273 Tasting Notes
I am probably not alone in having a can next to the stove into which I dump bacon grease, fat skimmings, etc. to cool before binning rather than clog the plumbing. And also a bucket under the kitchen sink of spent coffee grounds & tea leaves, etc. destined for the compost heap. And a jar of collected loose tea leaves that are stale, unidimensional, boring, or even flavorless. My jar is mostly old assams and assamics from elsewhere which I was hoping would taste better together than apart. Lately in the sleepiness of morning I have lazily combined a half spoonful from the mixed jar with a half spoonful of strong keemun premium and steeped it up for a “breakfast blend”. And today I realized that this amalgam of leaves made a pretty fair tea. I won’t recommend or record a rating since it is irreproducible, but it was worthy of a 75. And it seems to fit the spirit of this “Random Steepings” listing, so here ya go!
Preparation
Dec 2025 TTB, 2nd round.
Paris; by Harney & Sons.
Paper teabag with string-tag in a sealed, foil pouch. 8 oz / 212°F / 5 min. What could I hope to say that hasn’t been said in the 700+ notes and 400+ ratings already posted to Steepster for this marvelous tea? Clearly it’s popular. This time I’m drinking the teabag version of the blend, which I bought a couple months ago, and which differs from the looseleaf and sachet versions in that it omits the oolong component. I don’t mind. It’s got the vanilla, the blackcurrant, the caramel, the bergamot, and a solid black base tea that are all present in both flavor and aroma. Yum! I’ve recommended it in the past, and still do. I rated it 81 in the past, but given my followup purchases, find I must raise my rating to 88. The main purpose of today’s post, though, is to comment that I’ve contributed a handful of the teabags to the currently Traveling Tea Box, so that others who may not have enjoyed it in a while might do so again. Cheers!
Flavors: Bergamot, Black Currant, Caramel, Tea, Vanilla
Preparation
I didn’t know that about the teabags!
@ashmanra: yeah, sometimes Harney has different formulations depending upon how the tea is prepared. On their website, if you click on the ingredient listing for a particular type of tea, it may give you the option for teabags vs. sachets, vs. looseleaf. Sometimes the ingredients are in different orders but I don’t know if that means anything. However if an ingredient is missing, that definitely means something!
Ingredient lists start with whatever they use the most of and continue in descending order to end with whatever they use least of.
@rosebudmelissa Please don’t take this as an affront to your sensibilities—because what you wrote is sensible. I can only wish that made it true. [rant begins] While surely true for some tea vendors, and the law for food ingredient listings in the USA, it is certainly not universally practiced, whether required by law or otherwise. Food ingredient regulations may differ from those governing tea products. Some teas have visible ingredients that are not listed anywhere, or list ingredients that seem absent, or may be using obsolete packaging following a formulation change. I am looking at recent Adagio bag that lists “natural flavor” (a typically trace and invisible component) before apple, rose petals, and marigold, which I find dubious. And even the ingredients section for tea entries here on Steepster re-arranges the components into alphabetical order, either by intent, or accident. Basically, I take the label listings with a grain of salt because I doubt they have ever been challenged. Tea marketing everywhere seems awash with untested medical claims, loose language, and outright silliness. The Adagio “Gemini” bag in my hand right now says its “white tea, rose hips and peach flavor stimulates Gemini’s effervescent vitality.” No, the tea is not carbonated. Nor is it alive. The printed words have no actual contextual meaning. It also goes into an astrological spiel, saying “Geminis are sassy intellectuals who liven up every tea party with their quick-witted conversations” and then devolves into irrelevance, with “sunflower petals… will keep Geminis forever young.” Sunflower is not even an ingredient. And I think everyone has heard about some tea having “qi”, which is some metaphysical nonsense that nobody can clearly define. So please pardon my skepticism that ingredient listings have more than a passing similarity to actual contents. [rant ends]
The convention, and in some countries law, is that on the packaging the heaviest ingredient by weight is put first and then ingredients are listed in descending order, at least down to the ingredients that are less than 2% of the total weight, which maybe in any order.
Obviously mistakes and outright lies are possible on packaging. I don’t think these laws tend to apply to internet listings. They may not include ingredient lists at all, or may not be updated to reflect reformulations the way the actual product packaging is meant to. Steepster is not even selling tea so while I do find it disappointing that they don’t follow convention I understand that it is not a legal issue so they can essentially do what they want.
