If you’re curious about the FBOPF portion of this teas’ name, check out my explanation of tea grades.

The first thing I noticed about this tea is that the leaves are very thin and very wiry. With quite a percentage of golden tips this tea promises to be sweet. The dry aroma is light and sweet with overtones of honey.

The liquor brews to a dark brown. New Vithanakanda describes it as a russet color, and after comparing the two, I have to agree. The steeped aroma from the spent leaves and from the liquor itself are remarkably similar to the dry leaf aroma with overtones of honey and only the faintest heat notes.

When drinking this tea, the light astringency sets in and excites the palate. The honeyed overtones remain, but accompanied by the astringency creates an interesting contrast.

This tea is good for two or three steepings with good flavor, but it does fade quickly after the first brew. Each new set of leaves provides a remarkably consistent flavor profile though and I’ve found I can count on this tea to give me the same experience nearly every time.

I recommend this tea to fans of any black tea, but especially fans of Golden Tip Assams, monkey picked teas and Ceylon region teas.

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I’ll admit, it’s taken me a while to review this one. This set hasn’t been produced for over a year. But it’s remained good this entire time with no loss in flavor quality!

The 1/8 inch long curled and twisted leaves are splendid to behold. Brown and black in color some much lighter leaves are mixed in providing for an interesting visual array.

The dry leaves provide an aroma of freshly dried leaves in Autumn, wheat toast and hints at hay. Once brewed the aroma sweetens and a more chocolatey vibrant scent seems to emerge. This tea brews a vibrant caramel liquor.

Jackee Muntz seems to bite a little. There’s certainly an astringent kick in this tea’s taste. A bit of toasted bread with fired notes and a panopoly of lesser notes including a honeyed edge in the finish which is very nice.

I can recommend this tea for fans of Keemuns and other mild black teas including Ceylon style Sri Lankan blacks. More of a green tea drinker? Think of this is a dark Fukamushi style Japanese Sencha.

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Friday is Black Tea, Floral Tea, Fruit Tea, Chai and Pu’erh Review Day!

It must be raspberry week here on Tea-Guy! This light bodied raspberry flavored Earl Grey blend from Zhena’s Gypsy Tea is certified organic and fair trade as well as gluten and allergen free.

A lot of raspberry teas fall short when it comes to flavor. This Raspberry Earl tea from Zhena’s comes in about average, but it might be because of the tea bags I was provided instead of the loose tea version.

Appearance wise, the tea comes in round paper sachets which appear to have rolled dust and fannings contained within. It’s hard to get psyched when you don’t have much of a visual to go on.

The tea brews a deep amber liquor (color) which certainly has its own appeal.

The aroma steps this blend up a notch providing a nice raspberry & bergamot blending with just a hint of citrus.

The flavor disappointed a bit with light astringency and by providing a flavor which was a bit more earl than raspberry. It was also lightly sweet, but my guage wants to say it’s the combination of raspberry tartness and bergamot which gives me that impression.

This tea didn’t have much of a tail as it wasn’t perticularly bold and the sweetness softnes the usual finish of the earl grey blend.

Friday is Black Tea, Floral Tea, Fruit Tea, Chai and Pu’erh Review Day!

Adagio is good at a lot of things. They engage well with their online consumers. They use the internet to their advantage as no other tea brand does. They also find good tea to market! Golden Spring is one of my favorites from them, and I think you’ll agree, it’s very tasty!

This black tea blend is very appealing visually. Consisting of golden, black and brown tippy, soft-looking leaves and brewing to a beautiful deep orange liquor (color), it’s hard to resist!

For a black tea, its fragrance is very light and sweet. Soft on the nostrils unlike an Assam… it’s scents remind of honey and nectar.

This tea is vagualy reminiscent of an Assam black tea, but is softer on the palate and sweeter on the tongue. There’s no need for sugar in this lightly bold tea.

I would recommend this tea to fans of Darjeelings, Sri Lankan (Ceylon) black teas and anything with peach or honey.

What exactly spurred me to sign up for the World Tea Expo is something I can’t reveal much about at the moment, asside from the fact that it does indeed relate to The Project.

I learned something while out in Las Vegas… though it wasn’t related to gambling, adult inhibitions or travelling. Indelibly I learned that my greatest strength and passion is, and likely has always been, with people. What makes us tick individually. It turns out that this year’s World Tea Expo, for me, ended up being all about the people.

