Taiwanese Wild Mountain Black

My second tea to try from Butiki, thanks to the lovely swap package from Courtney!

This is the one I have been waiting for! Wow, this is really unique and delicious!
The aroma is fragrant and rich with caramel and spice. The taste is so sweet, rich and smooth, with notes of the spices and caramel combined with dark honey and fruit. It’s almost like eating a bakery product – so good!!

Thank you Courtney for sharing this delicious tea!

Oh this is a sipdown I’ve been dreading and putting off again and again. My very last teapot of Taiwanese Wild Mountain Black. You can’t see it, but I may need to wail and gnash my teeth at the horror of it all. Fortunately, these final sips of goodness do not disappoint. Honeyed pastries meet smooth malt with a hint of baked sweet potato and raisins. Good to the last drop, literally. Now someone just needs to convince Stacy to share her vendor with another seller so this tea can live on once Butiki is closed. Or at least hang onto the contact info so if Butiki resurrects in the future then I can order ALL OF THE TEA. Happy Thursday everyone!

Oh wow! This tea has gotten very rave reviews and I was worried that I would be disappointed, but there was no need to be! This tea lives up to every rave review.
It smells divine, it’s hard to describe. Fruity and honey.
The leaves are beautiful and long.
The taste is delicious. Sweet waffle cones and a slight fruity note, but I am not sure that I would have said raisin. In later steeps, I get slight caramel notes.
This tea is so different than all other blacks. I have a feeling this one is going to be restocked frequently in my cupboard.

My Butiki order came today and I went straight for this one because I had sampled it once before and had good memories. It is just fantastic. Leaf hopper teas are all great in my experience. I’m going to try to put a full review in later, but others have described it very well-honey, pastry, waffles. I am already thinking I will have to order it again before Stacy runs out!

Woo this is some smooth tea! There’s some kind of dark fruit drone I, once again, can’t quite pin down. I’m seeing the word “raisin” in the item descrip and that’s not quite right. It’s almost molasses or something, or some kind of berry-flavored syrup. NO astringency whatsoever.

I can see why people like this tea; to be honest, it’s a little too heavy/rich for me. Worth a try, at least, considering all I’ve heard about it.

Thanks to Nicole for the sample!

EDIT: I’m drinking cup 2, and now that it’s cooled down I’m getting the maltiness that I didn’t get in cup 1. It’s quite pleasant. Oddly, it makes me think of fall, too. It’s September. I’m OK with it being fall now…

I think I got this as one of my freebies in the Butiki Thanksgiving sale. That was such an amazing deal, so this is a tasting note for the 2013 season of this tea.

I’m actually still going through all of the teas I got from Stacy – and still trying to go through the fun samples I got from Sil. My unofficial new years resolution is to have at least a cup of tea a day, though, so I expect by the end of January that will catch me up. :)

I ordered this mostly because of how much I loved the Premium Taiwanese Assam, but reading the description of it and realizing how similar it sounded to a dan cong (the most beloved of oolongs for me) sealed the deal.

Steep notes: 4.2 g. tea to 500 ml. water in the Breville, below parameters. No additives.

Boyfriend is working from home today (SO. JEALOUS.) so when I got up and said I was making tea he perked up and asked what kind. I’ve been going for unflavored blacks lately which are his thing, so I put on the Breville for both of us. We are lucky to be at the bottom of the winter storm, but it still apparently feels like 4 degrees (and flurries – quite the rarity in Georgia) outside and so hot beverages are a necessity.

So I know Stacy said this tea was specifically NOT supposed to smell like chocolate but that’s really what I got from the dry leaf. I double checked that it was the right bag and it is, so maybe it’s just the different season. The leaves are gorgeous and spindly like a Dan cong or Verdant’s Mi Xian black.

Steeped, the smell is strangely kind of vegetal. Bready and vegetal. Starchy? Definitely savory. Maybe beans of some sort. There is a starchy mouthfeel and a roasty flavor with it, too. I love the apricot notes from dan cong but sadly, I don’t think I’m getting any here. The taste does linger in your mouth the way a dan cong does, though.

Overall I’m surprised at how savory this is – definitely not sweet, though maybe I need to go gongfu style to get these qualities? I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I’d be with the Western brewing, so I’ll try that way next time. Withholding the rating until I get a better sense of the tea.

This was on my shopping list, and Ysaurella so generously sent me a sample – thank you!

I have mixed experiences with a lot of highly rated on steepster teas. Not with this one, it is indeed absolutely lovely.

The smell of the dry leaf was on itself already intriguing, isn´t it amazing what tea leaves can smell like naturally? On first steep, it tastes amazing. Underneath it, the tea-ness of it, with hints of caramel and honey.

I haven’t written a tasting note in a very long time, but this one deserves a review. Courtney sent me a sample of this, and I haven’t been overly thrilled with my straight black experiences in the past… so I put off tasting it.

This morning, in an effort to clear out some of my teas, I decided to give it a shot. I’m almost disappointed that I did, because it is so good that I now want to order it immediately, and I JUST placed a Butiki order last week.

It is delicious, sweet and honey-tasting, but also kind of earthy and spicy. Cinnamon, maybe? Whatever. I want more of it. I guess I’ll have to finish off some other teas to make room for it. Sigh.

This is another tea from Sil Thank you very much for sending these to me, but I don’t like this either. Like PTA it’s just flat, unflavorful, tastes like nothing.

I’m really enjoying this bright and lovely tea this morning thanks to the generosity of CrowKettle.

After a four minute steep I’m left with a sweet scent that is a blend of citrus, sweet fruit such as tart plum, cinnamon, a hint of cardamon and nutmeg and a touch of floral like gardenia and rose cross.

The tea tastes sweet combining citrus/malt, honey, floral, plum, and spice notes. It is a pretty orange red colour, and tastes smooth but refreshing. as it cools it combines to create a taste like lemon scented waffles with a hint of sweet syrup.

The second steep is sweeter with stronger pastry notes. Caramel notes are present with hints of raisin.

Looking forward to further steeps throughout the day.

Thanks again for this very generous sample!