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The sales assistant was kind enough to brew this one up for me as well while I was in-store. The description sounds like something that would appeal to me- white peaches+vanilla+green tea. I was expecting something soft and yummy.

Well… It was nice? To me it was too sweet, I didn’t get much floral and the green while strong was kind of too smokey. This was not the blend I had envisioned in my mind, and it isn’t really what the leaves smell like dry. The SA said this is actually one of the sweetest teas in store, and all of the SF teas are rather sweet- which mildly surprises me because San Franciscans tend to run on black coffee mostly. Black coffee and chinese donuts. =D Growing up in SF, there was never a shortage of pastries and coffee.

I was in the area after work today and I was like ’I’M GOING TO LUPICIA, THERE IS NO WAY THEY AREN’T OPEN RIGHT NOW, I NEED TO GO!‘. Haha, I’ve had bad luck with getting to the store when they’re open and not super crowded.

I wanted to try this one because jump62359 really really loves it. The sales assistant told me that it’s one of their most popular ones, and is frequently sold out. I smelt it and was kinda iffy. The SA was kind enough to brew this one up for me.

It is honeydew. The flavoring kind of, OK really, overwhelms the rooibos, which can be a good thing depending on who you’re asking. I’m not a fan a rooibos, so that was good for me!

If you’ve ever had the little green melon hard candies you can find at asian supermarkets, THAT is what this tea smells/tastes of. It is really good, I can imagine it’s better iced.

Personally for me though… It was a little too sweet. It was like drinking candy and I was feeling more tea-y today so it didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t take this home with me. It was nice being able to try it before I bought it though. I could have bought it blind, but I’m glad I didn’t. I got the Napa Blanc instead, and OOH does that smell yummy. I’m soo excited to try it.

If anyone ever wants any though, I live in the SF bay area and can ship it to you if Lupicia ever takes it off their website. I assume they’ll always have the SF blends available in this area, provided they’re in stock. Surprisingly they had the Hawaii blends in-store too, but those didn’t shout out to me at first sniff either.

Pu Erh? really? I would have not associated it as such. My previous experiences with puerh had most been kinda fishy- so that’s still what I associate puerh teas with.

This was nice, and not too deep. It was fruity and sweet, but not overbearing. I feel quite horrid at describing things at the moment. But mostly it was good. I like it.

Argh I oversteeped it. It was still nicely sweet with the coconut, but the green was sad and unhappy.

We have this weird thing happening in the lab where the hotter the external temperature of the building, the more the A/C blasts inside. This is pretty OK for the main areas/cubes, but in the labs where we should be at 19-25*C it’s been a chilly 17-18*C at times. For the moment I’ve been bringing both cold and hot tea with me everyday.

So a tsp of this for a bullet thermos worked out well last time, but I kept getting coconut bits stuck in the top. This time I put maybe 1.5 tsp into a cup travel thermos with a few cubes of ice and 195*C water on top. It was still good at 3 hrs. At 4 hrs it was a bit oversteeped, and because the weather was so miserably hot today I didn’t finish it and it was ridiculously oversteeped by the time I brought it home from work. Lesson to be learned: don’t thermos steep for more than 3 hrs?

I was already quite tea-high because I’ve had like six mugs of tea today, which is unusual for me on a work day. I grabbed this one randomly out of the sample pile (which I should really put in a box or a bag or something) and stared at the leaves for awhile while contemplating if i really wanted to brew more tea.

The only familiarity I have with peony is that lovely flowery scent from some fragrances. I really like the smell of peony. I was looking at the kind-of pointy leaves and wondering if these were leaves from the flower or what? The leaves don’t smell like flowers. The label said white peony. Maybe this is a white tea that’s named peony for some odd reason. Is it tea or is it not tea? My caffeine high didn’t help with thinking so I gave up on the problem and brewed it anyway.

I brewed in a Kati cup that I got in Barnes and Noble the other day. I wondered in to spend my gift card on one of those Aladdin tea infuser mugs, and instead walked out with a ‘tea steeping mug’ which I think is their dupe of the timolino (which I don’t have and cannot compare) and the Kati cup, which I had been adding every single design of to my Amazon wish list. The leaves didn’t expand much, which was interesting, but the leaves were pretty much flat when dry and flat when wet, so go figure. I thought I overbrewed it, and at too high a temperature, because I didn’t look at the directions until after starting to brew, but it seems OK.

I have not much experience with white teas, so I feel like in that regard I can’t say much about it. But it smells like a very subtle and sweet tea, and it IS a subtle and sweet tea. I do like it, but I can’t really say much of anything about it. You know, except that it looks NOTHING like the white peony picture on the Adagio Tea site. This was a nice end to a long and tiring day.

