Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Cup Of Tea’

Here at Its All About The Leaf, we were recently contacted by Adagio – asking if we were interested in reviewing their new line of gourmet tea bags. Now, I have been following Charles Cain of Adagio on twitter, and on the tearetailer.com website, and on several occasions the issue of loose leaf tea vs. teabag has arisen. Often it is brought up by new “tea retailers” in a bit of a snobby attempt to differentiate themselves from other store-bought teabag companies. Claims of the non-teabag faction include:

- teabags contain only fannings – the tea “leftovers”
- the teabag interferes with the taste of the tea
- teabags are for old ladies and young children not hip middle agers
- only loose leaf tea will give you the full taste and experience of tea.

I have to admit, that at one time, I thought all of these things exactly. However, since starting this website, I have had a chance to review tea in all different forms and fashions, from teabag to loose, to dried, even baked in chocolate. And I have come to the conclusion – it is not the container the tea is in, it is the quality of tea.

And with that, I come back around to Adagios’ offering. This collection includes Jasmine Pearls, Silver Needle, Dragonwell, Wuyi Oolong, Golden Yunnan and Oolong Goddess. Each tea is packaged individually in a sealed wrapper, and in each wrapper is a teabag *GASP* containing just enough for one cup of tea. The tea bag its self is a good quality, pyramid teabag, allowing plenty of room for the tea to expand as it infuses.

Now, lets compare these teabags to the most popular claims by the anti-bag groups:

1. Teabags contain only fannings -> not here folks. The Jasmine Pearls for example, contained ACTUAL Jasmine Pearls – kind of a waste in my opinion, since it is such a high quality tea that’s neat to watch unfurl, but it is clear, that these are no fannings. The same goes with the rest of the teas – we are talking full leaf tea, not broken down old leaf.

2. The teabag interferes with the taste of the tea -> what are you, a supertaster? The fact is, 75% of people do not even have the capacity to tell the difference between good and bad tea, never mind to detect if a teabag interferes with a teas taste! I will tell you, I consider myself relatively picky with tea, that comes with the territory of drinking it daily and in great variety, and in not one single tea I had from this collection, could I taste the “teabag”.

3. Teabags are for old ladies and young children -> I am neither. Nor is my family, or friends. All of them mix teabags and loose leaf. Lets be real, how many old ladies do you know that will pay $19.00 for 30 bags of tea – not many I warrant. And kids? Rarely will they even do the buying. Lets just drop this myth entirely, it smacks of 50′s England, and I have never seen anyone in North America drink tea with a pinky out!

4. Only loose leaf tea will give you the full taste and experience of tea -> nope. That is plain old tea bigotry. Anyone who says this without qualification is either willfully ignorant, or is trying to sell you something. The reality is the quality of the TEA is what gives you the taste and experience – not the delivery mechanism. I have had loose leaf that is garbage, and teabags that sing (i.e. the Adagio Silver Needle in this collection) – it is about the tea folks, not the wrapper.

So – now that we have dispelled the myths, lets again, focus on this collection.

Jasmine Pearls – the taste is exactly what I would expect out of a good quality Jasmine tea. I enjoyed it very much, but the Pearls part is a bit of a waste since you cannot really see them unfurl. From a marketing point of view, I get it, but the same quality Jasmine tea would have accomplished the same experience. None the less – I loved it, it reminded me of my youth at home in the kitchen with my Grandmother!

Silver Needles – By far, I am a Silver Needle guy. No matter where I am, if Silver Needles are on the menu, I am buying/drinking/taking it home. I have had some stinkers, but this one is NOT! I loved every drop, and even got 3 good steepings out of it. There would have been more, but the teabag mysteriously disappeared in a whirl of kitchen cleaning…

Dragonwell – I am not a huge Dragonwell fan, but enough so that I know good green when I taste it, and again, this is it. Adagio has not skimped on the tea part of these teabags!

Wuyi Oolong – Oolong can be a lifelong study. There are so many kinds, from a greener Oolong to a dark, rich Oolong, to buttery light Oolongs. Wuyi is one of the more recognizable (see a pattern in this collection?) and is a good mid-range Oolong, appealing to a wider audience than say, a Formosa Oolong. It tasted… just as it should. No teabag flavours, no bitterness, just smooth, Oolongy goodness.

