Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Perfume’

I love Earl Grey. I used to drink it quite often, but a couple of months ago I came across a couple of EG variations that were bad. They gave Earl Grey a really horrible, perfume filled name. It used to be my favorite variety of tea, so I was excited to try this version from Mighty Leaf in hopes of renewing my faith in Earl Grey.

This is a whole leaf bagged tea which I don’t recall having experienced before. There were a lot of long, dark leaves and very few typical bagged tea sized pieces. The bag smells strongly of bergamot, but not in the perfume sort of way. I am not able to identify the scent of jasmine, but that may be a good thing. I believe my most recent horrible EG experience was with a jasmine EG. As the tea is steeping, the bergamot allows the black tea to shine through in the scent.

I steeped the bag for 4 minutes as suggested by Mighty Leaf and was a bit surprised that the leaves had expanded to fill the entire bag. That is pretty impressive compared to the normal bagged teas I usually have. The taste is of smooth black tea with a nice dose of bergamot. I am once again unable to locate the jasmine, but I’m fine with that. This is possibly one of the best Earl Greys I have had. The flavor is bold, but not overbearing or perfume-like. This tea is great and easy to drink plain, but is equally as good with the addition of milk and sweetener. The tea holds up nicely to the additions and retains a strong black tea base.

You can purchase the Mighty Leaf Organic Earl Grey directly from the Mighty Leaf Tea website.

The fancy teabag/pyramid/thing had a wonderful fragrance when I took it out of its packaging. The vanilla was deliciously fragrant and smelled like actual vanilla bean rather than some random perfume or extract. I could smell the tea base underneath which had an oddly lightly spiced sort of scent. I had to concentrate for my nose to pick up the coconut, but I think I detected it up. There’s something about coconut that just seems to blend really well with vanilla.

Unfortunately it pretty much all vanished as soon as the water hit the teabag, and just smelled like steeping tea. The taste of the tea started off rather weak and somewhat flat and only slowly did the flavour creep in, first the tannic flavour of the tea (which was fairly gentle and mellow compared to many of the bases used in flavoured blends – a point in this tea’s favor) followed by a sweet, vanilla-ish flavour. It’s not really the bursting-with-vanilla-flavour taste I was expecting, and it was kind of a let down in this regard. Not really getting the coconut flavour either.

This tea might benefit from adding a bit of sweetener and possibly milk too, although I think it would have to be steeped longer, as right now I think it’s too mild to stand up to the milk. It’s not a bad tea – it doesn’t have me jumping for joy, but it’s a nice easy-drinking black tea. I gave this tea a Steepster rating of 72 out of 100.

You can purchase the Orchid Vanilla directly from the Tea Forte website.

A white tea whose dry leaves remind me of a silver-leaf maple tree. Some of the leaves are silver and some are dark in color. The leaves are whole little seed pod looking things.

The brewing directions from RedLeafTea:

Hot (not boiling) water for 4-8 minutes

I had the leaves in hot water for 4 minutes. The taste of this tea is floral with a hint of jasmine maybe in the background. If you don’t like flowers in your cup, you will probably not like this tea. I can’t really put my finger on why I don’t like this, but the perfume in my mouth is screaming at me, so the floral notes are going to be the downfall of this delicate white tea.

You can purchase the Silver Needle directly from the Red Leaf Tea website.

Before brewing, straight from the bag, the leaves are long and unbroken, tangled together in a nest. The freshness of the leaves is apparent in their strength and scent.

This white tea is simple with no additional ingredients but at the same time flavorful within itself. While only containing one ingredient, this tea is far from plain or flavorless. It has the buttery sweet flavor typical of white teas but also a slight perfume.

This tea is perfect for anyone new to white tea or wishing to enjoy a simple clean flavor.

You can purchase the Silver Needle – Bai Hao Yin Zhen directly from the Canton Tea Co. website. Save 15% right now when you use the code LEAF at checkout!