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Teavivre’s Bailin Gongfu Black is a storybook tea. Wrapping oneself around this tea evokes a wondrous childlike experience. Spending an afternoon with a pot creates a feeling of warmth and wonder where imagination takes an unyielding hold.

I flat out love the dry leaf smell of this tea. Stick your nose in the bag and a rich, woodsy-cocoa scent envelops. The wet leaf is toasty and earthy, while the liquor has stronger dry-cocoa notes. Sipping this elegantly smooth tea, one experiences toasty-cocoa bliss. This tea provokes you to daydream. Naturally sweet. Perfectly balanced. The aftertaste transitions from toasty-cocoa to a more creamy caramel. A slight degree of astringency with the caramel aftertaste creates great harmony. I smack my lips after a sip and a joyous sweetness remains. My tongue begs for more. Yum!

I found that with this tea you must be careful not to over-brew. I get the best results brewing for exactly 2:30, not a second longer. Brew too long and you fade the wonderful cocoa/caramel taste. Prepare a cup, close your eyes, and let your mind and taste buds wander this dreamy fairytale.

In my never-ending quest for a supremely-great earl grey, I’m brought to Rishi’s offering. Unfortunately, this rather pricey blend will prove to be no rainmaker.

Opening the bag, the bergamot scent is on the lemony-side and ample, without being too overpowering. Acceptable start. My issues don’t lie with with bergamot. Upon tasting, I’m surprised at this earl grey’s black tea base. Using a Keemun/Yunnan blend, the base is rather bitter with some late astringency. It’s a dry bitterness without any redeeming value. Lifeless, barren, and dare I say, possibly stale. The citrus flavor fails to cover up this dehydrating crime.

It feels like Rishi took a lesser quality black tea base, masked it with the bergamot, and decided to slap a ‘supreme’ on the name. After drinking a pot of this, I feel like I just camped out in the desert and my mouth is suffering from a drought. A tall glass of ice water and some rain would be nice.

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple”. – Oscar Wilde

Harney and Sons’ Hao Ya ‘A’ is a complicated, beautiful beast. The dry leaf of this keemun has a strong musty scent with a very slight cocoa note. The wet leaf emits a more mellow, smoky smell. The scent is neither inviting nor offending. The strong, muscular scent does not necessarily translate to the taste. The brew is gentler with a dry-forest, earthy flavor. Woodsy. There is a profound dark toasty taste that intrigues. But the real stand out is the superb dark chocolate aftertaste. An exquisite dark chocolate that is finely bittersweet. The more I sip, the more I respect it. I’m loving this.

This is a thinker’s tea. Deep. Crafty. Quite possibly, menacing. I don’t see this as an everyday tea. This is a tea for a special occasion. An occasion where one wants to shake up life’s monotony. An occasion where one wants to question everything that is perceived as true.

Extreme. This tea is extreme. The vanilla is extreme. Your opinion will be extreme.

Sipping this tea was like drinking straight vanilla extract. Vanilla to the nth degree. Horrid! There is a reason people don’t pour themselves a cup of undiluted vanilla extract. I couldn’t manage to finish my cup and was forced to dump out the rest after only a few sips! This is something I rarely do when tasting. Even if a tea is disliked, I will show some measure of respect by finishing. But this blend: undrinkable. Oh, and the green tea base is not even worth discussing since it is beyond obliterated by the vanilla.

The only reason I’m not giving this tea a score closer to zero is that the person I shared this pot of ‘extreme’ with happened to love it. This totally bizarre individual finished off the rest of pot solo. I don’t understand it, other than to say; this is a tea you will either completely love or hate. There is no in-between. Personally, I detest it, extremely.

It’s a morning where there is a lot weighing on me. With a burning, burning, yearning feeling inside me, I decide to brew up some supreme. Too many companies get earl grey wrong. Countless earl greys use a cheap and poor-quality black tea base that leaves either an overly bland or excessively harsh brew. There are also earl greys aplenty where the bergamot is too dominant and the result is a perfume-like taste that destroys the blend.

Fortunately, Harney and Sons got this one right. The black tea base is pleasing and of good quality. The bergamot is subtle and in balance. There is a gentle, slightly-creamy taste to this earl grey. Harney and Sons added ceylon vintage silver tips to the mix. Not quite sure if the addition adds much. If anything, it may work to ever-so-slightly soften the tea.

While not totally blown away, in total, this is a well-formulated blend. This is the earl grey that you can drink daily and warmly enjoy. Oh earl grey supreme, you came into my heart, so tenderly.

