132 Tasting Notes
I tried this iced for the first time and this fully reminds me of cherry Oragel! I’m sitting here now expecting my mouth to go numb at any second now!!! Eeeek! It is drinkable, but I will not be making anymore of this…anyone want to swap me around 2oz of tea for this one that is now missing 2tsp of tea? lol PM me if you do!
I have been wanting to try this for a while now and I finally picked some up today. Hmmm this wasn’t what I expected. I was thinking the rooibos tropica would be the highlight of this tea with a nice lingering jasmine taste to it. Well, they tricked me! The main flavor I am picking up on is a citrus…like a sweet lemon taste, a bit sour as well. With the rooibos coming in second and then jasmine coming in dead last. It’s not a bad tea, it is good… it was just totally not what I expected it to taste like! Even smelling it I smelled the rooibos and jasmine! Eh, oh well… I have a lemon-y tea now. I’ll have to try it iced and see how that tastes. I’m going to knock a few points off just because how the taste is so different from the description.
Rawr! This is my kind of tea! I kind of wish I would have ordered this tea in a large tin instead of the osmanthus silver needle one, oh well! Anyways this tea is a strong/bold white tea with a natural juicy peach taste… and of course jasmine! I often mix a peach tea with my jasmine pearls, but this tea tops any blend I have had before. This tea has depth and isn’t overly powerful on any of the flavors. They all compliment each other perfectly… and this tea resteeps well! Ahhhhhhh this is nice, too bad I don’t have anymore :-(
I received my Samovar order yesterday when I got home from work…awesome surprise! I was SOOO excited to try this. Now, when dealing with Silver Needle tea I will usually put more tea leaves in than what is called for. This is because Silver Needle tea is usually so light in flavor. So what I did was put about 1.5tsp (maybe even closer to 2tsp) in 8oz of water and steeped for a little over 4mins (I got a bit side tracked due to my toddler wanting to help clean, but really ended up making more of a mess lol). Anyways Samovar had a 5min maximum on the canister so I figured I was still safe, but I usually steep my white teas at the middle marker. Anyways, this brewed to a nice honey color… a bit dark for Silver Needle tea I thought, but who cares right?! hehe. I could smell my freshly brewed tea and it was sweet smelling, floral, and earthy… as in a cedar wood earthy! I took my first sip and it was amazing! I have never had Osmanthus flowers before, but it tasted like a nectar… a bit like honeysuckle perhaps? Yes, I think honeysuckle would be a good comparison the more I ponder on this. Then I could fully taste the Silver Needle as well, a nice vegetal/slightly cedar woodsy taste. Very clean and pure tasting, a double plus in my book! This is a total score with Samovar’s tea and I can’t wait to try more of their tea. They definitley know what they are doing and have high quality products!
Preparation
This tea reminds me of my dad! With that being said it’s hard to get past that older man, after shave smell that I’m getting lol. This tea doesn’t taste as strong as strong as it smells though and does seem to be calming… I can get that from this, but every time I try to pick out the flavors “old man after shave” keeps popping up in my head over and over again. Hmmm it’s a bit woodsy, a bit spicy, a bit musky… Brute tea? Hehe, with that being said I’m not going to rate this because I’m sure it’s a good herbal tea, I just associate it so strongly with my dad that it throws me off a bit ;-)
Thank you AmazonV for letting me try this one! So I had this one last night before bed and it brewed a bit darker than most jasmine pearls I had, but I also noticed the pearls were darker as well. The taste was “ok”, it had a more vegetal taste and was lighter on the jasmine than most and to me was a bit astringency. I have no idea what a tin of these cost, but if they are cheap then I would say they’re not bad, but if they’re the normal cost of what these usually run then I would say look elsewhere!
I went out on a limb and decided to purchase this from 52teas (my first order from them actually) and even though black teas aren’t really my thing, this sounded too good to pass up. Trying this hot right after it was done steeping and it was mainly black tea that I could taste and a buttery pecan flavor. After it cooled down a bit I could pick up on the sweet vanilla taste. This is quite good for a black tea, but I would prefer a bit more of the pecan taste in there.. perhaps I will find another good black tea with nuts in it and mix it with this to see if that will give it that extra nutty taste that I am seeking ;-)