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I really have to find a source for this tea. At $12.50 an ounce, I can not buy a lot at once. I wish I could buy a little every now and then, but it is so hard to find. There was a two year period where SS didn’t have it at all, and it has been a long time since I have seen it there.

I needed a tea experience tonight, and you are guaranteed an experience with Wild Forest. This tea makes you want to go to your shelf and throw away every tin of mediocre, flavored drivel and display things like this in a place of honor, like a treasured possession.

It is incredible how long the flavor lingers. Unbelievable, almost. Yes. Big fat yes.

ETA: corrected price above. It was 12.50 per ounce and I buy two ounces at a time.

I should be in bed. Instead I am drinking puerh and eating Bissinger’s Chocolates that a friend sent to me as a gift! I choose to believe that the low caffeine of the puerh wont keep me up tonight (it probably will)and that the medicinal properties of the puerh will cancel out the calories in the chocolates. (It won’t.)

I slightly underleafed this and hubby, who loved it before, said he didn’t care for it! I will have to remember that he prefers this one strong. We are both partial to Golden Buds when it comes to shu…Youngest, who had requested it, said she thought it was great. It is a good daily drinker type puerh.

The leaves were only steeped once, so I am going to toss them in a carafe in the fridge to make some cold puerh to drink tomorrow. My reflux is kicking up again pretty badly. Yes, I know I shouldn’t be eating chocolate but honestly it doesnt seem to make a difference what I do or do not eat. Amounts and frequency seem to matter most. Drinking cold puerh and cold chamomile seems to soothe it just a bit.

One of the first loose leaf teas I bought was a jasmine black. It was…hard to drink. I felt like I was having a cup of hot bubble bath. Then about four or five years ago, Teavivre sent me some samples of their jasmine teas and I shuddered, afraid to try them…but when I tried them I fell in love.

Jasmine is like an antidote for stress for me. A nice, hot cup and a few moments alone rejuvenate me and wash away tension.

I was curious and excited to see what the new Golden Buds Jasmine would be like. It is nothing like that black jasmine of long ago! This is soft, smooth, and sweet. The leaves themselves are long, oh so soft buds that are a golden tan color. The steeped tea is a soft, medium orange/tan.

The tea has a light creamy body. There is not a trace of briskness or astringency, no cocoa or smoke. This is so smooth. The jasmine is ample but not overpowering.

My husband prefers not to drink black tea since he always wants milk and sugar with it, so he sticks with oolongs, greens, whites, and puerh most of the time. Tonight I just told him we were having jasmine tea, and he drank four cups. He went outside to do a bit of work and then came back for more. I still haven’t told him it was black tea, and he is loving it without additions. That’s how smooth it is.

We have made two steeps Western style and I am going to try for a third.

I came on here to review this and saw that I haven’t added it to my cupboard again since I drank the last pouch. Well, I just added it but it will be taken off again soon because I am about to finish this one off again.

Sometimes I wish I could make myself just order from two or three companies and have a nice, neat, matchy tea shelf. But then a company does something so well that I have to venture off and order this one from here and anither from there. That’s how it is with this tea for me.

This is a really basic tea, nothing super fancy but I think it has really good flavor and makes for a great breakfast blend for me. I served it at Writers’ Group a couple of nights ago and a man said he didnt drink much black tea because it is bitter to him, but this one wasn’t bitter and he liked it. He had several cups in fact.

I had it hot earlier and the pot long since cooled off but I didnt want to pour it out and I didnt want anything else hot, so I am drinking it cold and it is really good. I guess I will be re-ordering this again, and possibly some of their greens as well.

I made Gâteaux de Mamie Sunday afternoon, and paired it with this tea. Oh my goodness. What a treat. I haven’t had a really nice keemun in a while, and I need to drink up any remaining supplies I have in my stash because I plan to do some happy happy ordering as soon as the spring harvest teas become available.

This was steeped western style THREE TIMES. And the third steep still had lots of flavor.

Then tonight, I made chocolate covered strawberries for a little snacky with hubby and served this again. My husband doesn’t drink black tea without milk and sugar, but this one he did. Oh yes, he did. In fact, he had three cups and I had one. I think that means he liked it. And I think that means I should make another pot of tea.