While it is a bit surprising that the natural flavors were before the apple pieces, as someone who has experimented with tea blending and flavoring, flavorings in liquid form are relatively heavy and flower petals are very, very light and usually there for a bit of visual interest in the blend so it does not at all surprise me that a strongly flavored blend would have natural flavors first. Alternatively, they may both be such a small component of the blend that the order isn’t legally mandated.
I do agree that tea descriptions are sometimes ridiculously fanciful. This is part of the reason that there are laws concerning ingredient lists, so that if a business is honest and in accordance with the law, customers have reliable information as a foundation for their decisions.
I have to correct myself… Steepster alphabetizes flavors reported by users, which is sensible. And the ingredient listing on Steepster is whatever the user decides to type in, supposedly from the manufacturer. And of course @rosebudmelissa, you are correct that Steepster can list whatever it wants, in whatever order it chooses. And I appreciate your other comments as well. So, thanks! As an aside, we visited the local Adagio retail store today, and was pleased to find they were quite busy— but still willing to brew up a sample of one of their blends for us to taste. We had no difficulty taking advantage of the “buy 4 get 1 free” promotion! Thanks, Adagio!
Dec 2025 TTB, 2nd round.
Keemun Mao Feng Premium; by Tealyra.
Looseleaf, in a foil/mylar zipper pouch. 2 g / 8 oz / 205°F / 3 min. The small, intact, wiry leaves produced an aromatic dark amber liquor with a deep, nonastringent, malty, slightly sweet flavor having notes of tobacco and leather, and an overall flavor that I now associate with keemun teas. I have had multiple orders and lot #s of this over the years, and consistently find it to be superior to the more expensive “supreme” variant, also sold by Tealyra. I recommend, and stand by my rating of 90. This was purchased earlier in 2025, and still has plenty of time before the BestBy date of Nov. 2026, so I’m contributing the remaining 50 g to the Traveling Tea Box in the hopes that other fans of straight black teas may enjoy it as much as I do.
Flavors: Leather, Malt, Smooth, Sweet
Preparation
Dec 2025 TTB, 2nd round.
Government Street Blend; by Murchie’s Tea & Coffee
Stringless paper teabag in an unsealable cellophane bag. (I suspect it’s gone stale in the time since Arby kindly added it to the TTB 7 months ago.) 2.6 g. / 8 oz / 205°F / 4 min. The CTC leaf within yielded a powerful, dark brown infusion with a pleasant black tea aroma.
If there is green tea in this blend, I couldn’t tell (nothing floral or vegetal).
If there is jasmine flavor in this blend, I couldn’t tell.
If there is bergamot flavor in this blend, I couldn’t tell.
Sweetness—nope.
Nor could I detect anything uniquely Darjeeling or Ceylon, except the slight maltiness was complemented by a note of cardboard flavor.
A pleasantly tannic finish. Overall, the tea is okay, slightly more complex in the tea flavor than Lipton black tea bags. Recommended, but because it lacks four of the specific flavor/aroma elements claimed, I dock it twenty points and arrive at a rating of 47.
Flavors: Cardboard, Malt, Tannin
Preparation
I decided to give this one another sip today, as I have been staring at it in the cupboard for a few months. Steeped the same way as before. This time the rose aroma and flavor was the most prominent, and the bergamot took the back seat, while Jasmine was still enjoyable. My rating stands at 75, with recommendation.
Preparation
Dec 2025 TTB, 2nd round.
Balmoral Breakfast; by Jenier.
Pyramid sachet with string-tag in a sealed, plasticized pouch. 8 oz. / 212°F / 5 min. Decent if unremarkable blend with notes of cardboard. Recommend, with a rating of 65.
Flavors: Cardboard
Preparation
Dec 2025 TTB, 2nd round.
Premium Anji Baicha; by Tea & Whisk.
