Bar Harbor Tea Company: Mango Green

Ohmygod. Smell this. Go on, just stare at the screen as hard as you can and imagine smelling the best thing in the world. Imagine smelling the air right after a magical mango fairy flies by. Imagine smelling Zeus, as he's lounging back on Mount Olympus and sipping mango nectar. Mmmm, Zeus.




I am rashly prepared to award this tea five leaves without even having brewed any, because it smells so amazing. If the infusion tastes even a quarter of how delightful it smells in the tin, I'll be thrilled. Even if it sucks, I'm going to buy more just to smell.

So, I acquired this at a tiny, brightly-lit and sparkling new shop in Bar Harbor, Maine. The shop has only been there for a matter of weeks, but all of the blends I smelled were truly delightful and I carefully carried home a sack of the most unique ones I could find, mostly fall-themed, with which I will entertain you in the following weeks. On to the mango!

As you can sort of see in the picture, there are flowers in the mix (although what type of flowers they might be eludes me, they're orange) and the little delicious mango nuggets are rather moist, very fresh. Did I mention it smells like the angel of mangos? The brewed liquor (which I made an entire pot of, in anticipation) is darker than most greens, beautifully clear, and retains a strong fruity aroma.

First sip: oh. Oh my. Even without the mango, the green tea flavor in this is awesome, deep, complex, grassy in a good way. You can really taste the mango but it's not so overwhelming that the tea flavors fall away into the background. Absolutely beautiful blend - unfortunately, it's fairly unusual to find one that's balanced this well, many fruit teas either go overboard or underboard on the fruit flavor. This is perfect.

Bar Harbor Tea Company is a very new shop, and thus they are still developing their web presence. Their webpage, which is currently just a splash page, is here. The owner told me that they expect to have online retail available in a month or so. I highly encourage you to patronize them as the first company to produce a tea with an aroma that made me caper around my apartment in glee, and I'll be reviewing several of their autumn blends in the coming weeks.

Rating:
Notes: Probably the best fruit tea I've ever tried, high-quality, affordable and delicious. I can't wait until the online store goes up, and you'll see a notification on the blog when that happens.

Rishi 100% Premium Tealeaf Powder: Sencha

Meet Rishi 100% Premium Tealeaf Powder.

So a few weeks ago, on something of a whim, I picked this up in my grocer's tea section. I'm not going to lie to you: I picked it up expressly thinking to myself, "This looks to be amazingly awful and I will mock it to my heart's content on The Teaist."





Bzzzt. Wrong. Alas, I was a fool to base my entire assumption on the color of the beverage on the front of the box. I have been cheated out of my opportunity to be witty, because this foul, swampy-looking green powder is truly a miracle and I cannot seem to cease singing its praises nor buying it in large quantities.

Essentially, Rishi has recognized a problem I'm sure lots of us have - tea is wonderful, but worthwhile unsweetened bottled teas are very difficult to come by in convenience stores while one is out and about. Also, there are no doubt many people like myself who have been late for class dozens of times running out the door carrying a dangerously steaming Thermos of boiling water because they need tea to survive biological anthropology. You get the picture.

This product is very finely crushed up tea leaves. That's all it is. It is nothing like iced tea powder, which dissolves completely in water and is tooth-rottingly sweet. Rishi Tealeaf Powder is only a tiny single-serving envelope full of (surprise) tea leaf powder and when you dump it into 16 ounces of water, it forms a strangely colored but fantastic tasting unsweet green tea - immediately. You dump it into a bottle of water, shake it up, and it turns into an oddly opaque green emulsion of tea wonderment. It isn't lumpy or unpleasantly textured as I was expecting. It tastes grassy, refreshing, full-flavored and delicious, exactly like a sencha ought to.

The best way I can describe it is that it tastes very like a cold version of the milled tea powder that is prepared in the Japanese tea ceremony, only made by wizards.

I love it. On their website, Rishi even provides a handy-dandy diagram of how to make it:



Rishi 100% Premium Tealeaf Powder: Sencha

Rating:

Notes: Don't be put off by the weird color. It makes real green tea in a couple of seconds, no boiling water involved - I don't know anything else that can make that claim. You get more of the nutritional benefits of tea since you're ingesting the entire milled leaf. The powder is good to put in smoothies and you can use it to make ice cream. Along with the sencha, it also comes in genmai and oolong. And it's only $8 for a pack of 12 - I can't remember the last time I spent a more worthy $8. I'm buying more to take on the 10-hour car ride I'll be going on to see the Smashing Pumpkins in two weeks. This stuff is gold.

