Teabag - Jardin Sauvage

Tea: Jardin Sauvage 8511
Vendor: Lupicia USA
Vendor Description: A non-fermented rooibos tea. Green rooibos is flavored with sweet ripened mangos and citrus fruits.

This was a very interesting teabag from Lupicia. It was primarily interesting because it is a teabag made from rooibos. Rooibos does not expand when steeped when compared to most green teas. So the shape and style of the teabag does not matter as much. But it is still packaged in the same manner as the other Lupicia teas.

While I don't have much experience with rooibos teas, I was rather happy with this one. The tea has a very short lived flavor in comparison to most other teas that I have had, but what it lacks in length it makes up for in boldness. This tea is very bold and has a strong sweetness to it. The citrus fruit flavor is very apparent giving it a certain tang to the taste that leaves you with a very clean feeling. The mango provides a lot of the sweetness flavor when combined with he rooibos and citrus leaves you with a clean feeling in your mouth.

Rating: 8/10

Conclusion: While I don't have much to compare the flavor of this rooibos against, I did enjoy it thoroughly. I liked the sweetness of it, and feel that it makes a good teabag because it does not need to expand and does not get restricted by the teabag itself.

Teabag - Sencha

Tea: Sencha
Vendor: Den's Tea
Price: $6.00 / 16 teabags
Vendor Description: Den's Tea best selling tea bag. This is the same great quality sencha that we offer loose, with the added convenience of a tea bag. Each tea bag is individually wrapped in a foil pouch to insure freshness.

This is a teabag from Den's Tea. The packaging for this teabag is individually wrapped mylar, in a manner similar to Lupicia. When I opened this teabag though I was a bit surprised to see the string and tag both stained light green. There was apparently a fair amount of fine dust with the sencha in the teabag that got onto the string and tag during transit. One thing that I did find a bit odd was the tag on the end of the teabag is in a horseshoe shape. I'm not quite sure what the particular reasoning is for this, but I'm guessing it's there for attaching to the lip of cup or something of that like.

When I brewed this teabag it was a bit surprising that the teabag was quite full once the sencha inside absorbed the water. It expanded more than any of the previous teabags i was reviewing had. So far of the teabags that I have reviewed though, this one had the smallest particles, most deserving of the title of being dust in the teabag.

The tea itself was rather interesting though, I have not had much experience with Den's Tea yet, and this sencha was very smooth. It was very sweet and smooth, which are both characteristics of a gyokuro, but it still tasted like a sencha. There was no sense of astringency afterwards, and little to no bitterness. It was light and refreshing to the taste.

Rating: 5/10

Conclusion: While this is a decent quality teabag, the tea left me longing for a stronger more full bodied sencha. The tea inside the bag was primarily dust and stems, which compared to the other teabags I have been reviewing was sub par for the course. I was generally unimpressed, but at the same time not disappointed.

Ureshino Tamaryokucha

Tea: Ureshino Tamaryokucha 7405
Vendor: Lupicia USA
Price: $8.00 / 50g
Location: Saga, Japan
Vendor Description: Ureshino in Saga Dt., long a producer of roasted Kamairicha, nowadays steam-processes Tamaryokucha, its mainstream tea. This tea has beautiful thinly curled leaves and a deep dark green water color.


This was actually the same tea I reviewed earlier in teabag form. I didn't realize at the time that they were the same tea, and so I had taken notes accordingly. After realizing that the two teas were the same I wondered if I would come to a different conclusion based upon the loose vs. the teabag.

My initial impression of this tea was that the infusion was pale green with a slight cloudiness to it. It had a very normal and mundale aroma to it, although there was a slight grassiness to it.

The taste of the tea was lightly grassy, with a small tang to it on the back end. I noticed hints of a vegetal aftertaste. I tried a second infusion fearing that this was just a weak infustion to begin with. The second infusion was actually quite different. It was very full bodied with a higher sense of astringency and it retained a small bitter tang at the end.

Rating: 4/10

Conclusion: While this was very similar to the teabag form of the same tea, it reaffirmed that there was nothing spectacular about this tea. There are better teas out there and I was relatively unimpressed.

