193 Tasting Notes

98

Thanks CharlotteZero for sending me samples of all your heritage gourmand teas! You are AWESOME!

I’ve been wanting to try these for a long time and was just going to take the plunge and order, but CharlotteZero was kind enough to send me samples so I didn’t have to order blindly.

To be honest, as much as I wanted them to live up to my expectations that I had going in, I was also kind of hoping they would be a complete disappointment, as six 100g tins of this tea would cost me $270 CAD. My expectations were so high that I was actually anticipating that I would be somewhat disappointed.

But, oh my god is this tea f’n delicious! I guess I’m jumping the gun a bit because I’ve only tried this one and Financier, but I would make an order just for this tea. I didn’t know what a Cannele was, but I looked it up and this tea tastes exactly how I imagined a Cannele would taste. You can taste the custardy inside of the pastry and the carmelized outside. This is heaven and the cup is gone. Hopefully this isn’t goodbye.

ohfancythat

Aww it sounds soooo good. Curse you, MF! For being so far away and $$$

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

88

Thanks Scheherazade for including this in our swap!

I love pumpkin teas, but often I find the pumpkin is missing and all you get is the spices. But with the tea, the pumpkin is the most prominent with the spices taking the back seat. One of the best pumpkin teas I’ve tried, wish I could purchase this easily :(

tea-sipper

Oh I will def be ordering from Bluebird when the autumn and holiday teas are available at the same time.. hope that’s possible. I keep saying it will be the only teas I order for the rest of the year… yeah right.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

83

MMMMM. This tea is much better fresh! It is very similar to the plain Loashan black but it has the chocolate I’m looking for! Toasted barley chocolate goodness! I will have to reorder this and Vanilla citrus spice when they are back in stock.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

92

I feel like I’m on a mission to try all of the teas with the purpose of establishing a permanent collection of my favourites, and that I won’t always have 120+ teas in my cupboard, that eventually I will narrow it down to about half that. But sometimes I am honest with myself and realize I will never be done trying all the teas.

I almost didn’t include this in my Verdant order. I am not at all a fan of citrus spice teas, but seeing all the glowing reviews (mainly from Sil) made me want to at least give it a try, plus I had to spend the $50 to get the free shipping. But man am I glad I purchased this, especially because they are out of stock now!

This is the most perfect citrus spice tea I’ve ever tasted! The flavours are so wonderfully balanced. I think the inclusion of the vanilla really made this tea, it just gives it that creamy sweetness that balances out the bitterness of the citrus and the spice. I am genuinely in awe that I love this tea this much. This tea would most definitely be a part of my hypothetical permanent collection. I will try to keep it around as much as possible, but I only ordered an ounce and that won’t last me long. I hope that Verdant restocks this soon!!!

Memily

“But sometimes I am honest with myself and realize I will never be done trying all the teas.” <- I am still in denial, get out of my face.

Sil

So glad you liked this one :) also…if you ever try all the teas, I will be jealous :)

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

80

Received my Verdant order in the mail today. I called in sick so I was home when it came, which is good because my boyfriend gets off work before I do and always sees my parcels before I can hide them, so he has no idea I had another tea delivery :)

I tried this one first because it smelled quite malty and chocolatey. I ended up ruining two batches of this by forgetting about it, and man was it awful oversteeped. I finally got it right and this tea wasn’t what I thought it would be. I wasn’t getting any chocolate or caramel notes, only a roasted barley flavour. It was still quite good, especially with agave and cream, but I’m hoping I’ll notice some of the other flavours the more I drink this.

Sil

That’s too bad. What were your steeping parameters for your happy-er spot?

ashleyelizabeth

Oh probably about 5 mins boiling water. I am not big on setting a timer or anything. I am going to try it at 2 or 3 minutes next time. The first two times it was like 10-15 mins.

Sil

Woah 10 mins is a lot hahaha. Try 3 mins boiling. That’s my go to place unless I need a bolder cup then it’s closer to 5.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

88

I received this as a surprise sample in my swap with TeaTiff. Thank you for including this.

When I was adding my samples to my cupboard when I received this a couple months ago, I didn’t notice how highly rated this was. It’s been sitting in my cupboard generally unnoticed. But I’ve gone through most of my black tea samples in the last couple days and am down to the last ones. This one smelled slightly of grape to me. The taste of this is very VERY similar to jasmine. I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if I didn’t know that it’s tangerine blossoms. There is a little bit of a citrus tanginess to it. This is really good, but I really love jasmine and have never been disappointed with a jasmine tea. I find a lot of flavours are hard to get right (banana, peach, lychee), but I find jasmine is hard to get wrong, or so it seems. This is like a good jasmine tea with a little something extra.

TeaTiff

I am glad you enjoyed this. It is interesting that you compare this to Jasmine. I have a jasmine tea to try. I will have to brew a cup of the jasmine and this back to back to take a note of the similarity.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

81

MMMMMMM, this is my favourite H&S tea I’ve had. I find most of them have the same base and there is something about them I don’t like, but this one is different. And the black currant flavour is really natural and the perfect strength.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

79

Thanks Schmiracles for the surprise sample of this in our swap!

This tea has three things that I love, chocolate, nuts, and flowers. I am mostly getting the chocolate and the rose in the sip, but not a very distinct rose, which is good because rose isn’t my favourite flavour. I am only getting the hazelnut in the aftertaste. I like that I can detect the things that I’m supposed to in this tea, that doesn’t often happen for me.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

81

Thanks Schmiracles for sending me this tea! Had this one last night before bed. I mainly got the peach, but there wasn’t definitely some apricot as well and some sweetness that could have been the caramel. I forgot about this and over steeped it so I will make the remaining cup of this on the weekend and see if I can pick out the caramel a little more.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

76

I have not been feeling well the past few days. I have a cold, but the symptoms seem to be pretty mild compared to usual, and I always feel pretty good in the morning, so I’ve still been going to work everyday, but in the evening I always have a nasty headache. Right now is probably the worst it’s been.

Because I haven’t been feeling well, I have been off my diet, so I’ve been drinking a lot of black tea with my usual milk and sugar/honey/agave. I’ve been trying to get to all my samples from my recent swaps (about 8 of them last month). This was sent to me by kittylovestea! I was waiting to try this til I was off my diet because I didn’t have much to play with and wanted to try it with the good stuff in it, not with sweetener.

I wasn’t thrilled by it. It was a tasty tea, but not anything special. I used the whole sample I had for this one cup so I can’t retry it. If I saw this in Canada for a decent price I would probably buy it to give it another try.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

Profile

Bio

I didn’t drink a lot of tea growing up, just the red rose my nana would make me with about 3 teaspoons of sugar added to it. I started getting into loose leaf tea about a decade ago when I visited our local tea house and tried Rooibos for the first time, though I only drank it on occasion. I didn’t get serious about it until David’s tea came to town. I was on a diet and wanted something I could drink without sugar that had a lot of flavours to choose from.

I prefer black teas, but oolong and green come in a close second. White and guayusa are in the middle, while mate, rooibos and herbals are at the bottom of my list.

Likes: banana, jasmine, pumpkin, lychee, blueberry, chocolate
Dislikes: orange, ginger, rose, hibiscus, butterscotch, honeybush

My non-tea related interests are music, camping, poker, softball, snowboarding, biology and animals. I have 2 dogs and they are my whole life.

Location

Prince George, BC

Following These People

Moderator Tools

Mark as Spammer