Violin in C Sharp

 I will take a moment to acknowledge that this review is a good 1/2 year late.  I have been emptying my camera of old photos to make room for the pictures I'm bound to take on my trip to Europe next week.  In doing so, I came across the photos I took to complete my 2023 tea advent reviews.  Thankfully, I had taken copious tasting notes on the teas, so even though the review is late, it gets to remain an accurate picture of my thoughts on the tea. So then, where were we? Oh yes - day 17! I have to admit, when I opened the little tree and found Green Mango Peach.... I was NOT excited.  Mango is not my favorite flavour, and Peach is even lower on my preference list.  In point of fact, for my palate, peach ruins tea as badly as chocolate.  Needless to say, I had VERY low expectations for this blend. The write up did however inspire more hope!  "The sweetness of ripe fruit, sharpened by peppermint and ginger" sounded delicious!  I was hopeful that...

  I do love a good Jasmine Green tea, and while it is DIFFICULT to mess it up, it IS possible if your green tea isn't the right quality or if you are too heavy on the Jasmine, or if you use a Jasmine oil instead of blossoms or pre-scenting the leaves.  So - I was excited but cautiously so. Reading the description of the blend made me feel safer that it was indeed going to be a well done and lovely cup of Jasmine Green.  Why you ask?  Because they labeled the tea as a Chung Hao.  Chung Hao is a Chinese tea from the Fujian province where the Jasmine Green tea blend was invented for use in the Imperial Court.  To say it is a Chung Hao usually means that the tea has been hand harvested and DEFINITLY means that the tea has been scented by mixing the drying tea with fresh jasmine blossoms and then removing the blossoms before packing the tea.  It gives an entirely different balance to the tea than using oil, or adding blossoms after the leaves have already b...

  I had a busy day on Wednesday and knew that a Green tea was just NOT going to cut it to get me through my long day - so I skipped it and had coffee instead.  Yesterday, the idea of green tea made my stomach turn (I was fighting over exertion from the day before).  This evening however, as I sat down with my dinner of take out dumplings, I remembered that I had a green tea ready for me to try and thought it sounded like quite the fine idea! With a name like cherry blossom, I was expecting the tea to be floral.  Even the write up mentions florals.  I braced myself for florals.... however, after getting past the soft delicate florals in the light fragrance of my cup, the florals vanished.  On the palate, it is all green tea and cherry and ... it's lovely! It reminds me a lot of a nice Jasmine Green tea in how delicate it is on the top note and also in the way that the tartness of the cherry mixes with the green tea to wipe away any hints of a grassy note....

 A Green Tea today, so I was far more excited than the last two days of herbals.  I'm not sure though if I've actually ever had a Tea Forte green tea.  I think that before this advent calendar, I had only purchased black blends from them.  I mention this because green tea varies DRASTICALLY depending on where it is sourced from and how it is processed.  When it comes to green tea, I tend to favor Japanese companies over any others because their processing style sits better on my palate, but on occasion, I admit that I have been pleasantly surprised by non Japanese green blends - just not often. The write up gave me hope that even if this green tea varietal was on the grassy side, that the cherry and almond might either hide that grassy-ness, or work with it to create something interesting. The color, of course, was on the light green side. My first sip was all grass and cherry.  My second sip was far more balanced.  The green tea was still a bit too gr...

  I honestly had no idea what to expect from this blend. Based on the name alone, I thought perhaps something like the Day 1 Himalayan Green but... somehow.. sweet? Looking at the blend in the spoon.... confused me.  There is a lot going on there.  I could identify the Green Tea of course, as well as the cardamom, and turmeric - but there is a leaf in there that isn't the green tea leaf that I couldn't identify, as well as chunks of root that puzzled me.  I thought maybe... mallow root?  I decided not to investigate until after tasting. The color was... murkier than I expected.  It was almost the murk that I have come to expect from a pre-sweetened tea.  I assure you that my brow was quite furrowed as I stared and studied this during steeping. Flavor - the first thing that assaulted my palate was SWEET.  Dear god the sweet!!  And it wasn't sugar sweet it was.... sugar free sweet?  It was such a powerful sweet that I couldn't taste AYTHIN...

 Another year, another tea advent calendar!  This year, I caved to the intriguing adverts on my Facebook page and bought myself a calendar from a company called Vahdam - which I think is an Indian based company.  The packaging is STUNNING and eclipses every other tea advent I've done to date.  The outer box is heavy pressed paper/cardboard with a nice smooth coating and two magnets to help it snap closed.  I love that the boxes are in order instead of all mixed up (a thing so many advent calendars do which actually really annoys me).  Each box contains a little tin which is individually sealed with a plastic safety seal that has enough loose leaf tea to make an entire pot.  This means I get to share the daily teas with the rest of the household and get multiple palates worth of feedback! So then - on to the first day of tea!! Day 1 is a Himalayan Green Tea (see how pretty the little tins are!!!)  Now, when it comes to green tea, I'm most familiar ...

