June was an intense work month. So intense that I turned to some retail tea-rapy. While knowing that I probably have more than enough tea for the next couple of months, I could NOT resist picking up quite a bit of Chinese tea (in sample form).

Only half of my purchases are here but I could not wait to share them with you.

The first is this box of 30 different tea samples. You’d think that means more quick tea reviews but I’m doubtful about that – I will explain later. The samples are mostly compressed tea, which was the subgenre of tea that I was really interested in this time (for some reason). I just find their compactness to be really convenient.

The other tea that has arrived is the 50g sample pack of Tie Guan Yin from a family farm. I found them from a post lamenting that some people don’t like farmers to sell tea, a sentiment I don’t understand. I would love to buy tea direct from a farmer since I know all the money goes to him/her and I don’t think that a farmer selling tea means their tea is bad! I’m quite excited for this!

We can talk about my buying habits and possibly overconsumption of tea another time, but first, a really quick tea review.

The day after I unboxed my thirty tea samples, I decided to try one of them, a white tea called 月光白龙珠 (Moonlight White Dragon Balls). And after trying it, I realised that these teas might last a lot longer than expected! The moonlight white dragon balls are very sweet, with a glutinous rice note that reminds me of ripe puer. This flavour profile was basically constant over the TWO HOURS that I was drinking this tea. Most of my current loose leaf teas don’t last this long but even after two hours, the leaves were still pretty compacted and I didn’t want to throw them away just yet.

So instead, I popped the leaves into a bottle and chucked it in the fridge to make cold brew tea. The cold brew tea was delicious – the sweetness now had a fruitiness to it that’s hard to describe but oh so delicious. The consistency of this tea would make it a very good every day tea, to be drunk throughout the day.

And the fact that this tea just has so much in it also means that I probably can’t do weekly quick tea reviews – I can’t imagine just steeping these teas for 30 minutes in the morning and then going to work (and probably having to throw them away)! These teas are for long, slow mornings at home or if I am somehow working from home. I’m still not too keen to write my reviews of these teas as “proper” reviews because I only have one sample and that’s not fair to pass judgement, so perhaps I’ll collect a few short reviews and post them once a month or something. I’m not too sure, but I know that I have more tea samples coming so you can expect more photos as I try to work out a good way to record/share these teas with you!