Fun and FlirTea

I recently received an offer of a sample from Raizana Teas. When I first checked out their site, I was intrigued by the array of mood-based herbal teas (technically tisanes, but that’s  neither here nor there). Each and every one listed, as part of the ingredients/flavors, some form of tropical fruit.

Uncertain what to try, I simply requested a popular blend and promptly received a generous package of the Mood: Happy Tea. (Thanks again for the free sample!) The package states it is a Mate Hibiscus Tropical blend – a mood enhancer and herbal supplement.

My first impression was, “My god, there seem to be a lot of chamomile in that sucker!”

I opened the bag and was immediately hit with a wall of aroma. It was so sweet, it nearly knocked me off my feet. Don’t get me wrong, I have quite the sweet tooth. But this was a little too much. (more…)

When I first heard from The Persimmon Tree, I admit I thought they would be another “tea” company that doesn’t actually carry tea, but some weird persimmon-based herbal remedies. I don’t have anything against persimmons, per se, but they aren’t my favorite fruit and I wasn’t exactly interested in soaking dried persimmons and flowers in hot water and drinking the result.

Thankfully for me, The Persimmon Tree really is a legit tea company with a pretty awesome variety available. There were more than a few teas I was interested in trying, so I provided a short list and let my contact decide which one to send out for review (thanks so much for the free sample, by the way!).

The 2 oz. sample tin of the Green Pomegranate tea is not only adorable, but will work wonders for any future refills.

I don’t always care for flavored teas. Most of the time, they are too sweet or have a weird after-taste or just have a weird flavor to begin with. When I opened this tea, the sweet pomegranate scent was pretty close to over-powering for me. On the plus side, it didn’t smell like a sugary, fake pomegranate flavor. And you can see the actual pomegranate bits mixed in with the green tea itself. So as much as I was worried, I wasn’t too concerned it would turn out to be a failure for me.

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Have you ever experienced something so awesome that when you got back to your regular life, everything else just sort of fell off the wagon for you? Well, that’s where I’ve been the past couple of weeks.

I had such a wonderful time exploring the UK, meeting people, and visiting old friends that when I got back to the US and my job, I became consumed with doing my job and nothing else. But now it’s back to business and being awesome!

Today I’ll tell you about a fun tea shop I discovered in Warwick (a small town relatively near Birmingham to give you a vague geographic location). Attached to the Lord Leycester Hospital, a now-museum historic building in Warwick, I walked into the tea room about 5 minutes before they were scheduled to close. I felt bad and asked if it would be possible to get a cuppa despite the time and they were extremely gracious to allow me to take my time. Still feeling bad, I decided to just order a simple English Breakfast so I wouldn’t have to inconvenience them further. (more…)

Last weekend, I was finally able to breathe through my nose again and, thus, was able to TASTE things again. What a relief it was (and is)! As a special treat to myself, I had my first side-by-side(-by-side) tasting of the same kind of tea from multiple vendors/sources.

(I’m about to go on a bit of a tangent, so if you want to skip ahead to my actual comparisons, click here!)

You know what… somehow I think I’ve managed to write this blog so far without really discussing what types of teas are my personal favorites. I’ve always enjoyed a nice black tea blend (especially the British blends so common in the UK) and oolong has worked its way up my charts in more recent months. Sometimes pu-erh is my favorite, but at the moment my tea life is dominated by oolong – more specifically, it’s dominated by Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe) oolongs.

My first experience with Da Hong Pao was within the last few months. I received a glorious box of tea in the mail from my brother (currently living in Wuhan, China). I knew he was sending a package, but thought it was going to be quite small with a few samples for me to try. Boy am I glad I was wrong! It was a larger box than I expected and every last inch of it was PACKED with tea and teaware! It’s true… my brother is amazing.

In any case, one of the teas was listed on his helpful notecard as “Da Hong Pao: An oolong from Fujian across the strait from Taiwan – Spicy red flavor.” The idea of a “spicy red flavor” in tea was extremely intriguing to me and I ended up loving it. Since then, I picked up an oolong sampler set from Verdant Tea which included the Wuyi Mountain Big Red Robe and enjoyed some tea at Vital Tea Leaf where I ended up bringing home a good amount of their Aroma Red Robe.

I had read a bit about how one of the great ways to really develop your palate with tea is to have side-by-side tastings of the same tea type from different sources to get a solid feel for how the flavors can vary. I had wanted to do this ever since and was super excited when I realized I had 3 different Da Hong Pao teas in my cupboard!

