The Tea Spot Blue Mountain Nilgiri Organic Black Tea Review
April 13, 2009 by Diana
Filed under Black Tea, Tea review
MmMmm chocolate shavings....
The first thing that came to my mind when I looked that the Tea Spot Blue Mountain Nilgiri was chocolate. Why? Because the tea leaves look exact like chocolate chip flakes! Mmm! The tea leaves looked like chocolate shavings ranging from dark chocolate to milk chocolate when I started steeping them in my cup.
A little background before we begin. This tea is single estate from the Nilgiri Mountains in India. I love single estate teas. I can understand why people would want to blend teas from different regions to get the best cup, but there is something special about drinking a tea from a specific region. You get to taste the characteristics that comes from that the specific region and appreciate the quality of the tea from that area. When you brew loose green tea for example. You don’t combine Chinese gunpowder tea with a Japanese bancha. You could, but you drink the teas separately to appreciate the flavours that come with each individual tea.
Anyways back to this single estate tea. I used 1 teaspoon and steeped for 3-5 minutes in about 250ml of boiling water. The liquor appears at first to haev turned a beautiful earthy brown, but upon closer inspection its a deep orange hue. The tea had nice gentle fragrant aroma to it, it definitely reminded me of a Darjeeling. Wow, I really liked this tea. It was medium in body and had a very nice finish that lasts in your mouth. It is quite gentle to start on the palate, but finishes off rich and a bit smoky. There is caffeine in this cup, but lighter in caffeine then some heavier black teas I’ve had. Organic and fair trade as well. It’s a win win win situation. I just wish I was actually in India sipping this, not at home in front of my computer. Sigh.
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Two Leaves and a Bud – Organic Darjeeling Afternoon Tea and Earl Grey Tea Review
March 29, 2009 by Diana
Filed under Black Tea, Tea review
Today I’m reviewing two black teas from Two Leaves and a Bud – Organic Darjeeling Afternoon Tea and Organic Earl Grey Tea. Monday I’ll be reviewing the last four Two Leaves and a Bud teas I have – all green teas.
A nice complex darjeeling
I’ll be starting with the Organic Darjeeling Afternoon Tea first. Darjeeling, one of the highest growing regions of tea in the world, is from Northern India. This Darjeeling is 100% pure FTGFOP#1 = Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe. One of the best and most expensive qualities of tea consisting of a high proportion of tips and buds.
There wasn’t much aroma to this tea, even the wet tea bad didn’t have much scent – so I’m expecting this tea to be delicate. The color was a golden medium brown. Wow. I generally love all Darjeeling teas I sample. This one was a complex yet delicate tea on the palate just as I expected. Even though I steeped for only 4 minutes, there was a hint of a bitterness on the end note indicative of a high tannin content characteristic of black teas. This tea is astringent in nature and is high in caffeine! I can feel right away even after the first sip. Phew! The flavours of the tea linger in your mouth even after a few minutes and create a umami. Not a beginners black tea.
Ceylon OP#1 - Orange Pekoe
Next is the classic Earl Grey – a black tea base scented with bergamot. The ingredients in this one are Ceylon tea with begamot. This tea was darker in color, a brown color with a slight aubergine undertone. If you click on the image on the left you can see the beautiful color of the broken tea leaves. I could see the oil of begamot form a thin film at the top of the tea. This tea definitely has a kick to it. The tea starts off with a hint of bergamot with a sharp and slighty astringent flavour of tea. The end notes are lemony and clean. My feeling is that is has less caffeine than the Darjeeling. If you like a sharp tasting Earl Grey then this is the tea for you.
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Yogi Tea Organic Green Tea Goji Berry Tea Review
March 23, 2009 by Diana
Filed under Tea review, green tea
The best of both worlds
I love love love goji berries. I’ve been eating them in Chinese soups every since I was a kid. So you can imagine how excited I was when I saw this Yogi Tea Organic Green Tea Goji Berry.
Every Yogi Tea comes with a fortune on it’s tag. My fortune was “To be calm is the highest achievement of the self.”
The ingredients of this tea are: organic green tea leaf, natural and organic flavors, organic green matcha tea leaf, goji berries. The tea was a bit heavy in body for a green tea. The taste of the green tea was very strong and heavy. Also, I didn’t taste any goji berries, which was disappointing and there wasn’t any matcha powder in the packet. Some green tea bags with matcha have lots of matcha in it and cover your fingers with the fine green tea powder. The tea was very fragrant though and did have a hint of berries on the nose. The liquor was golden amber, it actually reminded me of apple juice! Overall I recommend this to someone who wants a medium/heavy bodied green tea with a hint of berries and caffeine in their tea.
In other news, I’ve been 80%+ raw for the past few days (today is day 4 and I feel great!). I’ve been making lots of shakes with my Vitamix and eating big salads. If you want to learn more about raw food The Sunfood Diet Success System by David Wolfe is an amazing book. It’s the first raw food book I started with.
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