Tag Archives: black tea

Tea Review: Sakurambo Black Cherry

coffee August 24, 2014 Leave a comment

sakurambo cherry tea

Another tea sample from my favorite brand, Lupicia (a Japanese company with stores in various countries and insanely cheap online pricing). This is a “black tea flavored with Japanese cherries, which has a sweet and fruity aroma.”

Sakurambo is a lovely black fruity tea that strikes a nice balance between tea and cherry flavors – it’s not overpoweringly sweet but has enough flavor to please – it starts out smooth in the mouth and then unfolds to a delicate fruit flavor. It’s not overly cherry, either – if I didn’t know, I’d probably be hard-pressed to identify what kind of fruit was in this, and would probably go with peach or something lighter than cherries (which one always worries will taste like licorice or cough syrup). It also smells gorgeous – I inhale before each sip just to let that scent waft up. This would probably make an excellent iced tea and I plan to try just that soon. I won’t buy a bag of this quite yet, as it doesn’t displace my very favorite cherry green tea from a local teahouse, but I will make a note of it for potential purchase in the future. A good tea for summer.

Interview: Natasha of The Snooty Tea Blog

creativity, this & that January 9, 2014 Leave a comment

Photos by Annushka Munch Photography-3

 

Natasha lives in New York and is the tea-genius behind The Snooty Tea Blog, a blog I am a big fan of in which she curates, reviews, and extensively discusses tea. I reached out to her to find out more about her inspiration, and below are her delightful responses. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter!

Do you remember your very first cup of tea?

We’ve always had some form of tea in the house, and one of the first cups of tea that I can remember was made by my grandmother, who was staying with us for the winter. It was a mug of Celestial Seasoning’s Red Zinger, which she had doctored up with honey and lemon because I was suffering from some flu-y thing or another. She had made one for herself as well–maybe I’d tasted hers and requested one of my own. Dangit, the more I try and recall exactly what happened, the blurrier the details get. Call it senili-tea.

How did your passion for tea start? How did that segue into the The Snooty Tea Blog? 

My passion for tea started after ordering up some Adagio goodies during the “Woo, green tea is the magical skinny-bullet!” craze of ’09. Since I wasn’t keen on purchasing creepy tablets of tea extract, I went the more natural route and decided to treat myself to some high-quality full-leaf bags. I became so enamored with the tea itself that I wanted to try more and more, as many varie-teas as possible–which is still true today.

The Snooty Tea Blog came about because all that sip-‘sploration had accumulated with it a hefty load of senseless tea knowledge. With nowhere else to put it, I dumped those tidbits and tea-scoveries onto a cabin-fever-inspired blog that I had started, but never had any real goals for. As it turned out, people liked reading my posts! Go figure. Everything else fell from there–getting contacted by tea companies for reviews, starting the Youtube channel, meeting some really amazing tea folks like Elyse Peterson of Tealet, Jeff Fuchs of Jalam Teas, and Nicole Martin of Tea For Me Please… Ece-tea-ra.

Recommend a black, a green,  a white, and an oolong tea.

Lavender Orange Grey Tea: A Love Story

this & that December 16, 2013 1 Comment

lavenderorangegreytea

All good things have beginnings.

And my love affair with tea began with this one. Flying Bird Botanical’s Lavender orange grey.

I’d been growing to appreciate tea more and more in my early twenties, but hadn’t really switched to drinking it regularly until I picked this up in a specialty shop in downtown, drawn by the packaging and especially the flavor – I love earl grey.

My dears, it’s hard to describe just how lovely this flavor is. It’s sort of like old, ground-up sunshine, as in, it’s not a bold, bursting flavor, but is a delicious, lasting, flavor that sort of stays on your tongue through the whole drinking experience. It’s a delicate but sustaining flavor, not at all slight or disappearing – it starts out and you can taste the earl grey immediately, and then it fades to a lavender and then orange note. It’s hard to imagine anyone not liking this, as it’s not a sharp flavor – it tastes like enhanced earl gray, exactly what it is. It’s strong but not too strong, and you’re going to want to drink it without milk so as to get the full delicate flavor…I could go on forever weaving word rhymes about this tea, but it would all say the same thing – delicious. So go order some. Pour a cuppa, pull up a chair, and enjoy.

Tea Review: Numi Chinese Breakfast

coffee November 25, 2013 Comments: 3

numichinesebreakfastreview

I do not like this tea at all. I bought an entire box of it at the co-op nearby and now all I can think of is how I’m going to get rid of it/actually drink it all. I love breakfast tea, and after trying a truly divine black tea called China Black at a nearby coffeeshop, I looking for something at the store that might taste similar. This is described as a “full-bodied Yunnan black tea,” which to me meant it would be strong and richly-flavored. Alas, I didn’t read the Cliffnotes, which is that this tea has a “malty” flavor with “floral” notes. I’ve never liked floral after-notes, or herbal, for that matter, preferring fruity if I must have something.

Even if I did however, what “malty” ended up meaning is this tea is fairly bland but with a bitter aftertaste – not the delicious, rich bitterness of coffee or high-quality tea but the whiny, complaining, left-too-long-in-the-sun bitterness of well, old tea. It’s certainly not the worst thing I’ve ever tasted, but it’s not exactly a pleasant experience drinking it. Avoid.

What other Numi teas have you tried? What’s your favorite black tea?

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