Tag: White Tea

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Living Leaf Tea’s Gong Mei White Tea

Gong Mei White Tea by Living Leaf Tea
White Tea / Straight
$14.95USD for 30g

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Living Leaf Tea has provided me with Gong Mei White Tea for the purposes of providing an honest review. I received this product at no charge to me and received no other compensation.

First Impressions

Gong Mei White Tea is possibly one of the most minimally processed teas that I’ve ever had the pleasure of steeping. This tea came to me in a resealable white bag with a simple label. “100% Organic High Mountain Tea” is printed just under the Living Leaf Tea name and I just know it’s going to be good. This Gong Mei White Tea is a straight white tea from Yunnan, China.

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The dry leaf is beautiful. Unlike other teas that I’ve tried in the past, this one has these beautiful unrolled leaves. I can see fuzzy feathering on the leaves, and several pieces are two leaves and a bud – the ideal tea leaves. This tea is hand picked, and I believe it given the care with each piece. The dry leaf has a very mild fragrance to it – it has a natural sweetness to it that reminds me of apples.

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Preparation

There were no steeping instruction in either the packaging or the product page on the Living Leaf Tea website, so I opted to follow the steeping guidelines for white teas from the Tea Association of Canada. I steeped this beautiful straight white tea in 80°C (185°F) for an initial steep of 2 minutes.

First Taste

After a short two minute steep, Gong Mei White Tea looks like a barely tinted water. The colouring is so pale that I almost thought I forgot to actually steep leaves! Luckily, what it lacked in colour was greatly made up for in taste. This white tea has a light sweetness to it, and a fruity flavour. It reminds me greatly of apples still, which is lovely because I do like apples. The tea itself is very light and has a very clean taste to it. I found there was no bitterness, no astringency, just a sweet and light liquor.

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A Second Cup?

I resteeped Gong Mei White Tea fourteen times (so fifteen steeps total). The tea gets consistently darker and more golden until about the eighth steep, after that it starts getting paler. The tea has a lovely sweetness to the apple flavour that holds well until the fifteenth steep. The tea develops a thickened mouthfeel to it by the sixth steep, which paired well with the honey sweetness of the apple flavours in this straight white tea. Near the end, I was pouring excess tea from my teapot into a pitcher to put into the fridge for iced tea (spoiler alert: it makes an excellent iced tea).

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My Overall Impression

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I loved Living Leaf Tea’s Gong Mei White Tea. It’s rare that I come across a tea that is such high quality and holds up so well to many resteeps, let alone a total of 15 steeps of the same leaves. This tea was a joy to have over a morning (and an afternoon). For the price of the tea, I do think that you get much more value than what you pay for. The flavour of Gong Mei White Tea is lovely, the colouring is beautiful. I really like teas that can be steeped and resteeped again, especially when the texture and flavours subtly change – and this tea really delivers on that. While I really enjoyed Gong Mei White Tea as a hot tea, it also did very well iced, so if you’re finding that you don’t want to (or are just unable to…) have more than a dozen steeps of this tea in a day, you can always steep some to save for later.

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DavidsTea’s Tea the North

Tea the North by DavidsTea
White Tea / Flavoured
$10.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

I was at my local DavidsTea and I asked my friendly neighbourhood tea pusher what the new tea was and he told me that it was Tea the North. Now, I know DavidsTea already has a maple syrup tea called Oh Canada! so I wasn’t really expecting something similar, but still was expected something with some maple influences, or something else that screamed ‘Canada’ to me. What I smelled instead was a lot of coconut and pineapple. Instant recoil from the container holding the sample that I was just smelling because it just did not make sense.

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Tea the North consists of: melon, pineapple, coconut, white tea, hibiscus, sweet blackberry leaves, apple, rose petals, rhubarb, safflower blossoms, and natural flavouring. He had rattled off the list of ingredients to me and I must have looked confused because then he told me that most of the ingredients were white or red. Oh. I suppose that makes sense? But coconut and pineapple does not scream Canada to me – it makes me think of pina coladas (and getting caught in the rain). Nevertheless, I wanted to try a bit of this white tea blend because I’m a bleeding heart (and Canada Day is one of my upmost favourite holidays).

