Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Quality Teas’

This is one of those amazing quality teas that sends you straight to the package, squinting at the fine print to find evidence of flavoring above and beyond the tea itself. Nope. Nothing but great tea.

The dry leaves have the farmy burlap feed sack smell traditionally associated with Keemuns. (Southwest Missourian that I am, I could just breathe the bag fumes and be content!) Drink the Leaf subtitles this “red peach Keemun,” which is evident in the red-gold color of the steeped tea.

But peachy doesn’t even begin to describe all the things that happen in your mouth once you start enjoying this stuff! This tea has heft and a wonderful liquid honey taste that stays on the tongue long after you’ve swallowed. (Suddenly, I’m craving buttered toast.) A second steep lightens the flavor some, but it’s still pleasant follow-up to the first yummy batch.

Drink the Leaf describes Hong Tao Mao Feng as having a “long finish,” appropriate for a tea you’ll want to enjoy when you have plenty of time to sit and smile between sips.

You can purchase the Hong Tao Mao Feng directly from the Drink The Leaf website.

Canton Tea was nice enough to send a box of tea infused chocolates as a thank you, and wow, what a thank you it is!

It seems almost daily that there are more and more tea infused chocolates, chocolate bars and other treats available. To date, I have only tried a couple of tea infused chocolate bars, and what they are lacking is the purity of taste. To me, if you are going to mix chocolate and tea, you need to highlight the best of both, and not overwhelm with one or the other. This is where the chocolates that Canton Tea sent me really excel.

These chocolates are made by hand, by Katie Christoffers in the UK. The name of her company is Matcha Chocolat. Her chocolates are made with only high quality chocolate from France, and fresh, high quality teas and other ingredients. Canton Tea has partnered with Katie, and is offering a box of her chocolates in their Tea and Chocolate Gift Pack – and now is the time to get it! Matcha Chocolat does not ship outside of the UK – but Canton Tea does

On to the chocolates. The box contained 3 Mint & Green Tea, 3 Jasmine Pearl, 3 Earl Grey, 3 Matcha and 4 Masala Chai Caramel hearts. I will go through each of the briefly.

Mint and Green Tea: I am a big fan of mint, and this does not disappoint. There is a nice minty freshness, with a bit of background Green Tea, there but not there, with a wonderfully smooth chocolate flavour. Think After Eight with a touch of seaweed (in a nice way, not nasty

Jasmine Pearls: This combines my two favorite comfort flavours – Jasmine and White Chocolate. Not at all flowery, it is just perfect. As the chocolate melts I can feel the tension flowing out of my body. No sharing this one!

Earl Grey: EG is not my favorite tea (something about the bergamot), however, blended with a nice dark chocolate shell and chocolate ganash, these work together to create a creamy taste with a hint of astringency, both from the Earl Grey and Dark Chocolate – pleasant, if a bit heavy in the mouth for my tastes.

Masala Chai Caramels: Milk chocolate, and Masala Chai infused Caramel – uhh, yum? So far, every spicy tea infused chocolate I have enjoyed, it is not jump out at you O M G I cannot believe it, but rather a more curious, “hmm, I like this, I just don’t know why” kind of feeling. Tasty!

Matcha: I have mixed feelings on this. First of all, the chocolate is divine. I am however, having a very hard time picking up much in the way of Matcha. Matcha is generally bitter, with the edge taken off by sweets. I am “feeling” the Matcha, but not really “tasting” it. It is not bad, just not, well, what I expected. Not my favorite, would pass on this one personally.

Overall, this box of sweets is a must not miss! Thus far it is my favorite box of tea infused chocolates. You can taste the tea in the chocolate, but are not overwhelmed by either – they blend smoothly and leave you with pleasant afterglow.

Lets not forget, that when you purchase this Tea and Chocolate Gift Pack, you also get a sample set of teas! Canton Tea includes their Dragon Well Green Tea, Green Tea with Mint, Superior Earl Grey, Jasmine Pearls, and Bai Lin Gong Fu Black Tea. This is a deal that you juat cannot pass up!

Oh, and if you are not a fan of Jasmine, my address is available for you to send me your Jasmine Pearls Chocolate – I promise it will be WELL enjoyed! Thanks Canton Tea for providing me with the opportunity to taste these chocolates!

You can purchase the Tea and Chocolate Gift Pack directly from the Canton Tea Co. website.

Tea Forte supplies whole loose leaf tea in these clever pyramid shaped infusers, which give room for the tea to expand as it steeps. It is a great brand for novice tea drinkers to try higher quality teas than typically offered at the supermarket and for tea snobs to drink at work without having to use a messy tea infuser at the office. Personally, Tea Forte was my first experience with loose leaf teas when I was visiting a Houston spa. When, after a wonderful massage, it was quite a treat to enjoy the bliss of my massage in a snuggly spa robe and sample the spa’s Tea Forte offerings.

