Angrboda

“You know that tea…?” Husband asked me last night.

EEK! Well, that was a good fifteen minutes steep, I think. And I didn’t even know what the base was at that point. Turns out to be a blend of Chinese and Ceylon, and as we know Chinese blacks can take a lot of abuse while Ceylon can really go either way. No adverse effects then.

This is a tea that Cteresa shared with me and I have to admit that I found it difficult to concentrate on it last night for some reason. It simply just failed to hold my attention for very long, so I’m writing this on a flimsy memory.

The base held up to the mishap very well, without a single bit of bitterness or astringency. The fruit flavouring was… well, fruity, obviously, but I couldn’t pick out each individual fruit. This may have something to do with my lack of concentration, but my immediate thought was that it was somewhat generic red fruit-y.

It’s a fairly classic flavouring, this, so I’ve had it and enjoyed it before from other vendors. Then, I definitely remember being able to ‘find’ each of the four red fruits in the flavour. Knowing what to look for obviously. I doubt I’d have been able to do so without knowing what they were in advance. I couldn’t do that with this one (at least not at that particular level of attention) and I’m not sure if that’s really a bad thing or a good thing.

It’s a shame when one can’t pick out the flavours, and one feels like the whole things is just a big muddle with a generic taste. On the other hand, when each flavour clearly stands out on their own, the tea can end up tasting a little bit unfinished. Smoothness is lost, and it’s just a cup full of edges and corners that don’t quite join up.

Pros and cons, really. The smoothness of this one rather suited me last night, though. I think precisely because I couldn’t concentrate on it. Edges and corners would have thrown me off completely, I think.

Here is another one that Sil shared with me. When asked what I would like to try, one of my requests was for some Assam or other. It’s a funny region for me. I really want to adore them, but I’m just not quite there. Nine times out of ten I’ll go for a Chinese but every once in a blue moon the Assam just strikes me as the most desirable tea on the planet.

And then I usually haven’t got any.

Lately I’ve been having some small Assam-y thoughts again, though, so it was a fairly obvious request. (Project Assam…? ponder ponder ponder )

I’m making this in the big pot to share with Husband, who opted to not have it milked. When it’s any other tea, I usually just serve it as it is, but sometimes I get confused about what he would prefer. He always drinks it without additives at home, but as soon as he sets foot on English soil he reverts to preferring his tea milked. I don’t know… maybe it’s a geography thing. (I hope he doesn’t think it’s because I won’t let him milk it… O.o )

Now, let me see. I’ve been carefully timing this, because one of the things that stops me from being all over Assam is how finicky they are. You can pretty much abuse a Chinese black from now until Christmas and it’ll still produce a drinkable cup. Sometimes rather stewed, but still drinkable. An Assam however will not put up with that sort of treatment. It will turn around and bite you back.

The aroma is quite malty, but it also has notes of raisins and honey in there. Mostly raisins. Whenever I’ve had an Assam that hasn’t been completely ruined, it seems to have always had a raisin-y aspect to a smaller or larger degree. Less so with honey.

Normally when describing something as malty, I would automatically started searching for a grain-y aspect, but I can’t really find that here. It’s more sort of wood-en for me. (And bright red, my at times weird brain supplies)’

Over it all there is a note of something that smells thick and creamy, almost… like if it had a smidge of vanilla flavouring. I’ve found that Assam generally works great for me as a base for vanilla flavouring, although peculiarly my Perfect vanilla isn’t Assam-y. Now I’m beginning to wonder if that works so well because the flavouring in those cases enhance a note which might already be there, if you know what I mean. It makes a vanilla flavoured Assam taste more natural than really flavoured. If you know what I mean.

But I digress and this tea, for the record, is not actually flavoured with anything at all.

First sip is sweet and honey-y. At the very beginning it was wood-y, but then it turned all sweet. I’m actually dithering a bit on the honey note, wondering if I think it’s more along the lines of toffee or something, but eventually I’ve come to the conclusion that I think it’s most like honey. Second sip starts me considering that question again. It’s almost like it depends on how I’ve sipped. Where on the tongue it hits first, how much I’ve been slurping, how long it takes before swallowing. At the very beginning, I think it’s like honey, but then it turns into something toffee-y and sweetie like. And I’m pretty certain it is actually the same note here. It definitely feels like the same note that changes.

So, apart from that weird sweet aspect that can’t decide what it is, we’ve got some wood-en notes to this like I found in the aroma, and they’re laying down the bottom of the flavour. It’s actually quite discreet, but it adds substance. There’s a hint of mild astringency here too, but nothing too dominating.

Now what about those raisins. peers into cup They’re in there. I know they are, because I can feel them. I just… don’t know where they are. They’re hiding from me, shouting coo-ee every now and then. I suspect the tea needs to develop a bit before I’ll find them.

The tea has cooled off a bit now, and I think we can safely say that this is one of those that only have raisin notes to a smaller degree. They’re out there a little more now all right, but nothing that makes me sit up and say ‘raisin!’. That creamy sort of milky note is very much at the forefront now and I’ve completely lost the honey/toffee/vanilla-y chameleon note. That’s a shame, because I was rather enjoying that. I liked this one best when it was very hot.

All in all, this was a highly enjoyable tea.

When Cteresa and I were planning our small swap, she suggested that I try some of this one. I had never heard about it before so I went and looked it up.

Then I made this face: O.O

And then I’m afraid I resorted to pitiful begging to pretty please with a cherry on top have a sample. Or something like that. Okay, maybe not quite that much, but I definitely wanted to try it.

I mean, caramel, vanilla and red berries? That’s like, three of my favourite things to flavour tea with! It reminds me rather of the St Petersburg blend from Kusmi, only without the bergamot. And you know what, I can totally live without bergamot. Easy. And I’m actually quite fond of St P. So what I’m expecting here is something similar but better. St P got 86 points from me on Steepster. Let’s see if we can’t beat that.

Oh my word, the aroma of this one! It smells like cherries and creamy-sweet vanilla and sugar-y sweet caramel. It’s quite heavy on the caramel too. This is liquid sweets in a cup. The berries here are cherry, strawberry and raspberry, but I can only really find the cherry in the aroma. That herry flavoured number from Fru P that I’ve got is really coming in handy here, because the cherry aroma in that one is exactly the same as in this one. Perhaps there’s a wee bit of strawberry underneath, but I can’t really be certain.

Okay, so the aroma is definitely leaving St P behind in a cloud of smoke. So far so good.

The first sip gives me juicy fruit a-plenty. It reminds me at first of a 4 Red Fruits blend, but extra sweet. Although this is only three red fruits. But who’s counting.

