa.

A nice mellow Assam tea with delightful toasty notes and a slight sweetness. While it is not as complex as some full caf Assams I’ve had, it is nonetheless very nice. It makes a soothing cup to accompany me to bed. No bitterness. No astringency.

New white tea offering from Upton.

I was surprised to see how many silver buds this tea has, it looks almost like Silver Needle but for occasional White Peony leaves. The flavor is less impressive though. It’s light and mellow but lacks character overall. It’s hard to tell what tea exactly I’m drinking – it has both Silver Needle sweetness and dryness of White Peony. The dryness seems to prevail and pushes sweet notes to the background.

This tea has no personality whatsoever and this is what I call totally forgettable. In order to write this review I have to constantly sip on the tea because I keep forgetting what it tastes like as soon as I swallow it.

Good gosh! My arby’s italian sub and curly fries must have been REALLY salty. I had their blackberry fruiTEA w/ it and a couple cups of tea and a bunch of water after and I’m still dying of thirst.

Didn’t have any iced tea made and I didn’t want to end up w/ a huge amount of wet leaves so I made ginger lemon water using the ginger I used in my matcha and English Breakfast this morning. I call it ginger water and not ginger tisane because ginger tisane has almost no liquor on it’s own lol.:)

1.5oz ginger steeped in 2oz boiling water for 20 min. Placed 2 thin slices of lemon in the bottom of my glass, decanted my tea, and added 14oz refrigerated water. Don’t have fresh lemon? Add 2TB lemon juice. Lemon verbena or lemon grass would definitely work as well.

I love this tea — I got it to try a different Chinese tea than my normal types and went for the generic Keemun (figured I’d start at the bottom), and I am very pleasantly surprised. It’s a perfect morning cup for me; plenty of flavor but not overly astringent.

For all of my black tea drinking, I’m a relatively newbie to Ceylon teas. But I decided to break out of my Yunnan, Assam, or Darjeeling rut and give this one a try.

http://www.uptontea.com/shopcart/item.asp?from=catalog.asp&itemID=TC56&begin=0&parent=Teas%3EBlack%3ECeylon&category=Uva&sortMethod=0&categoryID=24

Koslanda has been an organic and biodynamic estate since 1992 and is located in Sri Lanka’s Uva’s District, famous for its teas and often used in blends.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:TgdgQqD7RPsJ:www.transfairusa.org/pdfs/profiles/Koslanda-Sri%2520Lanka_04.pdf+koslanda+sri+lanka&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESg4VtXmI1NtppCt7rnAS1_Ko6SJ00x3HUauKTslJEqvzf7VM7GA1xyeMX6Mhyfh75CDiNeApjgi4S1I_Y0Y6oJYt9xZMfJHMH7tgu1lG9zKZd1TH3A-7zqS0uFtQSIDvqX0gaop&sig=AHIEtbS4ds9vRVtV6bh3u0QXvK40G-r8AA

The recommended steep time for this tea is relatively short for a black tea, three minutes, not because it’s delicate like a Darjeeling, but because this is a broken-leaf tea and with all that additional leaf-fragment surface area, this baby infuses quickly.

The liquor is rich and dark, but what’s missing is flavor. It’s not an unpleasant flavor, mind you, it’s just completely lacking. It sort of hints at being Assam, with a glimpse of maltiness, with a bright nuance reminiscent of Darjeeling, but they’re all vague hints. And the clean finish that Upton’s description mentions is really a euphemism for when you swallow, any flavor immediately disappears from your mouth — there’s no after-taste whatsoever.

That said, because the liquor is smooth and rich, it holds up to creamer and sweetener fairly well. After trying it neat, I added vanilla rice milk and agave syrup and it tasted, um, sweet and vanilla-y. But the tea was doing very little of the work here. Disappointing.

I’m finally finishing off this sample… it actually took me a few weeks because I opened it, tried it, didn’t find particularly interesting and put it away.

It’s one of the higher priced white teas that Upton offers but it just doesn’t deliver the way others do. The leaf looks like a regular Silver Needle but is shorter and partially broken. The smell is pretty generic but strong.

I’m really missing out on “velvety cocoa tones”. The flavor is somewhat dry and powdery, without sweet-mushroomy taste I usually find in most Silver Needles. Maybe it is the promised cocoa but I just don’t feel it should taste like this.

On the positive side it is quality tea, it brews very aromatic and holds 4 infusions easily. Just not my cuppa.

Having not liked this tea as much as the Ceciliyan Estate and Golden Kenya I bought with it from Upton, I put it aside while I drank those two. Now that they’re almost gone, I’ve come back to Tea Bank, and I’m getting some different flavors from it.

This tea now reminds me an awful lot of a Chinese black tea. It’s hard to characterize exactly what this means, but if you’ve had any Chinese black teas, you’ll know how different from Assams and Ceylons they tend to be. Tea Bank seems to be halfway between Ceylon and China. It also has a smokiness that I never noticed before. It has a more interesting flavor than I was getting from this tea when I first bought it, but it still isn’t as rounded and yummy as my mainstay black teas.

I used a bit more leaves than I usually do for black teas this time, and gave it 4 minutes, but it’s still not producing much flavor. Even with a normal amount of milk, it is overmollifying the tea. I may have to try this tea without milk. Still, it’s not bad, and there is some subtlety to it – slight notes of licorice and honey.

The dry leaves smell like you’d expect from a Ceylon black – smooth, with molasses as the primary scent. There is a hint of (real) black licorice, like the Panda kind. The actual brewed tea is pretty much in line with the leaf smell, and there is a very slight bready flavor in there as well. One the whole, the flavor is somewhat weak, so I’ll try steeping this for longer than 3 minutes next time and see how it works. Still, a pretty good tea.

