Featured & New Tasting Notes

Taken Plain.
Usually Golden Moon never ever misses with me. I can open up anything they send and adore it absolutely. Not this one. It is a very nice scented green but I have had better. I’ve had a TON worse and this is in no way a bad tea… but Ive had better. I’m just disappointed that this isn’t as good as the vast majority of their other teas.

What I was looking for was a deep toasted green base to add depth paired with the bright floral notes extending down into the base to pull it up into the light. The green tea feels like it is living up to my expectations but the jasmine seems to be the part falling short. It seems almost two dimensional and weak next to the base. Not weak as if you couldn’t taste it but weak like brittle. It does not have depth into the lower notes of jasmine flavor that would add richness to the blend and a more full mouth feel.

It’s ok. It is what they promise but I know that they can do better because they usually do. If you are looking for a light, pleasant and unoffensive Jasmine blend definitely give this one a shot. If you are like me and you want to be dazzled by new, bold and exciting flavors you might think this one is too calm.

I had genmaicha with my tofu breakfast, though I’m not sure it was this one. The quirky local brunch joint has an extensive tea menu, mostly loose leaf, though they don’t tell you which company’s tea you’re drinking. Since I have this in my cupboard, I’m labeling this way. Yum!

The leaves in this tea are a deep gorgeous green and no stems to be found in this tea. The ratio of leaves to rice is high which gives the final product a beautiful green colour. In comparison, I have some cheaper genmaicha which is full of stems and mostly rice and the outcome is a less flavourful yellow product; not nearly as nice to taste or look at as this comforting tea from lupicia.

My new shipment is even a little bit better than the tin that took me about a year to go through

This tea brews up a lovely amber color and has a subtle malt flavor. Hints of earthyness add to the boquet. Overall a good cup, but not the best Yunan Provence tea I’ve tasted.

This is my first real venture into Gyokuro. I’ve tried it before, but when I last purchased gyokuro I was still in the naive mindset that all green teas are brewed the same way (3 min, 180 degrees), and so I’m pretty sure that I butchered gyokuro the last time I had it. That being said, I now have learned that most gyokuro are steeped at extremely low temperatures (this one I steep at 104 degrees!) which brings out a completely different taste than you get at 180 degrees and I also brew it in a little kyusu now.

In this case you get a very sweet taste with slight vegetal hints, but not nearly as much as you would get at higher temperatures. The flavor is so different to me that I really don’t know how to describe it right now, but when I have a chance to try more Gyokuro, I’ll make sure that I report back

Great pick-me-up. The nice thing about this tea is that it tastes good even after it’s turned lukewarm, making it a nice thing to have by your side while reading/using the computer.

Finally was able to try a cup of this today. Didn’t need to add anything to it- no bitterness, just ginger peachy goodness with a good tea flavor. Going to buy a tin tomorrow. This will become a regular tea. It’s nice to find a black tea that can be so refreshing!

Chocolate? Mint? My middle names! I like this tea and it’s good straight up and also with a bit of sugar and milk. I am drinking the loose leaf but this also comes in tea bags. It seems to be a very reliable, pedestrian tea. I will finish it and enjoy it in the evenings. So far my favorite chocolate tea (not that I’ve done a wide sampling) is Florence by Harney and Sons.

If you like chocolate and mint you will inevitably enjoy this tea—the mint seems stronger than the chocolate. I suspect that there are better ones out there, but I would happily drink this again.

The more tea I drink, the more I start to make judgments about just how I would line individuals types up on a scale. If I could select just one Earl Grey as my favorite, from those I have tried, I could do it. If I could select just one strawberry flavored black tea and just one strawberry flavored rooibos, I could now do it. That does not mean that I will quest to try all of them.

This Chocolate Mint Truffle is very nice; there are days when meat-eaters would prefer a hamburger to a steak and this might just be the hamburger of choc/mint teas. But it’s a good hamburger—not a fast food one, but a hamburger from your local pub that prides itself on making a fantastic hamburger sandwich.

I think it’s time to try a second infusion.

I should start by saying that I truly got into green tea when my college roommate came home from study abroad in China. She brought home a few bricks of green tea and we spent the rest of college (1.5 years) drinking green tea sunk to the bottom of a cup of hot water. This was crude, but it was college and we were obsessed. When the bricks ran out, we ran to Teavana and chose Dragonwell as our replacement. I have been drinking that as my green tea since.