 It's been over a month since I drank this tea and yet I still remember the flavor.  You would think that would speak well of the tea blend.... and yet..... the best thing I can say about this was that it was vaguely christmasy. The peppercorn wasn't nearly as present as I would like, the coconut doesn't really show up in the flavour either.  The predominant flavours are the vanilla, the liquorice root, and the green tea.  It's warming and calm - but it wasn't anything special enough that I found myself wanting more than a cup. Final thoughts:  Nice, but nothing to write home about.

 Saturday saw me leaving the house super early - too early for me, which made me need coffee.... I ended up having a three coffee morning and didn't get home until evening.  When I saw that the tea of the day was caffeinated, I decided to wait until the next day and play catch up. I've had Moroccan Mint blends from several companies and have never been impressed with the blend.  The idea of it has always sounded good to me, but the theory was far better than the practice.... until now.  This Moroccan Mint blend is what I have always wanted my Moroccan mint blends to taste like!  The Green Tea base was delicious, without a hint of grassy-ness.  The spearmint was far more dominant than the peppermint, but the peppermint was there enough to give a nice cooling end note so as not to end the flavor with the harshness that spearmint alone can leave on my palate. This was a delightfully soothing cup and EXACTLY what I needed and wanted after my long day the day be...

 When I opened my tea today, I smiled when I saw the flavor, but I didn't immediately make myself a cup.  I've had many genmaicha blends before and knew that I simply wasn't in the mood for that flavor.  So, I put the bag back in its little pouch and went about my day. At 11pm, after a full day of D&D, I decided I wanted a cup of something warm as my roommate and I sat down to continue our journey through all the Hobbit and Lord of the Ring extended cut versions in story chronology order.  That's when I remembered, oh hey!  I still have today's advent tea!  And right then, genmaicha sounded like exactly the warm toasty flavor I was craving. I was not disappointed.   The roasted brown rice in this blend is such a delicious toasty note, and the green tea in this blend isn't at all grassy.  The write up is correct, it is on the sweeter side.  The slight sweetness of the green tea plus the toasty note from the rice made this pair perfect...

 Dad found this at the grocery store and brought it home.  It's not something I ever would have picked out for myself because I almost NEVER enjoy peach flavoured anything - especially not peach flavoured tea. That having been said - OMG THIS WAS DELICIOUS!!! The peach flavour in this was not at all like any peach flavouring I've ever had in a drink.  It tasted like I was biting into a fresh peach!  It was like drinking peach nectar, but without the pulpy lumpy texture and with the lovely added end note of a light green tea. The tea flavour was there in the main note, but I had to search for it.  Mainly, the green tea came in on the end note, the finish, and the after taste.  In the end note, the somewhat grassy flavour you can get from green tea is what cut the sweetness of the peach flavour, but then the grassy faded on the finish and the aftertaste was almost similar to that of a sweet matcha latte without the creaminess. Verdict:  I want more!

 The next flavor in my Twinings gift box that I decided to try this morning was this Earl Grey with Jasmine. Now, from the front of the package, I thought it was Earl Grey black tea with added Jasmine essence, flavoring, or flowers.  Oh-ho, NOT SO says the back of the package - this is an Earl Grey mixed with a Jasmine scented Green Tea.  Boy am I glad I read the ingredients these days because that shifted my entire expectation for the flavor profile. Now, here's the thing I became worried about - black tea and green tea brew at VERY different temperatures, so I had to figure out where I thought I should brew the water on the temperature scale.  I wavered a bit for a while - but finally decided to go with the packaging and use the boiled water for black tea.   The reason I wavered and worried over this was because I do not like the harsh taste of green tea when it has been brewed with too hot water.  It loses its sweetness and dries out my mouth - and ...

In case you hadn't figured it out - NEWS FLASH - I love tea.      Like several other tea aficionados in my extended friend group, I have managed to make my love of tea more than a simple appreciation of a beverage - I've developed my love of tea into a full blown hobby.  I collect different blends, I follow different tea companies and their blend collections the way some hobbyists follow card sets.  I have multiple drawers and shelves full of tea related paraphernalia, I have an electric water kettle that has multiple temperature settings specifically for different types of tea.... tea is a part of my daily life.  When I take a vacation someplace special, I try to find a tea cup to bring home for my collection.  For Mother's Day last year, I took my mother out to a fancy tea house to treat her to a Mother Daughter afternoon tea as a way to mark the celebration of the day. I LOVE tea.      With this in mind, it should come as no surprise ...