Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Culinary Teas
Tea Description:
What do you think of when you taste a Key Lime? Waves breaking along the coastline of southern Florida? Lazy summer days? Bright sunshine? The limes grown in the Florida Keys are one of the world’s best loved, and sweetest citrus fruits. When used as a garnish the juice of the Key Lime will brighten any dish or dessert. It goes without saying that this is a truly great dessert tea. Brew a pot, sit back and think sunshine. Or, brew a pitcher for iced tea and be in the sunshine!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is a really delightful tea to be drinking on a day like this. The weather is cold and drizzly outside but inside, I’m sitting here, curled up with a hot cup of this Key Lime Tea from Culinary Teas and it’s like a taste of summertime in my teacup. The flavor of the lime is bright and refreshing.
The black tea base is a Ceylon tea. It’s very much what I’d expect from a good quality Ceylon tea: smooth, mild tasting, even tempered. It isn’t an overly aggressive tasting tea and it isn’t too astringent. It’s pleasant and medium-bodied.
It’s a good base for the tart flavor of lime. I like that the lime is strong here without being overwhelming. And I also appreciate that it’s not abundantly tart. It’s tart enough to tell you that this is a lime flavored tea, but not so tart that I’m puckering as I sip.
Served hot, this tea makes a really nice afternoon tea. But this tea really shines as it cools, I found that the Key Lime notes really popped once it cooled. This would make a stunning iced tea!
St. Coombs Dimbula Ceylon Tea from Culinary Teas
Tea Type:
Black Tea
Where To Buy:
Culinary Teas
Product Description:
Pungent flowery character with good body. Takes milk well, highlighting the coppery cup. St Coombs is from the Dimbula District one of Ceylon’s premiere tea estates
St. Coombs. If the name sounds anything but Sri Lankan to you, you’d be on to something. This exceptional tea estate is actually named after a small fishing village in Scotland, probably the birthplace of one of the original planters. During the peak years of the British Empire homesick settlers from the UK frequently bestowed their new homes with the names of the ones they left behind. Somewhere along the line a proud St. Coombsian decided to trade in his fishing nets for pruning shears, board a steamer, head for the Far East and stake a claim. The rest as they say, is history. He could never have known that more than 120 years later the estate he helped plant would still be producing tea – and fantastic tea at that.
Simply put, St. Coombs, situated 1328 meters above sea level in the western Dimbula highlands of Sri Lanka, is an exceptional tea garden. The estate is ISO 9001 certified and year after year produces some of Sri Lanka’s finest export teas, consistently fetching high prices at the Colombo auctions. St. Coombs’ success is in part attributed to an ace in the hole in the form of the Tea Research Institute of Sri Lanka, the headquarters and laboratory of which are located on the estate. (The institute was established at St. Coombs in 1938.) That said, it is impossible to discount the influence of the exceptional regional climactic conditions on the estate’s output. (Conditions made the estate the perfect choice when the Institute was looking for a location to set up shop.)
From January to March, the Western Quality season, Monsoon rains interspersed with dry periods and cool nights combine to produce a large leaf with high sap content. The leaf blooms vigorously each morning ripe for the plucking, a phenomenon known as the flush. It is during this time that St. Coombs’ finest teas are produced. These tend to be exceptionally aromatic, light in the cup with a thick medium body and long finish. St. Coombs’ Flowery Pekoe is a shining example of this excellent quality. In general, FP teas are laborious to produce and require hand sorting in order to ensure an even grade. As such, they are produced in limited quantity and can be difficult to obtain. Our long-term relationship with the estate allows us to secure a good supply year after year. We can confidently say that a freshly brewed cup of St. Coombs’ stands alone as one of Sri Lanka’s premiere tea offerings.
Tasters Review:
This FB Flowery Pekoe Black Tea from the Dimbula, Sri Lanka Region really fits the bills as a Luxury Black Tea in their ever-growing catalog of tea offerings over at Culinary Teas!
I drink all of my teas ‘straight-up’ with no milk or additives and from what I have read it’s completely acceptable to drink this luxury black tea this way but it also takes well to milk or non-dairy milks if you wish. I infused the tea leaves for about 3 minutes – but – the product description says you can infusion them for up to 7 minutes if that is your preference. The post-infusion liquor color is that of a yellow-brown tending towards golden.
Once I started sipping this tea – I KNEW it was for me! A nice, solid black tea with sweet florally notes and a more perfume-like flower flavor on the end sip. It’s slightly astringent and overall well rounded. This is a great black tea to have on hand for any time of day!
Organic Tanzania Tea from Culinary Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Culinary Teas
Tea Description:
This organic tea comes from Usambara in northern Tanzania. Years ago lions freely roamed this region. The tea is reddish and the cup has a full and malty flavored.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Mmm! It’s been a little while since I last had a pure Tanzania black tea. It’s a tea that’s always welcome in my teacup! I love the rich, malty flavor!
The dry leaf is a very small CTC leaf. What that says to me is that I need to make a couple of adjustments to my brewing routine. First, I have a smaller leaf so there is more surface area exposed. So, I want to cut the brew time a little bit so that I don’t wind up with a bitter tasting cup! With a small cut leaf like this, I usually brew the tea for just 2 – 2 1/2 minutes. Since I brewed this in my Kati tumbler, I went with 2 1/2 minutes. If I were brewing it in my Breville tea maker, I’d go with 2 minutes.
