Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Tealyra
Tea Description:
Well rounded, sweet, mellow and flavorsome, our Lychee tea is an exotic and enticing taste sensation! Ripe, fruity and aromatic, Lychee is delicious either served hot, or chilled and served over ice with a sprig of mint or a slice of lemon.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I have some fond memories of lychee throughout my childhood, and these Dragon Lychee Pearls from Tealyra (known to my Canadian friends as Tealux) intrigued me, and for the price, I figured it couldn’t hurt.
I decided to take this to work with me, but conveniently forgot to bring any type of brewing vessel along with it. No problem! This type of tea is perfect for Grandpa Style brewing. Any kind of tea rolled into balls, cones or compressed into coins, bird nests, or squares make excellent lazy brew teas. It’s these types of visually entertaining teas that I like to show off to my coworkers. sure most of them think that there is some kind of sea urchin living at the bottom of my cup, but hey, it gets them talking about tea! I threw in 6 little pellets of deliciously scented black tea into a pint glass and poured hot water over it. It didn’t look like that much tea in the glass, but the flavor was not lacking in that department.
The fruit flavoring is pretty true to a fresh, juicy lychee. It’s exactly like any lychee jelly candy you can pick up at your local Asian market. The black tea base is lighter than I was expecting, but I still get that nice, fresh baked bread and cocoa powder notes I was hoping for. The leaves popped open almost immediately after I doused them in water, revealing long and sturdy brown leaves. I was able to refill my glass three times before the leaves gave up the ghost.
This was a great tea that takes to any method of preparation really well. I liked how the tart perfume of the lychee notes persist through many steepings, and the base black tea is mellow but defined. I’m hard pressed to find a better lychee tea, and this is the most unique one yet. This tea is like entertainment for your mouth!
Blue Ginger Black Tea Blend from Harney & Sons
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Harney & Sons
Tea Description:
For years, we have been honored to supply the tea to Ming Tsai’s famous restaurant: Blue Ginger. This blend is a heady combination of Fujian black tea and floral lychee fruit with a hint of ginger.
Learn more about this blend here.
Taster’s Review:
The first thing that was noteworthy to me about this tea was the aroma. Typically with a lychee tea, I get that overwhelming scent of lychee from the dry leaf which … is nice, but sometimes it’s a bit TOO much and can often come off as somewhat chemical-ish, you know what I mean? But with this Blue Ginger Black Tea Blend from Harney & Sons, the lychee notes seem somewhat subdued, which is possibly due to the fact that there is also ginger in this blend.
The brewed tea is wonderfully aromatic with notes of lychee, ginger and a rich black tea base. And that’s exactly what the flavor delivers!
The black tea base is a hearty Fujian black tea which provides a good, solid background of flavor that is rich and full-flavored. Typically with a pure Fujian black tea, I will note hints of caramel and cocoa in the flavors, and I’m picking up on those here. It’s much more subtle than I’d experience from a pure tea, but, it’s still nice that I’m tasting them!
The lychee and ginger seem very compatible. Lychee can sometimes taste a bit “perfume-y” and the ginger seems to tone that down enough so that the lychee tastes sweet and fruity without tasting so much of the perfume-like qualities of the aromatic fruit.
On the other hand, ginger can sometimes come off as a bit too spicy and hot, but in the presence of the lychee, the ginger tastes warm and slightly peppery without experiencing the fire that ginger can sometimes deliver.
Like I said, these two ingredients work very well together! Overall, I really enjoyed this Blue Ginger Tea. According to the Harney & Sons website, this tea is one that is supplied to Chef Ming Tsai’s restaurant by the same name – Blue Ginger. A very cool and delightfully unique tea to feature in a restaurant. I guess I’ve been offered one too many generic tea bags in restaurants becaus I know that I’d be excited to find something like this tea in a restaurant!
Liu An Gua Pian Green Tea from Teavivre
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Teavivre
Tea Description:
A great find for those looking for a more green tea with more character! Like several of our other teas, Liu’an Guapian is deservedly in the list of China’s top ten teas. Made only from larger, mature leaves that are rolled up during processing, the dry leaves have a distinctively plump shape to them – giving rise to its Chinese name of “melon seeds”. Very uncharacteristic for a green tea, it has a quite sweet taste and strong aroma, that is also overlaid with an almost smoky, spicy tang.
From Qiyun Mountain(齐云山), Liu’an, Anhui province
Harvest Time: April 2, 2013
Round shaped, vibrant leaves without any bud or stems
Produces a bright emerald coloured tea
A distinctive taste – sweet with a rich, slightly spicy taste
Low caffeine (less than 10% of a cup of coffee)
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Liu An Gua Pian Green Tea from Teavivre has the mouth watering aroma of milk and honey. When I opened the dry leaf packet I let out an audible ahhhhhh. When I steeped it the moist leaf let off that sticky sweet smell of milk and honey and I was in love. The beautiful hand rolled leaf look like tiny unicorn horns. Yes this tea is what dreams are made of!
