1384 Tasting Notes
TTB 2025. Aged white tea is very hit or miss for me.
Unless you have a pu er knife or … a knife in general available to help open the leaves after the first rinse, it will take quite a while to open the brick fully.
Wet Leaf Aroma: Fruity. Compost. Slight old house.
Flavor: Woody. Resin. A bit tannic.
WHOA. Hold the phone. I dumped a bunch of water on the leaf to throw it into my garden, but got distracted by dishes. When I came back, those fruity notes really started shining! Cherry and other dark red fruits. Maybe this one is made for cold steeping after the first 4 infusions.
TTB: I have a soft spot for jasmine-scented teas. While I don’t 100% remember if it was Jasmine that started this adventure I absolutely remember drinking a crap ton of it in college. I also like to add a drop of honey to really enunciate the jasmine flavor. Granted, that was with tea bags. With loose teas, especially with this one, I won’t add honey.
Dry Aroma: Jasmine. Jasmine Jasmine. Oh, and a slight barnyard note.
Inital steeping aroma: >_> nail polish
Wet Leaf Aroma:
Flavor: The jasmine flavor is a bit subdued. I wonder if I should have steeped it longer. Arg. Oddly, I’m kind of missing the usual barnyard and summer floral/grasses notes. Either way, it’s a nice light jasmine. It makes you really stop and think about what you are drinking. To find the notes and fully appreciate them.
I made a short version. Trying to determine how I want to do these videos moving forward. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iqa8DmTxov4
TTB. Laos. I want to go. I want to go to all the tea-producing regions. Side note: Don’t go looking up the tea until after you take a few sips, or their tasting notes will influence what you taste. Nothing quite like yelling PEANUT BUTTER in the middle of a group tasting. I once told a lady (when I was 10) that poi tasted like wallpaper paste. She looked at me incredulously and asked: You’ve eaten wallpaper paste?! Funny how our palates and minds put things together.
Dry Aroma: None. That’s okay. Last of the bag.
Dry appearance is very nice. Dusty. Milk chocolate brown with golden buds.
Flavor: Dark fruits. Woody. Mahogany.
Wet Leaf: I wish there were a better way to describe this note. I sense it in many black teas. Some might say malt, maybe raisin bread.
This is another one that I feel might not quite represent the full tea so I won’t rate it.
TTB. Finished. Charcoal-roasted white tea sounds intriguing. I love a good charcoal-roasted oolong, but I don’t know if I’ve had any white tea that specifically does a heavier roast to taste. I’m on the dregs, so I’m not sure how representative this sample will be of the full tea.
It’s been raining hard for the past few days. I need tea. Lots of tea.
Dry leaf: Nothing
Wet leaf: Raisins. Sweet wood. Charcoal and old house in the second infusion.
Flavor: Dried wood. Charcoal. Very slight Palo Santo.
I think it would be interesting to try more of this one. I don’t feel like I quite experienced the depth that this one has to offer.
I feel like Cookie Monster but with tea. And I don’t throw the leaves around.
TTB. Being an American that is allergic to dairy I am constantly seeing dumb things with dairy in them. When I first came across this bag tucked away amid the many others I immediately dismissed it. “What have they done this time?” Was my first thought. Maybe added butter flavor like they did in that Buffalo sauce. But curiosity got the best of me and I took it back out.
It does have a somewhat buttery aroma once it’s brewed vanilla butter with mint.The flavor is strong with mint but the vanilla finds its way around your palate. It’s quite unique actually… Mint overpowers so much generally that it’s all you taste and while this starts out with mint in your face the vanilla slides up quietly and leaves you with a gentle mouth feel in the after taste that is really quite nice.
That all being said I do grow and sell my own mint. And this mint is a bit stale in comparison
Buttermints are an “old fashioned” hard candy popular throughout the UK, though my understanding is they’re particularly popular in England – though I know them more from the Scottish import store I grew up living near. Think like a buttery toffee flavour mixed with a soft peppermint note.
I’m trying to think of a North American equivalent and, frankly, blanking on one. The only thing coming to mind atm is Rhubarb Custards, which are also a British hard candy.