Recently, I was introduced to this tea and I have been won over. It is a delicate tea with gentle flavors, similar to a white tea. It is fantastic. I highly suggest getting a sample to try for yourself. I have been sharing the joy of this tea since I got it with all of my tea drinking friends and family and everyone has thoroughly enjoyed it.

(Drank hot, no sugar necessary)

This is an absolutely exquisite, wonderfully beautiful tea. I fell in love with it as soon as I opened the box and the scent wafted out, distinguishing itself from it’s box-mates, intoxicating my olfactory senses. It’s a breezy tea with a refreshing breath of mint,a whirlwind of delightful chamomile, and a flutter of the rooibos flavors.

I recently got the bad news that the woman who owns Lavender Basics has had to close down her store. It’s terribly disapointing news because I love several of her teas and in the case of this tea I haven’t yet found a Formosa Oolong that matches up with this one in terms of quality or taste.

It’s baked without tasting burnt and it has a very faint trace of the bark-like flavour of Adagio’s Grapefuit Oolong (sans the grapefruit, obviously). It also gives off gently-wafting fruity notes, particularly as it cools. It’s a very full-bodied, complex tea that’s quite unique and a joy to drink.

I instinctively want to save this tea and use it as sparingly as possible, but I know that doesn’t really work with the limited shelf-life tea has. Sigh.

My favorite English Breakfast tea. Full of flavor and the toasty notes make it feel filling, almost as if you’d had it with a pastry.

So… I finally gave up to the hype surrounding this tea and ordered myself a sample.
I read all the praising tasting notes before trying it and was prepared to face something extraordinary.

I like jasmine teas and am always on the lookout for the perfect jasmine. This isn’t gonna get to the top, that’s for sure. My main gripe is the smell. What I’m looking for is fresh-off-a-bush-jasmine and all I’m getting instead is old-lady-perfume-jasmine. It’s heady, powdery and strong. I can vividly picture an old English lady wearing jasmine perfume and serving this tea to her grandchildren. The lady is so stuck in my mind that I think of her each time I brew this.

I decided to use a gaiwan because I figured since it’s Silver Needle it should stand up to several infusions. And indeed it does. Actually I like the subsequent infusions much better than the first one. The perfume is pretty much gone and now I can enjoy Silver Needle taste with the traces of jasmine flowers.

I’ll continue my experiments with this tea and maybe I’ll find a way to beat the first wave of flavor…

When I heard that this tea was made by taking a white tea and then soaking it in champagne, i was intrigued. I couldn’t wait to try it. It sounded like a sensualist’s treat. I’m very pleased with the experience of smelling and drinking this tea. It feels luxurious.

The dry leaves smell so wonderful that I want to eat the leaves. They have a wonderful grape and light raspberry smell. The leaves themselves are typical white tea leaves but with a bit more green and a little less downy white than some white teas.

The scent of the dry leaves is excellently expressed in the fragrant brew along with a very light musk as one gets in some grape juices. It leaves a very pleasant aftertaste.

As my first Darjeeling, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. The color of the tea threw me off, since it wasn’t as dark as blacks usually are. The taste is nice, definitely different than a “normal” black.

I gotta remember to back off the steep time just a hair with this one. The savory taste of the sesame doesn’t need a super-bold tea taste behind it. It can make it a bit overwhelming.

I usually pick a certain type of tea in the mornings before work. Stout enough that it helps me wake up but gentle enough that it isn’t a mean wake up since my stomach usually wakes up about 2 – 3 hours after I do. Anyway, I wasn’t 100% sure about having this as a morning, take-to-work-in-my-tumbler tea. But I figured what the heck, right? I added a little bit of sugar (1/2 teaspoon for my 12oz) and off I went.

Okay, I haven’t tried this with milk yet but I think I’m going to the next time I decide to start my work day off with this. The savoriness was a bit abrupt for me this morning. It was good and I liked it, but the first few sips were a bit shocking. Not a gentle wake up tea. Of course, I miiiiiiight have made it a wee bit strong (when I’m tired in the morning (aka ALWAYS) I tend to be a bit heavy handed with the leaf weight). But I think in a few hours I could have handled the tea much better. I still had some left when I got to work (unusual for me but again, it took a bit to gear me up for this) and by that time, all of me was fully awake and thought this tea was a fantastic idea.