The vanilla and caramel are both quite subtle at this point, but the vanilla comes out more as I sip and lends a creamy note. I’m now reminded more of some kind of red berry ice cream dessert. All we need now is the caramel, but I expect it’ll show up if the cup is allowed to cool off a wee bit more. This seems to often be the nature of caramel flavoured teas. They need to be allowed to develop a little more before the flavour really comes out to play. (And no, as I’ve mentioned before, your various tricks of adding sweeteners of various sort do not work for me. It makes nothing “pop” for me. Adding stuff just breaks the tea for me.)

It’s true for this as well. A little patience before sipping further and the caramel is there in the aftertaste.

Oh yeah, this is better than St P all right! I must shop at DF som time.

I just had a small sip of Husband’s mojito. Bleurgh! Not for me at all. I don’t actually like alcohol much and don’t find it refreshing no matter how many ice cubes are involved so, I suppose I could have told myself that it would be a bad idea.

I need something to wash that down with. Sil to the rescue! This one is a green tea with peaches and vanilla and Sil shared a few bags with me. I see that she didn’t much care for it herself, which makes it easier for me to say that I’m sceptical because I don’t actually much care for peach in tea. Peach everything else? Yes. Peach in tea? Not so much. And it appears that the deal-breaker for Sil was a strong floral note, something which I don’t really care for either.

Yeah, I’m beginning to expect something pretty dire here. But hey, at least I discovered that it’s a green base before I poured boiling water on it, so that’s a good sign right? Right!

Besides, it also has vanilla in it, and we all know what I’m like with vanilla, don’t we? Also, it’s been a long time since I actually had a peach flavoured tea, so my tastes might have changed in the meantime. These things do happen, you know. (For example, I used to really like Darjeeling. Now I just don’t care for it at all.)

There is definitely loads of peach in the aroma. It’s like when taking the very first bite of a peach or nectarine, and the fruit aroma comes up through the nose. There’s something green smelling in the aroma as well, sort of along the bottom and the edges and that note has a touch of something floral to it. I can’t immediately find any vanilla in the aroma, but there’s something sweet sort of hovering around the other notes which could be it, but might also simply be a peach fruity-sweet aspect.

Yeah, the flavour definitely has vanilla in it. It’s the first thing I find. A creamy thick sort of sweetness that reminds me a little of melted ice cream. A long with that, the green base comes out in force, and I can see what Sil means about something floral behind the vanilla. That’s exactly the way I’m experiencing it too. This is one of those teas that feel like they’re layered and the floral green tea is the bottom layer with vanilla right on top of that.

The floral aspect is quite obnoxious, but not completely undrinkable I don’t think. Sil shared two satchets with me, and I’m going to try and coldbrew the other one. It’s finally the weather for it too. This is just exactly the sort of tea that I’ve had good experiences with in coldbrew.

The peach flavour is mostly going on in the aftertaste for me here, with some modest overlap between it and the vanilla. This was the note that I was feeling the most sceptical about and it turns out to not actually be so bad. In fact I feel quite ready to dip my toes cautiously into the peach-flavoured tea pool again, so perhaps my tastes in that regard really have changed.

Not awesome, but it could have been much worse. I think it’s saved by there being two notes in here that I actually like. If either the peach or vanilla, and I don’t think it matters which one, had been missing, I wouldn’t have liked this at all, I don’t think. It’s drinkable as it is, and it’s infinitely better than Husband’s alcoholic concoction.

Edited: The cold brew is actually much nicer. The peach is very much at the forefront here, and although it’s still pretty floral, it’s not quite as obnoxious. Unfortunately the vanilla seems to have got slightly lost, though. I really very much prefer it brewed this way, but that doesn’t surprise me. It’s something I’ve noticed before with these sorts of blends.

Real food! Real tea!

This. And a liquid diet. Day 3.

I’m SO hungry! (Doing better so may attempt solid food tonight, depending)

Sil, I hope to get to the post office today. Right now things seem stable so I might brave it. (Don’t worry, it shouldn’t be contagious. Not unless you ate the same thing I shouldn’t have eaten. I washed my hands carefully before packing anyway.)

Cteresa shared this with me in our recent swap and told me to keep an open mind about the bagginess of it. It wasn’t one of the teas we had talked about, but she added it as a bonus because it was vanilla and she knows I like vanilla. Like, a lot.

Okay, so I gave it a shot yesterday, and was surprised to find it quite nice. I was told to expect a very subtle vanilla, but it was actually clearly detectable for me. Especially on the aftertaste. I was reminded of the French Vanilla Assam that 52teas made last year (I think) which I quite enjoyed.

Because it was convenient and because Husband chose a glass of whisky over a cup of tea later in the evening, I steeped the same bag again. Just to see if I could and what would happen.

In my experience Indian black teas generally don’t resteep very well with the way I brew them, so it was a bit of a gamble. Turns out this one was no exception to that rule and it did actually produce a fairly weak tea the second time around. What was NOT weak, however, was the vanilla! There was still plenty of vanilla around and without a strong tea to accompany it, it was a very VERY vanilla-y cup indeed.

In fact, I find I’m not certain which cup was more enjoyable. They were both enjoyable, but in WILDLY different ways.

I think I’ve seen this brand around a few times when grocery shopping. I believe it would be worth it to have a look if this particular variation might be among them. It would be a good candidate to take up to my parents’ house to drink there.

(Last time I ran out up there, my mother thought she was buying a higher end kind of bag when she bought something else than her own usual brand of Pickwick or Twinings, and instead managed to get something maybe slightly better, but it was a green tea and a plain rooibos. The former is… drinkable, I suppose, but far from what I usually prefer (black) and the second is just wrong. I don’t like plain rooibos. She tried one and didn’t like it either, so I’m not sure what we’re going to do with those bags now.)

It is a well established fact that Tan Yang is my favourite ever kind of black tea. So what, you may be wondering, is your second-favourite kind of black tea, Ang? Tough question! It depends, I suppose. Sometimes I’ll say Lapsang Souchong, other times I’ll say Keemun, because those are both teas that I must own in some form or other. It doesn’t even have to be the most perfect LS or Keemun that I’ve ever found, although that would of course be preferable; there just has to be one.

If you were to ask me such a question, Bailin likely wouldn’t even make it into my thoughts before answering. However, the first time I drank the Bailin from TeaVivre, I found that it was so close in nature to the Tan Yang of Loveliness that I have reached the conclusion that they are interchangable for me. I’m not saying that they taste exactly they same and therefore it doesn’t matter which one I’ve got. What I’m saying is that they fill out the same role for me. If I want a Tan Yang and haven’t got one, I can drink Bailin instead and be happy. And vice versa. It’s the same with caramel flavoured things and toffee flavoured things. They’re not really the same thing, but they do the same thing.