Golden Yunnan – a Chinese black “standard” – it is again, a good mid-range selection that appeals to a wide variety of palates. You get the boldness of a black tea, without the over-astringent flavours of a poor quality Black. I would have liked to see this replaced with a good Darjeeling or Assam, but to keep with the theme, it does work

Finally – Oolong Goddess. To be honest, I have not had a chance to try this out of the sampler, but I can assure you, that it will be a good example of this kind of Oolong, it will be fully leafed, and it will not suffer in the least for being presented in a teabag!

The Gourmet Tea Collections from Adagio are not meant for established, hard core loose leaf tea drinkers, nor are they meant to replace Adagios’ high quality loose leaf tea offerings. As Charles Cain has pointed out in the past, too many people are “scared” of loose leaf tea, I think because it has been made out to be too exclusive a club. These tea bag collections are intended to assist people in the transition of poor quality teabags, to loose leaf, being the intermediate step along the way. I think that they accomplish that admirably. High quality tea in a teabag is NOT a new concept, but the presentation of these in a retail environment like Adagio is doing will only serve to convert more people to good quality tea, and for that, Adagio gets kudos for a great effort, and I am looking forward to more collections just like this!

If you have gotten this far, you have probably formed your own opinion – and I am dying to know what it is! Leave me a comment, and I will reply to each and every one of them, pro-teabag or not, this website is about the everyday tea drinker – which you are! So let me know your thoughts!

You can purchase the Gourmet Tea Collection – Artisan Comfort directly from the Adagio website.

Celestial Seasoning’s Honey Lemon Ginseng is fantabulous! Aroma is a soft lemon; it does not smell too sour nor too sweet. Whenever I see the combination of honey and lemon, I think of it as the perfect concoction for cold and flus. Now add ginseng to the mix and you definitely give a boost to your immune system. I am partial to ginseng so of course I had to choose this tea. There is an old Chinese proverb that says if you ask 2 men to walk around the world non-stop, the one who looks untired and refreshed at the end of the journey would have a piece of ginseng hidden under his tongue. This once again referring to ginseng’s many health benefits.

A tip for preparing teas: try ripping open the teabags, pouring contents directly into the teapot and steeping from there. This little step will add more flavour to your cup of tea. You can use a strainer to keep leaves and dregs from entering into your cup of tea. I did just that with this tea, pouring 5 grams into my ceramic teapot and steeping with 600 ml of boiling water for 3 minutes.

The taste is not too lemony and although I could not smell the ginseng in the aroma, I could definitely taste it. It has that familiar characteristic I get from many hui gan teas but without the bitterness. I am referring to the sort of “coated” mouthfeel you get like when you drink milk. Having that “coated” mouthfeel makes it less of a thirst quencher. As a matter of fact, it leaves a dry feeling in your mouth, but then again thirst quenching hot teas are a little hard to come by. There is an initial refreshing quality right when you put it in your mouth, then comes the “coatedness” and dry mouthfeel at the middle and back of the tongue and lastly a hint of sweetness and cool sensation felt from the honey and pressing the front of the tongue to the front centre of the roof of the mouth. It seems that when I drank the tea using loose leaf steeping methodology, the taste of the three components were manifested more in layers – one taste, then the next and so on, whereas when I drank it from the teabag, the taste was more blended, that is, no single element came to the forefront, every sip had nuances of all three elements. The elements are certainly easier to identify using the loose leaf methodology. I tend to rip open the teabag and steep the leaves loose whenever I have teabags, but not many people do this as it is messy (because most contain dust or fannings) and more inconvenient. But you should give it a try; the teabag keeps the character, quality, goodness, and flavour of the leaves all contained; cutting it open makes for a better cup.

A notable tea that I will not soon forget. Now I just need to find it in my supermarket!

You can purchase the Honey Lemon Ginseng Green Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.

I have two tea bags with which to form a review of this tea. So, I will be sharing my thoughts on this tea as I progressed through both tea tastings.