Dr. Andrew Weil & Ito En: Canned Gyokuro

I'm a big fan of Ito En's bottled teas and a big fan of things endorsed by Dr. Weil, so this can only be good. Plus, I firmly believe that products are better when they have a picture of a laughing bearded man on them.

Gyokuro, meaning "jade dew," for its pale green color, is a traditional type of Japanese green tea that's carefully shaded as it grows. The lack of sunlight makes the tea plants produce more chlorophyll, which means the resultant infusion is naturally sweet. It's very distinctive, and usually pointed out as one of the finest grades of green available from Japan. Buying it in loose leaf is usually fairly expensive, and this teeny-tiny 8oz can was $1.79, the same price as Ito En's 16.9oz bottles. You apparently pay quite a markup for the Bearded Elderly Man Seal of Approval.

I've never had cold gyokuro before, but it turns out this is fairly good - although it goes against your instincts, since I wanted to drink it very slowly to savor the gyokuro flavor, yet it was cold, I was thirsty and it was quite a temptation to just guzzle the entire baby-can in ten seconds or so.

The canned gyokuro is surprisingly tasty. Gyokuro can taste wretched if it's not brewed properly, which combined with how expensive it is means I'm usually too poor and too lazy to make it. This is definitely a nice brew, with a light and delicate, sweet vegetal flavor. You initially taste a very light sencha, which then deepens quickly into the natural sweetness that gyokuro is prized for. Once you've swallowed, the aftertaste is nice and grassy, and the that lightens and leaves a lingering sweetness on your tongue. I'm a little surprised that essentially the entire fun gyokuro experience is available in this can, and I didn't even have to get out my loose-leaf brewing pot (or get out of my chair, for that matter).

So, I'm torn. On one hand, this is the only pre-brewed gyokuro that I know of, and it's actually pretty good if you can avoid drinking the whole can on the first sip. On the other hand, Ito En is charging me $1.79 for a little over a cup measure full of it. Apparently proceeds from the Bearded Man Seal of Approval cans go to the Weil Foundation's holistic medicine research, so at least I can convince myself that I'm drinking tea for a good cause when I inevitably buy a cart full of these tomorrow.

Dr. Andrew Weil & Ito En: Gyokuro

Rating:

Notes: EXPENSIVE. No more expensive that most bottled drinks, but sort of disturbing to pay $1.79 for a can that looks like one of those little silly tomato juice cans you get at brunch. If you're really thirsty, or looking to be refreshed, this is not your bottled drink - try one of Ito En's 16.9 oz bottles of regular Pure Green or Jasmine Green. If you're looking for an enjoyable tea experience, or want to try gyokuro without the song and dance it requires to prepare, I recommend it.

Adagio Apricot Green

I chose Apricot Green for the inaugural review because I was extremely enthusiastic about trying it, since I'm a huge fan of both green teas and apricots and a merging of the two is entirely likely to result in my dancing around my apartment humming a little tune. Adagio's flavored blends can be hit or miss (the rum and banana blends were poorly conceived at best, where values of "poorly conceived" equal "vomitous") but I'm excited about this one, and it's their highest-rated green.

As you can see in the photograph, the loose leaf itself is very beautiful: long broad leaves with a nice deep green color and little slivers of dried apricot. Smelling it is extremely interesting, though - the nose is almost entirely apricot, which is a little odd. If I had my eyes closed I wouldn't be sure there was any actual green tea in the tin, and that Adagio had mistakenly sent me a tin of apricots. Damn - now I'm all hungry.

Green tea means a 3-minute brewing time, but even after the full 3 minutes and completely expanded leaves, the infusion is very light and almost looks like a white tea. It also smells very strongly of apricot, and it's a bright, clear, good-quality liquor.

Sipping it, the apricot taste is a lot less overpowering than it seemed in the tin or even in the pot. It's an extremely light taste: both the green tea and apricot flavors are delicate, and the balance is almost perfect, but the lightness of the infusion is a little disappointing - after the awesome nose, I was expecting the liquor to "pop" with apricot. Next time I might try steeping this one for an extra minute or two to see what happens. GREEN TEA FLAVOR, I CANNOT FIND YOU.

I poured the rest of the Apricot Green over some ice. This is where the summery flavor really shines. It's one of the best greens I've tasted so far for icing, and with the hot weather upon us, I'll be picking up a bigger tin of this to keep a pot of it on hand in the fridge.

Adagio Apricot Green

Rating:

Notes: Smells stronger than it tastes. Would be an excellent tea for beginners, experienced drinkers who like a lighter blend, or those who find plain greens unexciting. It's good hot, but it's great iced.