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I’m trying two Niligiri teas this evening – this one and Tiger Hill. I’m getting the impression that Nilgiri teas are medium-bodied floral blacks in general. This one is a bit fruity as well, with a slight bitterness. It’s ok, but not something I’d buy more of.

My car is still not starting, and I’m still consoling myself with tea as I walk home. :p This one is listed under tweed & hickory instead of Metropolitan, but whatever. It’s decent as a peach flavoured tea, but I didn’t get any of the “cream” flavour at all. Not bad.

Another sample from Anlina. :) It’s interesting to experience a tea without knowing what’s in it. I smelled this one and thought, “oooh, lemon!”. And then after it steeped, I smelled it again and thought “no… mixed citrus maybe? bergamot? lemon danish?”. Then my curiosity overcame me and I looked it up on steepster. Mango and bergamot, huh? Well, now that you mention it, I can definitely smell the mango. And interestingly, I don’t really smell the flowers, but I can taste them. This is a neat blend, lots of different flavours somehow coming together and making something yummy.

Mmm, another sample from Anlina. :) I agree, this one starts out in the bag smelling like your average milk oolong, but once brewed it gets interesting! Green and vegetal, but also rich and creamy. Kind of a herbal vegetal, rather than grassy or vegetable. Neat, I like it.

This one isn’t on Teayama’s website anymore, but the description is still available on Amazon. Either way, I’m pretty sure this is the Metropolitan Scottish Caramel Pu-erh blend. I made it this morning to compare with the similar Coffee Lovers’ Tea by Tay Tea. The dry tea smells delicious, sweet and caramel-y. I used 3g for a 10oz mug, two quick rinses with boiling water, then steeped for 5min. I was a bit disappointed that the amazing smell doesn’t really translate very well into the flavour of the tea. Mostly it just has that earthy cooked puerh taste, with a bit of sweetness and caramel in the aroma. I wonder if rinsing twice actually washed away some of the flavouring? Anyway, it’s a pleasant enough mug of tea, but the Tay Tea blend I was comparing it to retained more of the added flavour even after the two rinses. I think I’ll try just doing a single rinse the next time I make this, maybe add a little bit of milk and sugar to bring out the caramel flavour.

Edited to add: Huh, second steeping (7min) was actually sweeter and creamier. Interesting! Glad I tried that.

Another sample from Amoda – the ingredients on the bag say almonds and vanilla, but the tea description says caramel, which is a bit confusing. It’s fairly similar to the Caramel Toffee Puerh I have in my cupboard, so I’m brewing them together to compare. It smells delicious, a bit more caramel-y dry, and a bit more vanilla-y once steeped. I used 3g of leaf for 10oz of water, two quick rinses with boiling water, and then a 5min steep. This is actually pretty nice. The puerh base is smooth and rich and a bit sweet. It doesn’t taste as sweet and desserty as it smells, but there is definitely some vanilla creaminess that really comes out in the flavour. It smells and looks so similar to the caramel toffee puerh I already have, but it actually does taste a bit better. When that one runs out, I might restock with this one instead.

Edited to add: Second steeping (7min) is milder in flavour, but still sweet and pleasant. Also, I feel like I could have a nap. Is it normal for shou puerh to make you sleepy?

Another one from Amoda. I’m a little surprised I had to add this one to the database, surely I’m not the first person to have tried it! I think I’ve actually had it before, in one of their tasting boxes. Anyway, this is interesting, it’s a blend of jasmine pearls (green tea), tie guan yin (greenish oolong), and silver needle (white tea). Besides the jasmine in the pearls, there’s no other flavouring, just the blend of teas. The dry tea is neat because it’s a combination of rolled silver-and-green pearls, lumpy nuggets of oolong, and then the long silver buds (and looks like some broken leaves too) of the white tea. It’s pretty dense, with the rolled teas: a level 1.5tsp spoon was 2.6g and expanded to fill about half of my infuser basket once everything unrolled (which took at least a couple of steepings). The tie guan yin unrolled into lovely large green leaves, and the pearls unrolled into long, lighter green buds with a little bit of stem attached.

