365 Days of Tea - Day 17: Wu Yi Mountain Oolong.

I did things a little differently this time, but I didn't get as much of a result as I wanted. So I might not do it again for a while. It might be more effective later on though. Basically what I did was create a poll of teas that I could review, and had people vote on it. Although I know I have quite a few readers, I didn't get many voters. (Total of 11 voters) I think that perhaps I'm being a bit too interactive for this early on.

I also made a major mistake and didn't photograph the tea before brewing it, but this is something that wont ever happen again. I was just excited to try it and didn't even think of it. (It's partial because it was such a small sample, too)

Wu Yi Mountain Oolong is a special oolong grown in the Wu Yi mountains of Fujian, China. Its suppose to be such high quality that it is usually saved for honored guests in China.  Its considered an "Artisan tea" and some variations of it are considered the most expansive tea in the world. The plants are bred from three bushes that are around 1,000 years old. Its suppose to be a very delicate, and smooth. A very different concept from regular oolong. It should still contain a roasted favor, but much less strong.

Smell - It doesn't carry a very strong smell, considering its meant to be a more gentle flavor. Its very woody, with a slight mossy scent. It smells like a very far off woods, on a windy day. Its very nice.

Taste - Its a very delicate tea, very smooth. It taste very leafy, with a nice roasted undertone. I wouldn't recommend it as an ice tea, but I think it would be a perfect mid-after noon tea with a light lunch. Its very easy on the stomach, too. Its not harsh in anyway, probably as light as a white tea.

Overall - I found this to be quite nice, although, for something supposedly being the most expansive tea in the world, I don't see it. Its very possible that the company I got this from isn't selling the same quality of product. (Considering the price on there website..) So perhaps I'll have to give Wu Yi Oolong another try in the future and compare this with that. With all that being said though, I still think this oolong is a good tea.

(3 out of 5 tea leaves.)

Can be found @ 

I have to apologize for this post, I made a lot of unusual mistakes. If I can get more of the tea, I'd like to take my own photograph for it.

365 Days of Tea - Day 10: Coconut Cabana.

I'd like to start off by making one thing very clear to my readers; I will never, ever sell my opinion. Someday, I may or may not have sponsors or people who donate product to me, but I will always be honest about my feelings in reviews. If a company sends me a bad product, I'll tell you its a bad product. I will also make it clear to the company sending the review products as well. It also seems that one or two companies are starting to pay attention to me, this is good, and exciting.

This isn't actually the tea I'm going to review, but I wanted to talk a little bit about the packaging. (I actually already opened, and discarded the packaging for the tea I'm reviewing - whoops!) Now keep in mind that this isn't their regular packaging, this is for a sample product. They also have these really awesome tins. I'm totally heart-broken that I didn't get a cool tin, so I could be in the cool people club. I guess I'm not cool enough. A lot of review products are typically sent in less then appealing packaging, companies don't realize that your first impression is literally the packaging. The Tea Spot's packaging is actually really nice. Although I kinda wish I had a cool "The Tea Spot" sticker. So I can stick it all over my face. My only complaint is that I wish it was resealable, because a lot of first time tea-seers wont have a tin or two laying around. I was lucky because I had one.

The real tea I'm reviewing is called Coconut Cabana.

You can clearly see a very pretty looking oolong. Oolong almost always appears like a burnt or roasted green tea. This oolong is called "milk oolong" which tells me that it is from Taiwan, since it was developed there in the 1980s and supposedly creates a milky, smooth taste.The coconut is unsweetened, which is ideal. I ate a piece of it raw, it was horrible. I expect the milk oolong and coconut to pair perfectly. 

Very nice golden color - as expected from most teas. 

Smell - It smells amazing. Its a very pure coconut scent, it doesn't feel faked either. Its a very "raw" scent, and carries a little earthyness from the oolong. Its not prefumey at all. It is very pleasing and excites the pallet. 

Taste - Its a very mild taste. Very earthy, and carries sort of a creamyness to it. I think the coconut actually added a bit of oil, which makes it taste slighty more thick then regular tea. The coconut favor almost seems absent at first, and you might only notice the smell of it until the second or third sip, then you suddenly notice that towards the end, you get a very smooth coconut favor. Not sugary, but still sweet in a very natural way. This favor is complex, its deep, yet subtle. I get the sense that I'm on the beach, but a beach full of earthy forest.

Overall - I am extremely impressed with The Tea Spot's first tasting so far. I could and pretty much did drink this tea all day. Not to mention that oolong has a decent amount of caffeine, gives you energy, and helps with weight-loss. The coconut also aids with a lot of these things, too. Its an extremely healthy tea (As long as you don't add a ton of sugar) and its also a very delicious tea.

(4 out of 5 tea leaves.)

Tea can be found here.

I also want to mention that - I'm always a huge fan of companies giving back to charities and The Tea Spot donates 10% of all sales to cancer research. The CEO - Maria Uspenski is also a cancer survivor.  (More details on this can be found here.) Companies like this who, support the little guy (like me) and charities definitely deserve my business and respect.

