75 Tasting Notes
Ha! I worked out what this tea reminds me of:
http://steepster.com/teas/geels-and-co/36586-oosterse-liefde
And quite a bit! Strange, considering that Impressionnistes isn’t supposed to contain lavender as far as I can tell and I always thought that lavender was what gave Oosterse liefde its top note. Also it’s spices vs. vanilla. It’s a bit of a mystery. I’ll have to do a sip-by-sip comparison soon.
One of my two favourite rooiboses. I don’t actually seem to like rooibos much, but this one is utterly lovely as a latte, with a generous dose of milk and some sugar. Kind of like a cookie in a cup. It’s similar to Yumchaa’s red chai, but sweeter and less strongly anise-y. I like anise, but it can overpower other flavours. I think they should just re-name this tea and make it a year-long offering. It’s yummy.
Preparation
Somehow it took me ages to try this tea, and I finally did last week. I’ve pretty much been sipping it since. At first sip, I just tasted mint, but a more subtle, gentle mint than in a pure mint tea (I’m guessing that’s because of the green tea). And then the spices sort of come in ‘from the background’, almost like an aftertaste but not quite. It adds up to a very soothing yet rather subtly complex tea. Also – it’s a perfect cake tea, especially for non-chocolatey cake. The tea makes the cake better, and the cake makes the tea even more perfect than it already is. Yup, I like this one a lot.
Preparation
This tea is pretty fantastic. It kind of tastes to me like what coffee would taste like if it weren’t bitter… or something. It’s a very satisfying, strong brew that you can nevertheless very easily drink without any milk or sugar. Actually, that’s when it does the coffee-ish thing. If you do add milk and sugar, it tastes wonderfully dessert-y. All around, a beautiful tea. Try it!
I absolutely love this tea. I went on a mini tea shopping spree today and got this one at Selfridges and White White Cocoa at T2. A very good day.
This tea tastes really familiar to me, like I’ve been drinking this kind of tea for years now… only I can’t think of what tea it could possibly be of the ones I have. I think maybe it’s just my head playing tricks on me. Whatever it is, though, it is just a remarkably soothing, gently sweet tea without a trace of bitterness or anything else that’s not lovely. I don’t really know which notes and such I was tasting – will have to do round two for that. All I know is that it is utterly delicious. So there.
Preparation
First thing, for all London-based tea lovers – apparently, T2 opened a shop in Shoreditch a few months ago. Great!
So I looked at what Steepsterites had to say and found this lovely tea, and the lovely shop girl brewed some up for me (they actually very happily brew any tea you’d like for you, on the spot! I tried this and Melbourne Breakfast), and it was very tasty so I got some. And now I made it at home and it’s still very very tasty.
It’s an unusual combination. I tend to associate cocoa with black teas, and I haven’t had much luck with green teas with coconut even though I love coconut. But this combination with white tea somehow works wonders. I was a bit sceptical at first because cocoa tea just begs for milk and sugar in my head, but this is beautifully… dessert-y, while also somehow being quite light. If you get the chance to stop by a T2 shop, do have a taste. It’s a keeper.
Oh, and it’s also one of the prettiest teas I’ve seen. The tea itself has all these different shades of white-ish and green and even almost brown. And then the cocoa husks come in with some coconut flakes. I just kept staring at it for about a minute, admiring the sheer prettiness. It looks like fall.
Preparation
I brewed some of Macaron Mangue Jasmin in parallel with a cup of Si Nancy m’etait conte, for a comparison, since both are green macaron teas. By the way, is there a difference between a macaron flavour and an almond one? I can’t tell.
Anyway, I don’t know if the temperature was too low for this one (72 or so), or if I didn’t put in enough tea or… but the flavours just didn’t come out. It tastes perfectly pleasant, but it also doesn’t really taste like much. Nancy, on the other hand, has a nice taste and aroma with the same temperature and amount of tea. Will have to play around with this one more before I give it a grade. I think I must be missing something, what with all the raves on here.
This is one of my favourite Betjeman and Barton teas. It reminds me of a green version of Coquelicot Gourmand, but it’s less sweet and lighter – and green, obviously (or not so obviously, if you haven’t had Coquelicot Gourmand. Which you maybe should, because it’s lovely). It smells absolutely scrumptious – I sometimes open the tea jar just to sniff at it for a while. Its flavour is more subtle, but still lovely. I usually go for citrus-y or flowery flavours with green tea. This one is on the sweet side of things, which I think may be harder to pull of well with greens, but it works like a charm.
Utterly lovely. I bought Pleine Lune and Dammann’s Coquelicot Gourmand around the same time and I got a very similar impression from them both: sweet, almondy, lovely. I realized that I didn’t really differentiate between the two, so I decided to do a comparison and brewed a cup of each, and whoa: suddenly I could really taste the spiciness in Pleine Lune! I have no idea now how I missed it before, but sometimes I really just need a comparison to let all the individual flavours and notes come out. I think this makes is a more complex tea than Coquelicot, though not a ‘better’ one, since they’re both kind of perfect.
