Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Yunomi
Tea Description:
Grown under the strong summer sun and harvested in autumn, this bancha tea has stronger astringency and less caffeine than sencha.
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn more about Yunomi’s Monthly Mystery Tea Sampler’s Club here.
Taster’s Review:
The Monthly Mystery Tea Sampler’s Club package from Yunomi promises to be FUN! In addition to this Organic Autumn Bancha from NaturaliTea, there is also a package of Genmai … which is just the toasted rice! I get to custom blend my own Genmaicha! Yay! I look forward to that … so, that review will be coming later. (I’ll probably be using some of this Bancha to make my first cup of custom Genmaicha!)
Before I do that though, I think I’d like to sample this Bancha on it’s own and give you my thoughts on the tea. And my thoughts? This is a really nice Bancha! The dry leaf is cut small, and I noticed a couple of stems in with the leaves.
I like Bancha … it’s less celebrated than Sencha tea, but, I find that the two are really quite similar. It is as the description above implies, though, it does have a bit more astringency than a typical Japanese Sencha. But here’s what else I’m noticing … this is deliciously sweet, vegetative, and has less noticeable bitterness – at least to this taster’s palate – than a typical Japanese Sencha. This is perhaps a little less sweet than a Japanese Sencha, but it has a nice, buttery taste and texture to it that I quite enjoy.
It’s a smooth, delicious green tea with a brothy mouthfeel – reminiscent of the broth of a soup that might have been crafted with mild green vegetables. It has a sweet yet savory taste to it … and I find that the sweet and the savory notes are well-balanced. It’s a mellow, lovely cuppa, and I look forward to blending this Bancha with the Genmai that was provided in this month’s Mystery Tea sampler’s Club package for a tasty Genmaicha!
Jeju Summer Harvest Korean Green Tea from Spire Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Tea Description:
A delicious Korean green tea with a light, fresh herbaceous taste and a vibrant green liquor colour.
Learn more about Spire Tea on their website.
Taster’s Review:
I can’t recall the last time I’ve tried a Korean tea … I know that I’ve certainly tried them, but, they are not as easy to come by and so my experience with them has been limited. So I was very excited to try this Jeju Summer Harvest Korean Green Tea from Spire Tea.
And this is delightful. It has much of what I’d expect from a green tea. It has that light, “green” taste that falls somewhere between the flavor of sweet grass and mild steamed vegetables. There is a very faint buttery undertone to this cup as well which adds a nice emphasis on the steamed veggie taste.
It is a pleasantly sweet and mellow cup, but there is a certain invigorative quality to it as well. It has a fresh, crisp, clean kind of taste that perks up the taste buds. There is some tangy astringency toward the tail, and the aftertaste is sweet.
Overall, I find this cup to be very rewarding and soothing, especially nice after a long day. I did find that the flavor waned slightly as it cooled, so this is one that I’d recommend drinking while its hot. But, that’s just fine with me, because it seems so relaxing to sip as a hot beverage. Very nice.
Organic Sticky Rice Oolong from Driftwood Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Driftwood Tea
Tea Description:
As with all of our scented teas, Organic Sticky Rice Oolong is naturally flavoured. It gains its unique scented from a herb native to the Yunnan Province of China – where many of the Chinese/Thai population of Mae Salong descend from – called Nuo Mi Xiang Nen Ye.
The leaves of this small aromatic plant are layered with freshly picked Thai Oolong 17 and allowed to slowly impart their beautifully sweet, sticky rice aroma.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
When I first opened the pouch of this tea, I was shocked by the scent. It really smells like rice. This smells like the Jasmine Rice that I prepare for my family on a regular basis (the rice that I keep on hand and my preferred starch for the family meals). The aroma becomes even more obvious as it brews … it really smells like I’m cooking rice! If my husband were home, he’d be asking me for a bowl of rice!
The flavor is very much like rice too. It tastes like the rice that sort of sticks at the bottom of the rice cooker, that becomes slightly caramelized. This is my favorite part – because it tastes sweet, has a wonderful, chewy texture and has a delicious caramel-y flavor to it (and it’s even better if I top it with a drizzle of melted butter). This rice treat tastes a lot like a cross between kettle corn and caramel corn … and that’s why I love it so much.
And this tea tastes so much like that! But I taste the Oolong too. It has hints of vegetal and floral notes, with the floral notes revealing more of themselves as I continue to sip.
With subsequent infusions, the rice fragrance in the brewed tea diminishes quite a bit, but the flavor is still there. It is softer, but it is still there. It still tastes like popcorn, but, some of the buttery quality is gone now, it’s not quite as creamy now as it was in the first cup. The floral tones begin to emerge – this is a different cup, definitely, than the first. Still very enjoyable, but I find myself wanting a little more of the creamy caramel notes that were so delectable in the first cup.
