Chi of Tea and their coupons are totally leading me astray! Was that a paypal button? Oh OOPS! :D
This is bad, because finances are a wee bit tight this month, but I’m staying within my weekly allowance, so I can justify it to myself like that. And also the fact that I could have placed a twice as large order, but decided to save some of it for later.
Clearly this calls for a cup of tea, something that feels thrifty, which means we’re delving into the Standard Panel. Smoky is good. Very smoky is very good. Hello Lapsang!
I’ve used plenty of leaf this morning. Plenty. Because I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. Luckily my average steep times are so short that it doesn’t really seem to have made a difference. It’s a little smokier than average but underneath all the smoke there’s plenty of the fruity sweetness.
I’ve had a Lapsang from TeaSpring, which is otherwise a wonderful company, I think, when it comes to chinese teas, and that one didn’t really develop that fruit note until the second steep. I think that’s why I prefer the Perch’s Lapsang over that one. I like that note. And I don’t want to wait for a whole new steep to get it. And I definitely don’t want to steep twice routinely to get one cup of tea. The super-smokyness of the TeaSpring one has other wonderful qualities, of course, like it’s a good one to turn to when in the mood for something seriously smoky, but it’s just not quite enough to make up for the subdued sweet note that I would say it was a better Lapsang than this one.
This one is perfectly balanced between smoky notes and substance for me.
(It’s significantly cheaper as well, which totally doesn’t hurt!)
