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I remember this Wuyi black tea having the basic, fruity profile of the region. The osmanthus flowers are the orange ones, not the yellow ones stored in gallon jars in Chinatown shops. The osmanthus was very strong in the first steep prepared western style. Its fruity, savory character blended very well with the black tea. I do remember the mouthfeel being rather thin but cleansing. It would make a great teapot tea to accompany lunch.

Thank you for the freebie, Old Ways Tea.

Handful of Steepster Freeze fuzzy recollections incoming.

The shou — somewhat oily body, the taste full petrichor and reminiscent of black oak and dark, dry loam. The bamboo imparted a cool and airy, green ‘essence of bamboo’ feeling that accomodated very well the dark, mineral nature of the shou. The aroma of gentle sage steam crossed my mind. Medicinal in that nature. The two main flavors played off each other well, melding into a cohesive flavor profile. The energy for me was cooling, focusing and somewhat overwhelming. Overall, a good, clean damp-free shou. Something I’d recommend as a contrast to warming, chocolatey, coffee, red fruit leaning shou. Thank you, Togo!

Cocoa aroma. Toasty cocoa taste and honeysuckle-sweet with notes of steamed milk, earth and grass. It was thick and flavorful though bizarrely unbalanced for the first few steeps. It promptly waltzed right off the cliff with the third infusion. What a tragedy. Don’t be tempted to look.

I’m not well versed on the tea grading system for teas produced outside eastern Asia so I headed over to Wikipedia to figure out what FBOPF-SP signifies. The FBOPF either refers to Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings or Finest Broken Orange Pekoe Flowery. Given the leaf quality, I think FBOPF in this case refers to the latter. The SP I’m unsure about; I’m guessing Special.

Anyway, thanks to WE ARE CLOSED (née White Antlers) for sending this 2018 harvest my way. It’s a zippy black tea, with a tangy fruit punch-cherry-blood orange tone atop a mild to moderate maltiness. Best as an afternoon tea and most definitely not had on an empty stomach. More versatile than when it’s best had is its preparation. I’ve been pleased with using less leaf to create a lighter brew and more to create a robust, zesty cup. Along with leaf amount, steeping times and water temperature can be altered to achieve your desired taste without adding any substantial bitterness or astringency. It’s generally smooth but with a good bite that turns into a brown sugar returning sweetness in the throat.

This tea was a good accompaniment to a very late breakfast. Buckwheat waffles made with Strauss Greek yogurt, shredded carrot and warming spices, topped with pecan butter and dark maple syrup. I’ve cooked twice in one week after not having much appetite since all this Covid mess began. The other meal was sloppy joes and tater tots lol. My wonderful housemate has been doing all the feeding of this derk.

This is a fairly mellow, low-toned Yiwu sheng. Woody, forest floor dark feel mixed with plummy caramel sweetness. Body warmth and menthol cooling arrive quickly with the second steep. Later steeps become woody-bitter, lightly acidic-metallic and mouth-watering. The aftertaste is certainly the strength of this tea. It mostly a dry powdery, bittersweet violet with very long-lasting retronasal action. At times the aftertaste also presented with Juicy Fruit gum, honeydew-cucumber and blueberry skin florality — delightful. I’m not too drawn to this tea currently, but I could see it aging into a reliable daily drinker.

Quite the list of ingredients, all harvested from Québec. A little thin but sweet, fruity and woody with a strong note of fir that evokes a feeling of near-winter, inhaling frigid, moist air through my nostrils and catching the clean, cool scents of a northern Canadian landscape. Or for those unacquainted, I’d say it’s like a Christmas tree in a cup. A hint of wild blueberry and a tangy-sweet quality. Brewed for the recommended 7 minutes, there is a drying catch on the swallow but it tastes so cool and comforting I don’t care. A long-lingering resinous sweetness follows.

Directions call for 2tsp/250mL; I opted for something like 5 teaspoons for half my glass teapot, so 500ish mL. The mélange of ingredients with differing shapes and sizes doesn’t make it easy to get a varied distribution, so I did do some hand-picking of the larger ingredients instead of incorporating them into my teaspoon measurements.

I placed a small order with Camellia Sinensis because I was interested in some of their herbals, namely Wintergreen, Labrador Tea and Taïga Sauvage.

Following a wake-up, chest-clearing mug of Juniper Ridge’s Yerba Santa, I had time for only 1 steep of this tea from Bhutan. According to Camellia Sinensis, this tea comes from the only tea production in Bhutan which is led by an all-women cooperative. Always keeping my eye out for unique teas, I couldn’t resist ordering a sample of the July 2020 harvest.

I prepared the tea close to package directions, using more tea than 2 teaspoons because the leaves do not rest uniformly in a teaspoon. I went for my standard-as-of-late measurement of 1g/100mL for green, white, and black teas prepared western style.
The tea is very clean and smooth. It sits well in my empty stomach. The taste evokes lightly buttered sauteed sweet green cabbage. There is an interesting minerality which Camellia Sinensis refers to as seashells and I think I can agree with that — calcium. A vague feeling, not taste, of smokey, earthy bitterness sits deep within the liquor. A spicy feeling sits only in the chest, something I could equate to the warmth of Saigon cinnamon, but like the smokey bitterness, it’s not a taste. A second steep when I came home for lunch brought forward lime-like and bright green olive impressions.

Overall, this is an exceptionally smooth green tea with an interesting profile. It covers a satisfying and nuanced range of flavors and impressions between sweet, vegetal, umami, mineral, citrus, bitter-smoke and warming spice. As I was just now browsing to purchase a larger quantity, the tea is now out of stock only 2 weeks after placing my order.

From the stamped bag era.

2.5g, 250mL, 205F, 4min

This tea has not aged well.

Wet Leaf Aromas: Cocoa, Molasses, Orange, Perfume
Flavors: Hot water

Temperatures in the one-teens are unacceptable. Especially for 3 days in a row. This isn’t Arizona.

Our tomatoes are cooked on the vine. Watermelons have exploded. The 19-year-old cat thermometer reads loooong and miserable.

I want to sleep all day.

I want an entire bottle of cold white wine to myself.

I want a strong, unsweetened iced tea.

Only one can win. You all know the answer.

An oldie from the stamped bag era.

Had I tasted it blind, I would instantly be able to tell it was a Sun Moon Lake Ruby #18 varietal black tea. That wintergreen, that menthol! Felt absolutely therapeutic one morning last week after waking up with a rattling chest due to the smokey air. Coppery malt, leather, tangy cherry (Trader Joe’s sells dried Montmorency cherries from Michigan; that’s the exact flavor note I’m thinking of here), prune-raisin, and dark wood; warming spicy tone danced with the cooling effect. The tea lacked some of the complexity of a fresh harvest but it has otherwise held up fine all these years. Gotta get some more of this varietal back in my cupboard.