A really delightful tea – I don’t know if it is quite as good as an Ali Shan Oolong (my favorite!) but, it is definitely good for a change of pace. This could easily become a staple in my cupboard because I can see this tea becoming something I CRAVE! I love it.
Immortal Springs Laoshan White Tea from Verdant Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: Verdant Tea
Tea Description:
After decades of innovation and working to perfect their green tea, the village of Laoshan has entered a golden age of diversity in their tea offerings. Just a year ago, our friends, the He family, started making black tea as an experimental crop, improving with each harvest. This black tea has quickly become our most popular offering. Now, for the first time, Laoshan White tea is available.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is some of the greenest white tea I’ve ever seen! In fact, had I not read the label and opened the pouch myself, I would have sworn it was a green tea. The leaves are so tiny, deeply green, and beautiful, like the youngest of spring leaf buds eagerly waiting the day it will open and drink in those golden rays of sunlight.
Oh… how lovely. This greenish-gold liquid is heavenly to sip! It has a beautifully soft mouthfeel – like fluffy soft velvet, and the flavor is sweet and vegetative. Again, had I not known I brewed a white tea, I would think this was a green tea based upon the sip. It has a very green tea flavor to it with the vegetative tones, however, there is also a delicateness to this that suggests a white tea to me.
The tasting notes for this tea suggest a sugar snap pea taste, and I get that. It is very sweet and crisp, like the sweetest, youngest sugar snap peas that have that distinctive SNAP when you break them between your fingers. This crispy crunch to the vegetable displays the freshness of it just as the flavors here suggest the freshness of the tea.
As I continue to sip, I notice hints of a sweet nutty taste. Not so much a toasty nutty taste, though. It tastes not quite raw, but not completely roasted either… like an almond that is just slightly under-roasted. It still has that creaminess of the raw nut, very smooth … but without the bitterness of the raw almond. In fact, there is nothing bitter whatsoever about this tea. It’s purely sweet from start to finish … and as I continue to sip, and especially in the later infusions (I steeped this tea six times) I noticed a honey-esque tone emerging, tasting somewhat like the honeysuckle notes I remember from my childhood and also vaguely reminiscent of a wildflower honey.
As I mentioned, this tea is good for multiple infusions – I steeped it six times, but I think it could have endured several more! – and the flavor just keeps getting more and more interesting with each infusion. This one is a MUST TRY for white tea enthusiasts – this one is so beautiful and memorable … the kind you want to spend an entire afternoon with, because there is so much beauty locked inside these tiny, delicate leaves.
Laoshan Black from Verdant Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Verdant Tea
Tea Description:
The summer 2012 Laoshan Black harvest is in!
Cutting open the first bag of our latest harvest of Laoshan Black is like stepping in to some fantastical cottage in the forest where fudge is being simmered on the stovetop, and the wafting dark chocolate caramel aroma mixes with the flowers and grassy smells coming in through the open windows. The aroma of the wet leaf adds a semolina sweetness of bread baking.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is the second of the three teas that were part of the last Steepster Select box (the Founders Favorites box), as well as the second of two of the three teas in that box that I had previously tasted and reviewed. But, I certainly didn’t mind receiving this tea – even though I had tried the Laoshan Black tea from Verdant previously – because this tea is so good. It is nice to have it back in my stash of teas, if only for a short while! I will enjoy it while it lasts!
And, even though I have tasted and reviewed this tea before, this is a whole new harvest, so, I feel perfectly alright with composing a new review for it. New harvests often bring new flavor to the cup, so it is interesting to me to see how this tea compares to the previous batch I tried. (I believe that the first batch that I tried was Spring 2011, and this is Spring 2012)
Well, it’s still very rich and flavorful, with amazing chocolate-y tones. I taste the malt notes, which give it an almost “Malt O’ Meal” kind of flavor (one of my favorite hot cereals … I miss the chocolate Malt O’ Meal, I could never seem to find it in my local grocery store, and I’d faithfully look for it every time I’d visit for months and months – probably more like years – and I finally gave up. I might try looking next time I visit to see if it’s there… then again, I suppose I could make my own with some of the cocoa powder that I have in the cupboard. It’d probably be better that way!)
Anyway, this first infusion is very full-flavored. I taste hints of cinnamon and notes of caramel-y sweetness. I think I taste more of a caramel-y taste this time than I remember with that first cup (then again, it was quite some time ago!) and perhaps less of the honey-esque tone. It is nonetheless pleasantly sweet and rich. Very similar to what I remember from previous Laoshan Black tastings.
If you haven’t yet tried the Laoshan Black from Verdant Tea – I highly recommend it. It is truly one of the most remarkably satisfying black teas I’ve ever tasted.