Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Learn more about Simple Loose Leaf here.
Tea Description:
Four Seasons of Spring is named because it produces four flushes (or harvests) each year that have a flavor and quality of that of a spring flush. This varietal was cultivated in Taiwan from a strain of TieGuanYin (Iron Goddess of Mercy), in the 1980s. This delightful oolong varietal has been cultivated for its sweet, floral flavors and expertly processed by hand. It is light yet buttery with lingering flowery finish of morning gardenias and warm milk.
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn more about Simple Loose Leaf’s Selection Club subscription program here.
Receive 25% savings on the Selection Club from Simple Loose Leaf. Just type in SISTERSELECTION25 in the coupon field and save 25%! This discount is applicable only to the monthly Selection Club subscription and not the retail selection of teas.
Taster’s Review:
This Four Seasons Oolong from Simple Loose Leaf is absolutely delightful!
The appearance of the dry leaf is quite what you’d expect from a Four Seasons Oolong – beautiful, forest-y green leaves that have been rolled into small pellets. The aroma is a strong, flowery essence.
To brew this tea, I grabbed my gaiwan and I measured out 1 bamboo scoop of tea into the bowl of the vessel. Then I heated freshly filtered water to 180°F and poured water into the vessel and let the tea “rinse” for 15 seconds. Then I strained of the liquid and discarded it. I poured more hot water into the gaiwan and allowed this first infusion to steep for 45 seconds. For each subsequent infusion, I added another 15 seconds onto the steep time. I combined two infusions into one cup, so my first cup was composed of infusions 1 and 2, while my second cup was composed of infusions 3 and 4 … and so on.
Yeah, yeah, those of you who are familiar with my posts are probably also very familiar with how I steep my Oolong teas. To those of you who are, I apologize for sounding somewhat redundant! The brewing steps above are written for those who might not be as familiar with my brewing style.
Anyway … I find that the fragrance of the brewed tea is still very floral but the scent is somewhat subdued compared to that of the dry tea leaves. This aroma translates to the flavor, because I’m tasting flower! The description above suggests gardenias and yeah, that’s what I’m tasting. I’m also getting a sweet, creamy flavor and texture. The texture is soft and smooth and creamy! Quite lovely!
I love the way the floral notes mingle with the creamy notes, because I find that these somewhat vanilla-like tones soften the sharp notes of the flower. I like that the creaminess here is not a heavy taste. It doesn’t seem to coat my taste buds the way some creamy Oolong teas can. Oh sure, I do love those sumptuous, creamy Oolongs but it’s nice to have a lighter approach now and then!
The first cup was finished before I knew it (hey, it’s good stuff!), and I found that my second cup was even nicer than the first. The floral notes are stronger but the creaminess is still there to soften the sharp notes. It is smooth and luxurious to sip from start to finish. And I found myself picking up on some hints of apple and melon around mid-sip. This cup seemed fresher and more round, with better developed flavors.
My third cup surprised me! I didn’t expect it to be creamy. By third cup with many Oolong teas, the creamy notes have waned, but I’m still getting a fairly strong cream flavor. Oh, sure, it has softened somewhat, it isn’t quite as strong as the first two cups, but I’m still getting a pleasing note of vanilla-esque cream. The floral notes are still there, and in the distance, I started to pick up the faintest hint of vegetation. The aforementioned fruit notes were beginning to emerge a little more, but these were still somewhat distant as well.
Overall, one of the nicest Four Seasons Oolong teas that I’ve tried. Another big win from this month’s box from Simple Loose Leaf! Have you subscribed yet?
Cinnamon Pear Flavored Black Tea from 52Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Zoomdweebies
Tea Description:
Sweet, juicy pear paired (pun totally intended) with some warm cinnamon and premium black teas. This is a delicious tea–hot or iced. With premium black teas, freeze-dried pear pieces, cinnamon chips and organic pear and cinnamon flavors.
Learn more about this blend here.
Taster’s Review:
Of the teas that I received in my last shipment from 52Teas, this was the one I looked forward to most. I absolutely love pear but pear flavored teas are not as easy to find as other fruit flavors and I suspect that this is because pear flavor is difficult to nail when it comes to flavoring teas. I know this from first hand experience. One of the teas that I offered as a tea blender/artist is a green pear tea and it was awesome but it took me about six months to get the flavors just right and to liking.
