Upton Tea Imports

Sipdown – this was part of the Upton Assam sampler and not really my favorite of the bunch but pretty good with sugar and soymilk. See previous notes if interested.

Assam tea of the morning here. 3/4 of the Upton tea sampler. The leaves are very slender and broken (GBOP = golden broken orange pekoe)

This is pretty good, I wish I had the foresight to try it plain before I dumped in my usual soymilk that I drink with assams. I’m getting a lot of malty flavor with a bit of chocolate and a trace of bitterness in the finish. I wonder why you need your leaves broken if you’re drinking the tea in loose leaf form… anyway this is pretty good but a bit pungent and strong even with the addition of soymilk. An eye opener for sure but not something I would need to have around on a permanent basis.

I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend!

This tea is very tasty! It has a lovely floral level, fresh juicy white tea base and a tasty sweet fruity finish. If you love floral whites, this is a must try! I very much enjoyed it!

However, the only thing I didn’t like about this tea was I couldn’t ID the fruity as pomegranate, tastes maybe more like a hibiscus, without any tart. The fruityness does go well with the floral and white tea base though.

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/pomegranate-magnolia-white-tea-from-upton-tea-imports-tea-review/
Lots of pictures of my pomegranate tree in bloom!

Ordered this sample the last time I placed an order with Upton Tea. The leaves are olive green, very long and slender (needle like, duh).

The tea liquor steeps up to be a very pale yellow. There isn’t much of an aroma coming from this. Flavor wise, it’s slightly floral with very light vegetal notes of corn. This is a very gentle and light tea but I generally prefer my greens to have a little more heft. Probably not something I would bother to keep in my personal stash. Still, it’s an elegant and relaxing cuppa on this lovely spring day. If you like yellow teas you might want to give this one a shot.

Upton’s notes say the tea has a pine needle flavor but I don’t think I would have picked that out if I hadn’t read their description. I thought I detected a bit of smoke somewhere in the finish.

I had Della Terra’s The Perfect Pear this morning, and am trying this tea tonight, so it’s just been a pear day. I actually really like pears. My grandmother had a little scraggly pear tree in her yard, and it would grow the smallest, knobbiest pears on it every year, but they were good.

I’m not sure if I’ve had green rooibos before. I feel like I have in some tea, but I can’t remember which one. I’m not a huge fan of red rooibos, so many I will like it’s greener twin a little more. The dry leaves smell like rooibos with a hint of pear. As soon as I poured the boiling water into my little teapot I could smell the sweet aroma of pear. The tea is a clear, dark yellow orange color. The flavor is initially of rooibos, with a fresh pear finish. The little pear flavor that is present is very fresh, like eating an actual pear. There is a slight green rooibos aftertaste, which is less medicinal than a red rooibos but is still noticeable. Adding sweetener brings out more of the sweet pear flavor and covers up some of the rooibos notes. I added a little milk after the sweetener and it smoothed all of the flavors over, leaving just a lot of the juicy pear taste. It also brought out a litlte creaminess, which I couldn’t find at all before adding the milk.

Overall, this is a nice tea, but one I probably wouldn’t purchase. The pear flavor is perfect, but there is a little too much rooibos taste for me, and almost no creaminess. I think that pear is a difficult flavor to bring out in tea, but this one comes very close if you don’t mind rooibos. Thanks to Mercuryhime for sending me a sample of this one!

-Dry blend has small pieces of green rooibos and large pieces of sunflower petals.
-Dry leaves smell like rooibos with a hint of pear. Tea liquor aroma is strongly of sweet pear.
-Tea liquor is a clear dark yellow orange color.
-Rooibos flavor with a fresh pear finish. Green rooibos aftertaste.
-Best with milk and sweetener.
-Fair tea. True pear flavor, but rooibos taste is strong. LIttle creaminess.

sipdown! (276) as I’m pretty sure this is a tea my friend would love. Thank you Kittenna for sharing this one with me. This is a tea that tastes like peach. it’s not a bad tea…there’s no astringency or bitterness and it’s pretty smooth. But it’s not a tea i love, or need in my cupboard. It’s a fairly average tea with not a whole lot going on. there are better black peach teas out there that i’d pick before reaching for this one.

i’m watching teen wolf. the entire season in one day basically. watching that much tv in one day is something akin to eating nothing but cake for a day. but i watched it in a half ass way at least, and fondled my teas the rest of the day. multitasking!

also

i should probably buy some more decaf blacks cuz this is a nice option. bye bye rooibos. whatevs.