According to Tea Forte’s website, blackberries and black currants flavor this tea. But this is not a tart and tangy tea as I would expect. Instead it has warm, cozy and sweet flavors without a hint of spiciness. As the tea cools slightly, mild berry flavor with subtle currant taste, becomes more noticeable. This is a smooth and not astringent tea. Although a teaspoon of sugar may be necessary to bring out the flavors, I found that milk is unnecessary to round out any harsh flavors that are usually present in a berry blend. Compared to other loose leaf berry teas I have sampled, this is one of the better options. I highly recommend this tea and for tea snobs, do not hesitate to try this one because it comes “bagged”.

You can purchase the Black Currant directly from the Tea Forte website.

Keemun is a variety of Chinese black tea, possibly China’s most famous.   The region centered around the town of Qimen, between the Yangtze and the Yellow mountains, produces mostly black tea.   Keemun used to be a component leaf in many traditional English Breakfast blends.  It contributed a smoky, rich character, while not imparting much bitterness.   Economics and politics led to most English blends toi use Indian and African sourced teas.  In China, Keemun is drank unadulterated, but also serves as a basis for a mid morning “milk tea” common in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

This Keemun from Adagio Teas, is a Mao Feng style tea.  Mao Feng denotes a tea that is picked with a bud set and two leafs of equal length – and is the preferred pick of most good quality teas.    Long thin. rolled & twisted black leaf, with a good amount of lighter tips, with a spicy aroma.  As it is a black, it is a one -steep tea:  1tsp/3g tea per 6oz water @ 205 F for 5 minutes. (Adagio recommends 212F, but I like letting the water cool a bit so as not to blast or scorch the flavor).   Bright & clear brown with a bit or orange in the cup.  Faint aroma of dark chocolate, with a hint of spice.  A light sweet flavor, with suggestions of cocoa, moderate body and almost no astringency.  Wet leaf shows the two leafs and a bud, brown in color, with a nice chocolate and spice aroma.  

It doesn’t have the smokiness I associate with Hao Ya Keemuns.   The Mao Feng is the first pick, and its emphasis is on the subtle flavors of the bud set.   Hao Ya is second pick, the pickings are separated by a matter of 7-10 days.  Both teas are finished in the same way.  It is amazing the difference in tastes of the teas produced.

This is a very good Keemun, very smooth and inviting.  This is the highest grade of the three Keemun’s Adagio offers, and it shows.   

You can purchase the Keemun Rhapsody directly from the Adagio website.

Sitting down to review a couple of teas from Kalahari Tea, one from their Energy Tea line and the other from their Chocolatte Red (Rooibos) line. Both teas are bagged but I’m open minded and I have had high quality teas that happened to be prebagged in the past (usually tear them open so I can watch the leaves dance freely -yes, I’m easily amused).

I’ve been wanting to try this tea for awhile and am thrilled to have some in my hands now. The description on the packaging sounds so uplifting- “Ruby Grapefruit White Tea – Fatigue Fighting Brew”.

Opened the packet and studied it a few minutes before deciding against opening the bag. From an outside look, all I could make out was a lot of monochromatic dust, not even any pretty bits of grapefruit. Weird. Checked the ingredients list again and I’d apparently missed the word ‘flavor’ that falls after ‘Natural Grapefruit’. Now I’m not sure what ‘flavor’ means exactly (natural chemical agent number 12321?) but whatever the flavor is, it sure has a nice citrus smell so I’m going to pretend that I think that means they squeezed some grapefruit pulp around the Bai Mu Dan. I love white tea but (obviously) couldn’t discern the quality from an ‘outside of the bag’ look, though I can say that I’ve never seen white tea dust before…

Anyway it really did smell nice so I steeped it for four minutes, anxious for the energy boost. The brew color was really dark compared to other white teas I’ve had (back to the ingredient list), must be the Eleuthro Root darkening things. It held the citrus smell but it wasn’t a ‘crisp’ smell like I’d hoped it would be and it didn’t make me feel energized hmmm. Inhaled the deepest smell I could, still hoping for the citrus zing, but it was flat. It tasted really watery, unsubstantial, zero complexity, but I fought the urge to toss it and let it sit for a few minutes – maybe it just needed to cool.

Right, letting it cool was a horrid idea. I went from zeroness to a chemical aftertaste that lasted through three glasses of milk before I could shake it. From meh to bleh…

Note: we could not find a link to purchase this on the website, but you can see the packaging for the tea here.