1438 Tasting Notes
2025 sipdown no. 36
This is decent. The base is nice enough (I believe the same as their lemon black tea) and the strawberry flavour wasn’t cloying. I absolutely adore a ripe strawberry, but strawberry teas just don’t do it for me. Thanks for sharing Cameron!
Preparation
2025 sipdown no. 35
This tea tastes like a cinnamon baked good to me, maybe a warm cinnamon loaf. The taste is even better once cooled (forgotten and left to fully cool, whoops). I really enjoy this one and both steeps are great. I fear I’m not at all tasting what it’s meant to taste like, but I’ll take it! Thanks Cameron for this tea!
1st steep 5 minutes
2nd steep 8 minutes
2025 sipdown no. 34
This has a lovely lemon flavour that comes through clearly. The base is fine, with nothing much to report except that it doesn’t detract from the lemon and isn’t astringent — both of which I appreciate. Thanks Cameron for sharing!
Preparation
Thanks Cameron for so many teas! Actually, I still have a few from the last batch you sent and a few from Martin as well. Time to sip some things down!
I only managed a single sip of this while it was warm, but I quite liked it fully cooled. The base is slightly astringent, but I enjoyed the fruit flavour. It’s definitely giving a tropical fruit vibe, somewhat generic, but also like a not quite fully ripe pineapple.
Made as an iced latte with homemade lavender syrup and oat milk (1.5 tsp of matcha).
We ordered four different matchas from Tealyra and this is the first we tried. This is a pretty weak matcha, I had to add double the amount to have any matcha flavour. Also, with soy milk (imo creamier than oat), the flavour is more ‘drowned out’. This was the cheapest variety we ordered, so it tracks that the flavour isn’t very robust. The flavour is nice enough, with creaminess and a subtle chalkiness. Not the best matcha, but not the worst. I doubt I’d re-order this, especially if the other variations fair better.
2025 sipdown no. 33
We ran out of matcha from Teavivre a while ago and picked this up as a replacement. While this is a good matcha, I found the vegetal flavour a bit too pronounced. On the positive side: it’s smooth with minimal bitterness and decently creamy. It works in a pinch (and we easily finished off 100g), but there are matches out there I’d enjoy more. Finishing this as a cold matcha latte with homemade lavender syrup and oat milk.
2025 sipdown no. 32
I sipped through 25g of this quite quickly – a sure sign of a tasty tea. I was quite intrigued with this being from an ecological reserve. There was a lovely sweetness to this tea unlike other Tawainese HM oolongs. The tasting notes say biscuits and pastry and I found this leaned toward a biscuit sweetness. Mixed with that distinctive high mountain, light, clean, breezy flavour. A really lovely tea and one I would order again.
I generally steeped this 3-4 times, all at 90° C.
A few sipdowns from January through June!
2025 sipdown no. 21 Stash Christmas in Paris
2025 sipdown no. 22 Nabo Hallon och Rosmarin
2025 sipdown no. 23 Chado Lavender Earl Grey
2025 sipdown no. 24 Yorkshire Tea Biscuit Brew
2025 sipdown no. 25 The Tea Girl Orange Chocolate
2025 sipdown no. 26 The Tea Girl Chocolate-Dipped Strawberry
2025 sipdown no. 27 Paper & Tea No 523 Berlin 2011
2025 sipdown no. 28 Mountain Stream Chocolate Wuyi Red Oolong
2025 sipdown no. 29 Farmerleaf Spring 2024 Jingmai Sun-dried Shengtai (Thanks Martin!)
2025 sipdown no. 30 Tea Girl Berried Treasure (sample size, I may have picked up 50g XD)
2025 sipdown no. 31 What-Cha Taiwan Four Seasons Oolong
2025 sipdown no. 19
This is very close to a high mountain black with waffle-y sweetness and an incredibly smooth body. There’s little to no maltiness, though it creeps in slightly as the tea cools. This is delightfully sweet, so much so that I would choose this over the Mi Xiang black (in a dire situation where not both could be ordered). The resteep had a decent amount of flavour.
1st steep 2 minutes 30 seconds
2nd steep 3 minutes 30 seconds
3rd steep 4 minutes 30 seconds
