Compassion Tea Company

This is a sample from the Mosaic Tea & Coffee company who are considering adding this tea to their lineup.

It’s been a few months since I had a jasmine green in my cupboard. I realized a while ago that I mostly drink herbals and I go through caffeinated teas very slowly, so I’ve been trying to reduce the number I have in my cupboard. This really reminds me what I’ve been missing. It has a strong scent and flavor of jasmine, which blends nicely with the light, vegetal flavor of the green tea used as a base. It makes me thing of spring – flowers and green growing things. the flavor is strong, but not heavy or bitter. It just dances across your tongue. I will definitely savor the rest of this sample and look forward to buying some Jasmine tea once my cupboard is under control.

This is a sample from the Mosaic Tea & Coffee company who are considering adding this tea to their lineup.

I wasn’t a big fan of this one. It smelled nice in the pouch – an interesting blend of vanilla, almond and light fruitiness, but with a bit of unpleasant smokiness from the rooibos, but the scents didn’t carry over to the flavor. The rooibos has a slight bitterness to it, and the flavors didn’t come through very strongly. I could taste the vanilla, but other than that all I could taste was that chemical flavor you sometimes get from artificial flavors. Not something I would buy.

This is a sample from the Mosaic Tea & Coffee company who are considering adding this tea to their lineup.

This is a mild, well-balanced rooibos chai which surprised me a bit given how spicy-sweet it smelled and the fact that I used the whole sample which was probably 1.5-2 teaspoons. The rooibos is very smooth, with none of the unpleasant flavors it can sometimes have. There is a mild spiciness, and a nice sweetness here. No one flavor stands out to me, but at the same time this tastes very well-rounded. It is quite pleasant on it’s own, but doesn’t really stand up to adding milk. That’s a strike against it for me, since I almost always drink my chai with milk. It’s very smooth and creamy with milk, but the spiciness pretty much disappears. Definitely a tea to drink straight.

Sipdown (122)!

I just realized that all in all I had a pretty great, and unintentional, sipdown Saturday!

This review is for Mosaic Tea & Coffee Company…

… Who generously sent me this sample to review so they could determine whether or not to pursue Compassion Tea Company as a supplier!

For this review, you get the added ‘bonus’ of not just my opinion but my roommate Shauna’s since I split the large pot of this that I made today with her as well. I would definitely call myself a more experience/invested tea drinker and she’s certainly a casual/novice tea drinker so you get the ‘best of both worlds’ (not to sound arrogant) this time!

Personally, when I’m drinking English Breakfast I’m looking for a few different things: the first of which is a strong, brisk flavour that kind of slaps you in the face. This IS a breakfast tea after all and you really do need something to jump start your day. Secondly, I like an English Breakfast with a strong malty flavour. To me that’s kind of a signature note in English Breakfast. And third, it has to be able to take milk or cream well because while that’s not something I personally always add to my tea it’s something that MOST do (if not sugar/honey as well). So just going through those criteria point by point…

1. This tea definitely had a strong very full bodied and brisk flavour overall. It wasn’t the smoothest base which is definitely something I observed from Compassion’s Earl Grey as well but I would argue that in an English Breakfast that’s not necessarily the most important thing because you really do want something BOLD and any over the top astringency CAN be ‘corrected’ with milk/creamer anyway. Shauna, as well, observed that this was quite strong. I think she may have made the all too common mistake of calling astringency bitterness though, because she said this was bitter and I definitely got lots of astringency but NOT bitterness. Those two things are NOT the same, but it IS something often and easily confused by people…

2. Yes to the malt! In addition to a sort of baked bread type of note, the primary flavour I noticed was DEFINITELY malt. Which is what I feel it SHOULD be.

3. Ok, so I didn’t actually add any milk to my tea because I don’t have any milk right now. However, Shauna had milk (we don’t share groceries, and while she offered to lend me some I know better than to fall in that rabbit hole and lose out on some of my own groceries in the future) and she added some to HER cups. So really, I can only convey her thoughts on this tea with milk added. And basically, that boils down to the fact she absolutely enjoyed this better with milk added in. Just judging from the plain cups I had, I can see why: this tea is full bodied enough that it could easily take milk well and I think it probably really softened the astringency she was feeling.

Overall; I have mixed opinions of this company’s offerings just judging on the three teas I sampled for Mosaic Tea & Coffee: I REALLY enjoyed my session with the Ti Kuan Yin I had today but both my pot of Earl Grey and my English Breakfast today left a little to be desired and were kind of just run of the mill. I don’t know if the trend there is the black base but I have a slight gut feeling that it MIGHT be. That said, neither of the two tasted bad per say and I do believe both the black blends are also available in sachet form and if that’s something that Mosaic pursues I think it’ll probably open them up a lot more towards casual tea drinkers who like the idea of not just drinking tea but doing good by drinking tea.