And now… onto the actual comparisons! (more…)

This Week’s Reviews

• Monk’s Blend from Tea Era
• 2007 Licang Wild Arbor pu-erh, loose leaves (raw) from Ya-Ya’s House of Excellent Teas (thank you, Jo, for this free sample with my order!)
• Assam from Two Leaves and a Bud
• Jasmine “Dragon Pearls” Green Tea from Tea Vivre (thank you, Angel, for this free sample!)
• Tie Guan Yin from Bigote Ecuador
• Yue Guang Bai Cake sent over from China by my brother
• Peppermint from Two Leaves and a Bud
• Assam from Two Leaves and a Bud (yes, again)
• Bolder Breakfast from The Tea Spot
• Mangosteen Superfruit Tea from Good Earth Teas
• Pancake Breakfast Black Tea from 52Teas

Featured Review!

This week’s featured review is of a company, not just a single tea. A month or two ago, I took a trip down to visit some family in Arizona. One day, while waiting to meet up with my brother, I decided I wanted a cup of tea. I saw a cafe that, along with fine coffees, advertised having fine teas on their sign. I took this as a good sign and headed in. It took me a full minute to find the tea at all. It was tucked away in some back corner along an aisle that clearly no one went through except to maybe head to the restroom.

The tea was displayed in the boxes on a rack, and every box had a layer of dust on it. I was intrigued, however, by the brand. It was called Two Leaves and a Bud. I hadn’t heard of them before, so I picked up one of the boxes and read what they had to say about their tea. From just a moment’s perusal, it became clear that this company really knew what they were talking about. They knew tea and they took pride in their products.

Since I already knew I wasn’t a great drinker of green teas, I decided to get one of the greens on display so I could try it out. When I finally got the attention of one of the people working behind the counter, I first asked what they knew about the tea company (since they were new to me, but clearly these people had chosen this tea for a reason). The woman sort of shrugged, looked confused, and said, “We tried a number of teas and this was just the one we liked the best.” She said it with something of a question in her voice.

I was disappointed but went ahead and ordered anyway. I go up to pay and after another moment, my tea is ready… in a manner of speaking. I’m handed a take-away cup (not even asked if I’d like a mug to stay) where the tea bag (one of those nice pyramid bags, though) is all the way at the bottom of the cup with the string and label and all. I grab the cup and my hand is practically burned, the water is so hot. I had to take it to a table and immediately fish out the tea bag with a spoon, due to the clearly waaaaay too hot water for green tea. It took another 5 minutes of just sitting there periodically blowing on the tea for me to even try it… and it is disgusting. Though it is obviously at least somehow related to how they made it, not necessarily the tea. (more…)

Introduction to Tea In Review

Each Saturday, I will be posting a list of links to each tea, tea vendor, and any teaware I may have reviewed in the past week. Some of these links will be internal to previous posts, but others will be to other sites, like Steepster (for those of you unfamiliar, Steepster is like the Twitter of tea reviews… with more than 140 characters per note).

I will also make an effort to feature at least one of the teas I enjoyed in the course of the week. This will likely result in at least one image that is less amazing than what normally appears on the site, as it will have been taken by myself with the only camera I’ve got… a lowly point-and-shoot Canon!

The Reviews!

First, allow me to share with you the list of links so I hope you enjoy the tea reviews from this week!

• White Peony from Two Leaves and a Bud – Thank you so much to Naomi at Two Leaves and a Bud for sending along the free sample of this and the other TLaaB teas from this week!
• Tropical Goji Green Tea from Two Leaves and a Bud
• Organic Jade Oolong from Two Leaves and a Bud
• Dragonwell from The Tea Spot
• Green Tea Tropical from Mighty Leaf
• Organic Earl Grey from Two Leaves and a Bud
• White Peony (Bai Mu Dan) from Tea Vivre – Thank you to Angel at Tea Vivre for this and other TV samples!
• Zealong Black from Ya-Ya’s House of Excellent Teas
• Iron Goddess King from Vital Tea Leaf
• Ripened Aged Pu-erh Mini Tuocha from Tea Vivre

Featured Review

To get things rolling, I would like to feature the Zealong Black tea I was able to sample as an early release tea from Ya-Ya’s House of Excellent Teas. This tea is from a plantation that is somewhat renowned for its oolong teas, and this is their first real black tea produced, as far as I understand (please correct me if I’m wrong, Jo!). Zealong, by the way, is a New Zealand tea plantation (since they’re known for their oolong teas, now you can see where the name comes from, right?)

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