Therefore, I think we must conclude that my second favourite type of black tea is Bailin. (Second favourite type of black tea that can’t be from Fujian would probably still be Keemun, though, fyi)

I’ve had two Bailins before that I can recall. The first one I had was from TeaSpring and it had a remarkable orange-y flavour to it. It was really lovely. The second one was from TeaVivre and that one didn’t seem to have that much in the way of that orange-y note. On the other hand it was a bit wild and exciting, although still a little more well-behaved than my favourite Tan Yang. Now I’m having the TeaVivre one again, choosing wild and exciting over orange-y. (Mind you, the TeaSpring one I had was yeeeeeeears ago, and the current offering might not even have that note)

The aroma is cocoa-y and grainy, and the flavour is as well. Cocoa and grain, caramel-y aftertaste, and something just a little bit sharp and citrus-y around the edges. Yes. This is still filling out the same role as Tan Yang for me, only with a little more sophistication. :)

As I already made an extensive post on this when I had the first time, I’m not really going to bother with doing it again. Just know that I’m as pleased with this now as I was then and that I still agree completely with myself, save perhaps for having noticed that touch of something orange-y, although it is very very tiny indeed and might just be my own imagination.

I got two bags of this from Fleurdelily. Drank one of them myself some months ago and Husband drank the other one recently. I don’t remember if I mentioned it before, but he bought a car recently. His first ever car. Circumstances with where we live and where his job is, this was something he had to do, although he would have preferred it had it not been necessary. Unfortunately there was no way to get from home to job with public transport without having it involve an enormous detour.

Husband hadn’t driven a car for about ten years and he had never ever driven one outside of England before, so although he took a lesson with a local driving instructor, he was still feeling a bit stressed about all the driving. (And buying of really expensive things and then just leaving them on the street and all that)

I swear there’s a point to all this to do with the tea!

All this stress let to him not sleeping very well at night. Waking up all the time and all that sort of thing. Something, and I can’t remember what, reminded me of the calming qualities of chamomile and it made me check if I still had a bag of it or not. I then gave it to him, suggesting that he could try it before bedtime and see if it made him sleep better.

For a man who has eaten corn flakes every single morning for years and can’t seem to get tired of corn flakes, he’s quite willing to try these experiments, so he drank this in the evening.

And it knocked him out cold. He slept like a baby, only without all the waking up and screaming and such.

We have now purchased a box of generic brand chamomile teabags (yeah, with this sort of stuff? I don’t care about all the snobby things. It’s purely for medicinal purposes and the generic brand cost a third, a third! of what whichever established brand it was they had cost) for the purpose of allieviating sleepless nights like those.

If if didn’t have any real effect, it was definitely a very good placebo. And in this house we are perfectly fine with placebo so long as it works. :)

So I’m notching the score up on this one, based this very good result.

Oh dear, I can feel that this is going to be a really long post. I’ll let you all know when I’m going to actually start writing about the tea, so you can skip ahead if you like.

My Teavivre order arrived! I wasn’t even expecting it yet. I’ve ordered stuff from China before, obviously, and I know it usually takes a couple of weeks to get here, but I don’t know why I hadn’t realised that it had actually been that long since I ordered.

Oh well, I’m certainly not complaining! :D I have unpacked my tea and the cats have given the box and the wrappings a very thorough sniffing. I don’t know what they kept the wrapping supplies next to in China, but whatever it is, it’s very interesting to cats.

While the wrapping was undergoing such a detailed inspection, I tried to decide which one to try first. And then I smacked my forehead because DUH! Self, don’t be an eedjit. You obviously start with the Tan Yang.

If you are wondering what’s so obvious about that, you have not been following me for long enough. Fujian produces the majority of all my very favourite black teas, and my most beloved type of all is Tan Yang. This is the type where I have been known to draw little hearts on the label. So yeah. Obvious. :)

The first time I ordered from Teavivre, I believe the company was still very young, but they had marched right into the hearts of many Steepsterites with their high quality and their sample program. For me, it was the Bailin gong fu that finally drew me in and made me place that first order. There was a contact form on the site that you could fill out if you had questions or suggestions, so I asked if they were planning on stocking a Tan Yang in the future. I can’t remember what exactly the reply was, but I think I was told that they would look into it.

Some time passed and eventually Teavivre did indeed offer a Tan Yang. Oh, how I coveted it! But unfortunately circumstances conspired against me and I didn’t feel like the time was right to buy it. We’ve been frugal, you know, what with having our wedding and then a bit later Husband having a stint with unemployedness, and now we want to start saving up so we can eventually buy a house. It’ll probably be at least a year before we’ll even consider talking to the bank, but we still have to start now.

So I sat here and watched other people drink this highly coveted tea, and then I COULD NOT TAKE IT ANY LONGER, flails AAAAAAAAARGH!!!! pant pant

I cracked and ordered. As long as I control myself I can totally save up and buy interesting tea now and then at the same time. Besides, I was getting to that point where every time I saw someone write about it, I felt a little guilty that I hadn’t bought any myself yet. You know, having suggested that they get some in their shop…

Okay, the actual drinking of the tea starts here!

The aroma is quite mild, and it’s has a bit of a honeyed caramel-ish note to it. There’s a little bit of grain underneath too. I suspect this is a more well behaved version than the (Most Highly Beloved of All) Te Ji I get from TeaSpring. But then again, that one is pretty unruly at times, so it wouldn’t be difficult to be better behaved.

Oh, so sweet! So caramel-y! There’s a bit of malt and cocoa as well, but I think it tastes mostly like sugar and caramel. I mentioned yesterday that I don’t like sugar in tea, but what I meant was that I don’t like sugar added to tea. When it is naturally occurring like this, I like it just fine. It has to do with the way added sugar changes the mouthfeel for me. Anyway, first sip gives my sugar-y caramel-y flavouring, and a summerly note of… sip sip grass?

GRASS??? o.O Well, that’s new. It’s not in overwhelming amounts, though, (like what happens with most Darjeelings for me) so it doesn’t become unpleasant.

Underneath that, and especially at the moment just before I swallow is the very important grain-y note. An awesome Fujian would only be half as awesome without that note. There is only one type of tea in which a good strong note of grain is more important, and that’s in Keemuns.

Still, like with all the notes in here, it’s fairly calm and civilized and to my surprise I find I quite enjoy that. I mean, I love that the Te Ji tastes so riotously wild sometimes, but I’m getting older and slower, and sometimes it’s better with a tea that matches.

My cup appears to have become empty… I don’t usually finish drinking before I’m finished writing. I must have needed it.

That’s it. If anybody needs me further today, I’ll be in the kitchen drawing little hearts on this label.

As you may have seen on the discussion boards, I recently missed out on a chance to taste this new-fangled sparkling tea product. Not wine, not cider, not tea, but sort of all things at once, or something. Fru P replied to my comment on the Book of Faces that if they had any left she would save some for me, but of course this was not possible.

I did take the opportunity to stock up on that awesome vanilla that they have (Sil, if you are still interested in trying it, please message me. I have loads now.) and I also bought some of her caramel flavoured black. This is another highly coveted flavour for me in tea. I love it when it occurs naturally and I love it when it’s added artificially. Unlike vanilla, though, I’ve met several caramel flavoured teas that fit my requirements exactly.

