Skylark

Today, I devoted time to shuffling and sorting teas from place to place. Since I am mostly drinking green and oolongs and herbals and tisanes these days, I decided to arrange those teas to make them more easily accessible while giving the black teas a bit of a rest backstage.

Of course, this created a surge of newly excavated and heretofore forgotten teas. Sorting teas can be a traumatic experience. Some of you might know exactly what I mean.

I think I may be finding my way around this blend. I hadn’t been taken with it before, but now I seem to be appreciating the subtleties present here more. The strawberry veers towards pineapple. The base is vegetal in a smooth hearty way. Grandpa steeping the leaves after the first two steeps produces a bit of earthiness once the flavoured layers have dissipated.

017/365

I’m considering buying some more August Uncommon blends, now that I’m apparently back on a tea-buying bender. I feel like I’ve bought all the tea in the last two weeks. I’ve certainly made up for lost time!

The description for this one mentions tangerine, and I don’t get that at all. What I can taste is strawberry; sweet and juicy, and really flavour accurate. It tastes to me like a strawberry that’s maybe just a touch over-ripe, when they go soft and pinkish in patches, and become even sweeter and more strawberry-like than they were to begin with. The end of the sip brings a light lemon flavour, with just a hint of orange peel. It’s a semi-pithy flavour, rather than juicy, but it’s a good contrast with the super-sweet strawberry. There’s a slight earthiness in the aftertaste that I’m guessing might be the silver linden.

I was intrigued by the inclusion of thyme, but it’s actually totally lost as far as I can taste. That’s a shame, because I was hoping it would cross a kind of sweet/savoury divide. As it stands, this one mostly strikes me as a sweet dessert tea, and I would have liked more “forest”. It’s definitely a case of a description making promises the actual tea can’t deliver, although somehow it’s close. That’s maybe the most infuriating thing of all.

I noticed from reading other notes that people found the sencha to be fairly prominent, and I don’t get that at all. I feel like I have a low tolerance for green tea when it’s obviously getting in that way of the flavouring, or clouding my appreciation of what the blend is supposed to be delivering. I don’t find that to be the case here – it’s just a smooth, sweet backdrop for the equally smooth, sweet flavours – a green meadow on a sunny day, to keep with August’s imagery. I was a lot more conservative with my brew time than they recommend, though. If I’d left it for 5 minutes, as the pouch instructs, I feel it might be a different story. I don’t typically give my greens more than 3 minutes, particularly on first steep.

I like the flavour of this one, but I feel like it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. I guess based on the few I’ve tried, I’ve become used to August Uncommon blends delivering something fairly unique, and this one really just isn’t. It’s a pleasant, easy drink though, and so I can’t really complain.

Hello, Steepster, I am back from my vacation/hiatus! It was awesome to get away and see my family for the holidays, and also great to be back. :)

This evening I am drinking a new tea, one I pulled from the GCTTB. I couldn’t find much information about it on Steepster, only that it was a green tea, so I opted for less than boiling water, and steeped for only about 2 minutes. This one smells kinda weird: rather herbal and bitter, almost minty. Have no idea what to expect on my first sip.

I just looked up the tea on August Uncommon’s own website, and apparently this tea is with strawberries and silver linden. When I looked up that latter ingredient, I immediately get shown a picture of a large silver tree. Bingo. This is what I am smelling. I couldn’t place the aroma at first, but I would now say that it is very close to being a sharp pine-line smell. No sign of any strawberries so far. I didn’t have any pieces in the remaining sample (while they are shown on the tea’s picture on AU’s website), so I doubt there will be a detectable strawberry presence this time around.

The tea is not tasting as sharp as it hits the nose (which I am more than OK with). I was right about the strawberries: not to be found. This is mostly now a weak green tea with strong herbal notes. Not something I would drink again, but suppose it was an interesting enough experience. At least I learned what silver linden was.

Still not crazy about this one, but I just finished a hot teacup worth of it and it was definitely an improvement. For starters, the strawberry and bright, juicy orange notes just seemed a lot fresher tasting overall – and I think the grassy green base was a bit more mellowed out. A good combination between delicate flavours and bright fruit notes, overall.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ66D7TcEWU&index=2&list=LL1M1wDjmJD4SJr_CwzXAGuQ