Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Tea Description:
Red hot cinnamon, sweet juicy orange and delicate white tea combine to form a red hot orange white cuppa that’s as satisfying as it is aromatic. Indulge your senses with this week’s tea of the week.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This seems like the perfect evening to enjoy this tea. It’s cold and wet outside, and I’m in need of something warm and soothing.
Well, this isn’t exactly what I hoped for. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s tasty! And it delivers exactly what the name of it suggests: a “red hot” cinnamon and orange flavored white tea. I guess I was just hoping for a little more than just that. I think that the addition of some cardamom and cloves would have really added something special to this tea. As it is, this tea is kind of one-dimensional, but, with the addition of a couple of other spices I think that this could have been so much better.
But, I guess that’s the tea blender in me … trying to dissect a tea and figure out how to make it better. I did that all the time when I was doing the tea artist thing. So rather than dwelling on how to improve this tea, why don’t I just review it like it is!
The ingredients state that the base of this tea is “Premium white teas” which suggests to me more than one type of tea. I’m thinking that this is a combination of Shou Mei and Bai Mu Dan. There are a couple of “needles” in my pouch that could suggest either a Silver Needle or a good quality Bai Mu Dan is in the blend. The tea tastes delicate and somewhat earthy. It is a bit more astringent that I usually would expect from a white tea, perhaps it is the flavors that bring the astringency out.
The cinnamon is strong, but it is not as strong as you might expect with a name like “Red Hot Orange White.” 52Teas managed to keep the cinnamon in balance with the other ingredients, allowing the white tea and the orange-y notes to shine through.
It is the orange that I like the best in this blend, and here’s why. With other spiced orange blends that I’ve tried (and I’ve tried quite a few, it seems like everyone has a spiced orange blend for the holiday season!) the spices seem to overpower the orange, forcing the citrus to play a background note to the stronger spice notes. Here, the orange is balanced with the cinnamon. It isn’t overwhelmed. It adds a very pleasing bright, juicy note of fruit to the cup.
So, while this isn’t my favorite 52Teas blend that I’ve tried lately, it’s not a complete miss either. I think I’m going to get myself some cardamom and cloves and play around with this to make my own “customized” blend and see if I like that better … mostly for my own curiosity (in other words, to see if I know what I’m talking about!)
Immortal Springs Laoshan White Tea from Verdant Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: Verdant Tea
Tea Description:
After decades of innovation and working to perfect their green tea, the village of Laoshan has entered a golden age of diversity in their tea offerings. Just a year ago, our friends, the He family, started making black tea as an experimental crop, improving with each harvest. This black tea has quickly become our most popular offering. Now, for the first time, Laoshan White tea is available.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is some of the greenest white tea I’ve ever seen! In fact, had I not read the label and opened the pouch myself, I would have sworn it was a green tea. The leaves are so tiny, deeply green, and beautiful, like the youngest of spring leaf buds eagerly waiting the day it will open and drink in those golden rays of sunlight.
Oh… how lovely. This greenish-gold liquid is heavenly to sip! It has a beautifully soft mouthfeel – like fluffy soft velvet, and the flavor is sweet and vegetative. Again, had I not known I brewed a white tea, I would think this was a green tea based upon the sip. It has a very green tea flavor to it with the vegetative tones, however, there is also a delicateness to this that suggests a white tea to me.
The tasting notes for this tea suggest a sugar snap pea taste, and I get that. It is very sweet and crisp, like the sweetest, youngest sugar snap peas that have that distinctive SNAP when you break them between your fingers. This crispy crunch to the vegetable displays the freshness of it just as the flavors here suggest the freshness of the tea.
As I continue to sip, I notice hints of a sweet nutty taste. Not so much a toasty nutty taste, though. It tastes not quite raw, but not completely roasted either… like an almond that is just slightly under-roasted. It still has that creaminess of the raw nut, very smooth … but without the bitterness of the raw almond. In fact, there is nothing bitter whatsoever about this tea. It’s purely sweet from start to finish … and as I continue to sip, and especially in the later infusions (I steeped this tea six times) I noticed a honey-esque tone emerging, tasting somewhat like the honeysuckle notes I remember from my childhood and also vaguely reminiscent of a wildflower honey.
As I mentioned, this tea is good for multiple infusions – I steeped it six times, but I think it could have endured several more! – and the flavor just keeps getting more and more interesting with each infusion. This one is a MUST TRY for white tea enthusiasts – this one is so beautiful and memorable … the kind you want to spend an entire afternoon with, because there is so much beauty locked inside these tiny, delicate leaves.
White Coconut Blondie from The Tea Merchant
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: The Tea Merchant
Tea Description:
Creamy, smooth, and delicious! We use spring select white tea hand blended with coconut, safflowers, and cornflowers. Delivers a sweet creamy texture with a light body, and a good balance of coconut. This tea is wonderful hot, iced or as a dessert tea.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is so-so-so good!
Right off the bat, I’m really impressed with this tea. When I opened the resealable Kraft pouch, I was greeted with some of the freshest white tea leaves I’ve yet to see! Their color is a pale green with silvery white tips, and are covered in silvery fuzz. And they’re so soft – not crunchy! I think that the only time I’ve seen white tea this fresh it has been a pure, unadulterated tea, not a flavored tea blended with flower petals and chunks of organic coconut.