Also with the smaller cut leaf, you have more leaf in a measuring vessel than you would with a full leaf. That is to say that 1 bamboo scoop of this tea would be more tea than 1 bamboo scoop of a whole leaf tea. So, I reduce the amount of tea that I measure into the basket of the tumbler. So instead of a bamboo scoop, I went with 3/4 bamboo scoop of leaf.
And the flavor is exactly what I was looking for this morning! It’s rich, full-flavored and loaded with the gusto I need to get myself going today! It is so malty – it would rival a favorite Assam! And the flavor is less harsh than Assam (Assam can sometimes be bitter!) This has a lovely caramel undertone that melds nicely with the malt. Notes of earth, leather, hints of molasses. As I near mid-cup, I start to pick up on some stone fruit notes. Plum. Caramelized plum!
Delightful! I love that this tea is organic. But even more than that, I love that this is a full-bodied, flavorful cup of tea that has given me the invigorating kick that I needed today!
Pomegranate San Francisco Black Tea Blend from Culinary Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Culinary Teas
Tea Description:
Our Pomegranate San Francisco has lovely hints of vanilla and chocolate sprinkled with candy like notes. Cup has a ‘sec’ (dry) character that highlights the tea flavor!
Learn more about this tea blend here.
Taster’s Review:
This is good stuff!
First, I have to tell you about the aroma because it won me over before I even took a sip. It smells sweet and evokes thoughts of the aromas that might surround me if I were to walk into a candy shop. YUM!
To brew the tea, I measured out 1 bamboo scoop of the loose leaf tea into the basket of my Kati Tumbler and poured boiling water into the cup. Then I let it steep for 3 minutes. The result: irresistible yumminess!
The pomegranate notes are tart and sweet, and I love the way they mingle with the notes of vanilla and chocolate. It’s a sweet treat with delightful, contrasting notes of tart. And the black tea base is smooth and full-flavored, with a pleasant malty note.
As the tea cools – or perhaps as I continue to drink – I pick up on more creamy chocolate notes. The chocolate is further accentuated by hints of vanilla, making it a very sublime creamy experience. This flavor combination becomes a very captivating flavor, as if it’s enveloping the palate with notes of sweet chocolate and vanilla. Mmm!
This reminds me a bit of grenadine. The fruitiness of the pomegranate together with the creamy notes give it a thick sort of texture that you might experience if you were sipping on grenadine. But … this is even better, because: a) it’s tea, and b) it’s not syrupy. But it does have that sort of yummy factor that I mentally associate with grenadine, like when I was a kid and I’d sneak a sip of grenadine! Hey! I liked it a lot when I was a kid!
But now that I’m no longer a youngster, I much prefer my grenadine experiences to be involving tea – like with this Pomegranate San Francisco!
Pineapple Black Tea from Culinary Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Culinary Teas
Tea Description:
Cup captures the flavor of freshly sliced pineapple amazingly. Think of sitting on a sunny veranda with a nice cup of tea. Fabulous over ice with a pinch of sugar.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I like summer a lot more when it’s winter-y outside. That is to say, I like the idea of warm weather when it’s wet and chilly outside, but when it’s hot and humid outside, I’m not thrilled about it. I prefer the “warm thoughts” of summer over the real thing.
That’s why I love drinking teas like this Pineapple Black Tea from Culinary Teas when it’s cold outside. It makes me think those happy, warm thoughts without having to endure the heat of summer. I get the best of both worlds: the cooler climate with the warm thoughts. And let’s not forget, I’m also drinking tea. Bonus!
To brew this tropical delight, I started with 1 bamboo scoop of tea and I put it in the basket of my Kati tumbler. Then I added 12 ounces of boiling water and let it steep for 3 minutes. Then I sat the tumbler under my nose to enjoy the awesome aroma of fresh, warm pineapple while I waited for the tea to cool. The fragrance made me think of grilled pineapple – yum!
The above description recommends this as an iced tea and I bet it would make a stunning iced tea. But, I’m quite enjoying it served hot. The black tea is a smooth, rich and lightly malty tasting tea. It’s got an even flavor, making me think that this is probably a Ceylon base. It’s got that brisk flavor of a Ceylon and a light-to-moderate amount of astringency at the tail.
And it has a marvelous pineapple flavor! It’s sweet and it tastes so juicy. It reminds me of the taste of fresh pineapple. Not that stuff that you get in a can. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I eat that stuff in a can – most of the time! – because it’s a lot easier than cutting up a fresh pineapple but the taste of a fresh pineapple cannot be beat! I like the canned pineapple just fine and I eat it mostly because while the flavor of a fresh pineapple is better than canned, the convenience of the canned pineapple trumps the flavor of the fresh.
And that was more than I had planned on telling you about my love of pineapple.
I like this tea a lot. I enjoyed it served straight up but it would also be nice with a drizzle of honey if you like your teas on the sweeter side. I don’t think I’d go latte with this though. I think the addition of milk would ruin this lovely drink.