While Saturday certainly marked a wonderful close to a beautiful and full day of tea related adventues… it was the people I met that day which truly energized me. The wonderfully high quality teas and the colorful array of accessories were really only icing on the cake.

I ate breakfast Sunday at the Roundtable All-Day Buffet at the Excalibur. The buffet was just $25 to come and go for as many trips as you’d like within a 24 hour period. My dietician would have been aghast at the prospect if she knew… but what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas… right? I actually ended up eating rpetty well there. Fruit, eggs and grapefruit juice were what appealed to me and I chose rather appropriate portion sizes. In case you’re wondering… I did go back for lunch and dinner… but I had a middle meal during a Tweetup I’ll mention later.

Sunday and Monday were where it was all at. Two more sessions: “Selling Your Tea Online Successfully” and “Creating A Menu With Cost & Creativity in Mind” bisected my morning and afternoon. Both presentations were steller! I couldn’t have been more pleased with the investment I made in paying for these two sessions.

Michael Cramer of Adagio Teas covered a wealth of great information related to community building… engaging and keeping your customers on your website and helping with conversion of simple visitors into customers who buy your products.

Melinda Decker, owner of LaTeaDa Tea Room in Clinton, IL provided an interesting presentation as well. While her ideas mostly focussed on her more traditional Victorian style tea house… she provided a number of robust and reusable ideas for making the most out of the materials you buy, simply by using the same ingredients to make multiple products… such as a cake, cobbler or pie being turned into a dessert in a glass.

I spent the rest of Saturday, literally networking with people. Hitting booths, talking people up over tea, getting my business cards handed out and really just getting to know people.

I ran into Jack Cheng of Steepster.com, Lindsey Goodwin of VeeTea, The fine guys over at Village Tea, Ty Beddingfield of Gamila… the inventors of the Tea Stick and a plethor of other completely wonderful folks on Sunday. Several of these folks, plus Ilya from Adagio Teas showed up for an evening Tweetup after the expo floor closed and we had some grub and drinks. In particular, Ty and I really talked for a while about ideas and things. A wonderful day.

After dinner Sunday night, I hit up Cherry, a dance club over in the Red Rock Hotel. This club was one hell of an experience! I thoroughly enjoyed the hours spent there dancing and admiring the crowd. I really get energized when a club is as alive as Cherry was that night. Rare I think, for a Sunday night.

Now it’s Monday morning. The sun is up… but I’ve been awake for hours already. To protect myself some from JetLag I have always tried to awaken as close to Eastern time as possible. I worked out in the rather meager (by my standards) health club in the Excalibur… an amazingly expensive $20 a day on top of the room bill.

After breakfast at the buffet again, I made my way over to the expo for some tea and my morning session: “Reaching Beyond Your Front Door For Additional Income” and then on to my afternoon session: “Price it Right & Sell it Smart.”

Ronald Eng of Kopius Teas put on a wonderful presentation. Very well spoken with great diction and clarity. His ideas were understandably expressed and he was very energetic about answering questions. A serial entrepreneur, Ronald had some great ideas and concepts to share.

Robert Hedrick of Holton & Heath also had some great insights on proper pricing, commodity vs exclusive and the power of branding potential. This was a also a very good presentation.

The rest of my “day” on Monday was spent scurrying around making my final connections with brands and companies, procurring more business cards in exchange for mine as an attempt to build more outlets and opportunities for me to grow with the tea industry over the next couple decades.

I did end up linking with Ronald Eng and Emilie Yanagi of Kopius Teas, the people at Zojirushi North America, a couple great folks over at TeasEtc, Maria Warman from Art of Tea and I cannot forget Nora of Golden Star Tea who has an amazing sparkling bottled tea beverage presented in a chapagne bottle!

At the end of the day I ran into May King of the new UK tea brand, MayKing Tea as well as a few other friends including Norman who is starting a tea garden in Hawaii! I ended up going out dancing with these two and we had a wonderful time out at Margaritaville down the strip after throwing back a few drinks at Liquidity, a bar in the Luxor Hotel & Casino.

I don’t want to leave anyone out… but I’m HORRIBLE with names… I ended up meeting several hundred people at the expo and coming away with some great friendships made over the three day event.

I have to recommend this event to anyone starting a new tea business, or anyone already in the industry!

I’ve already made the decision to head back to Las Vegas next year for another round of tea education. Maybe by then I’ll already have a small presence in the tea industry and be ready for some thoughts on expanding to becoming a tea brand. Here’s to the future!

Help a good cause: CharityWater.org