Shaolin Jasmine

This one wasn’t as bad as I had been prepped for. I opened the bag expecting to be hit with an overwhelming scent of jasmine…it was surprisingly subtle. After steeping for about 3 minutes. I poured a cup of a nice golden subtle and light flavored green tea. The jasmine was noticeable, but not overpowering which was nice, but still a little to subtle to rate it higher. It didn’t have much of a crisp finish…the clean taste of the green tea came through, nice coloring, good mellow cup for a cold morning…but just a subtle cup.

Different from your normal jasmine pearls, the base is obviously different. It’s okay, not my favorite, the Jasmine and base collide too much I think.

This reminds me of the jasmine tea served in baroque Chinese restaurants, dimly lit and filled with gold leaf and large porcelain urns. It’s a pretty standard jasmine. The jasmine doesn’t taste artificial. The description says there are jasmine blossoms included with the green tea, but I only see one in my .5 oz sample. Also, slightly oddly, I get a hint of citrus. I don’t know if I’m not identifying a flavor incorrectly or if my brewing basket is a little dirty and I’m getting some cross contamination. It’s kind of pleasant, though, and I think I should find a jasmine citrus tea.

Sipdown! (56/375)

Thank you Janelle for the opportunity to try this! I love the flavour of jasmine. I’m not the biggest fan of green tea, but pair it with jasmine and I will happily drink it all day. I like that this is a simple tea – it’s green tea, and it’s jasmine, and there’s not much more to it than that. The green tea is a good one in my books – it’s smooth and floral and has hardly any astringency after a fairly long brew which is one of my main problems with greens in the first place. The jasmine tastes natural, but it’s not as strong as I would like. It was a nice tea to drink after my Christmas leftovers dinner and way too much chocolate, but besides being better than any bagged supermarket jasmine green it doesn’t really stand out from the crowd. I like jasmine greens, but I don’t have a stand-out favourite as of yet and would quite happily keep any of the good ones I’ve tried in my cupboard.

Sipdown!

I drank this a couple hours ago and it just tasted like a generic green tea. No jasmine to be found.
Maybe bc it’s been in my stash for ages…

But if you’ve been following me for a while, then you know jasmine is was my first love and I love anything that attacks my mouth with jasmine florals. This one didn’t do it for me.

It’s alright, but not a favorite for me. Not something I would repurchase. It has an earthiness to it, where I would have preferred a lightness. I think the base doesn’t quite work with the jasmine, but I’m a little particular about jasmine teas, so maybe I’m just being finicky.

I can’t quite put my finger on what I think of this tea…there’s a firm vegetal note at the base and lighter flowery jasmine flavours at the top; with a tsp of raw sugar to tone down the mild bitterness of the green it makes an enjoyable cup.

I’m not sure this is something I would want to steep again – since I think I’m more of a black tea girl – but this might go nicely for my green-drinking compatriots.

Oh, and as it cools the jasmine-flowery notes become far more prominent…in a surprisingly pleasant way. This is such a nice little tea that keeps surprising me.