Anyway, I had to try this one as well, of course. I don’t even know how I missed it the first time I was in there. It’s not like me to not even look for it.

I had a whiff of the leaves before steeping and both that aroma and the aroma of the cup now steaming under my nose are extremely promising. It’s all sweet and butter-y caramel. There is even a smidge of something nutty to it. A sweet kind of nut, like an almond. All heavy and creamy.

The flavour, at the first sip, struck me as a bit thin and a bit… twig-y, sort of. I don’t know, I just got this image of twigs in my head. It’s not immediately delivering on the promise of the aroma.

Some would say, ‘try adding a little sugar’ or ‘try adding a little milk’, to which say a vehement no. If a tea has to have additives in order to taste right, it’s just not a good tea. Additives, for me, kills the tea. Additives are murder. In other words, I rarely actually like a tea very much after adding stuff to it, especially sugar. I can deal with milk but prefer not to have it. Sugar or other sweeteners, however… I do not understand how some of you can even get it down. So, no. I’m not tampering with the tea and nothing you say can ever convince me otherwise.

Instead I’m going to let it cool down a bit, and there it is. There is a caramel flavour there now, but it’s still not as rich as in the aroma and it’s sort of hovering under a water-y surface.

It helps a bit as it cools and develops a quite nice nutty aftertaste, but it still never gets really caramel-y. I suspect this requires some fiddling with the steeping process. So far, though, I’m not really convinced.

On completely unrelated note, this car (https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/944415_10151616377506122_932531436_n.jpg) is driving around in the town where I live. No, Steepsterites. Your eyes are not decieving you.

This sample has been clean forgotten. I was just looking through my box of things yet to post about and there it was. I see that I need to do some translation work on the description of it. I’ll get to it right away when I’m finished writing this post.

Wild pu-erh. Well, this sample was indeed quite wild. I fumbled a bit, taking the little bag of leaves out of the wrapping and dropped it on the floor. This, apparently, was completely irresistable to a passing and equally wild Charm-kitty, who proceeded to bat it violently across the dining room floor. The bag was sealed though, so no harm done. It looked funny, though.

The aroma is thick and earthy and pu-erh-y. It’s like… default pu-erh. This is what I think of, when someone says pu-erh. There is a kind of sweetish, fruity sort of jam-ish note in there as well, which rather reminds me of strawberry jam without actually smelling like strawberry at all.

If the aroma is default pu-erh, the flavour is a bit of a shock. There’s nothing default about this at all, and to be honest it tastes more like a black tea with a pu-erh-y edge rather than an actual pu-erh (which of course it is). I believe this is what Chaplon also mentions in the description as being less earthy and heavy then most pu-erhs because the trees it’s harvested from are so very old that they aren’t affected as heavily by the aging process. Chaplon calls it a more elegant pu-erh, but personally I wonder if that’s not just some sort of attempt to NOT say that maybe it would have benefitted from seven years more in storage…

That said, however, I find it quite pleasant. I rather like that feels more like drinking a black tea. I don’t know why I don’t drink more pu-erh, really. I do enjoy it quite a lot, but somehow I’m just not as interested in it as I am in black tea. Which is also funny, because you would think that this type would be much more interesting, wouldn’t you?

As for the actual flavour, I’m getting leather and wood at first. That’s a fairly sharp tasting sort of combination, and it makes me immediately search for something rounder such as cocoa and/or grain. No luck, though. Instead there’s just the earthy note of the pu-erh, reminding me of what it actually is I’m drinking and otherwise doing that same sort of rounding out task.

But there must be more to it than this, right? I sip and sip and sip and I find… nothing. Leather, wood, earth. That’s it. Something that tastes decidedly pu-erh-y, but feels black.

Often, as a cup of tea cools a bit, it develops more and other notes come into play, or the previously noticed ones change either in strength or in character. I was hoping that it would be the same with this one, but now that I have waited a while, I can tell you that it doesn’t appear to be the case. It tastes exactly the same. The same notes in the same proportions.

It’s nice and all, but… That’s it really.

I am so bored! Boredboredboredboredbored! Not bored enough to take the hoover around the house, though. Not yet. It needs to be done, but it can wait a little longer. I hate hoovering…

Instead, I shall have a cup of tea to celebrate the Teavivre order I just accidentally (yes, totally!) placed. Finally, oh finally, I shall try that their Tan Yang. I’ve been feeling kind of guilty about not having tried it yet, because I distinctly remember asking them if they were planning on getting. So not having tried it yet feels like not following through on my own suggestion, which is kind of poor manners.

While I’m waiting for that, I’m going to have a crack at another one of the Verdant samples I received recently when, on Husband’s orders, stocking up on the Life-Giving Tea. That would by the Laoshan Black, FYI. Hasn’t been called anything else in this house since forever. Yes, we nickname our favourites. Don’t everybody?

This one, I have to admit, I picked almost entirely based on the name. Every time I see ‘Fo Shou’, my mind reads it as ‘Fo’ sho’ and often supplies either ‘dude!’ or ‘man!’ after that. Can’t help it. It makes me smile. Obviously, therefore I had to try it.

The packaging is different from the other Verdant samples and thankfully comes with an identification sheet. I hope I don’t lose it. It would be just like me… Perhaps it’s a sign that I should try this out sooner rather than later, yes?

The aroma is slightly wood-y and slightly leather-y, and I want to say slightly fruit-y as well, but I’m not super-certain that I really think it is. What it does have in large amounts, however, is a strong note of something that… I know what it is, but I don’t know what it is! It’s kind of like cocoa, but not quite there. I think it’s cocoa mixed with something and it’s the something that is confusing me. Roasted nuts, perhaps? Hmm, I need to think about this.

Gosh, the flavour is a lot stronger than I had thought it would be! There is definitely leather and wood in this, all dark and rough and somehow faintly ash-y. Now those of you who remember the recent encounter with Tetley’s tea bags, will remember that I said those tasted like ashes, and that it wasn’t particularly pleasant. For some reason this note of ash is coming off in a much more favourable light here. I suspect the unpleasantness in the Tetley bags was in combination with the smell of wet cardboard and the taste of the paper teabag, whereas this particular tea is completely cardboardless and guaranteed paper-free. This way, the ash just comes over as something with just a hint of smoke. It isn’t really smoke, but it reminds me of smoke, and apparently that’s close enough for jazz.

Ashes, but good ashes. Right. Okay. I’m not sure that there really is any sound logic in that, but there you are. It is, however, a note that brings a warning with it. With many Chinese black teas you can generally steep them from now and until kingdom come, and your result will still be drinkable rather than a bitter, astringent mess. I don’t think that is true for this one. That note is a strong one, and I think it will turn strongly astringent if left to its own devices for too long.

That note is the primary one here, and it’s the first one I meet when sipping. It’s fairly small at first, then there’s a pause in which other stuff happens, and then sort expands rapidly on the swallow, greatly dominating the flavour profile.

