Review: TeaVivre Black Teas

There is simply nothing nicer than sitting down in your own living room, putting your feet up, and sipping your way through a pot of freshly brewed tea.

TeaVivre is a group of tea lovers from China, Canada and France, who all share a passion for drinking great tea and appreciate the healthy life style it brings. They all live in China and frequently travel through the country visiting China’s tea plantations so they can track down exceptional teas. I like an ethical company and it is great to see that TeaVivre has kept the traditional Chinese tea making methods and looks after its producers. I was sent a foil bag of samples to try out, all the way from China.

For a tea lover such as myself, the TeaVivre website is interesting on its own, full of lots of historical and cultural information about tea, its development and benefits. I actually spent a whole evening reading through the various pages (I assume that makes me quite sad!), it was very interesting.

Each tea comes with its own brewing instructions (how hot to have the water, how long to brew for), which I did my best to follow properly so as to get the best end result. I thought it was a bit odd putting a sugar thermometer in my boiled kettle to check when the water was at exactly the right temperature before pouring it over the fresh tea, but I had to at least try to get it right even if I was using the Western method (a teapot!) rather than the traditional Chinese brewing process (I’d love to experience that one day).

Above is the Yun Nan Dian Hong Black Tea – Golden Tip. It is a typical example of how the fresh tea looks when it comes out of the foil packaging – delicate but large tea that has an amazing scent. This was probably my favourite out of all the different teas I was sent. Also known as Yunnan black tea, this is one of China’s most famous or common black teas, but as the Golden Tip variety it has lots of orange pekoe in the dried tea. The brewed tea is orange and golden, and has a lovely rich and strong flavour. I always add milk to my black tea, which this variety was more than happy to support.

Here’s a list of the teas I tried and enjoyed:

Golden Monkey Black Tea
Tiawan Jin Xuan Milk Oolong Tea
Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe) Wuyi Rock Oolong Tea
Yun Nan Dian Hong Black Tea – Golden Tip
Premium Keemun Hao Ya Black Tea

I am no expert tea taster and couldn’t break down the flavours of each individual tea I tried out, so I cannot give you a detailed description of each tea type. I’m not going to try; the website has all that information on it, anyway. But I can tell you that every one of the teas I tried was simply wonderful. It was so nice to have a fresh black tea that you smelt the instant you opened the packet, and tasted just as it smelt once it was brewed. The fact that these teas have come direct from Chinese growers and producers who are passionate about their product and are given a fair deal for it also appeals very much.