Just Organic has impressed me so far, I’ve joined the Kickstarter. There’s only 70 hrs left!

This seems a rather delicate green by the brewing instructions (175*, 2-3 min). My kettle is always set to 195, so I just splashed the leaves with some room temp water, and then added my 195* water and brewed as normal. I don’t know if I made it all the way to 2 min though, I was a little distracted while brewing.

This green though, it really IS, Just Pure Green. I think I’ve gotten used to (spoiled by) flavored and blended greens lately. This is a just a really nice solid green. There was no astringency, maybe a touch of bitterness (which I expect out of nice greens). The mouthfeel is full, and it isn’t drying at all. I could do with it being a bit stronger.

Is it phenomenal? No. I’m not even sure it would ever make its way onto a shopping list for me, but it seems like a nice everyday drinker that would work nicely as a base if you wanted to get into blending yourself. Also perhaps a nice intro tea for people that aren’t very used to greens.

Just grabbed a random baggie from the packet of samples from Just Organic Tea, and came out with this.

I’ve never heard of Tulsi before, Wiki tells me that it’s also referred to as Holy Basil. First sniff of the dry leaves didn’t yield much basil scent, but rather a lemony scent. Like ‘I love Lemon’ type of teas- I’m guessing that’s the Lemon Myrtle coming through. The wet leaves smell more basil-y but still lemony. The liquor smells really lemony at first, but settles down into a nice spicy scent. Like a chai tea with a dash of lemon.

The tea leaves my mouth feeling minty fresh, but a little dry. There’s not much taste really, it’s all aroma (to me). You can’t taste any yummy lemon-y-ness, any of the spices, or even the peppermint because the amount used is so subtle.

I don’t dislike it, it’s not something I would purchase. I can see this being nice as Iced Tea though!

My mailbox smells like chai tea. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s kind of nice. I’m not sure my neighbors appreciate the spicy smell of their mail though.

I got the sample packet from JustOrganicTea today! They send along 11 different tea samples and a sample of organic sugar. The chai smell really overwhelmed the other teas though, ALL the little baggies smell like chai. I don’t know if the taste of the other teas have been contaminated, but since this is a flavored tea as well, I figured it wouldn’t be too bad if it was contaminated just a little. Plus this is one flavor that I actually requested.

The leaves are broken, rather small, the largest maybe a square centimeter. There’s no dust though. The leaves are a dark brown like 60% dark chocolate. The label says there’s carob in the mix, which is interesting, I’m not sure what carob tastes like on it’s own. I couldn’t get much of a dry leaf smell off of this sample. I’m not sure if that’s because the sample is too small, or because the outside of the bag still smells like chai.

The liquor is a dark maple type of color, maybe not as red. The dark maple that’s a little more brown and green. It just smells like black tea. It smells like very nice black tea, but I’m not getting a vanilla scent off of it. The blend of black is very nice- it’s very smooth and mellow and not at all astringent. For me it’s like where lipton is too bold, and P&G tips are too smooth, this is a nice medium. It’s a black blend that I actually like very much. One I wouldn’t mind serving to friends with cake. It’s smooth and sweet on the uptake as well as the after-swallow taste. There’s no dryness to it, just sweetness.

I get a teensy bit of vanilla on the gulp. The slightest bit of a vanilla feel in the nose, but no actual aroma or taste. At this point I don’t know if it’s actually there or if I’m just looking so hard for it that I’m imagining it. If I weren’t told it was a vanilla blend, I wouldn’t have called it that. Maybe I should start doing tasting notes without looking first at what I’m brewing.

I like it. I would drink it if it were offered to me. I really liked this cup, unfortunately the sample didn’t contain enough for several cups. I wonder if that’s a good thing. On one hand I can’t really get addicted to a tea I’ve only had once. On the other, I can’t experiment to see if this is really one of those jewels. At this point though, I don’t know if I like it enough to commit to a large amount of it.

One of my friends kindly gave me a teabag of this because everytime I try to get to the Lupicia in the mall, they’re closed.

The website describes it as a green tea with sweet berry flavoring. That’s definitely accurate to me. It reminds me of the sweet berry sauce you find mixed into alot of ice creams- berries, but very generic. Also a bit creamy and too sweet for me at the moment. The green tea flavor isn’t coming through very strongly with the two minute steep, even though the berries are quite strong. I’ll probably do a second steep longer to see if I can bring it out more.

I’ve been all achey and my mom thinks I have the flu. Strangely the ‘flu’ is making very sensitive to scents and flavors. I’m not sure thats a good thing.