drank Wanderlust by Yumchaa
73 tasting notes

So, the day before yesterday started off really well (tea-related), but went very badly downhill (not really tea-related, except for this tea). Then yesterday started horribly (not tea-related, except that I had to rush out of the house w/o my morning cuppas), stayed pretty bad (I think it shot my tea tastings for the day, too – will get to those if Steepster starts being happier), and then got resolved (included a nice, cheery night-time rooibos – ditto).

The good start to day-before yesterday involved a lovely email from Stacy of Butiki Teas and then two morning cups of tea from the swap cteresa sent me, neither of which will get onto the database here. One was a “random” Ceylon from a local tea shop – local to her, that is – which I found delightful, and which inspired me to order a Ceylon to try from PureAromaTeas. And the other was a home blended chai she made up with a Portuguese black tea, which was so good it made me walk around the house asking “Why have I never thought of chai for breakfast before?!?”. All I can do aside from that is check out the rough proportions of spices cteresa used, as they were spot on.

[skipping over non-tea-related woes] In the afternoon, I made a pot of Wanderlust for Cara and me, as she’s a big Yumchaa tea fan too. (By ‘pot’ I mean the Magic Infuser/Cha Cult I own.) Now, I have to say, with all due sorrow, that I’ve found a Yumchaa tea I didn’t like. Dry, the smell of the apple and cinnamon was lovely, but after steeping it went bitter, which it also tasted. I have to say that my taste-buds were not tainted by the bitterness of the day, as Cara also found it bitter, before I’d even said anything about it. I know Teresa wouldn’t have rated this one highly if it had been a problem with either the cinnamon or the green tea base, so I’m stumped as to what went wrong. That said, I’ve had teas I liked a lot less, but it was both Yumchaa and a Teresa favourite, so expectations were very high.

At least it rules one tea out of my next order from Yumchaa, thereby making life a bit easier! :? (If we ever get to London again, I’ll definitely try it in store though, to see if I still don’t much like it.)

Sil

yeah…. i dunno. this one was good but it wasn’t fantastic when i tried it. it was also a bit of a confusing tea so i never got around to rating it lol

cteresa

So sorry it was a bad day! a kiss, and glad you enjoyed the teas (weird about this one – any chance the water was too hot? this is a 75 degrees tea)

cteresa

Oh, just to add in case you have not found it, the recipe for the chai http://steepster.com/teas/unknown/32018-homemade-chai-mix more or less. It´s a fun thing to make, though a tip, it gets better as it ages for some reason.

Hallieod

Thank you for the teas again, the sympathy & the chai recipe!! Yes, about Wanderlust, I’ll try again at a carefully-measured 75. I’m usually using 80 for greens, so it wouldn’t have been super hot, but definitely worth a try.

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Sil

yeah…. i dunno. this one was good but it wasn’t fantastic when i tried it. it was also a bit of a confusing tea so i never got around to rating it lol

cteresa

So sorry it was a bad day! a kiss, and glad you enjoyed the teas (weird about this one – any chance the water was too hot? this is a 75 degrees tea)

cteresa

Oh, just to add in case you have not found it, the recipe for the chai http://steepster.com/teas/unknown/32018-homemade-chai-mix more or less. It´s a fun thing to make, though a tip, it gets better as it ages for some reason.

Hallieod

Thank you for the teas again, the sympathy & the chai recipe!! Yes, about Wanderlust, I’ll try again at a carefully-measured 75. I’m usually using 80 for greens, so it wouldn’t have been super hot, but definitely worth a try.

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I’ve been drinking tea pretty much all my life, allowing for the fact that there probably was no tea in my baby-bottles. I gave it up twice, once when a then-boyfriend sneered at me for being addicted (okay, I was, but I was also stubborn enough to bear a week of the blinding headaches and overwhelming exhaustion that followed cold-turkey withdrawal), and once on my first pregnancy. Neither experience gave me any reason to believe a life without tea is a good life.

Having spent most of my younger days in Ireland, where tea is everywhere, and mostly it’s decent, I whined my way across the States in the 80s and first half of the 90s. Now back in Dublin, and the tea situation is a bit mixed, but there’s the internet to provide what nearby shops don’t!

I started drinking green and white teas as well as my staple black a good few years ago now, but have recently decided I need to LEARN something more about tea than the little I know.

My likes:
- strong black tea blends; some flavoured blacks, such as Earl Grey and a small (but growing) number of other fruit and flower-flavoured ones; and chai. (For some daft reason, I feel like a tea fraud drinking sweet chai at home, though I’ll happily drink it out.)

- Chinese greens (may update this when I’ve learned enough to be more specific); some flavoured greens, especially if they’re made by the fabulous Yumchaa; Genmaicha; getting to like Sencha, as long as it’s not too bitter.

- White tea, pretty much as long as it’s good quality, I like it. Some flavoured ones are nice, though it’s easy to overpower the more delicate taste of white.

- Rooibos, which I know, I know, isn’t properly ‘tea’. (As above for Yumchaa flavoured rooibos – some of my favourites.)

Dislikes:
- Any black tea made by someone who doesn’t know you need BOILING WATER. (See above about the Whining Years.)

- Hibiscus in fruit-flavoured teas. Looks so pretty! Tastes so awful!

I’m working on trying to like Hojicha, which isn’t going too well yet. Jane Pettigrew describes it as “biscuity”, but unless she’s eaten a lot of cigarette-flavoured biscuits in her time, I don’t get it.

- Aniseed in spiced teas. (Just discovered this one for the dislike list today, in an otherwise-tasty chai. Don’t like the tongue-numbing effect.)

Indecisive, despite being opinionated – okay, very opinionated – so may just add notes rather than rating.

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