And now that I’ve brewed the tea and am sipping it, I’m so thrilled with how good it tastes. It has a sweet, creamy coconut taste that marries beautifully with the delicate taste of the white tea, which is not overwhelmed by the strong coconut flavor. The white tea has a lightness to it (it IS a white tea, after all!) but it also is quite creamy, with an almost buttery undertone. I like that I taste both the coconut and the white tea … It’s all very nicely balanced.
The tea also has a very subtle floral tone that offers just a hint of contrast. This, together with the slightly dry astringency toward the tail helps keep this tea from coming across as cloying. It is a very sweet tea, but, these little nuances keep it from tasting too sweet.
A very enjoyable tea that is delicious any time of day, would make a very good alternative to dessert on the days when you want to go low-calorie but still crave delicious flavor. If you like coconut, this is a tea that you MUST try!
Apricot Cheesecake Shou Mei from 52Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Tea Description:
We’ve had a few cheesecake blends over the years, and I’ve heard from a number of customers that the cheesecake is a bit on the subtle side. So I’ve decided to try a cheesecake blend with a lighter tea that might not normally be a good match for cheesecake flavors. (I tend to want to pair our white teas with sweet, fruity notes.) So here is our delicious shou mei white tea, blended with real freeze-dried apricot bits and natural apricot and cheesecake flavors. And it is truly delicious!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
One thing you can pretty much count on is when 52Teas creates a cheesecake flavor for its Tea of The Week, that cheesecake flavored tea is going to sell out pretty quickly. Frank – the chief Zoomdweebie at 52Teas – is the master of cheesecake flavored tea!
But I have to be honest, this isn’t my favorite cheesecake blend that Frank has ever come up with. That said, this is still a really tasty blend!
While hot, the flavors tend to be a bit more jumbled – I can taste notes that are apricot-like and cream cheese-ish. There are some buttery and brown sugary notes in there too. But there is nothing really about it – when it’s served hot – that screams out to me and says “I am Apricot Cheesecake!”
But as the tea cools, the flavors become more distinctive. The apricot becomes much more like apricot – sweet and juicy and it tastes remarkably like the apricot filling that my gramma would make when she’d make apricot cobbler. Sweet, even a little extra sweetness from the glazing, but still true to the fruit. Then there are the flavors that are associated with the cheesecake. Creamy, tangy cream cheese. Buttery pastry with a hint of brown sugar. YUM!
And as I’ve mentioned before, the tea is at least just as important – if not more important – as the flavors. After all, I’m drinking tea, not some soda fountain concoction. I want to taste the tea. And I do taste the Shou Mei. It has a sweet, lightly nutty flavor that melds beautifully with the pastry crust notes of the flavoring, making it taste more – I think – like pastry. And the creaminess of the Shou Mei lends itself well, and even enhances, the creamy elements of the cheesecake flavor.
So, while this isn’t my favorite cheesecake blend from Frank, it is certainly delicious. And trust me when I say that it’s worth checking out 52Teas website and subscribing to the newsletter to stay “in the know” for when his famous cheesecake flavored teas are offered … you’ve got to try at least one! But be warned … once you try one, you’re going to want MORE!
Wild Raspberry Pu-erh from The Whistling Kettle
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Pu-erh & White Tea Blend
Where to Buy: The Whistling Kettle
Tea Description:
This Pu-Erh is flavorful, mild and with an addition of silver needles, makes a great iced tea. Dr. Oz has recommended this tea as a way to help lose weight. Pu-Erh also help reduce cholesterol and great after a meal to help “cut the grease”. Pu-Erh has probiotic properties no other type of tea has.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
As those of you who read this blog pretty regularly are probably aware, I’ve pretty much come around when it comes to Pu-erh. There was a time when I DID NOT like Pu-erh … or at least I didn’t think I did. I was even “afraid” of Pu-erh, so much so that when someone would send me some in a swap package, I’d send it off to someone else without even tasting it! And that REALLY doesn’t sound like me, does it? But it’s true.
Now, I’m not afraid of Pu-erh any more, although I do often cringe when I receive Pu-erh … worried that I will have a bad experience with it. But truth be told, I have far more positive experiences with Pu-erh than negative ones. The negative experiences are indeed very few and very far between!
This Pu-erh blend … is amazing. And let me just say that if my first tasting of Pu-erh tasted anything like this … I would not have been so afraid of Pu-erh for so many years! This is so good!
The raspberry notes are sweet with just a twinge of tartness to them – just enough to make it taste like a true berry taste. There are hints of flower in the blend as well as a softness. Soft is generally not a flavor I associate with Pu-erh so this is a characteristic I attribute to the white tea. The white tea really offers little else to this blend, other than some visual interest to the dry leaf. As I taste this, there isn’t a moment when I can say definitively “there’s the white tea.” However, I don’t think that this blend would be quite the same without the white tea in it. It adds something … a creaminess, perhaps?
However, the Pu-erh offers the majority of the flavor here. And while it does have that distinctive Pu-erh earthiness, it is slight. Instead, this simply tastes rich and mellow and smooth. Almost like coffee, but without the bitterness of coffee.
A very enjoyable tea from the Whistling Kettle … and it’s a good one!