So when I encounter a new pear blend, I ‘m always interested in trying it to see how it turns out. I’ve tried several different pear blends and some have been more successful than others and in my experience as a tea blogger, I have found that the key is to find the right complement to the pear to accentuate the flavor of the fruit. Because if you think about it, the pear is a rather delicate tasting fruit. When 52Teas announced this tea for the week of August 25th, I wondered if cinnamon would be the right complement for my beloved pear.
I brewed this in my Kati tea tumber. Whenever I’m steeping a tea with some spice, I like to use either a small teapot or my tea tumbler because I find that the spices seem to embed themselves into my Breville tea maker when I steep a spiced tea in it and the only thing that can get those spices out of the tea maker is to run a brew cycle with just water and baking soda. This works, but I’d rather not have to do this every time I brew a tea with spices in it. It’s just easier to grab this tumbler or a small teapot to do the job.
I used one bamboo scoop of tea in the tumbler’s basket and poured water heated to 205°F into the cup until full (about 12 ounces, I think). Then I steeped the tea for 3 minutes.
Hmm … well, I can taste the pear, but it isn’t as pear-like as I would like it to be. While the tea is still fresh from the teapot hot, the pear notes are nearly indistinguishable. After allowing the tea cool to a drinkable temperature (about 4 minutes or so), I find that the pear flavor emerges a little bit. The more it cools, the more the pear emerges, but even as I near the end of the cup, I think that this tea is more cinnamon and black tea than it is pear anything. The pear is quite delicate. Even when slurped to aerate the liquid on the palate, the pear is not quite as pear-y as I want from a pear tea, and what pear I do taste is a little on the artificial side.
The black tea is a pleasant enough black tea base. It has a brisk taste and it’s an invigorating tea. It’s a bit on the astringent side and if you oversteep this, I suspect it can become bitter (so don’t do that!) The cinnamon is warm and flavorful, not a candied cinnamon red-hot type flavor, but a warm cinnamon-y note like something I’d sprinkle on my toast in the morning. Flavorful and once the tea has cooled to the point where it’s more like iced tea than hot tea, I find that the cinnamon is an enjoyable accompaniment to the pear notes.
And this does taste better iced than it does hot. When it’s hot … what can I say? Not my favorite pear tea. It’s alright but not something that I’m cheering about or gushing with praise for. But then, I did preface this review by saying that pear flavoring is difficult to nail when it comes to pear flavored teas. The way the tea melds with the tea base and other components really becomes paramount because the tea base and/or components can alter the flavor of the pear and make it taste less like pear.
But, it does taste better as it cools, so I think I’ll be using the rest of my pouch for iced tea. (It’s actually quite tasty iced and that fake-y taste is not there when this is chilled.)
Shimizu-En Kukicha Tea from Hisabo Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Hisabo – this special link will not only sign you up for their newsletter but also qualify you for special pricing for our readers! By subscribing to the newsletter, you can get in on their limited edition teas!
Tea Description:
“A hug in a cup” is one way I’ve heard Kukicha described. Warm, delicate, sweet, comfortable. A cup that’s likely to take your heart along with your senses. It certainly did for the husband of Yumiko, the 17th generation daughter of the family who runs Shimizu-en. In Japanese tradition, it’s usually the wife that goes and joins the husband’s business, but in this case the quality of the tea was too much to leave (sorry for the pun).
In fact, it’s a minor miracle we are even able to bring Shimizu-en to you. The company has no website, no distribution, nothing. They just have a small shop in front of the tea garden and they sell out every year. The tea has been recognized multiple times nationally—no small feat for a company that only employs family members and picks most of its entire plantation by hand.
Kukicha is a very unique kind of tea, made from the stems and twigs of the tea plants. What began as ruthless Japanese efficiency has led to a tasting experience that had the entire Hisabo team saying ‘Wow’. This tea is a hands-down winner. Delicate and floral on the nose, once you take a sip you’ll taste a sweetness quite unlike anything you’ve had before. It will have you going back and trying different brewing times just to tweak the exact amount of sweet and grassy that you want. And it will definitely take your heart.
Taster’s Review:
Hisabo is a new-to-me tea company and they are unlike any other tea company I’ve yet to encounter! They don’t actually sell teas on their website the way most online tea companies do. Instead, they offer their limited selection of teas to their customers via email. To get in on their offers, you need to subscribe to their newsletter. (This link will also give you a special discount that is available only to our readers!)