Teabag - Tamayokucha

Tea: Tamayokucha
Vendor: Two leaves and a bud
Price: $7.99 / 15 teabags
Source: Japan
Vendor Description: This incredible Japanese tea is steamed as it dries, yielding a sweet, light flavor with no bitterness - just the taste of a misty morning in a Kyoto garden. Like all high quality Japanese green teas, this tea is green, not brown.

This is the first offering from Two Leaves and a Bud that I have tried. Their teabags are made of the silken material individually packed. The packaging is transparent plastic, but I don't know if it is UV blocking or not. If it does not block UV then it would be important to keep these out of direct sunlight. UV destroys vitamin C. The teabag is a tetrahedral shape which is good.

The tea has a very unusual flavor at the onset, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It has a fruity somewhat vegetal flavor to it. It is very smooth with no bitterness and a very light sense of astringency. It seems almost like a Chinese green tea rather than a Japanese green tea. Unlike the description that it has, the tea is not green. It's more of a yellow color.

Rating: 3/10

Conclusion: While the teabag style is quite good, the tea itself is rather unremarkable. It is advertised as being a Japanese green tea, but it is not particularly representative of green tea. If they had more of a selection this could be fine, but as the only Japanese green it seems a bit odd of one. It seems almost like a Chinese green tea than a Japanese green tea.

Teabag - Grapefruit Green

Tea: Grapefruit Green 38223
Vendor: Lupicia USA
Price: $4.00 / 5 teabags
Vendor Description: The refreshing aromas of green tea and grapefruit are harmonized to create this fresh-tasting tea. A faint touch of bitterness hidden in its astringency is for the adult taste.

This is a flavored green tea from Lupicia. I actually am not a big fan of grapefruit, so I didn't have very high expectations of this tea.

The teabag came individually wrapped, although there are two kinds of packaging that they offer. If you get the 5 pack the teabags are individually wrapped. The 10 pack is just a resealable bag. The teabag is trapezoidal and made of the nylon mesh.

When brewing this tea, the grapefruit smell is rather strong. It is strong enough to drown out any sense of smell from the base green tea. The scent of green tea is normally rather faint so it is not hard for that to get drowned out.

The taste of the tea was quite strong with the grapefruit flavor. It was difficult to tell that the base tea was a green tea. The flavors do actually blend well together though. The grapefruit lends well to the crispness of the tea. When you first sip this tea you notice first and foremost the grapefruit flavor, but then as that tails off you notice the tang from the base tea. The pairing is very good and lends to each other nicely.

Rating: 8/10

Conclusion: While I was afraid that the grapefruit flavor would be too overpowering, it ended up being a very nice pairing. This is a very nice flavored tea, and the teabag style is very good. It's definitely worth a try.

Teabag - Gyokuro

Tea: Gyokuro
Vendor: Maeda-en
Price: $6.50/10 teabags
Vendor Description: Maeda-en's Premium Gyokuro Tea Bag is characterized with clear crystal blue-green color along with Gyokuro's unique balance between bitterness and sweetness. For maximum brewing, we use nylon-mesh tea bag.

This is the first teabag that I decided to review. I was a bit skeptical about this when i picked it up, mostly because I picked it up at an asian grocery store. I have had some of the products from them in the past and was generally happy, although as I got more and more into loose leaf tea I started stepping away from buying tea from non-specialty shops. I love the taste of gyokuro and I figured that this might be a good solution for it.

This teabag is made of the nicer non-paper material. Although the shape of the teabag is the flat satchel type. This was actually the first time I had seen one of these in this shape / material combination. The teabag does come individually wrapped in a foil package.

The leaf itself was rather small and it was a smaller particle size than most gyokuro I have had from them in regular loose leaf packaging from them. The brewed liquor was actually more of a yellow color than I normally see in a gyokuro.