First tea bag:
The smell from the dry tea bag is minty. The teabags from Hampstead Tea are really full, not your typical tea bag. I brewed the bag for 2 minutes, added a splash of milk and sipped. “What does this remind me of? Dirt? No, mint.” For me the tea has a mint aftertaste. Is this bad? It depends, do you want your breakfast tea to remind you of mint? I decided on this first cup that I did not want mint with breakfast.

Second tea bag:
The smell from the dry tea bag is minty. No denying the mint flavor. As I brewed for two minutes, I braced myself for the previous flavor profile. I sipped my first sip and hum…it seems better to me. Is it a tea that I would pick for breakfast? Probably not. I did read another reviewers take on this tea and they compared it to a Darjeeling. I can see that comparison now that I have drank two full cups of this robust black tea.

Overall, I like Hampstead Tea tea bags, they are full and brew up nicely. This particular EB left me wanting something else. It is just not my cup of tea.

You can purchase the Organic Fairtrade English Breakfast directly from the Hampstead Tea website.

I have tried to write this review for something like 3-4 months. Every time I get excited about drinking this tea, get excited about brewing up tea, and then as I start drinking the tea I lose focus and end up working on something else.

So today, I’m trying to actually focus. This tea review, it SHALL be written. But as I’m drinking it, I think the fact that I am easily distracted is part of the review itself. The tea is just not holding my attention long enough to really get a good review. The aroma of the unbrewed leaf is malty with overtones of pepper. It’s got a lovely chestnut color. But the flavor is more subtle. It’s got a hint of sweetness, and some richness and a hint of earth to it. When you take a sip, the brew tastes good – but it just slips your mind quickly. It’s a nice tea, it’s just not my cup of tea.

You can purchase the China Yunnan Silver Tip Choice directly from the Grace Tea Company website.

Dry smell of the leaves brings forward a “sweet” wafting.

Dry appearance of leaves: At first glance, it appears to be just broken tea leaves, but upon further inspection you notice the small black pellets known as Gunpowder. Gunpowder is made up of leaves hand-rolled into tiny pellets. These resemble gunpowder, thus the name! (Now, that is a cool fact). Small green Mint leaves against the black Ceylon leaves and the blackish pellets create a nice mixture. I admit I did not notice the gunpowder pellets at first, but now they are what I see first! It is funny how your perspective can change when you have gained new facts.

I was curious about the gunpowder pellets so I took just one and put in hot water and watched in amazement as this teeny little speck turned into a tea leaf that measured over 1″ in length! As I am watching the agony of the leaf, I realize that whatever amount of gunpowder that is in my infuser basket has not unfurled all the way. I can see a second and perhaps a third infusion in my near future and that is what makes loose leaf tea so affordable. Not only are you getting a better cup of tea, it is also cost efficient costing just pennies per cup, NOW that is a bargain!

Brew this tea like you would a green tea. A quick 2 minute brew and my first sip is a mild peppermint sensation. The more I drink the more I notice the peppermint taking center stage in this blend. Not the lead role, but certainly a good supportive role. Since this is a blend the astringency was masked from my detection radar.

I do not taste the Ceylon base or the Green tea base, one over the other. It is just a mild peppermint in a good tea base. I have been drinking black and green tea blends lately and I like what I taste. The bitterness of a black tea base is camouflaged by the often times grassy taste of a green tea and vice versa. Separately I have to put additions in most black teas and I pour out most greens that I brew. But together, they forge a mild tea with a lower caffeine level that is most enjoyable after a meal. As this cools down the peppermint is less noticeable and the black Ceylon has come forward to take a bow.

As I finish up this pot of tea, my mouth has become very dry. One way to combat the amount of astringency in teas is to brew at a lower temperature and/or a shorter amount of time. My last sip is much cooler and a bitterness has set in that I did not notice when I first started this review. I like this tea well enough to play around with the brewing parameters a bit until I find just the right combo for my finicky taste.

I do agree with TeaFrog, this tea should be a staple in every tea lover’s cabinet.

You can purchase the Asian Mint directly from the TeaFrog website.