Now I want to talk a bit about that other stuff that happens there in the middle. Those are our more friendly, calm and well-behaved notes. The source of the cocoa-and-something notes in the aroma. So there is a great deal of cocoa there, obviously, but there’s something else as well. It’s not pure caramel, but more a dulce de leche sort of note. I loffs me some dulce de leche… I’ve only ever seen one brand of it here, though, and it costs a small fortune for a small glass, so it’s a very rare treat indeed.

Although the cocoa note is stronger than the dulce de leche-y note, I still think it’s the dulce de leche-y one that I’m noticing the most. It feels longer, somehow, softening the ash-y pow at the end of the sip. As I drink it even starts to build up a little on the aftertaste too.

As it cools and develops, this is the note that really starts to come out more and more and I don’t even have to wait so very long before that initial ash-y dominance is almost completely broken into something much smoother and caramel-y.

I find I’m enjoying this a great deal more now than I thought I would when I had the very first sip. But I still think it’s one of the few Chinese blacks that it’s actually possible to ruin through over-steeping. This tea does not give the impression of being foolproof.

I honestly don’t know why I bought a sample of this. I don’t really much care for most Yunnans because 95% of them tastes like hay to me, and I particularly don’t enjoy the golden ones. I suppose it was just extreme curiosity that came over me. (Strangely though, I can find myself in a state of mild panic sometimes over not having any Yunnan at all in the house, so there must be a time and a need for it. I just haven’t figured out what it is that creates this)

I suspect that I got this out of simply sheer curiosity, since I was ordering a vast amount of Laoshan Black anyway. When this one was first introduced to Steepster at large it was with many a word of praise, and those who got their hands on some swooned en masse. Really, they fell like flies! So I thought when I ordered, now is my chance to see what all the fuss is about.

The fuss is indeed about a golden type, but with that name I would honestly have been rather disappointed if the sample had not contained bright yellow leaves.

The aroma is heavy and smoky. I’m getting a fair bit of pepper here too, and a funny sensation that there is more depth to it than this, but gravity itself is preventing the aroma molecules from being pulled into my nose. There is also a thick sort of smell, that makes me think it smells as though I’ve put milk in it. (Which, for the record, is something I never do. No additives here, ever.) It doesn’t, however, seem to smell like hay at all. Good!

The first sip is a confused jumble of flavours that I can’t pick out from one another. On the whole, it feels thick. It’s this pseudo-milk sensation again. And then there’s an aftertaste of pepper and smoke. But all that stuff in between? That’s just a right mess. It feels all tangled up in there, so I’ll have to see if I can untangle it a bit.

No, I can’t. Or rather, I’m not sure it’s actually really necessary, because every sip I try, here, just gives me those three same primary notes. First the milkiness, then pepper and a smidge of smoke. Under it all we’ve got that hay, that I was fully expecting, but it’s not as prominent as it can sometimes be with these types.

And that’s really all there is to it. This is a funny sort of tea which has a fairly simple flavour profile but somehow manages to make it seem like it’s extremely complicated. I’m not sure how that even works at all.

Unfortunately for me, I does fall somewhat to the fact that I’m just generally unimpressed with Yunnans and it just doesn’t hit my swoon-buttons. I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed, because I honestly hadn’t expected to swoon either, but I am still somewhat underwhelmed. Sorry.

Hello Steepsterites!

We were in the UK this weekend to attend a family wedding. To make a lot of things a lot easier we had booked local accomodations for the night. It was… Well, it was a bed, anyway. In the room there was also the luxury of the possibility of making a cup of tea or coffee, according to ones preferences.

This was the tea available.

Well. I shan’t go into too much detail because I remember only these few things about it. Either this was all there was to remember or I’ve simply surpressed the rest of it. To put it down in a few keywords, this is what it was like,

It smelled strongly like wet cardboard and tasted faintly like ashes.

And when I say ashes, I don’t mean that it was in way smoky or at one point had been smoky. It was just bad.

But it was all there was, and I was in need.

Drinkable. Just.

This is an ancient sample that I got from Fleurdelily, who doesn’t seem to be around anymore, back in October. It’s been sitting in my Untried Teas Box since then, because there were several things about it that I found a little intimidating.

I’m not super-keen on mate, to be honest. But I don’t hate it either. Also, I’ve never had roasted mate before, and maybe that appeals to me more.

I’m not super-keen on chocolate flavoured things where the chocolate isn’t a naturally occuring note of cocoa. It’s a texture thing. Or rather a lack of texture thing. But I’m willing to give them a go.

I have also had a blend previously which contained chicory, I think it was, and there was something in it that I didn’t like where people told me it was likely the chicory. I think. Or was I dreaming that? I can’t remember which blend it was or when I drank it.

So that is why it has taken me so long. Quite honestly, I’m rather afraid of this.

But I’ve pulled myself together and made a cup, expertly spilling a good slosh of it into the tray. The table at Tea Corner is wooden and was beginning to show the evidence of a lot of spilling, so I bought a small melanine tray from Roy Kirkham, with butterflies on it matching one of the small pots, to have the pot and cups and such on while brewing. It looks great (I think) and it works.

Well, it certainly smells like cocoa. Sweet and deep and very much like hot chocolate. So far so good. There’s something else underneath as well, which smells rather like coffee, so since chicory has a history of being used as a coffee substitute during the Occupation, I’m going to assume that it’s chicory I can smell.

My father doesn’t like tea at all. He doesn’t like real tea and he doesn’t like herbal tea. He thinks it stinks to high heaven and tastes even worse.

(And don’t come and tell me nonsense like ’it’s just because he’s only had bad tea’ or ’it’s just because he hasn’t tried this or that tea’ or ‘everybody likes tea, just not all types’ because it’s rubbish and it annoys me. We all have things we just. Don’t. Like. For me it’s beer and most sorts of alcohol. Yuckity yuck yuck yuck. For him it’s tea. It greatly annoys me when people seem to take offence at the fact that there are people in the world who strongly dislikes things that others like. Nobody likes everything, and we are allowed to not like some things. So there. Rant over.)

But anyway, I think he might find the aroma of this one tolerable. Yes, frankly, because it smells like coffee, but even so. The funny thing about me father, by the way, is that he’s really into whisky and goes to tastings and what not when he can with Husband and a friend of his. So while he finds my tea disgusting and I find his whisky repulsive, we get each other on this. :)

Right, enough stalling. What does this stuff taste like?

Peculiar. It doesn’t actually have a very strong flavour. At first it was just a sip of hot liquid, and then all the notes show up in the aftertaste. A coffee-y hint, a blooming of cocoa and at the very back of the throat a tiny point of something prickly, as if there was a smidge of chili in it. Well, I’ve heard of chili chocolate…

Now, it is a very old sample by now and apparently I also used water that was too hot, so that may account for the funny backwards nature of the sip. I’m far more used to things having no aftertaste than things having only aftertaste.