I bought this because I needed a caffeine free tea that would also help with stress. I hoped it would taste floral to me like it did to another reviewer, because I used to add lavender to plain Tulsi and enjoyed it that way.

I am disappointed to say that this tea tastes exactly like the description from the company says. I get very little floral taste and lots of spice. It could be my mix came out a little different and I got more spices than flowers. Cardamom and anise rule the day here with the savory Tulsi. It isn’t bad, it is just what Bellocq intended to make but it isn’t what I was hoping. I may try adding some of my lavender or purchase Teavivre’s rosebuds and see if that brings this into line with what I was looking for.

If you are looking for Tulsi with exotic Indian spice, you’ll dig it.

ETA: youngest tried it and loved it.

I found a sample pack of this tea in my stash, and it is with newer teas. I can’t remember if it was included with an order or if I actually purchased a sample for some reason. We are trying very hard to sip down a bunch of samples and get some of the stash under control because I have every intention of ordering a whole lot of tea as soon as the pre-Ching Ming Harvest starts coming in!

We have had it twice now because this tea resteeps pretty well. It is tea, TEA. As in, this tastes exactly like black tea. That’s not a bad thing. My daughter loves it and I am enjoying it with breakfast. I have said it before, but I am 99.9% sure that is exactly the same tin as Royal English Breakfast in the Historic Royal Palaces collection, whihc only comes in sachets but in that oh my goodness gorgeous tin that they have for that whole line. I am thankful that when I started on my tea journey I found out about those at Barnes and Noble. Good tea is available at more and more places in my town as demand is going up, it seems.

This is an every day drinker for when you don’t really have time to think about your tea. It was served at tea time with soup (ham, peas, carrots, and barley) and cornbread muffins yesterday and again at brekkie today. It went well with both.

This is a sample bag from a The O Dor order a while back. Their samples are well packaged to keep fresh and almost all of them have given up several good steeps for me. This was no exception.

The oolong is very fresh and green, no rock/dark/mineral oolong here. The goji berry and peach were the dominant notes to me but they were not too strong. I thought they were light enough to let you taste the oolong without covering it completely yet still had plenty of presence. I honestly didn’t detect the pear separately.

The tea was such a pretty color, too, a clear, golden liquor that shone in my little teacup. Very relaxing in the evening.

I received a tea bag of this in my last Bird Pick order, which was, as always, Premium Silky Green.

I made this for breakfast so we can whittle down the stack of samples and I don’t regret it. I wasnt sure what was in the bag and CBA to look it up so I erred on the side of caution and treated it as if it were Assam. I used boiling water but kept the steep to four minutes.

It is not a stellar tea, but it was quite drinkable with my cheese toast. I did not add milk or sugar and it was well behaved toward my sensitive tummy. Happily, I now find it is mostly Keemun with some Ceylon. If I needed to buy an inexpensive tea, say to furnish an office for people who don’t really care what tea they drink, I would consdier this a good candidate. It is cheap, it goes down easily even plain, and you can drink ir mindlessly and not be ashamed. And it did satisfy my need for tea when I got to the point that I started adding mustard to my cheese toast. (I start with plain cheese toast and chocolate milk and when the chocolate milk is gone I switch to tea and add a smear of mustard to the toast.)

My love of good Keemun means I wouldn’t order this, as Keemun or Queen Catherine are my breakfast teas of choice, but it isn’t bad.

You don’t see a lot of reviews from me saying that I don’t care for a tea. Here you go.

This is a sample teabag that came with my order of Premium Silky Green, the only tea I have ever ordered from Bird Pick. (It is sold as a green tea but I am really really sure it is actually a milk oolong. Still really great tea.)

The jasmine scent was great. But the first sip drew an immediate reaction from both me and my daughter. Nope! We are spoiled by the greatness of Teavivre’s jasmine teas. To be fair, this tastes a lot like the Asian Market jasmine tea that it is really cheap. Can’t remember the name of it. It is a pretty standard restaurant pouchong with jasmine. I think it came in a yellow tin?

But this is a bit harsh for sitting up and watching the snow fall as we keep the fire stoked. I can tell that if I drink much of this, it is going to irritate my stomach, and that’s not a good thing. Moving on….