And on that note, you DO have to take into account the good that Compassion does. Literally 100% of their profits go towards offering medical aid AND education to the less fortunate in Africa and that’s a pretty damn compelling reason to want to support from Compassion Tea and use them as a supplier…

Regardless, I hope I’ve been a help to Mosaic Tea & Coffee in reviewing these teas for them and helping them to pick out a supplier. If you haven’t checked them out already you really should do so because what they’re doing in providing on the job training for adults with disabilities is really quite phenomenal and I had a fantastic time drinking tea on their behalf. I think most people here on Steepster can really get behind what they’re doing.

http://mosaictea.com/

Sipdown (124)!

This review is for the Mosaic Tea & Coffee Company…

… who generously provided me with this sample to try so they could determine whether they wanted to work Compassion Tea as a supplier. I steeped this one Gong Fu in a gaiwan as I figured that would probably really show the full range of what this tea was capable of.

The session started off a little rough, if I’m being completely honest. The first infusion or two were sharp and astringent with a sourness that reminded me a little bit of grass, in a bad way. It wasn’t starting off super promising. However once I hit the third infusion and continuing forward this tea really surprised me in a positive way. Each steep continued to get better, and I drank ten infusions in total before I felt like the leaf was brewed out to a point where it wasn’t worth steeping anymore.

The liquor is a lovely golden yellow and starting from that third steep forward it shows a really beautiful range of flavour as well as evolution of flavour. It’s got those greener grassy and vegetal notes that you’d expect from Ti Kuan Yin which are quite present in the top of the sip, and the body has a light nuttiness as well as floral (orchid) taste. Nothing comparable to the nuttiness of a Genmaicha or Hojicha but nutty in its own right as an oolong. As well, there’s a nice peachy/stonefruit flavour in the body of the sip that only deepens throughout the session. Eventually that flavour is one accompanied by the flavour of honey and cane sugar, the further into the session you go.

My absolute favourite part of this tea was the finish/after taste though. While the body of the sip might lean more heavily towards peach notes I found that the finish had a very pronounced and natural nectarine note that extended into the aftertaste and was really long lasting. It allowed me to really extend my session because I was truly savoring each infusion well after the liquor had been sipped down.

I definitely prefer this offering to Compassion Tea’s Earl Grey that I sampled yesterday and as far as Mosaic is concerned I think this is a tea that would likely be enjoyed by both novice/casual tea drinkers and people who’ve tried a wider range of tea or who brew tea outside of Western parameters.

Sipdown (114)!

Doing a tea tasting with my roommate Shauna today; figured I’d start with something really simple and we’d escalate into more complex tastings. Earl Grey is one of Shauna’s favourite kinds of tea, according to her. However I find that interesting because just drinking this one blindly she wasn’t actually able to identify what the tea was!? It’ll be interesting to see how her untrained palate interprets the other teas I’ve selected.

But first, a nap…

This review is for the Mosaic Tea & Coffee Company…

…who have kindly asked me to review several teas from The Compassion Tea Company so they can determine the quality of the tea as a company to potentially source from.

As this is Earl Grey, and not something particularly unusual, I just brewed up a pot of it to enjoy today whilst cleaning the house and doing every day chores. For most people, Earl Grey is an ‘every day drinker’ and as such I felt it important to treat my brewing of it as such. Nothing fancy, and nothing the average tea drinker wouldn’t be able to handle themselves. I predict that’s how I’ll be reviewing the rest of the teas they sent me.

First observations are that this has a fairly potent bergamot aroma and does smell quite fresh: bergamot is one of those things used in blending that you can really tell when it’s aged because the oil will turn or ‘go off’ and I didn’t get that impression with this tea. That’s definitely a good thing. Brewed up; it delivers good flavour but not necessarily smooth flavour. Personally, when I’m drinking Earl Grey I want a smooth drink and not something more brisk/astringent which is why I tend to go for unconventional EG blends myself (ones that incorporate unusual bases or added ingredients). For some people, brisk is what they want from a morning cup: it’s really a personal choice and I think Mosaic will just have to decide what kind of tea drinker they want to cater to primarily. I will put it out there that astringent/brisk does NOT equal bitter and astringency can kind of be ‘altered’ with milk or cream…

Other things worth note: some EG tastes floral or of lavender, and I didn’t get that from this tea. Ultimately; it’s not a bad choice for an Earl Grey but there’s some roughness to it and I wouldn’t say it’s exactly the shining example of a"perfect" EG or anything like that. Since, when picking a supplier, you have to view the company’s offering as more of a ‘whole’ though I’m quite interested in trying the other teas that Mosaic has sent me. If the other teas are stellar than a more run of the mill/average EG (which is such a staple offering) is one of those things that can get by because the other teas will compensate.

Just my thoughts: hopefully they’re helpful!