Taste-wise, still as yummy as my first experience with this. Hello toasted sesame! I’m not craving unadon from it though, but that could be because unadon just isn’t a morning dish. Mmm, unadon. Anyway. The mouth-feel on this puppy is… AMAZING. My fukamushi from last night had less savory mouth-feel that this one (though I blame part of that on my decision to use a metal strainer, not my kyusu with the sasame filter – and how big of a dork does that sentence make me?). Post-tea I’m kind of left with the feeling that I need to brush my teeth. Not so much for the taste because I’m kind of grooving on that but for the mouth-feel-created-fuzz-factor-feeling. It rivals the tooth sweater feeling first thing in the morning. Kind of fantastic that it can be that thick tasting but weird in a black.

Randomly, I think if I were to add yak butter to any tea, I’d want the tea to be like this. The tea is strong enough and bold enough in flavor that I don’t imagine butter – even yak butter (which I equate to having a taste similar to goat cheese because, you know, it’s a YAK) – would be able to overtake the tea. Of course, I don’t imagine ANY tea could overtake yak butter but at least a tea like this would have a fighting chance of not being overpowered and, in my mind, balance out the tea/yak taste experience.

Not that I plan on adding yak butter to any of my teas. But you know, if I had to.

After finding I wasn’t really in the mood for Black or Black Flavored Tea today I sipped on this. I think I will be more into the Greens and Whites today!

Ginger is my favorite spice, and so when I saw this in the shop last night, I had to get it, even though I’m trying to move to loose leaf rather than bagged tea. (And two other boxes came home too, but we’ll not speak of that. )

Once I removed the plastic, I was surprised that the the scent was so.. weak. Once brewed, the spice scent still had less ginger than expected, but was definitely better than just the smell of the tea bags.

Flavor-wise, it’s definitely a cookie flavor, and the tea tastes like a mild gingerbread cookie. The ginger doesn’t have a bite to it, and you can taste a few of the other spices.

I am enjoying this tea, but likely won’t buy another box – I prefer my flavors bold, and this is very mellow. But, it’s good, and if you like spice tea and mild gingerbread cookies, this is good stuff!

RL is still busy like a busy thing, and I’m only now coming up for air. I’ve been gulping down my staples the last couple of days, and this one is definitely in that category.

So school has been using me as a punching bag as of late, but only about a month left to go. I honestly feel bad about not updating here whenever I’ve had a new tea, so I’m taking a quick break to fill in this one gap at least.

That being said, this tea was worth the loss of the nap I was planning on taking. When I first opened the tin (ages ago) I smelt sour and cinnamon, but with something else that adds a bit of sweetness. The smells blend oddy well together and kind of overlap in my mind,but I’m not a fan. The leaves look un-uniform, with some rolled and downy silver and other open and blackish-brown. I did really enjoy the light yellow it brewed to, and in my glass mug I could see the little hairs from the leaves floating around. I tried not to think about that too much when I maned up and took a dainty sip.

The first taste was more spice than I expected. The cucumber aspect was definitly overwhelmed, but when I did isolate it was like woah. I felt a the same sensation when I’m eating cucumbers, sans crunch, that wetter than water feeling. It also tastes pretty much what I’d expect from a cucumber tea, cucumbery goodness, when ignoring the cinnamon.
One the second steep, the cinnamon was cut back and I enjoyed this cup more than the first. One the third steep I lost interest and left it to sit for about 6 hrs.

Does any know why Adagio added the cinnamon aspect? It doesn’t really detract from the tea, or help it, but I can’t figure out why it would be there. I’ve never thought cucumbers and spices. Pickles and spice, yes. But cukes? Not really.

This is a bagged tea that smells strongly of cinnamon and cloves with the sweet shy scent of chocolate peeping around the corner. I used two tea bags which created a rich red-brown broth tasting strongly of vanilla, cloves and cinnamon with a chocolate taste appearing toward the end of each sip. There is also a strange cool-sharp sweetness that I assume is the licorice. I do not get much of the rooibos, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned since I don’t like rooibos. It claims to be cherry vanilla but I don’t sense the cherry at all. Overall it is an ok tea for an evening sip. I will try some of their other blends to see what they’re like as well.

Update: It gets more chocolatey and less spicy as it sits. I think it needs time for the volatiles to evaporate and the chocolate to get a firmer seat.