Tea of the morning here, 2/4 of Upton’s assam sampler.

I don’t have a lot of experience with CTC’s aside from knowing they are produced in a different way than orthodox teas so here’s a short primer for the curious: http://t-buds.com/orthodox-vs-ctc-teas-body-vs-flavor/

I steeped this for 3 minutes but might try it for 2 next time. It is definitely a strong assam, bold and malty with a bit of a winey aftertaste and some bitterness too. Definitely a lot better with milk and sugar and very eye opening. Meh, maybe I’m a tea snob but I much prefer the traditional assam leaf.

I have read this is primarily what they use to make chai with in India but traditionally chai is made with a lot of milk.

This is nice tea, but nothing special. It definitely does not live up to the delightful Upton Mao Feng Imperial though seems similar to their Jade Pekoe. It has a mild honeyed flavor, but not much smoke or deeper flavor. The leaves seem to be broken into small pieces, which I didn’t expect. I don’t catch any spice or fruit really. It is just a plain jane non-offensive tea that I probably wouldn’t have even pegged as Keemun had it not been listed on the package as that. It is not bitter, astringent or mineraly which speaks well, but probably best looked at as a bargain tea.

Finishing off the rest of this sample today. It tastes a bit better if you use more tea (leaf) but I’m still finding it lacking in flavor/artificial tasting and not sure why it’s curdling my soymilk… oh well! Not going on my shopping list, that’s for sure.

Another sample from Upton Tea Imports. There aren’t too many decaf teas I like but I figured I would try this one out. It definitely smells and tastes like vanilla, but the flavor is a bit thin and wine-y. I think the decaf process removes a lot of flavor from the tea, which is too bad. I added some soymilk to this and it was okay. Will probably finish off the sample I have with some sugar but won’t buy a large size.

I prefer the Vanilla Comoro from Harney and Sons for a vanilla decaf black tea.

I wanted to try a West Java tea so I got a sample of this with my last order.

Wow, to me this tea is nothing like the description that Upton gives it. Sweetness? Delicate flavor? Where?? I got a dark orange cup that was extremely tannic to the point where I could not drink it plain. I am not fond of overly tannic astringent teas so I had to dump some soymilk in here, as well as sugar in order to make it palatable. I plan to finish the cup I have but the rest of this sample is going in the dustbin, bleah. I hope my stomach does not revolt.

This is my tea of the morning, one of the assams from the Upton Tea assam sampler. I’m still not used to the time change, I’ve been going to bed early the last couple of days and waking up feeling groggy. Anyway I thought this would help to perk me up.

I may have oversteeped this slightly but my first impressions still stand. A nice, hefty assam, very malty and with some floral notes. It is definitely a good choice for morning time!

1/4 of the Upton tea Assam sampler I got yesterday in the mail. Because I really need MORE tea, right?

Anyway I love drinking assams in the morning which is why I went for this sampler. Normally I would put soymilk and sugar in an assam right away but I wanted to at least try a sip of this plain first.

I like it plain which is a good sign, it’s very smooth, malty and has a touch of chocolate. I only steeped mine for 3 minutes and I noticed a lot of the other tasters went for 4 minutes, still I like it at 3. It’s good with a splash of soymilk and at this point doesn’t need sugar in my opinion, although you could certainly add some.

There is a slight tobacco or something in the finish although nothing bothersome. I am enjoying it, a good basic assam.

Another of my morning teas that i’ve been too busy to log. It appears that this is the second time i’ve done that so this may jsut be one of those teas that is a good average every day tea that doesn’t sneak up on you but isn’t bad either. I’ve got more of this in my sample – have i mentioned lately how crazy awesome upton samples are in terms of size and value?!?!? so i’ll try one more time at least. Mostly i recall this being a little malty, but not overly so and not bitter or anything. so yay!