This is another great tea. It’s spicy flavors are strong and true. Visually very appealing, the dry leaves conjure up aromas of hearty holiday good cheer. I need it because my default mode is grumpy, so it’s nice to have a transformative moment inhaling this tea.
The aroma reminds me of a strongly mulled red wine (good as far as I am concerned).

The taste does not disappoint at all. It tastes vibrant, spicy, and without having any piny odor at all, makes me feel as if I’m in an evergreen forest wassailing my heart out without irony.

This hearty, robust tea is great on its own; I added a bit of sugar and milk as I approached the bottom of the cup and the tea was still just fine—it does not really need the addition, however.

I’m tempted to use these tea leaves to experiment with adding them to heated red wine, to heated apple cider, to heated eggnog—I think that this tea is divine on its own but could be used to cook up some seriously December-y potent potations!

This tea has very strong notes of orange creamsicle. Opening the bag of dry leaves instantly brought me back to those times at Grandma’s when we would eat creamsicles on hot summer days.

It’s a pretty distinctive smell for a black tea – the sweet citrus freshens the rounded black tea flavor profile. My girlfriend said the smell remided her more of Chinese black teas than my usual Ceylons. All in all, it’s a tasty tea and a novel experience. Still, it’s not a staple tea like a Kenilworth estate – more of something to bring out once a week or to pair with food.

This tea used to be so good! A solid black tea, not too weak, with bananas!

Now, it is lemons. It is bitter, and it is bad. Milk doesn’t help it. I don’t like this anymore.

If you like lemon tea, though, it might be your thing.

This tea is bananas. I don’t know how they did it, but it’s just full of banana flavor. The smell of the leaves is like the fresh fruit, and with milk added it’s more like a dried or pureed banana – more rounded than vegetal. Add milk for an even creamier experience.

Even though it’s decaf, I might believe someone who told me that it wasn’t, if prepared carefully. It’s only a bit weaker than a regular Ceylon black tea for the same amount of leaves, and it doesn’t lose much flavor while retaining harshness like lower quality decaf teas. Recommended.

Having a cup of this one again – after my last tasting I was pretty excited to see if I got the same flavors out of it.

To my surprise… I’m getting really different vibes from it now. The dry leaves are hitting me with more of a squash aroma than a tomato one. Taste is your standard Ceylon base tea, with squash or pumpkin notes and a hint of chocolate. Overall character is bright, on the lighter end of Ceylon blacks. Still good.

Go out into your garden, pick a ripe purple heirloom tomato right off the vine, and bite in. The rich and savory smell of the tomato mixes with the vegetal scent of the vine.

Somehow, this experience is captured in the dry leaves of this tea.

As with most black teas, the actual flavor of the tea gains more “regular black tea” flavor and aroma than the dry leaves, but the rich tomatoey smell still comes through. It’s a very good tea.

Alas, poor Upton Organic Yunnan FOP Select. If I had this tea in a restaurant, I’d be delighted with it, just grateful that they served me a decent tea instead of the tannic bagged crap that’s usually served after dinner, even at good restaurants.

http://www.uptontea.com/shopcart/item.asp?from=catalog.asp&itemID=ZY54&begin=0&parent=Teas%3EBlack%3EChina&category=Yunnan&sortMethod=0&categoryID=0

But, unfortunately for Organic Yunnan FOP Select, above-average doesn’t quite cut in a world of overachievers. I’ve tasted Rishi’s Organic Ancient Tree Golden Yunnan. And, FOP Select, you’re no Rishi Golden Yunnan.

I’ve tasted Ito En’s Yunnan Golden Tips. And, FOP Select, you’re no Ito En Golden Tips either. Why, I’ve even tasted FOP Select’s brother, Upton Season’s Pick Yunnan TGFOP. And you’re not that either.

Yeah, FOP Select, you’ve got that great smooth full-bodied Yunnan finish, without that smoky quality that makes some Yunnans taste like Keemun wannabees. But where’s the malt, man? Where’s the caramel quality that comes from the tips — the buds — in the tea? Where are the qualities that make Yunnans taste like Yunnans?

FOP Select, you’re O.K., but your nothing special. You’re a C+ student in a class of A scholars. You’re the journeyman utility infielder who occasionally sees some action as a pinch hitter, but who will never start a game, let alone make “the Hall.” Yeah, they’ll come out for your retirement party, say nice things about you while you’re handed your gold watch, but your portrait will never hang in the executive dining room, the dining room in which, by the way, they serve only really fine teas (yeah, in my dreams).

FOP Select, you’re a swell tea, a tea that would delight any restaurant-goer who’s resigned himself to the fact that while upscale restaurants will serve only the best coffees, they’ll serve whatever crappy tea their distributer hands them. But, alas, in my kitchen, I get to do the tea buying and I’m afraid, FOP Select, you not only lack the pesticides and artificial fertilizers I avoid in my tea, but you also lack the taste I seek. We’ll let you know if we have any openings.

I drank what I had left of this today, and while I’m not going to move the rating down because I still think this is pretty awesome, I definitely like it better hot than chilled.

To be fair, part of the reason that I like this so much is because it reminds me of that hot chocolate I was talking about before, and drinking this cold removes that comparison. And it’s not that this tastes bad cold or anything. It’s more that the sensations become very dissonant.

There’s that spiky heat from the chilis, clashing against the cool bite from the…well, the cold. And something about those two butting heads and not really melding results in a striking sensation that I don’t really find pleasant. Spiced chai cool, I find almost calming. That feeling was absent in this cup.

This is in no way going to deter me from continuing to drink this. I’ll just be doing drinking it hot.