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Yay, this came in the mail. Is it artificial? Hell, yeah. But if you like lemon heads the way I do, you too will find the concept of lemon candy gunpowder tea irresistible. Plus the smell. Sooooooo lemony.

This beautifully named tea has light sweet and savory notes. It’s a little nutty, but mostly vegetal, and for a sencha, amazingly mellow. I find senchas have great flavor but can be on the astringent side, so I’m really glad to have found a non-astringent one. Delicious!

Does the fact that this tea comes from Assam make it technically an assam? I haven’t had enough assams to tell by taste, and the labeling doesn’t really say. To me the flavor falls somewhere between an English breakfast and a darjeeling. A hearty tea with just a hint of earth and fruit undertones. And orthodox is right — I feel like it’s “normal” enough that I could serve this to non-tea addicts without raising eyebrows. Certainly not the most exotic of the Tealet teas, but a solid offering.

The Tealet tins came four to a box, and simply for the sake of keeping some idea of what I’ve tried and what I haven’t, I’m making the round through each box before going on to the next one. Today’s box was particularly well-appointed in that it hit all the major tea groups: black, oolong, green, and this white that I’m finishing out the day with.

While I don’t think I would seek this tea out because I’m just not a fan of unflavored whites, I have to note that the tea has some fascinating spice undertones that give it a lot more character and body than a white tea usually has. It tastes like cinnamon and cloves, if you can imagine cinnamon and cloves as an aftertaste rather than the overpowering experience they usually are. I also get a bit of sweet hay flavor, which I find with a lot of white teas. It’s a very smooth tea, but with 4 out of 5 caffeine points, maybe not the most relaxing tea. Drink it to wake up.

Prep note: the instructions recommend using a whomping 2 Tbsp; I used 2 tsp, which to me seemed plenty strong enough. It’s true that this is a light and feathery tea, with many of the pieces consisting of 2 leaves attached to a stem, and all this means that it’s not going to fill all the spaces in the measuring spoon. But still, 2 Tbsp seems like overkill. Use your own discretion, I guess.

The recommended serving for this is 1 Tbsp., but I just used a tsp. because (a) all I’ve got since my steeper went out of commission is a little basket strainer that fits in the top of the cup, and there’s no way 1 Tbsp of rolled oolong leaves would fit in it once the water hit them and (b) I wasn’t keen to use the whole tin in one go.

Now that I’m trying it, a Tbsp still seems unnecessary, but maybe 1.5 tsp would have been good. It is just slightly on the weak side. That aside, the flavor is great, very smooth with that classic Taiwanese honey-floral oolong taste. A bit of mellow pinenut flavor too. There are few things as comforting as a honeyish oolong.

I think this may be the greenest green tea I’ve ever seen; the steeped leaves are the saturated green of fresh-cut grass and the brew is a murky chartreuse. I was going to save this for later in the day until I saw it got 5 out of 5 marks for caffeine (and after just a few sips, I can already feel the buzz). The directions said 1.5 tsps, but these leaves are so fine they make for a dense spoonful — I cut it down to 1.25 and now I’m thinking just 1 tsp in the future will be plenty. The description card says this is a sweet tea; I’m getting savory. This has a lot of the same buttery spinach and green bean notes as a long jing, though it is far, far stronger than long jing. The quality is excellent, but really, I think I just stumbled across the espresso of the tea world, so sip with caution.

OP stands for orange pekoe (it took me longer to work this out than I care to admit). I think I slightly oversteeped this cup, and when I first sipped it, it had a coffee-like bitterness. With just a little sugar though, it becomes the most heavenly honeyish tea. I’ve always enjoyed orange pekoes for their full-bodied flavor (delicate flavors are great for green tea, but give me a hearty black, please), and this is a really good orange pekoe, strong but still nuanced. Though I’m not picking up the promised almond floral notes, I think I might have to chalk that up to my own haphazard steeping. The leaves are very long and thin, black in the tin but steep to a warm brown, and yes, there are little gold tea flowers mixed in. They’re about the size of my pinkie fingernail, but they’re whole, and they look like tiny buttercups. Adorable.

The label says “musky vanilla flavors and white chocolate aftertaste.” I’m kind of picking up more on that as the tea cools — at first it seemed more like musky melon and olive notes. I also added 1/2 tsp of raw sugar, and I think that helped bring out it’s sweeter side. I have a feeling this one will grow on me and I’ll pick up more of its complex flavor profile when I’ve drunk it a few more times. The leaves are long, narrow, and olive-colored. They smell vegetal and spicy, kind of like a rain forest. I think this one might benefit from a longer steep time than was recommended, because I’m getting a lot in the aroma that doesn’t translate to the tea.

A nutty green tea from the Doke region of India. This is one of those green teas that steeps up a burnt orange, and to me it tastes roasted, though I can’t find anything that specifically says that it is. Also a bit more caffeinated than greens typically are. All in all, this is not my favorite style of green tea, but if you do like darker greens, this is a solid specimen.

This is a good-quality unflavored black, but to me not the great standout that the Black Pearl is. Has some low-key fruit flavors and beautiful whole leaves. The little card that came with the tea says that it it comes from a late harvest, so the fermentation process begins naturally before the leaves are plucked. Interesting. Next time I make this, I think I’ll try using slightly more leaves and see if I get stronger fruit notes.