365 Days of Tea - Day 7.

I've sort of realized by now that I probably wont be able to acquire 365 teas by myself, and although I might be growing in readership, I'm not growing financially. So that means that at some point when the review products stop coming in and when I'm out of money to spend on this project, I'm going to have to mix some teas, and create my own infusions. So maybe I should make Friday's posts always be custom infusions. (Infusion Friday) Today's tea is actually a blend (another name of an infusion) of 3 different teas that teavana sells. This is their own blend and nothing I came up with.

Body + Mind is a blend of  Monkey-Picked oolong with Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearls green tea and Mao Feng white tea. Which can all be bought separately on their website or you can buy this blend. Supposedly monkey picked oolong used to actually be picked by monkeys that were trained by monks, but now its picked by human hands. According to the website its considered one of the highest gradest oolongs. This probably means that there isn't very much in the blend to save costs.

You can't really see it in the image but there is some jasmine pearls that look exactly like the pearls from the other tea. The black-ish green bits are the "legendary monkey picked oolong", and I would assume that the threads are the white tea. White is picked young and isn't left to oxidize nearly as long as other teas. Its usually extremely delicate favor. I don't have any images of the tea itself, it brews the same color as the last one.

Smell - The tea offers a pretty similar scent that most jasmine teas have. Jasmine itself is pretty strong so I imagine it would be hard to have a tea containing jasmine that would smell like anything but. It is a lighter jasmine smell, but only because it is blended with other teas as well. None of the other teas give off a strong enough scent for me to pick up anything other than that. I still enjoy it however.

Taste - There is a lot of potential complexity here, the oolong implies a woods-y favor, the jasmine gives a flowery favor that slowly rolls onto the tongue, and the white tea allows a gentle but subtle favor of the forest to carry all the back notes. Only this isn't really the case, though. The jasmine favor is there, and the other favors are very subtle. You can barely taste anything but jasmine, although it isn't a strong jasmine favor. It is a very light-favored tea. There is two real favor components here; the jasmine that weakly tingles your pallet, and the "tea" favor. If you took the jasmine favor out, it might be more complex.

Overall - Although I did generally like this tea, I expected more from something that contained so much. This is one of this "less is more" things. I had much higher expectations, for something containing "Monkey-picked oolong" but perhaps I need to experience it by itself to fully judge this tea better.

(2 out of 5 tea leaves.)

Can be found here.

365 Days of Tea - Day 2.

I recently reached out to a few tea companies in search of some review products. I probably contacted at least 20 of them. Only one replied. I can't really blame most companies for ignoring me, I'm still a no body in the blogging world. I'm decided also to inquire about creating a custom theme and some more tea-centric graphics. Perhaps this will bring some more appeal to the blog and be more interesting to people as well as companies. So the company that replied is called Tea At Sea, they offer some teas I've never heard of, and I look forward to reviewing their samples.

Now lets talk about today's tea.

From my limited understanding, Maharaja is a Sanskrit title for king, and chai is just a fancy name for tea. Maybe they should have called it King Tea! Anyway, oolong is a tea that has been dried under the sun and curled and twisted. (Realistically it is probably dried in a dryer) I've also heard of fire roasted oolong as well, I'd like to get my hands on that someday.

The Tea

(You can click the photograph and view it larger)(Yes I photographed this)

Its quite nice, smells very strongly of cinnamon, and a hint of cloves, maybe some ginger, too. The tea leafs seem to be far and few, some of the black pieces are not actually leafs. Upon further inspection they look more like raisins, but much harder to the touch, so I think its safe to say there are not raisins. You can definitely see the cinnamon and gloves. I would assume the yellow-y bits are dried ginger. Ginger usually makes a fantastic addition to tea.

(In my awesome Adventure Time mug)

  

Color/Smell - It brews pretty much the same color as the last tea, however a bit more red-ish. The cinnamon smell carries over and reminds me of the holidays. I want pie now, stuffing, and eggnog. Eh..hem.. Yes it is a wonderful smell.

Taste - When I think of oolong and what oolong is, I'd assume a deep, almost woody roasted flavor. However, I honestly don't taste "tea" at all. I wouldn't even define this as an oolong tea. Its a herbal tea that just happens to have a little bit of oolong tea in it. All I can taste is a mild cinnamon flavor, with a subtle ginger backing, and some light clove notes. Its also unexpectedly sweet. If I brewed this more on terms with it being an herbal tea, it might have more favor, usually herbal teas are brewed a bit longer to get the flavor out of the bits.

Overall - If you're looking for a woods-y oolong tea, you'll be disappointed. If you're looking for an herbal time, you'll be quite happy. I really did enjoy this tea, and can see myself drinking it during the holidays, or during the cold months. I would highly recommend brewing it at least 3 more minutes longer then it recommends, actually, if you can, don't even bother removing the tea leafs. Let it steep forever, it'll only grow strong flavors out of the different components.

As an oolong tea:

(1 and a half tea leaves out of 5. Not-Recommended.)

As an herbal tea:

(3 and a half out of 5. Recommended.)

Can be found here.