I’ve touched on how cocoa flavoured teas and chocolate flavoured teas usually disappoint me because they lack the thick texture of real hot cocoa. This blend, however, has managed to find a way to actually taste strongly of cocoa without bringing with it this lack of texture disappointment, in spite of how the actual texture is still as thin as water. If you get what I mean. I’m highly pleased with this. No other chocolate flavoured tea that I can think of has managed to do this.

As the cup cools a bit, the flavour becomes less shy and actually shows up on the sip as well. The cocoa remains largely on the aftertaste, and I’m catching hints of something wooden (the rooibos, I think) and nuts on the sip. That chicory that I was so afraid of doesn’t appear to be around at all. Or it wasn’t actually chicory that caused aforementioned unpleasant notes previously. See, this would be a lot easier if I could actually remember it. Now I don’t even know why I mentioned it in the first place.

All in all, this is quite a hearty and pleasant blend. What was I so afraid of for all this time? That said, I’m still not super-keen on mate, but I’ve learned that I like it better when it’s roasted.

“If somebody made me a cup of tea, I might feel better…!”

Husband obliged. I think his reasons might have been threefold.
1. He would get a cup of tea out of it.
2. He wanted me to feel better.
3. Best to nip whining in the bud whenever possible.

“If a cat would come and sit on me, I might feel better…!”

Unfortunately Luna and Charm are less susceptible to this sort of thing.

Luckily we had had this tea in the morning so a resteep of the same leaves was a pretty simple thing to do. It’s a favourite of mine, and Husband has fallen for it as well. When I bought the current lot, he told me to make sure I ordered plenty of it.

And do you know what? It does actually appear to have calmed my unhappy tummy a bit. It’s not perfect, but it does feel a bit less meh.

Hello Steepsterites! No, I haven’t forgotten you. I have in fact been around and reading most days. Just been a bit busy. Husband started his new job shortly before I posted the last post, and at the moment his commute is absolutely horrid. There is a car purchase in his near future which will cut his commute time in half or there abouts. So as it is, he’s home pretty late every day and I don’t really see very much of him.

Now, however, I’ve got a long holiday of about 2½ weeks in front of me, and there should be more time to keep up with you lot as well.

Project Ceylon!

Yes, I’ve made it through the samples from Nothing But Tea. What I have left now is this one, which I got in that delicacies shop that shares my name, and by coincidence discovered that it wasn’t actually a generic blend as the name would have me believe. I’ve also got my two Chaplon Ceylons, Galle and Uva Highlands, which I want to revisit for Project Ceylon as well. That’s going to be difficult, especially when it comes to Galle, because I’ve had about half the tin so far and I’ve started to know it pretty well. That makes it harder to analyse, I think, because I know what I’m expecting to be there and it affects my experience of the cup I’m actually having. Bit like how I avoid reading other people’s notes on a tea while I’m writing my own post.

I suppose with Galle and Uva Highlands, those are so relatively new in my cupboard that I could just find the first post I’ve done of each and have that count towards the reference map, but somehow that feels like cheating.

Now, back on topic. This one comes from Pettiagala and since it was a coincidence that I spotted that name on her bag in the shop, I’ve had to find my own information on it by way of Google and Teh Interwebz. As far as I could determine, it’s a high grown tea, grown at about 1500 meters above the surface of the sea.

The aroma of the dry leaf has a bit of wood and a bit of malt, and with a touch of something floral on top of it all. I can’t find any of the leather-y notes that appear to have been more or less universal in the Ceylon teas I’ve tried so far. This doesn’t worry me too much, though, because the scent of the dry leaf have been completely difference from how it presents itself when brewed before.

So after steeping, I’m on the lookout for that leather-y note, but once again I can’t find it. It’s still a bit floral and a bit malty, and it has also gain a hint of grain and a good deal of sweetness. That sweetness strikes me as somewhere in between honey and caramel. Neither one nor the other, but with elements of both.

Judging from that aroma, I’m counting on the flavour to really pay up, but unfortunately the leather-y note is still missing. A bit malty, a bit floral and a bit grainy, just like the aroma. But the leather-y note just isn’t there and there doesn’t appear to be any other notes in there that takes up that particular place in the flavour profile, which just makes the whole thing taste a bit thin.

Shame that.

This one comes off as pedestrian at best. It’s a good enough tea, and the taste is pleasant. It’s by no means a bad tea. It’s worse than that. It’s just kinda boring…

Reference map: http://goo.gl/maps/0LJ8r

Cherry flavoured black teas seem to be few and far between around these parts and I’ve always thought that was a shame because I really wanted one. So when I was in Fru P’s the other day and I saw this one, I spontaneously jumped on it and got 50 grams. I’ve been crazy much looking forward to trying it, but was trying to control myself a bit. Otherwise I’d have had it at five minutes to bed time last night. :D

The aroma of the dry leaf is definitely cherry. Very recognisable as such, but there’s something else in there too which I can only say reminds me of marzipan. I don’t think that’s actually really it, but that’s the closest I can get. It smells like cherry sweeties and the sort of warm cherry sauce that we eat with the Christmas rice pudding around these parts.

After steeping it smells a little less like sweeties, and there’s a certain harsh-ish note to it which makes me think it’s been very strongly flavoured. Like the vanilla one was. I wonder if these are actually completely freshly blended for her shop and that’s why the flavouring seems so strong. That perhaps they haven’t had time to settle and air out the excess yet. I don’t know. I suppose we shall just see over time. I’ll definitely be revisiting the vanilla one, so I’m sure I’ll notice if that one suddenly takes a nose-dive on perfection.

Cherries, when I eat them, always seem to surprise me by how dark and grey-ish they actually taste. It’s like I keep imagening something more tart-ish and cranberry-y for some reason, and then I got surprised when they actually just taste like cherries. I love cherries, but I don’t get them often. We can only get them in summer around here and even then I don’t always buy them at the shop. They go mouldy SO QUICKLY, cherries do, so I’m always rather picky about whether or not to get them.

Like cherries, this cup surprised me. Cherry just isn’t really much of a forefront flavour, so at first I just get a sip of base tea, and then that is immediately followed by the flavouring. I think the base here is either Ceylon or a mild-ish Chinese. It has a certain amount of grain to it and a bit of malty notes as well.

There isn’t really any time to properly try to analyse the flavour though, because the cherry comes in and floods the whole thing. The aftertaste is pure cherry.

I’m not picking up any of that sweetie or marcipan-y notes in the flavour itself, but there is a hint of marcipan on the aftertaste. It suits the cherry quite nicely, really.

Cherry sauce and marcipan. I’m getting in a Christmas mood…!

Project Ceylon

Back on track. Nearly. I’m actually writing this based on notes I made yesterday. Writing backlogs like this usually ends up in a big past tense/present tense messy muddle, but I’ll try and control myself. Pick a tense already and stick to it! Bear with me if I can’t.

