Reading that on the website made me laugh, Detox is a mood now?

Like you’d expect from Monkey’s paw the leaves resemble the squiggly line drawings of small children, each set of leaves and bud resembling the hectic mish-mash that you must decipher into just the right animal to appease the little tyke. The mass of dry leaves are actually quite fetching due to their rich green color, offset with bits of white undercoat and kept light and ethereal by their wickedly bent forms. This brew not only smells lightly of asparagus, but also tastes a bit like it in all the best ways.

The leaves invigorate, resembling nothing more than untouched well-leached leaf litter at the bottom of a stream. A mute green chaos at the bottom of the glass turning the water a light yellow green in gently extracted stratifications, like smoke from a serial line of incense sticks lightly layering the air. With the first sip I could tell that these leaves are very much on the sensitive side and tend to bitter with the slightest provocation, but with a little love and understanding it was able to leach a rich, grilled asparagus flavor that was both surprising and welcome. Its not so much a “would buy again” as an, “looking to order more while typing this review” experience. Buy and enjoy, with as many people as you can talk into sharing the pot.

Or at least thats how I picture the snotty 23 year old with the belly button ring responding when I casually mention that the cafe’s Assam is a little mild. I choose to picture that so I can grumble about those dang kids and their MTV, and Melrose Place. And where do those belly button rings go? I mean they seem to be standard issue up till somewhere around their 26th birthday, and then they just disappear. Maybe thats where Cafe stirring spoons and silver tea balls come from.

At any rate, back to the tea! Its a bit mild for an Assam. By mild I don’t mean flavorless, or meager, or weak, its in fact rich, forming a complex weave of light chocolate and honey threads on the tongue. In my experience Assam is generally on the knock your socks off scale to balance out the milk that so often goes with it, while this could pair well with milk, I found it to be a bit too diluting. This brew falls more in the range of something you’d make while half asleep in the morning to make your brain work, at least to the capacity it worked before you went to sleep.

That probably seemed not at all related to a review of this tea, and thats fair, but I’d say that, as with wine tasting, tea tasting requires a broad palate. You can’t drink tea or wine and say its “muscatel” without refining your understanding thereof by consuming Muscatel wines. These leaves are rife with the rich, malty, grape-ey flavors of Muscatel wines, but due to the devaluation of the term Muscatel by pretty much every Darjeeling on the market I doubt this particular Puttabong Darjeeling will get the credit it deserves. This is a shame because, if this batch is any representation of their craft, the men and women of the Puttabong estate know their muscatel. Its got that sweet-malty flavor that seems to straddle the taste buds between really rich chocolate and grapes or raisins. Its not bitter (but follow the three minute instructions on the label as it can easily become bitter) but it is strong enough that your more casual black tea drinker will most likely find it best cut with milk or sugar. I was able to get three or four steeps from a single pot of leaves, so

Now to tackle the letters, which expand to “Super Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe 1″, and somehow they get Clonal from Q, of all that only Tippy, Orange Pekoe, and Clonal matter, the rest is just a sort of product-identity and advertising. By the last bit I just mean that all the other words in the description are based on unstandardized ratings that can vary widely in meaning, definition, and legal status from country to country and estate to estate. Orange Pekoe refers to the sieve size that the leaves were sorted with, there are a procession of sieves, they work from the widest to the smallest and anything that doesn’t fall through gets the grade of the sieve. Tippy just means that its tips, which needs to be said as the smaller bits would appear to be mis-graded if you didn’t know this. Clonal boarders on meaningless, because practically all teas, that are not harvested from wild genetically recombinant trees, are clones. Cloning is not a bad thing, its fun, get yourself some plants and try it out.

So to summarize this is an excellent Darjeeling, one of the few marked as Muscatel while actually tasting of Muscatel. I’d recommend it most strongly to people, who like myself, enjoy a good strong black tea, or to people who prefer more, ahem, British tea traditions.

I fell deeply in like, not love, with the little packet before me due to its Mild flavor. Being mild, in the realm of “Tropical” fruits at any rate, is a good thing! because in my own personal lexicon tropical implies mild weather, mild warmth, on a nice mild beach with a mild drink and a soft mild flower in a somewhat-less-than-mild womans hair. The white tea was a great choice towards the higher goal of keeping it mild, it doesn’t overpower the light pineapple and coconut flavors.

