Fun and FlirTea

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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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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