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I didn’t have an issue with the scent of the dry leaves. They just smelled kind of plain to me. I chose a low temp and low steep time to avoid cooking the cukes.

165/1.5 min. It’s not bad. Smells like cucumbers and tastes like it, too. I’m not picking up any tea taste, more like liquid cucumber, no spiciness whatsoever. Actually, I think it’s pretty neat, but it’s not what I’d look for in a tea.

Dry tea smells delightful. Fruity, perky and promising. 170/1.5 min. Not so fruity scented now, nor in the taste. Perhaps this would make a better iced tea. I didn’t really dislike it hot, but it didn’t seem like a mango taste to me. It was more of a cane sugar taste without the overwhelming sweetness. More syrupy tasting. I wonder if it would diminish when cooled.

This tea smells fruity, yet subdued when dry. The scattered flower petals are beautiful. I went light on the steep 175/1 min as I wanted to avoid cooking the leaves. The description of this tea has to be incorrect as it doesn’t mention vanilla. Either that or I totally missed it. I’m getting a very big vanilla scent and flavor. I do not like vanilla, nor would I have purchased it had I known. The sweet vanilla flavor so permeates the tea, that I cannot focus much on the other elements. I can taste some fruitiness, but am not enjoying this, so I can’t report any further. It lingers far too long in my mouth and nose.

This is an interesting tea. Dry leaf smelled grassy, meadowy. It’s beautiful to look at, green and long and flat. The liquor is very, very light yellow, but not much of a fragrance, well, other than a little asparagus.

At first, I didn’t like it at all. The first steep produced a very vegetal, savory tea, with just a super faint hint at sweetness. (So faint that I thought I imagined it.) It didn’t have anything really interesting, but it wasn’t horrific, so I decided to steep a second time, honestly, simply because I was thirsty and I had some hot water ready to go.

The second steep was amazing! Sweet, slightly floral, mysterious and extremely pleasant. It was like a different tea. I haven’t had this happen to me before and it’s showing me that maybe I need to give some of these teas I dislike a second steep to see if there’s a glorious cup awaiting the next infusion…

Can we say “tropical fruit explosion?” It’s really good! (If you love pineapple, that is!) I do. It smells tropical from the moment the packet is opened. It retains it’s scent even after steeping. 165/1 min – I hate getting vegetal greens with fruity flavors, so I really dropped the temp and steep times. I love this tea! It will make a wonderful summer iced tea. The green is nice and slightly grassy, the fruit flavors are blended splendidly. I’m very satisfied with it! (Phew, one less sample bag in the stash…)

Tea Note #100! And what a beautiful one it is. Although I’ve had a fairly interesting black tea from time to time, I tend to prefer flavored blacks as I’m not such a fan of traditional black teas. This tea, however, has changed my thinking. It is the most extraordinary black tea I’ve ever experienced.

These leaves, when dry, are like a huge tangled mass of extraordinarily long black fingers that cling to one another. They’re beautiful and almost a deep violet-black color. They remind me of ravens’ feathers. The scent didn’t remind me of anything other than what I’d pick up as a regular black scent. Perhaps very slightly peppery, but that could have been my imagination as I was thinking of a way to describe the color and pepper came to mind.

205/30 sec – The flavor is simply extraordinary. It is amazing! I love it. Really. It’s a rich flavor with an almost honey-like sweetness, kind of a dulce de leche flavor without the fullness. Raisins. I can taste raisins and I think that’s the flavor that fills my mouth first and most fully. There’s a very slight spiciness to it and I’m thinking that may be that pepper scent I picked up earlier. There is NO bitterness to it at all. It is slightly vegetal. It’s a really wonderful black tea. It is an expensive tea, but it’s such a wonderful treat.

My second steep of this tea will be for about five minutes, which, for me, is really going out on a limb. I detest bitter black tea, but having read the other reviews, I get the impression that this one will not let me down.

Update: I just tried the resteep at 4.5 minutes and I’m not liking it as much. I’m getting a marked astringency although no bitterness… yet. I think it makes sense as the shorter steep time pleased me so much. Samovar recommends 45 sec for the first steep, but as the Breville only works in 30 sec increments, I went with the lower time.

Tea note #99… last of the double digits! :)

I just received this package yesterday and decided it would be a nice morning tea. It smells divine in the packet… fruity and almost peppery at the same time.

205/2.5 min – It still smells fruity, although since I had it on the Breville with the timer, I forgot that it was there and it had cooled considerably. I took a sip of my cold tea and thought, hmm, this is an excellent tea for icing! So, I dropped some ice in and confirmed it. Excellent. It’s fruity, but you can still taste the black tea. It’s mellow and not at all bitter, which is lovely. I like the taste of the mango, which, while not as real tasting as some other mango black teas, is not overly sweet, either. Plus, it has my cat’s name in it (Tango), so it has to be a winner, right? (No. Okay. It’s still good on its own merit.) ;)