I probably wouldn’t purchase this tea myself, I’m just not that into flavored teas, although I would be far more likely to purchase this blend than anything else named similarly. To those who do enjoy flavored tea blends, and have developed an attraction to the subdued micro-notes of white tea I’d say, go wild, let your fingers write a check your bank can’t cash. Well not literally, don’t write a hot check…

I suppose this is a sort of best of the worst, as far as teabags go its not as horrible as most, it doesn’t use non-biodegradable materials, or sometimes flavor altering bleaches, you don’t have to worry that some kid in a third world country is going to get hospitalized tomorrow from runoff as the materials and manufacturing processes are more than likely clean (industrial binders and bleaches probably are not in play here), so if your in desperate need of a baggie by all means pick up this one, that said.. I still don’t see a problem in just letting the leaves float free in your cup to be honest.

I don’t mean to sound mean, its just I’m not very fond of teabags as a general rule.

These two little specks on a molecular biologists glasses, lets call them Billy and Fred, spend all their time absorbing the crude building blocks of life forming all around them, partly to continue their own evolution, and partly to prevent any little upstarts from dashing their dreams of a family tree culminating in Brussels Sprouts. Its hard work, its laborious work, and when a particularly tenacious amino acid refused to get in line, Billy said “To hell with this!” and gobbled down Fred instead. If you’ve ever known a Fred I’m sure you can sympathize.

Thus began the long tradition of eating thy neighbor to spare yourself the pesky business of turning inanimate compounds into organic structures, a tradition which has reached its zenith in crisp tasty bacon!

I am a great fan of bacon, bacon of all shapes, forms and sizes, I’m even able to enjoy assorted non-pork variants of bacon, such as soy bacon, turkey bacon, and the wildly tasty Salmon Bacon. On hearing that some wonderful individual had indeed found a way to merge Bacon, Maple Syrup, and tea into a singly, purchasable, product, I naturally assumed I was laying semi-dead in a coma ward drooling incessantly, but alas, and hark the Herald angels (er the ones that Herald coronary bypasses) it does exist.

This beautiful Frankenstein is the brainchild of 52teas, the tea-a-week club that also brought us such interesting blends as Cherry Vanilla Cola Black Tea and Golden Raisin Oolong. Most of the flavored tea fans here seem to spend an extraordinary amount of time drooling over these blends each week, so I figured it was about time to give them a try. These blends are available in 2oz vacuum sealed bags, which they seem to ship out at a breakneck pace. The leaves are small richly dark fragments, which can be forgiven as this is a Flavored black tea and larger fragments would be almost out of place here, the tea is interspersed with bits of bacon, or soy bacon, and smells richly of its two namesakes.

While I’ve made quite a few cups of tea, shouting SCIENCE before imbibing each one I assure you, I only took notes on a few. Overall its a wonderful black tea with Maple overtones, and a hint of smoky bacon, I was slightly disappointed that the bacon wasn’t stronger, but since I’m not a huge fan of flavored teas to begin with, having the simple black take precedence was hardly a flaw. Still I can see how fans of strongly flavored teas might feel minutely gypped. In its defense, it is a very stable black tea, strong, but balanced, without really hinting as to its origin, sort of a good all round generalized black tea about town.

After mentioning my mild disappointment it was mentioned, by the Zoomdweebie himself (Frank), that some have found it tasted better with a pinch of salt, but try as I might I couldn’t find a single salt that brought out the flavor of bacon and not brine. Still, like I said, its mild, not absent, and does come through the maple a bit more in the second steep. I’ll probably buy it again.

Well, enough social Commentary. While wandering the Isles of my local Albertsons grocery store I stumbled on a wonderful new product in the Vodka section. R. J. Reed’s Old Style Southern Sweet Tea, a Sweet Tea Flavored vodka. Now due to a lack of ingredients list I’m not sure if the flavorings contain any actual tea, or if an artificial simulation of that rich (dare I say beautiful) sweet tea flavor was constructed by their union flavor elves, but either way I’m sure it fits this venue.

We’ve all seen Green Tea flavored Vodkas and spirits, as well as Chai and tea based Liqueurs, but this is the first Sweet Tea based product I’ve seen. After a quick Google, the best verb in the history of verbs, I found that the idea of a sweet tea flavored Vodka is not even remotely new, and can also be found in a product by Firefly. Something about a simple syrup laden sweet tea seems very at home with vodka, like a mixed cocktail in a bottle.