Loose leaf, steeped Western-style in a stainless micropore infusion basket: 2.5g leaf in 8 oz alpine spring water at 185°F for 3 min; re-steeped the same for 4 min. I’ve never had anything from Tea & Whisk, so was pleased to try this offering. The steeping leaves were seemingly intact, needle-like in appearance, and gave a vegetal aroma reminiscent of dragonwell teas, and produced a liquor pale golden in color. The taste was fresh and buttery smooth, non-bitter, non-astringent, with soft notes of asparagus and edamame, and manifested a slightly tannic finish at the end of the cup. The re-steep was similar in hue, but much weaker in aroma and flavor. Re-steeped flavor was more grassy than vegetal, with no appreciable lingering aftertaste. This was a good tea to drink, but not really something I would buy in the future. I’ll rate it a 65.
Flavors: Asparagus, Buttery, Edamame, Grassy, Smooth, Tannic, Vegetal
Preparation
Dec 2025 TTB, 2nd round.
Iceberg Tea; by Dark Tickle
I am not sure how this tea got its name because, to me, “iceberg” evokes a cooling sensation, such as from mint or wintogreen or camphor, and there is none of that here. Loose leaf black tea in a sturdy plasticized kraft paper zip bag. 2.5 g / 8 oz. / 212°F / 3 min. in a stainless micropore infusion basket. Soft blueberry fragrance on the dry leaf, which intensified nicely whilst steeping and returned as the infusion cooled. I have never tasted bilberries, but will assume they taste the same as their sister-species, blueberries — and this blend contains both. Steeped flavor was somehow “dusty” and slightly sweet, with a gentle vegetal taste (probably from all the flower petals) and some unremarkable black tea base, but devoid of berry flavor while sipping and slurping. The berry flavor appeared in the long, soft finish, and was fairly natural tasting (there were scattered whole dry berries in the dry blend, which floated about as the infusion proceeded). There was a quarter cup of cold liquid remaining in my teacup, to which I added a half teaspoon of sugar, but finding no improvement, I discarded the rest. I’m happy that other sippers really enjoyed this tea, which I can only attribute to their superior palate and experience, and I’m sad that I cannot share their enthusiasm and recommend it. I was disappointed that I found no strong flavor to enjoy in the hot liquor, and that influenced my rating, which I’ll set at 60. If you seek a hot tea having a satisfying berry flavor, perhaps you should look elsewhere.
Flavors: Blueberry, Dust, Sweet, Vegetal
Preparation
Dec 2025 TTB, 2nd round.
Floral Nectar Tea; by Simpson & Vail, Inc.
Loose leaf black tea in a mylar zip bag. 2 g. / 8 oz. / 212°F / 3 min. in a stainless micropore infusion basket. Wow, this tea is loaded with lavender! [It doubles as a nasal inhaler! As a rub for roasts! As a bouquet garni for soups & stews!] And the potent lavender fragrance persists from the dry blend, through steeping, onto the tongue and into the nose in a long finish. The base “black teas” were strong enough to withstand the lavender onslaught, giving the impression of a generic black with slight astringency, but no bitterness, tannin, nor any hints of malt or mint or pepperiness to betray its origin. On the tongue, I caught an occasional whisper of fruitiness, probably from the apricot flavoring. But lavender reigns supreme here, so you’d better like it, which I do. However, the mostly one-dimensional character of the tea hurts my rating, which I’ll call at 68.
Flavors: Apricot, Astringent, Lavender
Preparation
Dec 2025 TTB, 2nd round.
Cocoa Mountains; by Bird & Blend.
Loose leaf, steeped Western-style in a stainless micropore infusion basket: 2.5g / 8 oz / 212°F / 3 min. I’ve never had anything from Bird & Blend, so was happy to find this! I laughed when reading the description on their website saying “heaps of naturally decadent ingredients”, since there are exactly TWO ingredients, besides the vague “natural flavouring”! The dry leaf had an aroma of chocolate, and a chemical smell of coconut, which admittedly worried me. However, after steeping, the infusion was quite tasty, like a chocolate chip & coconut cookie, smooth and sweet without chemical bitterness. It wasn’t overly sweet though, so marzipan did not come to my mind, which I have found to be unpleasantly cloying anyway. I enjoyed this hot and without milk, even though the pouch gave separate steeping instructions for a milky tea. The lingering aftertaste evoked to me the impression of a keemun base, though the pouch listed Sri Lankan Black Tea as the ingredient. My later sips accompanied vanilla ice cream and all was harmonious. Recommended for those who favor chocolate, and I’ll rate as 78.
Flavors: Cocoa, Coconut, Sweet
I called mine the “Franken-tea” jar!