This has a fairly light, subtle flavour. The jasmine is definitely there, but it’s quite unobtrusive. There’s a creamy sweetness from the oolong, and a lightly vegetal base. It’s smooth and sweet and mellow. No astringency or bitterness yet, and I’m on the third steeping.

I have to admit, I have a bit of a Western palate when it comes to teas, so I tend to go for the bolder flavours. I’m still developing a palate for whites, greens, and light oolongs. But sometimes it’s good to sit down and drink a tea that really makes you pay attention to fully appreciate it. I don’t think I need to own this tea, but I definitely enjoyed trying it out!

Thanks to Amoda for sending me a sample of this to try! This came in a little plastic, resealable bag – so happy the resealable sample bags are back!

The aroma of the dry tea is super floral – lots of rose (obviously, there are tons of rose petals in the tea as well), and bergamot. I don’t really detect any cardamom? But I also didn’t happen to get any cardamom pods in this sample, so it might not be representative.

Brewing instructions were 1 tsp/8oz cup, boiling, 3-5min. I measured a level tea spoon (using one of those spoons that’s for tea, and actually holds 1.5tsp) and it came to, like 1.6g and looked like a lot of rose petals. The petals tend to shift to the top of the sample, you know? So I ended up dumping the rest of the sample into a dish so I could fish out some actual tea and bring it up to 2g. :) This went into my 10oz mug and steeped for 4min.

It’s a very nice tea! A lot more floral and less spicy than the Person Palace tea Amoda sells, which I tried previously and really liked. I have a plain rose-flavoured black tea in my cupboard and this is a lot more complex and interesting than that. I think it’s the bergamot and maybe the borage that just rounds it out? If you like rose-flavoured teas, I definitely recommend this one.

I decided to take the leaves for an ill-advised second steeping (9 min! let’s just squeeze every drop of flavour out of these suckers, lol). This time I broke open a couple of green cardamom pods and tossed them into the basket as well. This is actually… surprisingly drinkable, given that I have no business attempting to make 2g of tea blend stretch to making a total of 20oz of tea, that’s ridicious. I’ll definitely be adding a cardamom pod or two, the next time I brew this properly, since the rose/cardamom combination really is the whole point of this tea.

I don’t know if I’d be able to choose between this one and the Persian Palace by Sloane. They’re both good, and suprisingly different from each other. Happily, it looks like I’ll be able to buy 25g of each, once I finally take myself off tea-buying hiatus. :)

My little town doesn’t have a tea shop, but it does have a “fancy coffee shop” (this is in addition to the Tim Horton’s). I don’t usually go there, because frankly their coffee is overpriced and not very good. But today I was walking past in the cold, and going in to see if they had tea seemed like a good excuse to warm up. :) They do have a few little jars of loose-leaf on a shelf, with just the names on the front but what looked like Metropolitan labels on the back. I asked the girl what she would recommend, and she picked one off the shelf and said “oh, this tea is definitely my favourite!” so I was like sure, I’ll have a cup of whatever that is. :) It looked like a rooibos blend, and the name on the front just said “Nutcracker”. I walked home with the warm cup in my hand, smelling it and trying to guess the flavour. It’s primarily what my brain helpfully identifies as “cherry… no, almond… no, definitely cherry… hmm, maybe amaretto?” and I thought there were maybe hints of lemon as well? It’s also unmistakeably rooibos, even without tasting it. It tastes pretty much the way it smells, sweet and almondy/boozy. It’s good, tastes like a festive, desserty sort of tea. I got home and looked it up, and apparently it’s supposed to be marzipan flavoured which I guess makes sense. It’s also supposed to be way cooler-looking than it actually was! I double checked, and all I can see is rooibos and almond slices, no crazy snowflake candies. Ah well, I’m pretty ambivalent about candies in tea on the best of days so I didn’t really miss them. This was decent, if I’m ever running low on flavoured rooibos I might get some more.

Sample sipdown! Brewed the rest of the sample (3.5g) in 10oz of what turned out to be 80C water (I overcooled it, oops) for 2min. Malty, smooth, and weirdly I was getting some smoky notes from it earlier (seems to have disappeared as the tea cooled). Not rating because I wasn’t really paying enough attention as I drank it.