The tea has a very mild vegetal flavor to it, with a weak flavor to it. There is a very light sense of astringency, but all in all this was a very weak flavored gyokuro. This was actually rather surprising considering I steeped this teabag with a rather small amount of water so the ratio of tea to water was rather high. All in all this was a very unremarkable gyokuro.

Rating: 2/10

Conclusion: I was hoping for more out of this teabag, but was disappointed. The style of teabag is ok, but I would have thought a tetrahedral or pyramid shape would have been better. The tea is very weak all around and not worth the cost. All in all you're better off looking elsewhere.

Teabags, an epic quest

So for a while I've been toying with teabags, trying to find a good solution for tea on the go and at the office. I ended up just bringing in a teapot to the office though. But nonetheless I endeavored onto this epic quest and felt that I should document some of it. So I felt I would start by taking a look at some of the styles of teabags that I have seen.

The first thing that I take a look at in a teabag is the material. There are two predominant types of material that I have seen recently.

1) Paper - Good old paper. Tried and true, it's been around since the beginning of teabags. The downside of paper is that it absorbs some of the flavor and you can't really see the tea very well. Paper is also not very forgiving for water to flow through the teabag. On the upside, paper is cheap and biodegradable.
2) Silken / Poly - This is a material that I don't really know how to define it since I can't find much information about the material itself. It is being used in most newer tea bag companies now, and it is reported to be biodegradable. The material does not absorb water, it is a mesh that allows for rather good water flow, but does not dump material into your cup, and is biodegradable. The downside is that i'm sure this material isn't as easy to produce as regular filter paper and is more expensive.

The second thing to look for in a teabag is the shape of the teabag. In my recent experience there are a few different shapes of teabags floating around nowdays.

1) Satchel - At least that's the closest of a name that I can think of to name them, this is the traditional shape of a teabag, folded closed at the top, accordion fold at the bottom. The two side views resemble a triangle and a square when you look at it from the side and the front respectively. If you want to think of an example, think of the traditional Lipton teabag.
2)Pod - The second type of teabag that I have run across is the pod shape, for well you guessed it, pod brewing devices. These are small round teabags that fit into the pod brewing devices normally used for that other less graceful beverage.
3) Tetrahedron - The tetrahedron shape of teabags is getting quite popular among the higher end companies that generate teabags. These are often referred to as pyramid style teabags, but in fact are not pyramids. They have only 4 points to them.
4) Pyramid - This is a true pyramid shaped teabag, and there is only a few companies I have ever seen use these. The packaging does take up more space for them, but they are very nice to see.

Next up is packaging. There are many types of packaging used to store teabags and this does matter when selecting a teabag.

1) Individually wrapped - Individually wrapped teabags are best, since air is only exposed to one teabag at a time and only when you open the teabag. The best wrapping is airtight and UV blocking. This often takes the form of mylar packaging to prevent light and air from being exposed to the tea.
2) Resealable container - More often than not, not all teabags are individually wrapped. This tends to be more environmentally friendly, but exposes the teabags to more air. This is a better solution if you are using the same teabags frequently and go through them in a rather fast manner.

Finally you should look at the tea itself. Most people who read this blog though should know what to look for in the leaves themselves. Although it is frequent and common to see tea that is actually dust or brushings. Teabags are often the place where these end up.

Now with all of that in mind, let's try to find some good teabag tea. Although I probably won't be picking up much of the more common teabags up for review (read Lipton).

Book Review : Tea Chings - The tea and herb companion

Today is time for another book review. This book is Tea Chings - The tea and herb companion by The Republic of Tea (hereafter referred to as RoT). I ended up picking up this book on the way to the airport since I knew I had a long layover. This was a mistake.

The book is divided into two main sections Tea and Herbs. The Tea section was a very broad set of information about the assorted forms of tea, and it was a very quick cursory glance of many of the facets of tea. So broad and quick that you learn much more by reading a few of the pages on wikipedia. There was very little to no really unique information to this book. There are many parts where it made me wonder how many people were writing this book, it almost seemed like it was written a page at a time by different people. One section that comes to mind lists different green teas and describes them. In this section Dragonwell and Long Jing were listed separately, even though they are the same tea. The book is also heavily biased toward RoT products. They don't mention them directly, but it is a very noticeable bias. It also lacks some rather important information. For instance in the section it mentions the Indian black tea grading system it forgets to mention the grades of FTGFOP and SFTGFOP, citing TGFOP as "the absolute top grade".

