“As summer ends and autumn arrives, the shorter days and cooler nights tell nature to shut down for the winter, revealing new flashes of bright colour and earthy darkness. This tea embodies the season with purple malva blossoms, orange marigolds, tart rhubarb and sumac berries, red currants and rose petals. It’s a warming tea full of contrasts, blended with a rare green rooibos.”

The ingredients were exactly as listed above. Amidst the rare green rooibos lay copious amounts of color from the cornucopia of ingredients. It smelled like a sweet snack food for mountain hikers. The recommended brewing was 1.5 tsp per cup, four-to-six minuntes in 100C water. I went with 2 teaspoons in 16 oz. of boiling water for five minutes. Mainly because I’m American…and have no clue about Celcius.

This brewed to a persimmon orange color. Very deep. Not the usual yellow-green associated with green rooibos. It smelled a bit like freshly-fallen apples. The taste was extremely difficult to pinpoint and/or breakdown. I am wary of using the expression “explosion of flavor”, since I’ve used it before…but I just did. And I can say that it did, indeed, taste like autumn. And being an autumn kid, that is easily a plus. Smooth, relaxing, and cozy…like taking a stroll among falling leaves.

Dry, like many white and green teas, Bai Hao Yin Zhen smells somewhere between grass and hay. I thought I also detected the slight scent of mint. The tea consists of rather attractive looking buds – not leaves and when wet, they give off an order that reminds me of egg salad.

I steeped two heaping teaspoons for three minutes in six ounces of Aquafina (my favorite bottled water). This produced a surprisingly thick-bodied liquor with a pale brown color. Both the taste and order were rather subtle, but I might have detected hints of almonds and zucchini. I found the flavor to be slightly bitter with noticeable saltiness that lingered in mouth for some time.

All in all, I was disappointed in the flavor of this Bai Hao Yin Zhen which was lacking complexity and depth. It remained somewhat flat and with out much flavor throughout the tasting process. But the saltiness is what I disliked the most. I found it – can I say – irritating? Perhaps because I have never experienced a salty tea and was not expecting it.

The website indicated that this tea is picked in April. I have also read that the liquor of this white tea should be light green – not brown. Perhaps my tasting experience was influenced by the fact that the tea must have been more than a year old. I would be wiling to try this year’s crop as I usually find drinking white teas to be a rather pleasant experience.

This oolong consists of rather dark little oolong nuggets. These little oolong fists are darker than many other green oolongs, which is fairly representative of what you find with the Wuyi oolongs. The smell coming from my sample package is not impressive and, truthfully, doesn’t even smell all that fresh. Nevermind that fact because the cup that they yield is delicious. I am a girl that prefers my oolongs more on the green side than the very roasted dark oolong counterparts. Not that I don’t enjoy them, I just prefer the greener ones. The Wuyi oolongs tend to walk the line and strike the balance between light and dark oolongs that I just love. This is earthy and you can taste a touch of the roastedness. However, there are still plenty of floral notes and a distinct peachiness. This one is even just a touch creamy.

Obviously, I like this and definitely think that it is worth consideration. It is a tad on the pricey side, but oolong is what I consider to be an investment tea. Meaning? I will definitely open my wallet and pay a few bucks more to get a good one because when I drink oolong, I like to infuse the leaves at minimum 2-3 times, so I want to make sure that I have chosen one that I really like to drink. This one is a good choice.

Fortunately that has yet to happen. So for he has yet to send us anything undrinkable, and a few of his blends have even become personal favourites. Generally you can’t go wrong with anything you choose to buy from http://www.davidstea.com/, and if your worried it might not be up to snuff, just send him an email and ask, so far he’s been pretty forthcoming, even in regards to the dark secrets of tea flavouring.

On the topic of flavouring, my water has quite a bit. While the water here is very drinkable, at least with a little filtering, its still your basic California liquid rock. Half the weight of a well used California tea kettle is the mineral build up, and a water softener just isn’t in my budget. This has been the bane of many a white tea, for even though white teas often have wonderful flavours, their usually too mild to get through the taste of Granite. White Tiger to the rescue!

No I’m not referring to my brief career as a Luchador (just picture my tea-fed physique in spandex, makes you quiver, eh ladies?) but the name of an unusually strong Pomegranate and Blueberry flavoured white tea. White tiger is very strong for a white tea, although still not in the realm of greener leaves. Its the white tea that comes through, unlike with other fruit blends the flavours of Pomegranate and blueberry compliment the tea, as opposed to obliterating it in its wake. What really comes through is a light, unbitter, broccoli and asparagus flavour with a compliment of fresh blueberries, and just a few drops of Pomegranate juice to season. Its well worth the price, and is possibly one of the better things to come out of Canada.. that and Hockey.

Usually if the site has this much flare, I grow skeptical of the company’s wares. I hadn’t tried anything from David’s before. Other reviews had been mostly positive, so that was a good sign. That and their selection was as diverse as their mini tea-cumentaries.

The site explains that their Himalayan Traveller’s Tea is organically grown at 5,000 feet above sea-level in Nepal. I don’t know what it is about high-elevation teas, but the scents emanating from ‘em tend to be layered with fruit overtones. Traveller’s Tea is no different.

Far be it from me to use taster notes, but it has a citrus tone. As far as I can tell, there are no citrus elements. Bizarre for a black tea with no blending. In short order, after reveling in the perplexing scent, I brewed 2 teaspoons in 16 oz. of boiling water for five minutes.

The liquor was distinctly copper-colored, possessing a deep, earthy smell. However, not the usual black tea-ish scent. Taste-wise, it was lighter than most black teas, more like a silky oolong feel – very gentle. No bite, but maybe a nibble. After two excellent infusions, I had a urge to go backpacking.

With a Sherpa.