The flavor of this tea is like none other. Seriously this is not your average green tea! Yes there is a note of vegetation and unlike my SororiTea Sister I do get a bit of a grassy note, but it is so much more complex than that and I am in agreement with my SororiTea Sister Anne, that it is a stellar green tea to covet! Like her, I think my new favorite.
I too get that kick of a spicy note and a deep earthiness for a green. Something like peat moss perhaps. This is easily a tea that I could get all flowery with the words about but rather I want to just sit back and relax into this sublime cup. It is sweet, a tiny bit tangy and tart, a kick of spicy, a whole lot of grounding earthiness, vegetal, subtly grassy, with a touch of fruit flavor very much like that of a melon yet I also detect something perhaps like lychee with a light floral undertone to it.
Regardless of what verbiage I could use to persuade you to try this tea, I will restrain myself, if you don’t buy it then that just means more for me, and for my SoroitTea Sister Anne too I suppose. Seriously if you are not a fan of green tea you must try this. You will be changed for life. If you do enjoy green tea, you have to experience this one, and if you are a green tea lover you simply can NOT be without this in your stash!
Lychee Black Tea from King’s Zen Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Amoda Tea
Tea Description:
The dry leaf smells incredible. Lychee fruit is unique and distinct. Hopefully you’ve tasted lychee before, because it’s flavor is tough to compare. It has a natural sweetness that is present in this tea. Mixed with the smoky Chinese black tea, you get something a little exotic, sultry and sweet. This tea is smooth and light-bodied.
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn how to subscribe to Amoda’s Monthly Tea Tasting Box here.
Taster’s Review:
Lychee teas are often hit or miss with me. Sometimes the Lychee is just too much – way too fragrant, way too over-scented, and the cup ends up tasting like someone spiked my tea with artificial tasting, nasty chemicals. Then there is sometimes the opposite side of the spectrum, where the tea is lacking in scent and flavor.
But this Lychee Black Tea from King’s Zen Tea – a tea I received in my Amoda Tasting Box for February – is really fantastic. The black tea base is nicely pronounced here – it isn’t hidden behind the Lychee flavor. It tastes rich and smooth, with a hint of smoke and I think that this smoky tone interacts quite well with the sweet, exotic flavor of the lychee fruit.
I have to disagree slightly with the description above, I don’t think I’d categorize this as a “light-bodied” tea. The lychee taste is light (when compared to a typical Lychee Congou tea) but the tea itself is what I’d categorize as a medium bodied tea … or even a medium to full bodied tea. It has a nice richness to it, it certainly isn’t as thick or rich as … say, an Assam tea or a Yunnan tea, but, it has an understated yet satisfying richness to it that is a bit more than what I’d call “light.”
The lychee fruit flavor is indeed subdued compared to some of the other lychee scented teas I’ve experienced. But I think that’s what I’m digging so much about this cup … it doesn’t have that overwhelming lychee taste that almost tastes of chemicals. This tastes light, sweet, and naturally fruit-y, while still maintaining that rather unique lychee taste.
A very nice cup. Thank you Amoda, for including it in this month’s box!
Cheeky Lychee from David’s Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: David’s Tea
Tea Description:
Lychees are just about the cutest little fruits around. But their perfumed flavour is all sophistication. After all, they’ve been the favourite snack of Chinese emperors since the 1st century. This lychee-scented black tea is made by placing baskets of tea leaves over big pots of simmering lychee fruits. Now getting the royal treatment is as easy as steeping a cup.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This has to be one of the nicest Lychee scented black teas I’ve ever encountered. The flavor doesn’t taste over-the-top or chemical-y the way so many Lychee teas have the tendency to be. Instead the flavor is smooth and sweet.
Lychee is a very unique fruit in that it has a somewhat perfume-y flavor, but somehow David’s Tea managed to capture the fruit flavor without making it taste like Aunt Mary’s soap. Instead, the lychee here is softer, less sharp, while still managing to be a easily distinguished flavor. That is to say, when you taste this, there’s no doubt that it’s a lychee flavored tea. It just doesn’t have to knock you over the head with its flavor … and this tea doesn’t.
The black tea is not overshadowed by the fruit flavor. In fact, the black tea is the strongest flavor of the cup, which is what makes this lychee flavored tea so unique. The lychee isn’t aggressively attacking my palate with its perfume-y flavor, the black tea isn’t obscured by that strong, distinct lychee flavor, and the black tea reigns as the dominate flavor … without taking anything away from the lychee. A perfect presentation of flavors.
This is what all lychee flavored black teas should strive to become.