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Dang. Smells amazing. Light, very slightly vegetal, slightly fruity kinda? This is awesome. Will log better when not playing hostess. A plus would recommend.

Honestly, my first impression upon trying the cup was “Wow, this sure is green tea?”. Nothing really stood out about it to me; it was good, but kind of generic. I’m on my second cup now, though, and it turns out there’s a lot I like about it.

I guess this is just me figuring out what chun mee tastes like (I’ve never had it before), but while it isn’t my favorite green tea, it’s a really solid one. It’s heavier than a few other greens I’ve had, and more astringent than I’m used to Chinese greens being. Kind of like I said about Misty Mountain: it smells like a Chinese green, but it’s more vegetal and full-bodied than, say, dragonwell. Actually, it tastes kind of…I don’t know, roasted? But in all honesty I’m not sure whether or not I only know to look for that because I read the tea description.

All in all, as far as solid staple green teas go it probably isn’t as good as that one from Charleston, but it makes a good case for itself and I’m glad I have it around for now. It’s kind of like the green tea equivalent of a winter sweater that, while slightly scratchy, does its job of keeping you warm.

One day I’m going to make this properly. My first note for this was, what, two years ago? Well, I still have the same tin of tea, and I finally steeped it a minute longer like I said I was going to (I’m going to the midnight premiere of the next part of The Hobbit tonight, and this seemed really appropriate to drink beforehand), except now the tea is 2 years old and I have no idea whether it’s supposed to taste like this. The flavor is definitely stronger, and there’s basically no astringency to it. It’s like the floral Chinese-green-tea scent is a lot more vegetal than it normally is? So like a Japanese green kinda snuck in there and played around while I wasn’t looking.

I like it fine, and a lot better than I did last time I made it, so maybe the years aged it, I don’t know. I hope I didn’t, like, tea-poison myself.

I wish I could be more professional about this, but the only words coming to my mind are “super friggin tasty”. I tried this for the first time on a whim during one of my Zen Tea excursions over the summer, and both my best friend and I thought it was so good that it’s now become the tea I have to force myself not to order so that I’m not just getting the same thing every time I’m there.

It smells amazing. I think it’s the almond part, but it almost smells like amaretto, except fruitier. Almond and papaya are just a super interesting combination of things to throw in a tea, in my opinion, and they make a nice sweet interesting delicious pair.

Honestly, this is probably one of my favorites now, up there with Uji Sencha and Brioche. No word yet on whether it tops White Christmas.

HI EVERYONE I’M ALIVE

I can’t believe I haven’t logged this yet, because it’s one of my favorites that I’ve recently bought. It smells absolutely amazing. The green tea base is nothing special—which isn’t to say it’s bad, it’s just not astonishing, as green teas go—but the subtle sweet sesame flavors make it, and it’s a very nice, cozy, lightly sweet green tea.

I think I’ve had mine a little too long, as I can’t taste the flavors as well as I used to be able to, but this effectively got me through my hellish senior year of college, and for that I salute it.

This is the second time I’ve gone “Oh, what the hell” and bought tea for myself for Valentine’s Day, and it seems to work out splendidly every time. That said, I don’t want to imply for a second that this is any degree of subtle. It’s EXTREMELY rose. Like, straight up, if you don’t like rose, you will HATE this, it’s basically just like drinking a bouquet of them.

What makes me like it so much is that the chocolate part actually is subtle, and manages to accomplish “subtle but definitely present” rather than “the description calls it subtle but what that actually means is I can’t flipping taste it at all”. The chocolate comes in right after the rose is done kicking you in the tongue and makes the whole experience a lot better by being muted and sweet and cocoa-y and blending with the rose extremely well.

Eh.
Basically, this is the latest in Teavana’s streak of “Well, it’s okay, but it really could have been better”. Very caramely and chocolatey, but suffers from the same problem as Dokudami Umami did, where there’s something really lacking and watery about it. Also, there’s no sea salt in this. Teavana is not good at naming its teas after what they taste like.

I like the spiciness of the peppercorn and the sweet savoriness of the cocoa and caramel. I just wanted more from this, and it didn’t deliver.

This must be why people like oolongs! My initial affair with Kwan Yin left me really surprised when it seemed like every other oolong just tasted like wood, nothing, or nothing with a clean aftertaste of wood, but Da Hong Pao is quite tasty. It’s definitely got the clean, woodsy taste characteristic of oolong, but with more…I don’t know, flavor to it? It’s fuller and fruitier than, say, formosa oolong, and I like it infinitely better. There’s also a sort of sweetness to it that I didn’t really get from other non-flavored oolongs. I am a fan.

WOO YEAH FREE SHIPPING! WOO YEAH GIFT CARD!

I like this, but it wasn’t really what I was looking for. First of all, there’s very little caramel in it, to the point where I was like “Really? You put caramel in the name?”. It mostly tastes to me like apples, cinnamon, and almonds; I’m not sure where the “Amaretti” comes from if they already have “Almond” in the name. For a delicious tea, its name sure is a liar. That aside, though, it’s pretty good. Very cinnamon-apple, neither of which I am really a fan of on their own, but I’m not going to judge Teavana for that (or, I guess, DavidsTea, since that’s where everyone’s saying the recipe was ripped off from) since that’s pretty much just what the blend was going for. It’s a very winter-holiday tea. The only thing I don’t like about it is the beetroot. I think I had another Teavana blend with beetroot in it, and just…I don’t like it in tea, it’s so loud and sour and even if it plays well with other ingredients, that sucks if the other ingredients are what you’re drinking the damn tea for.

In conclusion, not perfect but tasty! Probably won’t buy it again, but what I have is going fast.