This one was initially quite confusing to me. Usually the word ‘silver’ gets attached to white teas, so I had to check several times before my brain would accept that it really was a black one we had here. No clue where they get the silver from. It didn’t even taste silver. If anything it tasted more yellow. Bright sun-yellow.

But synesthesia aside, this tea took us into the mid-elevation part of the scale, grown at 600-1200 meters above the surface of the sea. It’s also the one grown furthest to the North of all my Ceylons so far. I wonder if that makes a difference?

The dry leaves didn’t have much in the way of aroma on their own. I had to try and breathe on them a bit before anything would come out, and then it was a sweet note of honey and a little bit floral as well. Nectar is really the first word that pops into my head with that combination.

After steeping there was much more aroma and the honey note was very strong, but I didn’t get so much of that floralness that I caught on the dry. Instead I got the impression that there might be a note of grain hiding under all this bee stuff.

At this point I can’t say I was particularly surprised to find a load of honey in the flavour. Actually, if I hadn’t known better I would have thought that this had actually been flavoured with honey. That’s how strong it was and how close to actual real honey I thought it was.

Here, we also got the floral notes and the grainy notes back again. At first I thought that it might have been two sides of the same coin, but I definitely thought I noticed both in the flavour, so I decided it was more likely that they were both there independently. Which sounds ridiculous, I know. Like the flavour is made up of random coincidences and various flavour molecules meeting up randomly. Anyway, there was definitely a bit of something floral under the honey and a smidge of grain under that as well.

Primarily, though, it was just very strongly honey. I had an Assam once which would do this when brewed Just So. It was highly enjoyable, but totally unreliable. It seemed like a complete stroke of luck when it went honey-y and I never could figure out what it was that made the difference, because I thought I made it in the exact same way every time. This Ceylon came out even more strongly honey than I remember that Assam doing and two steeps of it, both heavily honeyed, implies that it does so with much more consistency.

I found this one greatly enjoyable, although at this point in Project Ceylon I will have to say that Ceylon blacks generally don’t really seem to resteep well. That’s a shame, I think, now that Husband and I, in the Age of Frugality, have become so good at always steeping a tea twice before tossing the leaves. There is a great deal of guilt involved when not doing it with these… (I’ve been spoiled by Chinese blacks, haven’t I?)

I’ve never had this one before either, so I can’t tell if I agree with myself or not.

Reference map: http://goo.gl/maps/76sz4

Steepsterites, let me deviate momentarily from Project Ceylon for a moment. I have been waiting for this moment for quite a while. A new shop in the city where I live has opened. They sell tea, coffee, wine, and other various delicacies, and while I would normally be slightly put off by the coffee in particular, I have been waiting impatiently for them to get ready to open the shop, which they finally did this Wednesday. You see, the name of the shop is ‘Fru P’ which means ‘Mrs P’, and you know what? I’m Mrs P too! Clearly this is a sign. Clearly.

Today I got the chance to go in there, where I met the other Mrs P (and Miss P as well). She had a few beginner’s troubles with her till and such, but hey, they’ve only been open for two days. I’m sure they’ll come after it. She seemed very nice and helpful and she smiled when I told her that I was Mrs P too. I also got a cherry flavoured black and another one for Project Ceylon. That one was an inspired bit of a find, actually, because being currently in the process of learning that area, I automatically looked for it on her shelves, even though I thought that she would be more likely to have a Ceylon blend rather than anything single estate, or even single growing region. I thought I’d get some anyway, and then I saw a sticker with a name on the tin and asked if that was where it had come from. She wasn’t sure, but she tried to pull the big mylar bag out of the tin enough that we could see its label, and agreed with me that it probably was. So that’s another one for the Sri Lanka reference map as soon as I look it up and work out where it actually is. (I can’t remember it off the top of my head, but I wrote it down)

Anyway, the first one I’m going to try out of the three I got is this vanilla. You know, Steepsterites, about my ongoing quest for my Perfect Vanilla black tea and how I have been despairing of it even existing at all. I did have it briefly. Chi of Tea had a Vanilla Nilgiri which lived up to all my ideals of the Perfect Vanilla, but they appear to have gone out of business, so when I thought I would stock up on a significant amount of it, my plans were sadly thwarted by there not being any.

So this one. The leaf smells very sweet and it’s got a good deal of that vanilla pod-y quality to it that reminds me very much of a specific sort of licorice sweet that you can get here (and which actually have nothing at all to do with vanilla). There is a certain sharpness to it, though, which makes it feel like it has been very strongly flavoured. This had me initially sceptical, but a strong flavouring isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. It all depends on how well the base tea can keep up in the flavour.

After steeping, the cup smells like a whole sweet shop. It’s vanilla-y, of course, and with notes of caramel, coconut and marcipan. Even a little bit of nougat as well. There is also still that licorice sweet note to it, which is a good sign indeed. Nothing of the sharpness that had me a little wary with the dry leaf, but I can’t pick up much of the base either.

OOOOooooh this is gooooooood!

This tea hits all the right buttons in the flavour. Everything seems to be just so and the only thing about it that currently bothers me is that I don’t know what the base is. Which is funny because with flavoured teas I don’t normally care about what the base is.

At first when I sip, I just get vanilla. A flavour that I seem to be able to taste not only with the tongue, but with my entire mouth in a way. It seems to sort of get in there and then just expand. It’s one of the vanilla-est vanilla teas I’ve ever met where the vanilla doesn’t feel artificial or more along the lines of vanilla sugar.

It even has that vanilla pod-y feel to it. The sort of darker vanilla-y flavour that reminds me of the leathery rubbery texture of the pod.

I’m still not getting much of the base here, but I don’t feel like it’s missing either. The details of the base just aren’t that important here as long as it seems able to hold up to the flavouring without feeling either over-powered or dominating. I think it’s doing so quite well.

This reminds me so strongly of the Chi of Tea vanilla Nilgiri that seems to be forever lost to us, that I’m nearly ready to say that, yes. I have found it at last.

The perfect vanilla has to taste Just So. (Check)
The perfect vanilla has to smell Just So. (Very Nearly Check)
The perfect vanilla has to be easily available without a ton of shipping and/or helpful Steepsterites playing middle-men involved. (Check)

I don’t even have to buy it ONLINE for crying out loud!

I have to taste this through thouroughly before I can say for sure if it really and truly is my Perfect Vanilla, but it’s a very strong candidate. I just need to see how consistently I can brew it with this outcome and whether I can reconcile myself with that bit of sharpness in the aroma. The former being more important than the latter, obviously.

I knew the name of that shop was a sign!

Project Ceylon!

Another which is technically mid-elevation, but just touching on the edge of high-grown. If high-grown is anything above 1200 meters, then we’ve got this one hovering in a grey area at 1000-1300 meters.