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Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Tea the North in hot water for 4 to 7 minutes. For those interested, “hot water” is defined on the product page as being 167-176°F or 75-80°C. I did an initial steep of 5 minutes in 175°F water.

First Taste

Tea the North steeps to a bright red – which did not surprise me given the fact that the blend includes hibiscus, rhubarb, and safflower blossoms. The taste of this tea is… interesting? There’s sweetness to it that comes from the fruit (melon, pineapple, apple), and a touch of tartness (from the hibiscus and possibly the rhubarb). I think I would describe this as being primarily coconut and artificial flavouring. The coconut flavour is heavy in this white tea blend, and there’s just something about it that lingers on my tongue that I just do not like. I’m not sure if it is the flavouring in this tea, or maybe just the combination of flavours, but coconut takes center stage and all the other ingredients (aside from adding a touch of sweetness or tartness) stay in the background – the far, far background.

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A Second Cup?

I didn’t really want to, but I did resteep Tea the North. The second time around was not an improvement on the first, I’m afraid. Is it possible for coconut to strengthen in flavour? Because that’s what it seemed to do here. The mix of sweet and tart was incredibly muted this time around, and I felt like it was just coconut again, with an odd aftertaste that seemed sour to me.

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My Overall Impression

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I didn’t like DavidsTea’s Tea the North. I wanted to at least love this tea blend, because I’m a sucker for all things Canada and with the impending 150th birthday (tomorrow/July 1st), I really wanted to love this tea. I think it’s cute that they did a blend of primarily red and white ingredients instead of doing maple (again), but I feel like it really missed its mark. The aroma of coconut and pineapple don’t make me think of Canada at all, and the tea itself was a bit of fail in the flavor department.

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Citizen Tea’s White Cranberry

White Cranberry by Citizen Tea
White Tea / Flavoured
$11.00 for 50g

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Citizen Tea has provided me with White Cranberry for the purposes of providing an honest review. I received this product at no charge to me and received no other compensation.

First Impressions

This is the first of a few reviews from Citizen Tea, which I was really excited to receive in the mail. White Cranberry was the first I tried because I was feeling like having something light – which I typically find white teas to be light. This white tea blend consists of: white tea, bamboo leaves, snow white tea, pomegranate leaves, and flavouring.

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The description of this tea on Citizen Tea’s website states that there are cranberry blossoms in it somewhere (perhaps that is in the flavouring?). This tea smells amazing, I’m not going to lie. It has a very bright, fruity smell to it. The smell reminds me exactly of dried sweetened cranberries – do you know what craisins smell like? It’s just like that, and I love craisins so it’s a great smell to me.

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Preparation

Citizen Tea recommends steeping this white tea blend in 80°C (176°F) water for 2-3 minutes. The initial steep I did of White Cranberry was for 2 minutes in 175°F water, because that is the white tea setting on my Breville IQ Kettle.

First Taste

White Cranberry steeps to a lovely yellow colour, it smells strongly of cranberries. On first taste, the flavour of the tea is muted compared to the fragrance of the steeped tea. I find that the tea has a mild sweetness, even though it does smell a lot steeper than it actually is. The white tea base isn’t overpowered by the fruity taste. I do think it tastes like cranberries, with a hint of something else that reminds me a bit of raspberries. I find the tea itself to be smooth and free of bitterness. It’s enjoyable, and two minutes was a good length of tea time.

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A Second Cup?

I steeped White Cranberry a second time (for 2 minutes 30 seconds) and I found the colour was signficiantly lighter. The taste of this white tea blend was considerably more tea base and less cranberry. The base itself is delicious – it has a very mild sweetness with light vegetal taste to it. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of berry flavours the second time around, but it was a bit of a treat to be exposed to the white tea base in this blend.

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My Overall Impression

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I liked Citizen Tea’s White Cranberry. I really liked it during the first steep – the fruity taste of the cranberries in this white tea blend is delicious. I think it smells really good (both dry leaf and steeped), but I do wish that it resteeped a little bit better. That said, the price of this tea quite reasonable for a white tea blend. I find white teas are generally more expensive, and the price point of this tea (and others) on the Citizen Tea website are quite competitive. I think White Cranberry works really well for the first steep, if you’re in love with the fruity taste. The second steep is a good experience with the white tea, I just wish that the cranberry taste carried over better – but both steeps are good.

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