Black Bear Ices It

The walls of a church built in 800, under the Meieringen,
Switzerland church of my grandmother. You can just walk right in. Amazing!

I hope by now you all realize that my tea tastings are one woman's opinion about a particular tea. Whether you will like the tea I review or not is a matter of your taste, since so many things influence an individual's response to a particular tea. When I was starting on my tea journey, I found that some reviewers seemed to share my tastes and if they recommended a tea, I would probably like it. I am sure that goes for you as well.

I admit, sometimes I will try a new tea simply because I am captivated by its name. Such is the case with Black Bear Jasmine, from Kitchen TLC. Because we have bears and because I've had another black jasmine, I tried it - not a reasonable reason, but there you have it. If I had been smart, I wouldn't have bought it, since I never like teas with vanilla flavoring. But I got it. And I hated it. I gave it three tries. Full strength, it was perfume to drink. Half strength more of the jasmine came out and it was better, so I tried it about half-strength as an ice tea - about 2 teaspoons to 2 cups of water, refridgerated overnight. It's almost good, not much jasmine, more vanilla and something floral I can't identify. It actually is growing on me, iced. I probably wouldn't drink much, but I have friends who would love it, so now I feel it has redeemed itself.


I just found out I can go to World Tea East, Sept 9-10! I am so excited! I have wanted to go to the parent show, the World Tea Expo in Las Vegas for years, but couldn't. Many tea people are thrilled this is happening, as for us Easterners, this is so much more accessible. There are expos of one sort or another in Seattle and Western Canada, but it has been years since there has been one in the East. Be assured I will tell you all about it. What I do know is there will be a number of lectures given by some well-known tea people such as Bruce Richardson, exhibitions, tea competitions, etc. More to come!


If you are interested, Dawnya Sasse from http://www.teapartygirl.com/ has a webinar on "Starting a Tea Club for Fun or for Profit". Find out more information at Tea@TeaEvents.com. Dawnya has a regular email feature of tea recipes and often has these webinars. This will be the first webinar I will have tried, but her recipes are good and creative, so I expect this will be as well. You can sign up for the recipes at her Tea Party Girl website.