Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘High Tea’

After tasting and loving Shanti Tea’s Cherry Sencha, I was excited to try their silver needle, but I was rather disappointed. Well, I guess whether or not you will like it, depends on your expectations. To me their silver needle is just too far off from the characteristic mildly sweet, light signature tastes of the silver needle. If I were being nice, I could say Shanti Tea’s silver needle has a unique taste, or realistically I could say they are way off track.

Inspection of the dry leaf shows dark green backing to white down, buds are quite small. The aroma of the dry leaf has a sort of spice or hints of fragrance of like a flavoured tea.

I steeped 5 grams of leaves in 600ml of water for 2 minutes at 80 degrees Celsius. The resultant infusion was light yellow in colour and smelled like cooked spinach with ginger.

Silver needle is a very high quality, expensive tea; with picking of only the young, top buds of the tea bush. The taste is typically light, sweet and delicate. Tasting this was as if I had Tropicana 100% pure orange juice and compared it to orange Kool Aid. I liken this silver needle to the Kool Aid. It is like artificial white tea flavouring; it did not taste natural at all. It tasted like something was added, some flavouring, hints of ginger??? If I had to compare it to a like tea I would say it is similar to Indonesian white tea. Both have that sort of “artificial” taste that does not seem to come from the buds. It is still drinkable, but don’t expect exceptional silver needle quality here. I’m going to have to pass on this one.

You can purchase the Silver Needle directly from the Shanti Tea website.

I like green tea but it’s never the first tea I reach for. I generally oversteep it and then fight to get past the bitter taste of my own forgetfulness. A friend of mine swears by the bitterness of green, says that you don’t get the full benefit without oversteeping it…. erm I don’t know. He’s cool but always leaves me shaking my head, so misguided. So green tea is just okay for me unless it’s Pouchong.

Pouchong green from Canton is among the best Pouchongs I’ve had. It’s a triple threat when it comes to tea. It’s an antioxidant and an antimutagenic and it’s tasty all in one. The leaves are big, dark, and twisted just right (reminds me of another one of my friends hmm). The tea brews to a light golden yellow, almost clear, like liquid sunshine. I put stevia in the first brew (out of habit with greens) but found it was a bit much and it took away from the clean taste of the tea. Second steep, without stevia, brewed up just as clean and with a slight melon scent. Third steep was a bit longer (on purpose) and it still was smooth and almost clear.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Pouchong or who shy away from greens the way I do, this is one tea you must try. This is a high quality tea that will not disappoint.

You can purchase the Pouchong directly from the Canton Tea Co. website. Save 15% right now when you use the code LEAF at checkout!

Todays tea is the Kalahari Tea, Red Tea Kalahari Reserve. I personally love Rooibos tea, the sweetness and nuttiness of it. I was looking forward to a good cup of high quality Rooibos tea, with a name like Reserve, it sounds pretty exclusive!

From the Kalahari Tea website: “Kalahari Reserve is 100% pure red tea, selected from the tender tips of the Rooibos bush. With it’s sweet, smooth taste, it can be enjoyed by itself, or with milk, lemon or a sweetener. Rich in antioxidants, red tea tastes great and is naturally caffeine free. It’s the healthy drink you can consume all day long.”

First of all, I heated the water to 100 deg C, pretty standard for Rooibos. I brewed the teabag for 5 mins., again, pretty standard. There are no instructions on the bag teabag package, and it is not very attractive, with just a typed name on it. It would be nice to see some sort of design, something to say that this is more than a boring old teabag!

The tea is a deep amber, again, what I come to expect from a Rooibos tea. The taste is slightly sweet, with some spicy notes – unique for Rooibos, as I have not really tasted any spice in a straight Rooibos before. Unfortunately, that is the end of the distinguishing characteristics for this tea. The brew is bland, almost stale tasting. I don’t detect any nuttiness whatsoever, and I found that I did not enjoy the tea at all. Not an offensive taste, just non-memorable. I am still waiting an enjoyable Kalahari Tea, and I am sure that it is there, I just have not found it yet!

Can anyone suggest which of the following is a good tea to review from them: Ruby Grapefruit White Tea, Cherry Vanilla Chocolatte Red Tea, Highlands Honey Red Tea, Safary Lullaby Red Tea – I really don’t want to do any more negative Kalahari reviews! Leave your comments below.

You can purchase Kalahari Tea Kalahari Reserve Red Tea directly from their website.

I love Tea Forte. Every single tea that I have tried to date has been flavourful, without being overwhelming. I also quite enjoy Oolong Tea. To date, I have mostly focused on the darker, more oxidized Formosa Oolongs, and enjoy the robust flavours that they produce. With that in mind, I reached for the Tea Forte Silk Oolong this morning to give it a try.

First of all, Tea Forte has packaging nailed. The Chest that was sent to us contains the teas nicely, and the pyramid tea bags and wrapping are minimalist enough to let you focus on the tea, while giving you the impression that, even tho this is a teabag, you are about to embark on a high quality tea experience. In the past, I found for the most part the bags give enough room for the teas to expand, so I was not too worried about this here, even tho it is an Oolong that should expand enough to release all the flavours.

I have to say, that this is the first Tea Forte that has disappointed me. Perhaps my expectations were too high going into it. First of all, clearly there was not enough room for the tea to expand in the tea bag. After brewing it at about 195 deg F for about 3 minutes, the tea leaves were straining the confines of the bag. Usually, you can get a nice scent of the tea through the bag, and certainly once it has hit the water, but here, I found the scent to be very muted and almost undetectable.

The tea it’s self is nothing to write home about. It is very light, bordering on almost tasteless. It is certainly smooth as the name “Silk Oolong” implies, but has no interesting aftertaste that lingers, and is overall, unmemorable. Perhaps being used to stronger Oolong infusions I was prepared for a stronger tea, but this certainly is not that. It leaves me feeling indifferent enough to it that I am not even going to bother with a second or third infusion.

Maybe if you steeped it for much longer, you could coax more flavour out of it, or even cutting the leaves out of the bag, buy why do that when you receive it in a bag? You can purchase the loose leaves from Tea Forte directly, but for the price (Tea Forte teas can tend to the expensive side), I don’t see the value on this tea.

Overall, Tea Forte is a fantastic company producing fantastic teas, but in this case, it is one tea that I would remove from the lineup, as it does not seem to fit into the flavourful, memorable teas that I have come to know Tea Forte for.

You can purchase Tea Forte Silk Oolong directly from their website.