Featured & New Tasting Notes

This is my favorite tea ever!!! It is good iced and hot. When I brew it just right it tastes like white gummi bears :D A very nice light fruity white tea

This is that last of this tea as I only had a small sample envelop of it. It didn’t blow my mind but it’s still a very pleasent tea, though I think I’d like to try some other Ceylons before I decide whether or not to get more of this one.

This one is a bit dry, but very tasty in my opinion. You can taste the natural sweetness in the steam rising up from the cup. The color is deep golden…very pretty. It smells faintly of green tea but tastes nothing of it. I’m digging the slightly nutty flavor. I could drink this one all the time. I bet it would be tasty iced too. Yea Darjeeling!

I’m glad Auggy sent me a full sample tin!

Okay, I don’t know what I did differently this time (perhaps brewed it longer?) because I liked it today. Still don’t know what a currant is supposed to taste like but I got sort of a light black cherry/berry vibe coming from it today. Of course, lower expectations also might have played a hefty roll in my liking it today. Yay lower expectations!

My son actually gave me a cup of this mint tea when I was coughing and miserable with a cold. It is soothing and stopped my coughing about as effectively as a cough drop plus it adds fluids to help the cold move on out!

A chinese tea wanting to be a japanese one? When i saw this in the shop i knew i want to taste it. Chinese teas are usually pan fried and japanese teas are usually steamed. So this was quite a surprise. The leafs look like high quality sencha – quite long and nice in color. The smell was ok, fresh and green. Also almost like a sencha. So where is the difference? In the taste of course.
The first steeping can be quite long – like 1 minute. I used quite a lot leafs (1:5 water). There was a slight bitterness, but also a nice sencha-like taste. Very good.
The second time a steeped only for 30 sec. Even after this short time the brew was quite bitter and the taste started to resemble a bit more the tradicional chinese teas. The green fresh taste and the bitter taste were quite is sync. Both very powerfull. The 3rd and 4th steeping were less bitter, but you could still feel it.
This tea is not for everyone. If you don’t like the bitter taste, you won’t like it. It’s not possible to get enough flavour from the leafs without having it bitter. On the other hand, if you don’t mind the bitterness (it’s not this bad bitter taste like if you leave the tea steeping for too long), it’s a very interresting tea. You can play with it quite a lot. After finishing you can see the really nice leafs – quite good quality. This one behaves like a real mutant :)
..but for a good price: around 7Euros for 100g (and only 1/3 as bitter as Ku Ding >_<).

A very tasty Earl Grey- the lemongrass really does make a difference- one of my favorites!

Caramel and houjicha- I was very skeptical. A friend sent me a sample of this, and it is actually quite good! Probably not something I would re-order, but something interesting for a change of pace. The caramel flavor compliments the houjicha very well, and it makes for a brew that is slightly reminiscent of coffee… in a good way.

Very nice, especially because I don’t usually go for the greens. Good vegetal flavor, not too grassy/earthy or bitter. Light and airy with a touch of sweetness. The brew is surprisingly light in color, just a hint of green (unless you let it sit in the pot too long :) ). I think you green and non-green lovers might like this one.

Having with breakfast on a leisurely Saturday morning. A smooth, round flavor with no bitterness. Brewed with slightly cooled water (bring to full boil in kettle, remove kettle lid and wait 2 minutes, then steep), served with a few drops of milk.

This is going to sound weird, but I’m having trouble being excited by this tea. It is a really good quality tea – smoky, smooth, great flavor. In fact, it is the only Keemun that hubby has actually said he likes and that’s HUGE.

But I’ve had really good Keemun before. Adagio’s Keemun Rhapsody is my favorite and I think quality-wise the two are very comparable. So having this is just “Mmm, good Keemun”. No angels sing, no epiphanies occur. Just the acknowledgment that yes, this IS damned fine tea.

Part of the reason, too, could be that TS sorta knocked my socks off. Like, a lot. But then, my experience with Assam is very limited and Thomas Sampson was a huge quality jump compared to what I have had before. And I just didn’t get that jump with Jackee but I admit, I was kind of hoping for it even though I acknowledge the expectation was unreasonable.

But the lack of quality jump is not Jackee’s fault. If I hadn’t had Adagio’s Keemun and had just stuck to the ones I’d had from SpecialTea’s and Rishi, I think this one would have knocked my socks of in comparison. As it is, it’s just now competing with Adagio to find out which Keemun reigns supreme. (This needs to be said in a Chairman Kaga voice… Was there ever an Iron Chef tea battle?)

Randomly, am I late to the party in seeing the jac’KEE MUN’tz and thom’AS SAM’pson bit? That’s so neat but I feel like I’m probably the dorky child that takes 20 minutes to get the punchline.

Mellow, smooth and creamy as advertised! I’m going to have to try this one iced as well.