The music is playing and my dancing shoes are tied. I’m ready to move. There are certain things in life that just simply thrive in combination. Cheese and wine being one. Laurel and Hardy are another. How about black tea combined with black currant?

Stick your nose in a canister of Harney and Sons’ black currant and you’re quickly engaged with a strong, berry-like scent. Taste this tea and you are experiencing a certain harmony. Black currant, which first originated in Tibet and later brought into Europe, provides a tart, slightly sour taste. When combined with the black tea, an inviting balance is met. The strong nature of the black tea with the tart notes of the black currant dance in lock step. Too many flavored black teas on the market have their flavoring overwhelm the tea. Not so here. Harney and Sons uses the black currant as a tasteful, nuanced enhancement. Never is the black currant overpowering. This is well executed.

For those that like lemon in their black tea, this black currant can make a nice, milder alternative. Less acidic and less sour than lemon, yet still exhibiting a well-mannered tartness. This is one of my favorite flavored-black teas. Now, excuse me while I sip some more and waltz.

As someone without much experience with the gunpowder variety of green, I decided to play some Russian roulette and brew up a batch. After spinning the cylinder and smelling the brew, one word comes to mind: smoky! The scent reminds me of a freshly extinguished campfire. This is not a warm and cozy aroma! On the outset, this bold scent has me concerned. I don’t want my tea tasting like an ashtray.

Upon sipping, I’m pleasantly surprised. This green has a fairly-strong, earthy taste. Subtlety-hidden is a honey-like hint. But that is quickly forgotten when a more smoky flavor comes barreling in. After a few cups, the blood is definitely rushing to the head. Be prepared, this is a tea that unquestionably has a strong caffeine content.

Harney and Sons describe this as a “a good everyday green tea”. I disagree. As an everyday green tea, I want something sweeter, softer, and less offending. Only some sort of adrenaline junkie would want this daily. Occasionally, for a smoky-mature jolt, this tea may work. I stumble out of this game of Russian roulette shaken, but alive to see another day.

Bland. Conventional. Pedestrian. A first-class earl grey should be an important staple that every good large tea company should strive for. Teavana with their premium prices and the self-important feel that their brand portrays falls flat here. This is a tea that is a slight step above your average teabag earl grey, but far from the better loose leaf earl greys out there. The flavors lack punch. There is no vibrancy. It’s drinkable, yet dull. Teavana should do better, and you the consumer can do better. Move along.

Ponder life’s great enjoyments. Think love. Think beauty. Think wonder. Think Teavana’s boldly-named Joie de Vivre? It takes quite a bit of hubris to declare your tea the joy of life and do it in the language of love, no-less.

On this windy and cold, brutal winter night, I sit hoping this Teavana blend will radiate some light on my evening. This fruity tea brews to a very mild yellow color. The peach-like smell has me recalling a warm mid-summer day. A glowing day that feels so, so distant. My excitement builds as I take the first sip. Bring me joy!

Upon tasting, I am quickly brought back to a harsher reality. This light and smooth blend has an interesting peachy-grape taste with a fairly-strong lemony aftertaste. It’s a tea that at first grabs attention due to the intersection of some unique flavors. But after the initial element of discovery, this tea becomes rather uninspired. Where is the joy? While not terrible, it hardly lives up to it’s haughty name. This is a tea that would likely be better served iced, while sitting poolside, with a nice colorful straw poking out. As I peer out of my window into the total eternal darkness known as winter, I’m left feeling dispirited.

I’m the type that likes a good, natural caffeine kick to help stimulate the senses and push the creative side of my brain in motion. In the local mall, I stopped into Teavana and asked, no demanded, for something with a high caffeine content. My search was for a tea that would get me bouncing around the room with energy. I was presented with MateVana, an interestingly scented, soulless creature.

I will preface this by saying, I usually don’t care for chocolate-flavored teas, but decided to give this one a shot. This ‘tea’ does not taste quite like tea. It’s a thick and rich, coffee-like brew. The heavy nutty-chocolate flavor is overwhelming, almost too overwhelming at times. One sip tastes like a nutty hot chocolate and the next tastes like a mocha coffee with a dash of vanilla. Where is the tea I ask!?

This supposed ‘tea’ did nothing for me. It neither awoken my creative side nor stimulated my taste buds. MateVana lies in some wasteland between hot chocolate and mocha coffee without any real reason for being. If you’re a chocolate lover, this tea may be acceptable to you. But, caffeine with no soul does not leave much to be energetic about.