Well, here, I’ll let you hear it from them:
Hisabo is a little different from most tea websites in that we don’t sell tea directly on our site. We currently only sell through emails sent to people subscribed to our mailing list. We’re also launching a subscription service where people can ‘pre-buy’ the teas we sell at a discount to ‘normal’ price. In short: we send subscribers an email with a description of the tea, the story and pictures of the farm where it came from, as well as tasting notes.
That’s how they described it to me in the email they sent me when I asked them about this tea and where it was on their website. According to the emailed newsletter regarding this Kukicha, they do still have some of it left, so if you’re interested in it, contact them quickly!
The tea is packaged in 50g foil lined pouches with beautiful Asian calligraphy on the package. The outer design looks a lot like a block collage of Asian papers. It’s beautiful!
Inside these beautiful packages is the good stuff. The dry leaf smells a little like freshly cut grass (and it looks a little like it too!) with sweet, warm nutty top notes. I steeped this tea as recommended by Hisabo: 160°F for 30 – 60 seconds. I opted for the 60 seconds, and I scooped 2 bamboo scoops of the tea and put it into the basket of my Breville One-Touch tea maker and poured 500ml of freshly filtered water into the jug. Then I let the tea maker do its thing and about 2 minutes later, I had a teapot of delicious tea!
It is a light and refreshing cup of tea. I like it served hot but it would also be tasty iced. As the weather is getting a little cooler now, I’m enjoying more hot teas (happily!) and while this tea has a fresh taste to it, the warm, nutty flavors of it are very autumnal to me. It reminds me of the flavor of freshly roasted chestnuts together with a subtle grassy note in the background.
The thoughts this tea evokes is a little bit of summer still hanging on now that autumn has arrived.
It’s a wonderful cup of tea. (It resteeps well too!) I like this tea and I like the idea behind this company. Rather than having a bunch of tea in inventory waiting for people to buy it, they only offer you the tea when they receive it and it’s the freshest tea that’s available. Very cool!
And if that’s not enough incentive to check out Hisabo … their customer service is top-notch! They are very friendly and helpful and quick to respond to inquiries. When you check them out, tell them that the SororiTea Sisters sent you!
Original Herbal Chai Rooibos Blend from Simple Loose Leaf
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Rooibos
Learn more about Simple Loose Leaf here.
Tea Description:
Chai is a type of tea typically served in India with milk and sugar. Our Herbal Chai is comprised of rooibos herbal tea along with a combination of ginger root, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon and black peppercorn. This herbal version offers a remarkable authentic chai flavor while remaining naturally caffeine-free.
Ingredients: South African Rooibos, Cardamom, Cinnamon, Ginger Root, Cloves, Black Peppercorn
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn more about Simple Loose Leaf’s Selection Club subscription program here.
Receive 25% savings on the Selection Club from Simple Loose Leaf. Just type in SISTERSELECTION25 in the coupon field and save 25%! This discount is applicable only to the monthly Selection Club subscription and not the retail selection of teas.
Taster’s Review:
This Herbal Chai from Simple Loose Leaf’s Selection Club Sampler Box is a very finely ground rooibos! The rooibos leaves are chopped finer than I’ve typically seen in most rooibos blends. It’s almost like a fine, “instant” powder … almost, but not quite. This still needs to be steeped.
So I steeped it using a T-Sac. I don’t usually reach for a T-Sac when I’m brewing tea, but with a tea/tisane that is as finely ground as this is, I usually choose a T-Sac to steep the tea because I don’t like loose, floating leaves in my brewed tea. I’m not in to floaters.
Additional parameters used to brew this tisane: with freshly filtered water heated to 195°F and 1 tsp. of Herbal Chai in the T-Sac, I steeped the tea for 10 minutes. Because this is a finer chopped chai, you don’t want to use a little extra leaf – as I often do with chai because I want a little stronger flavor with all the spices that are in the blend – but with this blend, the fine chop means that there is a lot of surface area and this is going to get plenty strong with the 1 tsp of leaf to 12 ounces of water ratio.
The aroma of both the dry leaf and the brewed tea is so delightfully spicy. It reminds me of the smell I would experience when I visit the spice shop in Portland. Notes of cinnamon, clove and pepper are prominent. I can also smell the cardamom and ginger.
Mmm! This is a perfect tisane to send out for September. As the air becomes crisp and the weather turns cooler for the coming season (Autumn!) this tea serves me as a reminder of what is to come. As I’ve said many times before, fall is my favorite season of the year. And … yes … the reason is TEA! Tea just tastes better hot. Yeah, there are some teas that taste better iced, but for the most part, I find that teas just taste better when they’re served hot and I find that hot tea tastes best when the weather is chilly.