Not going to rate this one since i know my tastebuds are wonky. i think? This is a relatively tasty “every day black” but i’ll wait until i’m not having issues to be certain :) still, it’s keeping me warm and that’s all that matters to me at this point.

For a anniversary gift, My mother gifted me with some lovely Moroccan Tea Glasses.
They are turquoise and gold and just plain gorgeous.
So, thought I, how can I possibly use these glasses for anything else without first using them as they were originally intended…for tea! (translation: Yah! an excuse to buy tea!)
So, I ordered this from Upton. A proper big tin of it too.
We are real glad I did too.
Because it is over in my gypsy wagon (a camper where we have been living and will be living most of this summer) and after a long morning in a hot field (yes, its hot here already, reaching above 90 degrees) this tea cold-brewed has absolutely hit the spot.
I have also enjoyed it hot.
Hubby even loves this tea, he will be out in the field, and stare up at the sun and say “can’t wait to get back to the camper and have a large, cold glass of that minty tea”
I might have to place another order of it soon, we are flying through the big tin much faster than I expected.
I miss you all! Since living over in a camper most of the time without wifi or anything, I can not write to you all.
But, I am thinking of you each time I have a cuppa.
I bought a little kettle and tea cups from a thrift store and I have a little tea chest over there in the camper.
My hubby makes fun of me.
He says that most people might bring some tea bags, but no, I have teapots and a tea chest of loose tea.
I tell him just because we are living in a camper does not give me the excuse for missing out on a proper cuppa.

i actually brought a pu-erh cake and my small glass gung fu to work today.

it won’t be the classiest steep of all time, but i realized i was never gonna drink my unflavored or traditional teas if i didn’t start putting a little extra effort forth and make some compromises. and i’m pretty excited about this.

i did one 30 second rinse. then one 30 secondish steep. i realized a little too late i should have done both shorter. but this is learning! and it’s still a good tea experience i get to have.

the cake loosened and dissolved into little tea flakes immediately. after the rinse, the fishy pu-erh scent was immediately present, but not strong!! it really wasn’t.
again, i’m not very pu-erh knowledgeable yet, but i can immediately tell that this is much better than the crappy davidstea pu-erhs i’ve tried. (don’t get me wrong, i like davidsteas a lot! and they have a ton of great teas but really they do not do pu-erhs well at all.)
i steeped the next cup at 20 seconds, and then the next one at 30 seconds, etc. and my pu-erh innocence tells me that this is a very very good tea. my other great experience with pu-erh is a blood orange pu-erh from Carytown Teas that i tried once and then couldn’t get it out of my head. (so of course i own 2oz of it now.)
this is a rambley review i realize.
i think i have gained perspective on how a good pu-erh should taste. i’m excited.

i should be drinking this out of porcelain shouldn’t i.
yes definitely porcelain.

i love lapsang. and even more i LOVE lapsang blends.
i will treasure my sample of this until the last cup.

28/01/2013
my first pure pu-erh.

i did a quick steep for just about 5 sec, and then one long one for 5 min.
then i just did more and more steeps for maybe 4 to 5 min each. until the liquid got pale. i was too lazy to look up what the PROPER way to steep this is. also i have 3 more squares to work with.

03/29/2013
this is a good pu-erh. i need to thank davidstea for making such awful pu-erh because it gives me a valuable reference to know what good pu-erh is. i mean heck! this tiny square probably isn’t even near the best. (i actually like the mini cake i had yesterday even more, and i’m glad i accidentally ordered 2 samples of it.) but this tiny square is not without it’s charm.

i had to let it rinse/steep for more than just 10-20 seconds, cuz the square is packed very tight and it took a while to break up in the water. and i know the point of a rinse is a rinse, but i drank the rinse anyways. and then my second steep was 1 minute. which i know is longer than it should be. my third steep was about 45 seconds. and i did a few more short steeps after that. all in my tiny glass gong fu.

i don’t know. i drank 2 cups of this today trying to get to know this tea. but it just wouldn’t open up to me. i’ll try again in a few days. some teas just aren’t quick to trust.