The second section is in regard to herbs. Now I didn't know much about this going in, and figured that it might have some light to shed on the subject, but again the information was so broad and skimming that I know I would have a better understanding from reading some articles in Wikipedia. It glanced at many facets of deriving medicine from herbs and some instances throughout history. This is a much broader topic and should be covered in much more depth than this book.

I don't really want to go into more detail about this book, well because it doesn't even deserve it. I felt that this book was a waste of my time and money for a book on RoT propaganda. I don't recommend this book to anyone and there are much better books out there for the money and overall.

Rating: 0/10

Tearoom/store: Seven Cups

Today I thought I would review a tearoom / store that I recently had the chance to visit. The store is named Seven Cups. It is owned by a husband and wife, the husband who spent a good deal of time as a tea buyer, and his wife who is a certified Chinese tea master. The name of the store comes from a poem by Lu Tong, which is on their website. The store is divided into two main areas, the front area being the actual store where the back half is for lessons and as a tearoom. The front is filled with an assortment of jars with samples of each of their teas (and from where they get their teas for serving in the tea room) along with foil sealed airtight pouches for purchase. About a third of the front room is taken up by their selection of pu-erh cakes. I'm not versed at all in pu-erh, but from what I heard it was apparently a quite good selection of pu-erh. They also had a few sampler packs, individual samplers, and a good deal of teaware. They had a surprising selection of yixing teapots and assorted accessories. Their prices seemed to be quite reasonable, at least for those items that I had seen at other stores.

Their selection of tea is almost exclusively Chinese. I believe I spied some genmaicha sitting on a shelf somewhere. And of the teas that they had, most of them were teas that I had heard of or read about, but never saw before in a tea store. This included some yellow tea and some fancier oolongs, like Big Red Robe. These rarer teas do have a price to match though.

I had the opportunity to try out some Yellow tea, Meng Ding Huang Ya, and this was my first time trying it out. It was incredibly smooth and mellow, it was worth it's reputation. I of course had to get some. The review will be coming soon.

Another thing to note was the tea club that they have. It is a combination discount club and reward program in one. It's free to sign up for and you get a 10% discount. On top of that every dollar earns you a point toward a 10 dollar gift certificate, 100 points per 10 dollar cert. At the same time they are currently running a promotion with 20% off everything. This does not combine with the 10% discount though. You do accrue points though. I couldn't help but pick out a few items, including the wonderful yellow tea.

If you are ever in the Tucson area, I would suggest stopping in and looking around. Or if you are looking for something special and Chinese in the way of tea, check out their website. They also have a few videos and the like about tea and how to brew them.

The Au Chocolat

Tea: The Au Chocolat 5504
Vendor: Lupicia USA

This is another one of the black flavored Teas from Lupicia. Like the cookie tea it has a very appropriate and very strong smell to the leaves.

Also like the cookie tea, this tea has a large number porus particles. This tea smells a lot like chocolate. Brewing the tea smells a lot like chocolate as well. The liquor has a very dark color to it, that seems almost like coffee in color.

My first thought of this tea is that it was sweet, but not that sweet. It also was not an umami sweetness to it. This really was not much of a surprise to me though, umami is relatively unique to green teas. There was no bitterness to it and a low level of astringency to it.

My first thought to this was that it was disappointing as well since I could not taste very much of a chocolate taste to it. I decided to try this with a bit of sugar and cream. When I added in the cream and sugar it changed the flavor completely, it tastes much more like a cup of hot chocolate than before. This is making me reconsider the cookie tea, which I will probably re-review later with some cream and sugar.

Rating: 8/10

Conclusion: Without the cream and sugar this tea was rather unimpressive. When I tried it with the cream and sugar it was very tasty. While I don't think of this as a spectacular pure tea, it is a nice change.