Foxfire teas

surprising! sweet in scent and in flavor. how is it possible to make a dragonwell taste so different from the others? cold steeping this :)

Lemongrass, ginger, peppermint, and pepper are the strongest flavors in this tea. Great for a slightly spicy, warm non-caffeinated drink.

Light, fruity, and floral, and such a treat. One of my favorite senchas by far.

Very floral and sweet. A nice afternoon tea.

Backlog:

This was an exceptionally memorable tea. I remember being so joyful about this tea that I even texted my daughter just to remind her that I love tea. She thought that maybe my younger daughter had gotten a hold of my phone and started sending out random texts. (My love of tea in this house tends to be a joke, because they don’t think anyone on earth loves tea as much.)

This tea is an example of WHY I love tea. It is amazing. Remember Dawn? From Simple Leaf? Yeah … this one reminds me of Dawn. I’m not saying it tastes exactly like that … but it is SO GOOD that it reminds me of Dawn which was also SO GOOD.

Here is my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2013/07/14/high-mountain-red-tea-from-foxfire-teas/

You really, really should try this tea.

LOVE! There is so much to love about this dragon well! It is sweet, somewhat buttery with hints of bean, and then as I continue to sip, I notice a cocoa-ish note as mentioned in the description. I could hardly believe my taste buds! But there it was! YUM! By mid-sip, I notice a citrus-y tone toward the tail end of the sip, this citrus note lingers into the aftertaste.

A really, really good Dragon well. Dragon Well is one of those teas that I don’t drink very often, but when I finally do get around to trying one, I can’t help but wonder why it took me so long to get a Dragon well in my cup! The answer, quite simply, is that I have a lot of teas to drink … and it would seem that there is hardly enough time to drink them all. However, if I were less a ‘taster’ and instead kept to one tea … this would definitely be a contender to the Dragon Well that I kept on hand. It’s really amazing!

I’m having one last cup of this Earl Grey before sending the rest to my SororiTea Sisters. This is a really good Earl Grey. Definitely one of the better ones that I’ve tried. The citrus is so bright tasting, and I like that while bergamot can often come off as perfume-y, this just tastes citrus-y. It still tastes like bergamot but it just is a smoother, better tasting bergamot than some out there.

If you like Earl Grey, you should try this one.

Foxfire strikes again by eating my tasting note, and isn’t it crazy that it happened to do that with a Foxfire tea?

Anyway… after my Ernest Hemingway tea FAIL … I decided I wanted to brew something I was fairly certain I’d enjoy. Since I figured Foxfire wouldn’t let me down with their Earl Grey, I thought I’d try that. While there have been a few Earl Grey fails in my past, I was confident that this Earl Grey would not be one to join those failures.

This is really AWESOMELY good. Definitely one of the upper echelon when it comes to Earl Grey. Maybe not #1 for me, maybe not even in the top 3, but, probably at least in the top 5.

The bergamot is remarkably smooth … it is almost so smooth that it is almost creamy, but without a vanilla or cream flavoring. This isn’t an earl grey cream. But, it is smooth like one. The bergamot is not at all sharp. No soapy notes, no perfume-y notes. Just smooth, rich, delicious flavor. This is like the smooth-talking Mr. Grey.

And the black tea base is rich and full-flavored. A really wonderful Earl Grey. Mr. Grey has restored my faith in tea again.

Backlog: I had one more pot of this tea this afternoon before sending the rest off to my SororiTea Sisters. I really like this – the crisp, sweet fruit notes meld deliciously well with the robust Assam tea.

If this tea is any indication of what I have to look forward to with Foxfire Teas, I’d say that I’m in for a treat with the three other teas I’ve left to try from them!

I hadn’t planned on drinking more black tea today (I already have a black Darjeeling waiting for me after I finish this one) but when the mail came and brought a box of teas from Foxfire Teas – a company from Portland that I’ve wanted to try for a while now – I had to add another black tea to the queue … in fact, this tea “took cuts” in line, because I didn’t want to drink an Assam too late in the day. It’s already 6:20 pm, any later and I’ll be up all night.

This is an AWESOME black currant tea. I think it might just be the best black currant tea I’ve tried. Not that I’ve sampled a whole lot, but, of the ones that I have tasted, this one belongs at the top spot.

It smells incredible. The fruit tones really POP … it smells a bit like my gramma’s kitchen when she’d make grape jelly. I’m not a big fan of grape flavored foods, but, my gramma’s grape jelly? Now that stuff was awesome! She’d make it from the grapes right off her grapevine, seed the grapes and then cook them then mash them through a sieve. She’d then pour off just a little bit of the juice and let me drink it after it had cooled and before she’d add all the sugar and pectin to make the jelly. To this day, I really don’t like other grape juice, because nothing compares to that juice.

And while this does SMELL like grapes cooking, it doesn’t taste like grapes. It tastes like currants. Although I must admit that currants and grapes do have a similar flavor profile, or perhaps I should say currants and fermented grapes (wine) have a similar flavor profile. This tastes more like currants than fresh grapes. It is sweet and tart … leaning more toward the tart than the sweet, but balanced enough between the two to keep it from being too tart for my sometimes tart-sensitive palate.

The Assam here is fantastic. I love that this is an Assam and not a Ceylon! It gives the cup a very rich, bold flavor. This is a wine-y Assam as opposed to a really malt-y, biscuit-y kind of Assam, but, there are some really lovely malt tones to this as well.

Truly lovely!

Here’s a link to Foxfire Teas: http://foxfireteas.myshopify.com/ They ROCK!

This was a different sort of Yunnan black. It was gold-tipped, so it was inevitable that I was going to like it. What I was NOT expecting was how burly it would be. Dare I say, this was a gold tea that could rival some dark Assams out there? It tasted of peppers, earth, smoke, and leather. Yes…leather. And it woke me up right quick to boot.

Full Review: http://beastsofbrewdom.teatra.de/2011/11/22/tea-like-leather/

I made this one with lightly boiled soy creamer and one sugar, it was pretty good. The vanilla is not subtle, but also not overpowering.