And my favorite kinds of teas to sip during my favorite season of the year are chai blends like this because the warm spices are just so cozy and comforting! This is a perfect autumnal blend!
The finer chop on this blend makes for a very strong tasting chai, so don’t go overboard when you’re measuring out the leaf! You might want to even use a little less leaf because it does get very strong.
The spices are robust. The clove and ginger and pepper are the strongest flavors that I’m tasting. After these flavors are recognized by my palate, then I begin to pick up on the cinnamon and cardamom. The rooibos doesn’t offer a strong flavor to the cup, it’s more like a slightly sweet, nutty background flavor that is quite complimentary to the earthy notes of the spices.
I’ve got to tell you that when I saw that this is a rooibos chai, my thoughts were “Oh, another rooibos chai.” I wasn’t all that thrilled with the prospect. But this is one of the better tasting rooibos chai tisanes that I’ve tasted in some time. The finer ground on the blend makes for a deliciously pungent, spicy chai and that’s just fine with me!
This tastes great with a dollop of honey or a half a teaspoon of sugar. I find that the sweetener accents the spices in a chai (sugar and spice makes a chai taste real nice). Add a splash of milk or cream for a tasty latte … it’s a wonderful, caffeine-free treat to drink any time of day.
Product Review: Tea Box Express Monthly Subscription!
Product Information:
Where to Subscribe: Tea Box Express
About Tea Box Express:
Tea Box Express is more than a box of tea. It’s an experience. Each month brings a new box brimming with surprises that always include quality brand-name tea and three or four fun tea-things. We are dedicated to bringing you the best teas and the niftiest tea goodies. Our mission is to bring a tea party to your door every month.
Save 20% off your first month’s subscription! Just use the code SORORITEA20 in the coupon field at check-out to save!
Review:
This is a review of Tea Box Express’s debut box – October 2014 – which hasn’t yet begun to ship. The box came to me early so that I could review it and share my thoughts with you so that you can get in on the goodies right from the very beginning!
This box is near PERFECT for people like me. As some of you may know, besides writing about teas, I’ve also written about other subscription boxes (specifically, foodie/yummy goody boxes) on my Hungry in Portland blog. I’ve pretty much discontinued those reviews mostly because I find that my time has become limited and tea is more important to me than the goodies, so, I devote my time here. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped getting in on the goodies!
What’s so great about this box is that it combines the best of both worlds! It’s a tea of the month box and it’s a goody box, plus there are some really neat accessories to go along with it. For the October box, I received a tube of Teatulia Black Tea, a jar of “Tea Honey” from Savannah Bee Co., an adorable bee shaped, festively frosted sugar cookie from The Decorated Cookie Co., plus a bright yellow, ceramic teapot-shaped teabag caddy and a tea honey dipper/server which allows you to drizzle honey no-mess-style into your cup of tea. I’ll be reviewing the “tea party” including the tea later, but, for now I wanted to review the experience of receiving this box!
Let’s see what these items would have cost me if I bought them separately:
- Teatulia Black Tea: $8.99
- Tea Honey: $5.50 (although to get the 3 oz. jar, you need to buy 2 at $11.00)
- Bee Cookie: $5.62 (approximately)
- Teabag Caddy: $4.50
- Honey Dipper: $4.98
Total retail price would be approximately $29.59 if these items were purchased separately, although some of the items can’t really be purchased separately, and these prices do not include shipping charges. To subscribe to this box, you can pay month-to-month $25.50 plus $5.99 for shipping, or if you pay for 3 months, the monthly cost comes out to $24.67, or for a six month subscription, the cost works out to be $23.17 per month.
So there is a savings benefit to subscribing, but to me the real benefit is the joy of receiving the box. The fun part of these boxes is that they’re curated for you. This month’s theme (if it’s not obvious with the Bee and the honey), is “Bee Happy”! When you first open the box, the first thing I saw was this card (to the left) that says, “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” ~Abraham Lincoln.
Inside the lid of the box is a “theme card” that offers some suggestions on how to be happy. Nurturing our positive emotions like joy, gratitude and serenity can make us happier, and I love the suggestion on starting a happy list!
My happy list:
Tea.
Yeah, there are a few other things that I’d add to that list, but tea is right up there at the top of the list. Tea is joy. And this box is all about TEA. Receiving a box like this every month would be like getting joy in the mailbox!