A good all-round black tea, with typical Assam malty overtones. A reliable standby tea for first thing in the morning.

Mmmm, this hits the spot tonight. I’m getting a good butter taste from it and the floral bit is coming through nicely as well – it’s actually pretty strong for a floral flavor. But it isn’t a light, rose floral or anything that would be sickening, but a richer floral flavor. Orchid I assume but can’t say for sure given I’ve never eaten any flowers (my dad once made me eat a cattail but I don’t think that is the same thing – that was more green leaf/stalk, not floral).

This is quite a nice little tea and something I was apparently totally in the mood for tonight. That makes me happy.

Yep, I was right. This is good with a big glob of honey. I steeped it a little longer since the description practically encourages it. Seven minutes instead of five. It got stronger, yeah, but not bitter. This might taste a little bit too much like wood for me, though. I’m still curious to try Yunnan Gold and Yunnan Noir despite this.

It’s neat to the point of being mesmerizing watching the pearls open. It starts with the white tea leaves slowly unfurling from around the pearls. And these are proper, suculent-looking white tea leaves/buds, not the chopped, torn-up bits you get with some teas. Then the green tea, which is in smaller pieces, sort of puffs up and slowly drifts apart.

It feeds the eyes aswell as my sense of beauty and art, because to me tea is more than just drinking a cup of tea leaves in hot water.

Tea like this makes one realize why one drinks tea in the first place. I have tried chai flavors in coffees and latte’s, but they pale in comparison to the flavor that is delivered by this tea. Tazo knows tea and does tea with a passion and to perfection.

I realized after awhile of sitting on this note that Tazo Chai has black pepper in it. When I let this tea sit for too long I can really taste it. Maybe I steeped it too long or the water was too hot. But, phew, it was strong after awhile.

What’s this? A rooibos I can stand?? Sorry, had to get that out. This is a very mellow, lightly spiced tea. It still has a bit of that rooibos aftertaste that I don’t really like, but it somehow goes well with the apple, cinnamon, and chamomile flavor. The taste reminds me of real apple cider, just not as strong and sour.

I used to livein England for five years. When I returned to America, loosing my favourite tea brands was disappointing. But Red Rose was the closest I found of an easily available cheap and cheerful tea.

Try drinking a cup of mint tea and then making a Red Rose as the next cuppa in the same mug. Gives the Red Rose a nice hint of mint, but not enough to overpower the flavour.

One of the best teas ever. I’ll have to wait to say more another time.

At the suggestion of many, I dialed the temperature WAY down. Like to the top of the first white zone, which I’m thinking is somewhere around 160 degrees. [1. I really need to get a thermometer. 2. If you’re just tuning in and have no clue what I am referring to, I use a utiliTEA.] I put in more tea – like 1.5, maybe even 2 tsp – and I let it sit for 2:15-2:30 minutes.

MUCH improved. Of course, this is a completely different company, so I’m not sure how much that played into it [I’ll have to try Adagio’s again], but this was much more aligned to what I was expecting.

There is a distinct smokiness to the scent as it rises off the cup, which I don’t enjoy but don’t hate either. It’s almost gunpowder-y? Kind of like that smell you get from a log-burning fire, but with more of a peppery tone to it.

There is still some of that saltiness to it, but it’s not too pronounced. This is definitely a tea with some subtleness to it, but this cup had that chlorophyll-sweet taste to it that I enjoy. The sweetness becomes more obvious as it cools, and the aftertaste towards the end is somewhere between roasty and smoky.

It’s an interesting tea, and I want to continue playing around with it a bit, but I think that I’d enjoy it more if I were eating something with it. Something with complex flavors and a medium kind of intensity to it. Balducci’s makes this smoked ham, pear, and gorgonzola sandwich that would likely pair masterfully with this. I think I know what I’m doing tomorrow.

I had this sweetened/iced and blended with Teavana’s Apple, Lemon Pomegranate rooibos tea which is excellent for summer! But it’s just as lovely on its own and hot on an autumn morning when you need something sweet to get your day started.

A big “thank you” goes to Auggy for including this one in our tea swap. :)

The smell is so warm and inviting and the taste is equally as good. Very almond-y with a little cinnamon thrown in. I was worried that the cinnamon would overpower the tea (like quite a few others tend to do) but this was not the case. A very tasty cup for a rainy, funky day.
I want to dip homemade sugar cookies into this tea!!! Mmmm…

Mine was actually Teavana’s discontinued Organic Pu-erh. It tea and dirt had a baby, that’s what this tastes like. I do enjoy it quite a bit, but I have to be in the mood for it. Usually it goes like this: I’m looking through my tea collection trying to decide what I’m going to drink, because I’m feeling indecisive, usually I know exactly what it is, and I see it and I say, “Hell, why not?”