Treasure Green Tea Company

Gongfu Sipdown (2486)!

This was my first tea session of the year!! This was such a beautiful yancha with a dense and warming roast and mineral character exquisitely coupled with its namesake aromatic rose notes. However, what really caught my attention with this session was, around the third or fourth steep, the emerging lychee notes. Floral, yes, but also lush and sweet in a way that just popped against the notes of charcoal, roasted nuts, and slick, wet rocks that made up the bulk of the profile. It reminded me of a similar note I’ve picked out of some of the nicer Phoenix dancongs that I’ve sampled, though I much preferred it here with all the familiar rock oolong flavours I favor so much!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1mylEsucN4/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFiDbsgvwc

Gongfu!

Enjoyed this with a handful of fresh Saskatoon berries (one of my first stops upon arriving was to go get some fresh berries) in this beautiful pale blue teacup that was thrown by my mom!! The tea is genuinely just a total camphor bomb with deep, grizzly back of the chest notes of spice and incense with just enough earthiness!! Excellent on its own, but also a nice contrast to the subtle dark sweetness and hint of acidity from the Saskatoons! It’s been over five years since I last had fresh Saskatoon berries, so this is pretty divine and special!!

Also, a moment to talk about how cute and Wabi Sabi this teacup is!! I love that it looks like gently rippling water, with the wide flared rim. She almost didn’t finish the piece because it wasn’t what she’d envisioned but it’s pretty spectacular in my books!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CvBDG21STHn/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cAJKwbg1Hg

Y’know, I’ve been trying to do tasting notes chronologically and yet I still somehow managed to miss writing one of the Vancouver shop teas we tried!

Treasure Green actually ended up being one of my favourite stores we visited. Though I didn’t get a whole lot of tea, I did walk away with a beautiful gaiwan and the sales rep was probably the best and most enjoyable to talk to of any of the shops we went to. You could just really tell he was having the best time being there, and was super knowledgeable and friendly.

We samples of the their iced tea recipes while there. He did give us a run down of how it was made and what the ingredients were, but I can’t recall all of them. Only that it used one of their green teas iced as the base with additions of honey and freshly muddled mint among other ingredients. It was really refreshing with a crisp, cooling minty finish and the perfect amount of sweetness from the honey to make the more vegetal and grassy notes of the tea really pop and feel lush.

It was strange because, stylistically, the iced tea menu was so different from the types of teas the shop was selling (kind of like Paragon), but it was just so good and you could tell that there had been a lot of care taken to make sure it wasn’t made with just any green tea but, rather, using one that would really specifically compliment the other fresh ingredients.

VariaTEA sent this one my way and since the instructions on the package suggested gonfu, i decided to try it that way instead of my typical western brew. Not sure what they were hoping for here but all i ended up with, what a sort of watery tea that never really turned in to anything that i would say was what i’d want in a gold tip tea. There were echoes of what this might taste like, but nothing spectacular or really worth fussing about. Oh well, can’t win them all!

Not tasting the bergamot this time around.

The dry tea is mostly dark, black tea with a few fuzzy, golden tea leaves mixed in. There are moderate-sized pieces of citrus peel and also neon orange and yellow stamens, like saffron. I can smell the bergamot most of all. I steeped for 1 minutes and the resulting brew is very light. I’m not sure if it’s the type of tea or the shorter steep, but I ended up steeping longer than the package suggested even, so perhaps it’s meant to be that way. I can taste the orange but only slightly. I will try steeping this one again. Hopefully the flavors will hold up.

Second Steep
8 ounces water + 200 degrees + 3 minutes

The steeped leaves have opened up considerably at this point and I can really smell the bergamot. This cup is a little darker than the first but still on the light side. I think next time I may start with a longer steep on this one.

Third Steep
8 ounces water + 200 degrees + 8 minutes

This cup is already as dark as the others at 4 minutes but I’m going to see if it will be darker after a longer steep.

I left it for 8 minutes this time and the color has remained the same. The aroma is starting to fade on the steeped leaves and also the liquid. It tastes bitter but also watered and bland. This cup is tolerable but not great. I think next time I’ll stop at two steeps.

Much better after cooling to room temperature.

My husband had a cup of this tea last night and it smelled so good that I brought some with me to work today. The aroma is fresh baked bread, specifically the crisp, golden outer crust. The steeped leaves have opened some and are the color of cooked spinach. They smell sweeter even than the tea liquor.

Drinking this tea now. I received this tea in this month’s Amoda box. This is a subscription that I can’t give up even though I’m doing the 52Teas thing now. I just love Amoda, what can I say? They do what they do better than anyone else.

Since Amoda is promoting this as an ideal iced tea blend, I decided to try this both hot and iced. So I brewed a pot and I poured myself a small cup to drink hot and I’m keeping the rest to the side to cool so that I can have it chilled.

Served hot, this is nice. While it does have a similar flavor profile to the typical holiday type blend (spiced orange) I like that this is blood orange and you can taste that little difference. The orange is a little sweeter and a little brighter here. The spices are not overwhelming the cup.

I look forward to trying it iced.

Sipdown (114)!

Well, I said it’d be good with milk and so, of course, I took that as much to the extreme as I could and I made this up today as a latte! I must be calcium deficient or something because all I’ve been able to think of today is making things as lattes – at least I have some self restraint though.

It was phenomenal; I’ve been growing a little tired of straight black tea but this was different enough to keep me heavily pleased. It looked golden and it tasted golden; well, as much as a tea can taste like a colour. But seriously; very thick and creamy with really smooth honey and bread notes.

Very pleasant way to finish this one off, and I think it’ll be really memorable too.

In a timolino.

This is the last Amoda subscription tea I have left – at this point I honestly can’t remember which month’s box it came out of. Definitely not January – I think March?

I don’t know why it took so long to get to trying it though; I guess partly because I kept getting straight black teas from different people in swaps and I wanted to try the swap teas first (still have straight black swap teas to get to). And I also kind of wanted to pace out all the straight black samples – after a while they sort of start to feel repetitive to me. Does anyone else feel that? It’s the reason I don’t think I could ever 100% drink only straight tea blends; I need variety of flavour to keep things interesting.

This was great though; it was super smooth and silky with a strong, but not brisk, astringent or bitter flavour. Top notes are fresh baked bread, honey, and raisin and the rest of the sip is comprised of malt and very light citrus notes. It reminds me a little bit of Easter bread, just a touch less fruity. I think this one would take milk very, very well. The flavours are strong enough that they wouldn’t get drowned out and the natural sweetness of this blend would compliment a thicker, creamier mouthfeel.

Also, dare I say it but raisin notes might be growing on me a little bit. Just a touch though; I’m still not ready for full blown, all out raisin tea but I am finding myself saying the phrase “The has strong raisin notes but I didn’t mind it” a lot more frequently as of late.

I found this oil quite versatile. I used it for cooking, salad dressings, and when making my own nut butters. I ran out of it and miss it, so I’m going to order more. It has a very light taste when used on its own as a salad oil.