I had a very difficult time placing this one on the map, but with the help from Google I have become reasonably convinced that I’ve managed to find the correct area. According to the information I was able to find, Blackwood is actually the name of a section of Idulgashinna tea gardens, so I actually had to look for a completely different name. The difference here is in… umm… the name. I couldn’t find anything about whether we were talking about a large estate dedicating different sections to specific goals, or if it was something along the lines of several smaller gardens joining forces or what.

The dry leaf smells wood-y and a bit spicy, but otherwise it doesn’t really seem to have anything that stands out about it. There is a bit of sweetness in it, but not so much as to really warrant a comment.

This is interesting because after steeping it’s quite berry-y and sweet, but with a strong body of leather-y almost-smoke. This is very unexpected! I’m beginning to think I generally just have a somewhat skewed impression of the high-grown teas, because so far I’ve only had one that really came across that way. I thought I’d get something more floral and light, and certainly not something that tries to have me believe that it’s smoky. It definitely feels more mid-elevation than high.

There is quite a lot of berry in the flavour as well. So much that I could have been persuaded that I was actually dealing with a flavoured tea. It’s sort of a mixture between blackberries and raspberries with maybe a bit of blackcurrants as well. A great big fruity note which pulls out into a creamy feeling tail. How lovely!

Underneath that, and towards the end of the sip I get the leather-y base with a slight astringency to it, but not very much. There isn’t any of that smoke that the aroma almost promised me, unfortunately, because I should have liked to have seen how that would play with the berries. Ever since Auggy shared a citrus-flavoured lapsang souchong blend with me, I’ve been wishing for a red berry-flavoured lapsang souchong blend. Or just generally more flavoured LS blends, but especially the red berries. I should get me some good Four Red Fruits and try it myself. Anyway, I would have liked to have seen how these berries and the smoky note had played together but if I’m to be completely honest, I think I like this particular tea better for it not being there. I feel like I’ve missed an opportunity, but at the same time I’m not sure this would have been the proper place for it.

I haven’t had this one before, so I couldn’t tell you whether I agree with myself or not. I do, however, find this one greatly enjoyable.

Reference map: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=211803378882467968316.0004d6ff92c6d663176b9&msa=0

Project Ceylon

This one is a high grown tea, from about 1500-1800 meters in elevation. It’s not quite as high as the Nuwara Eliya, though, so I’m expecting there to be some difference.

The aroma of the leaves (have you noticed how good I’ve been at remembering this?) is mostly fruit-y and raisin-y but with a great deal of wood-y, slightly spicy notes in as well. Once brewed, the tea retains this fruity note, although it is now the least prominent one. The wood-y, spicy aspects have taken over here, along with a note that very nearly, but not quite come across as caramel. It’s the shadow of caramel, but not the real deal by any definition of the word.

At first when I sip, I get the sensation of hot water. It has a bit of a fruity tinge to it, akin to the apple and pear mixture from before, but it’s faint. Then, after a short moment, a somewhat astringent but rather grain-y and wood-y note shows up underneath, followed immediately by something that strikes me most of all as floral. This is peculiar because floral notes are almost always top notes for me, so it’s funny to find one that somehow manages to sit near the bottom.

As the tea cools and develops a bit, the whole thing gains some maltyness which sort of covers every layer and becomes the primary note. I believe that this would be the grain-y note from before taking over.

There is still a moderate astringency here, though, a little bit too much for me to find it totally enjoyable. I should have liked it better had it been a bit smoother.

This strikes me as rather different from the other high-grown tea I’ve tried so far. The Nuwara Eliya seemed much more fresh and spring-y and somehow green-ish, where this one leans more towards the mid-elevation tea I’ve had, which was the Ratnapura grown at 900-1200 meters. Flavourwise the Dimbula seems to fall right in the middle between the two, but bizarrely I find I enjoy it less than either of those. I believe it’s the far more pronounced astringency at play here, which is really detracting for me.

I had this one three years ago as well, but I wasn’t apparently in much of a frame of mind to really try to analyse it at the time. I agree with myself about a fruity aspect, although Then-Me thought it was more berry-ish. I wasn’t super impressed with it at the time, though, and thought it best for those times when tea is needed but exquisite flavour and complexity is not necessary. I gave it 73 points then, and have decided to take that down a few notches.

Reference map: https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=6.657388,80.60078&spn=2.013212,2.892151&t=h&z=9

Project Ceylon!
(Or ‘erotic cider’ as Husband was sure I said earlier this morning. O.o)

Now here we have a low-grown. I’ve been quite looking forward to this one, based almost entirely on the name. It’s a good name! It’s fun to say. :D

The leaves smell quite sweet and fruity, reminding me of raisins along with some slight notes of wood and leather. The aroma after brewing is surprisingly sweet and reminds me of honey with a little malty notes underneath. There is a touch of leather-y undertones to it, but not much. It really smells very thich and smooth this.

At first there is a flavour of honey and especially caramel, then a bit of grain and a smooth and slightly creamy finish. Unlike the other two Ceylons, this one doesn’t seem to have any astringency at all. Not even a little bit. I would have liked for the grain element to have been a little larger, to give it a little more volume because as it is, it’s coming over as quite delicate.

After it has cooled and developed a bit the aftertaste turns rather grassy, which feels a bit like the tea gets a second wind. It wasn’t there in the beginning. There was only the impression of the ‘something smooth and slightly creamy’, but now I’m getting a distinctly grassy note.

The leather-y, wood-y flavours that the two previous Ceylons exhibited seem to be completely missing in this one. There is a little bit of it in the aroma, but nothing in the flavour that I can find. This makes it feel almost like it’s from a completely different region. It’s very different from the two others.

I’m having a tough time rating this one because I’m primarily comparing it mentally with the Kenilworth which I gave 80 points. I like Ratnapura better because of the sweet, caramelly qualities, but I like Kenilworth better because it’s a fuller, more voluminous flavour all over.

According to my hypothesis, I would prefer Ratnapura over Kenilworth because Ratnapura is a low grown tea where Kenilworth is mid-elevation. This is the dangers of having a hypothesis in the first place. It’s trying very hard to influence my here, so in order to be as honest as possible about my rating, I’m forced to think very hard about it, and I believe I’ve arrived at the right choice. Even if it does go ever so slightly against my hypothesis. (On the other hand, my statistical base is very very small here. Way too small to say anything final.)

Now, this is one that I had before three years ago, and back then I seem to have made an extraordinarily strong cup. Must have overdone it rather on the leaf, I think. I am, however, very pleased with how much I’m agreeing with myself. Right down to the EXACT number of points I had decided on! That’s just… uncanny! (Note, I don’t look at previous posts or ratings of these before after having written about the current cup. I don’t write the post directly in Steepster for these, so I don’t even look the tea up until I’m ready to write this paragraph. Doing so would be cheating.)

Reference map: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=211803378882467968316.0004d6ff92c6d663176b9