I tried this sweet elixir strait up and unchilled, and I recommend to you completely, utterly, and whole heartedly not to do that. As I’ve found in the directions of other Sweet Tea Vodkas online you should split this intoxicant about two parts Sweet Tea Vodka to one part water, or simply let your ice melt a bit, oh you’ll need ice. Like true sweet tea this demands ice. Its sweet and syrupy with a rich smooth black tea flavor that just begs to be drunk, so much so that you should pretty much assume your drunk when you’ve finished as you, no doubt, have had far far more than you planned to.

One downside, a few quick searches have not produced any information about this product. I can find quite a bit about Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka, Hound Dog Sweet Tea Vodka, and Jeremiah Weed Tea Vodka, but nothing about this one. Not sure why that is, maybe its a very new product, maybe its manufacturer R. J. Reed LTD is a sub of a sub that doesn’t have any significant web presence, either way it may be found at your local grocery store. If I find an on-line source I’ll keep you all very much posted.

I am a Fan of the Yunnan region, I’d say everyone who appreciates Chinese teas of any style or variety is a fan. Yunnan is home to many renowned mountains that produce the worlds finest Oolongs, Puerhs, and a uniquely primitive leafy variety of green Tea. I don’t know if there have been any actual studies of Tea Tree Strains in Yunnan, but there do seem to be rather alot of them, each one producing a separate, and heartily renowned tea, and their black teas are no exception. This is a good tea.

I said good not great though. The leaves were certainly pretty enough, the scent sweet, the texture firm, the shape spindly, the color rich. I brewed it a number of ways, and did enjoy it well enough, but no sparks, if it were a date we’d decide to be ‘just friends’. It has many good qualities, a sweetness, thats not quite as sweet as Ceylon, or other Yunnan red teas, a tannin depth, though not quite as deep as Darjeeling, a savoriness, but not quite as savory as Assam. In short, this tea is a dedicated generalist that, like an American SUV, tries to do many things, but doesn’t quite do any of them perfectly. Its definitely worth purchasing and having on hand, and I’d love to try another seasons harvest as there seems to be a missing greatness that may just mean this was a particularly flat year, but don’t expect this to be much more than a pleasing cup to follow a meal.

This, like any Rooibos blend, differs starkly from tea in that its lightly woody to nutty, can be brewed as long or as hot as you like without getting bitter, and won’t give you even the slightest of buzzes. I tried it three times and found that the best results come from using water right from a boil for around ten minutes, and about twice to three times the recommended amount. None of this is odd, I prefer strong brews and flavored tisanes usually come a little light in that department and require just a bit more material.

The scent is intoxicating, which screams well the aromatics of the Cinnamon, and just a bit of a fruit twist. On the tongue the bit becomes a shadow. I love Cinnamon, so the rich, strong, spicy cinnamon makes this a blend to keep on the shelf, but its not really Figgy, figs are a mild flavor to begin with, and all that really comes through is the sugars of the fig. Maybe my disappointment comes from the rich almost banana flavored figs I used to get fresh from the backyard tree. Maybe a little banana flavor added to the mix would bring this out, or maybe it would ruin it for everyone else, these are the reasons I’m not a blender.

This is a great little blend, I wouldn’t buy it expecting a “Figsperience” (copyrighting that as the name of my new fruit theme park) but its a great slightly sweet cinnamon rooibos, provides a little excitement in a chilled thermos to break up the work day, and strikes me as an interesting rub for cooking meat and vegetables. This is one of the weekly blends from 52teas tea of the month program, and is still currently available. Frank from 52teas wanted me to let fans of the site (or totally new customers for that matter) know that they’ve re-blended ten of their top products, so if you see one you liked, it might still be available, go look.. I’ll wait..

(EDIT: As corrected in the comments, Lao Mansa is where the tea came from, somehow I missed the Map right on the product page. Revel in my mistake.)

This tea is so young you should probably check its ID before bringing it home to prevent legal issues. Young is not a bad thing, in fact if its to your taste it can be a very good thing, I find them to be the “green tea” of puerh and really appreciate their sharp rich vegetable flavors. Being this years harvest, and not having been subjected to artificial “ripening” this puerh still holds on to its green tea qualities, and lacks the earthy quality of older/riper puerhs.

In all the cups I was able to get from the chunk I sampled, and they were many, expect at least three good steeps from it, the tea remained strong and vegital, not in a buttery way, but in a lightly blanched broccoli way. It was both sweet and sharp, and will disappoint if thats not your sort of thing, but it most assuredly is mine. I like Raw Puerh, unapologetically. You could age this, and the vegital and tannin qualities would seem to indicate that it would taste amazing, and perhaps a little floral, with five or six years under its belt.