Anyway, the point being that Twinings is trying to emulate a specific but actually quite common/nostalgic regional flavour. It just so happens to be one that is far less well known (and therefore maybe assumed to be weird) here in North America.
Yup, sounds weird to me. No assumption needed. :-D
Ah!!! Thank you for the insight. I’m a big fan of Japanese foods and such so buttermint doesn’t seem to weird. I’m just glad it doesn’t actually have butter XD
I used to make something called Buttermints at Christmas and I assumed that was what this tea referred to, but I was wrong! They were candies made with butter, confectioner’s sugar, and peppermint oil and they were really just soft mints. They are pressed into molds or can be rolled into “snakes” and then cut into “pillow” shape. I did pillow shape, roses, and leaves. They were delicious! The butter is there just to bind the sugar together and you don’t particularly taste butter.
I use the same molds to make rose-shaped sugar “cubes” for tea parties. You mix regular sugar (not confectioners) with the tiniest bit of water and press it into the molds and then let it dry.
TTB. Thought this would be the perfect complement to my eggs on avocado on bagel. Oooo. Yes. Very good. I made it a bit more astringent, aka steeped it longer, so that it didn’t get lost in the food. Quite a lovely tea this one is.
Flavor: Woody. Dark wood. Resin. Cream. A bit of port? A hint if charcoal
Dry leaf: I think the aroma is contaminated. Which is amazing because it tastes great. But this aroma doesn’t smell like I know it should
Wet leaf: Woody. A bit of raisin bread.
Edit (I’m editing as I think I may have come off a bit too strongly the first time.)
I have a speech in Sept. It’s on matcha. When I started learning about mo cha, it really threw a curveball. I want to say first that I absolutely, 100%, hope that farmers experiment and try to reclaim lost arts. I have nothing against that. However, I personally disagree with fully calling it mo cha at this point. It’s no different than powdering any other green tea made in China. Like Lu An Gua Pian, which Tea Trunk/Ooika used. Do they have more right to call it Mo cha because theirs is unshaded? If you blur the lines, things get sticky real quick.
Dry Powder: Very different aroma from those who are used to matcha. It’s very herby. Reminds me of dandelions. The coloring is decent. Not quite as amazing as some higher grade matcha, but not the worst I’ve seen either.
Flavor: Oh man. Bitter. Like I stuck a dandelion in my mouth and started chewing on it. But not unpleasant like industrial grade matcha is on its own. To make this, they used Long Jing #43, which I love as a loose leaf. Not sure how I feel about this one, though. The herbaceous/medicinal qualities through me for a loop.
The coloring is also a bit different. It’s less of a jade green and more yellow, which makes sense as it is pan-fried. Need to try again with less powder.
Teagschwendner is now known as Chicago Teahouse. Things pretty much look the same on the website but they are no longer part of the Teegschwendner franchise.
You can read more on those changes here: https://teatiff.com/2023/02/13/chicago-teahouse/
I messed up a bit. In my morning hay fever delirium I added too much leaf. This one is like an oolong, you don’t need much. So my cup is a bit astringent and the taste is a bit more bitter then I expect it should be. The overall tones are nice and woody.
TTB.
Dry Leaf aroma: Notes of contamination. Generally, I sense notes of nutty and pan-fried toastiness, but this one has some issues. Just a bit of the nutty and toasty, but it has some musty, like it’s been next to too many flavored teas.
Wet Leaf: Better. More nutty notes. A bit of passion fruit. But still, that contamination lingers.
Flavor: Maybe it’s just me but still does not taste like a Lung Ching/Dragonwell/Long Jing should I know this is most likely not a good show of what their product actually is like so for now I won’t rate.
No intent to impugn anyone here, since oversights can and do happen. But it could be that the tea was somewhat stale, since it had been around long enough to pick up contaminating flavors. Last week I myself threw most of a pouch of dragon well onto the compost heap because it tasted poor—and was actually 3 yr past its BestBy date!
Good to note. I think I will do the same with this one.
