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Sipdown! (17)

Polished off another of my oldest teas! This was actually a gift from my mom, she sweetly sent me a set of Stash’s holiday collection (in January of 2022) after I complained that no stores near me seemed to carry holiday teas. This was the last tea from that box!

This was a very pleasant infusion, especially since I don’t generally like chocolate teas, and lavender is iffy. Mostly this is mint though, with lavender as a sidekick and a bit of creamy cocoa in the background. Not something I would repurchase, though I don’t tend to buy teabags in general. But mostly because I would rather blend my own version at this point.

Sipdown! (9)

Definitely making better progress on sipping these Obubu teas since I made it one of my goals for the year (and made a tracker spreadsheet, obviously). I have a lot to go through, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get to the point where I’m keeping up the tea club shipments, but it would be nice to be only a year or two behind LOL!

Anyway, this still tastes delicious despite being from September of 2022. This is one of their hojicha that’s made from sencha rather than bancha, I want to say a summer sencha in this case? So it definitely has a grassier, greener, and sharper flavor to it IMO. Not overly sharp, but moreso than their basic hojicha. A bit more intensity as well, though I did also overleaf this cup so I wouldn’t have the dreaded half-cup’s-worth of tea left over. Anyway, still nicely toasty and woodsy with a little bit of roasted nut in there as well. A cozy tea for the cold weather we’re having here in Austin.

Sipdown! (8)

Another oldest tea bites the dust! This was one nice enough, but I always felt like it needed more flavoring, and found it odd that they added hibiscus to a tea with vanilla in it. I get it, it makes the orange pop more, but I feel like it works against the vanilla. Still a perfectly fine blend, just ends up tasting a little more generically hibiscus than I would prefer (though not very tart). The green maté base is soft and haylike, gently herby and earthy.

As for the company, note sure if they went out of business or…? Their website is there but checkout is disabled. A shame, I was curious to try a couple of their other blends.

So Vallhallow was kind enough to gift me a bunch of Lupicia teas that she wanted to rehome, thank you! And a bunch of them are from her Japan order, including this one! Yeeee! This is named after and inspired by Portuguese glass, which is apparently a popular souvenir in Nagasaki. Interesting! The pink and blue konpeito are so cute and festive, and I love the colors together.

Flavor-wise, it’s a lychee and grapefruit black tea, and it’s delightful! I can taste both flavors clearly, and the bright grapefruit and syrupy, floral lychee make a great pairing. The grapefruit is prominent at the beginning of the sip, but then there’s a lovely sweet lychee finish. I will say it looks like there’s some Darjeeling here, as there are a few green leaves interspersed among the brown ones in the spent leaf. So maybe next time I’ll experiment with a slightly lower temperature to see how that affects the flavor of the base. Looking forward to sipping through this one, and trying the others as well!

Sipdown! (7)

One of my oldest teas down, yay! This was purchased in the spring of 2021.

For some reason I’ve just never loved this tea, which is why it stuck around for so long. I think it’s the salted aspect of it, which I do enjoy with sencha, but find a bit odd with hojicha. There is a noticeable salinity and slippery texture, and I just don’t love it with the toasty base. Obubu has a hoji sakura sencha sometimes and I definitely prefer that one, but I do tend to prefer Obubu’s sakura teas in general because there is no sugar or salt, only dried blossoms and leaves. But Lupicia’s Sakura & Berry is still a favorite, and one that I will repurchase in the spring! :)

Sipdown! (5)

Teavivre’s dragon pearls definitely ruined this tea for me, ha ha. It has none of the rich cocoa notes that I expect, and instead tastes much more generic – very woody and earthy with a bit of a barnyard hay flavor. Not terrible by any means, but definitely not up to the standard I’m accustomed to when it comes to hongcha. This is why I only buy unflavored teas from companies specializing in them, ha ha… Yes, I am a tea snob. XD

So one of my tea goals this year is to have matcha at least 3 times a week, because I haven’t made any in months and I have quite a stash of unopened packages. Obubu has sent matcha in their tea club multiple times, plus I chose a matcha set as part of my pledge in their first Kickstarter, so I have no fewer than six unopened 25-30 gram pouches from them! (They’re actually running a campaign at the time of this post to start a bus line so people can more easily get from Kyoto or Osaka to their farm, so go check that out!)

Anyway, I opened my oldest package, from the spring of 2023, and was delighted to see how green it looked and how fresh it still smelled. It was a bit clumpy, but nothing that a good sifting couldn’t fix. Huzzah for airtight packaging! It’s been a while, but my oat latte with maple syrup still came out scrumptious, and the matcha is deliciously smooth with mellow earthy and fresh grass flavors and not a hint of bitterness in the slightest. Looking forward to having this multiple times a week! :)

The Kickstarter campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obubuteafarms/shuttle-to-tea-wonderland-community-bus-line-to-wazuka-cho

So I was working on my tea goals for the year yesterday, and one of them was to drink either a single teabag (I have a small pile from a swap) or sample size, or a cup of one of my oldest teas every day. I keep a small, clear acrylic bin on my tea counter with my 5 oldest teas in it, to try to encourage me to drink them up, and this happens to be one of them. I probably won’t always post about those sips, but I figured I would today.

Such a lovely everyday sort of tea, as all A&D teas are (or I guess now it’s “were”, isn’t it? QQ). It’s smoky but not ashy or mineral, instead it has a satisfying and meaty savoriness to it, along with a hefty texture that makes it feel a bit like a meal. The bottom notes are very earthy and woody, and support the smoke well. Even a hint of a dried fruit or winey quality maybe? I don’t always drink smoked teas, but if I did I think I would reach for this one often. :)

My tea goals (so far):
- at least 1 sipdown/day (365 for the year)
- under 200 teas by end of year
- no-buy January though March (then reassess)
- drink 5+ teas per day
- drink an Obubu tea every day
- drink a teabag, sample, or oldest tea every day
- drink matcha 3+ times per week
- start cold steeping again
- reorganize tea counter bins

Sipdown! (3)

This is one of the holdouts from the year that I bought all the supermarket holiday teabags. Probably because I do tend to neglect teabags if they’re in the cupboard and not visible on my tea counter.

This isn’t a favorite, but it’s not bad considering it’s a hibiscus-forward blend. It actually ends up tasting a bit like red wine, there’s even an almost alcoholic note to it. A bit sweet and there’s a moderate amount of candy cinnamon. It’s perfectly pleasant, but not one I would purchase again as I’m not the biggest fan of these spiced hibiscus sort of teas.

Sipdown! (1)

Happy 2025, tea friends! So happy to have a blank slate for sipdowns, as I did horribly last year ha ha. Starting things off with this holiday tea from the December S&V subscription!

I enjoyed this one a lot actually, even if it wasn’t really what I expected. It’s very creamy and has a buttercream frosting-like richness to it. The red fruit is there as well, and I wouldn’t call it subtle but it’s more in the background than the cream. Does have a nice tang to it though. The cocoa is subtle but it’s there, just adding a bit more depth and a slightly toasty bottom note.

I will say, I feel like the base in this is different vs. some of their other teas? It feels more Assam-y to me or something, rather than the earthy Chinese base I’m used to. Nice for this tea though, because of all the rich notes. Not sure I would order a tin of this, just because I don’t tend to reach for desserty teas these days, but would recommend!