Steepsterites! I am coming to you from out of the past!
We have had a succesful move and are still in the process of unpacking and figuring out where everything goes. One category of belongings that we have already figured out what to do with is our teas. In the dining area of the kitchen a corner has been turned into Tea Station. For now it’s just a table, but in time it will also involve an arrangement with shelves and such. It’s absolutely awesome, I have an actual real tea corner now. I’m so pleased about that.
Right now I’m taking some time to relax and enjoy a cup of tea before working out what to do with all this other stuff in my room. Obviously it was time for something really very nice so I dug in deep in the pile(!) of tins and found a Keemun which I know to be extremely pleasant. Or at least I suspect it to be. I think Auggy shared some of this with me once, but as I’m coming to you from out of the past, I can’t, in my present, look it up. Either way, you rarely go wrong with Keemun anyway.
The aroma is pleasantly floral and grainy with something fruity that reminds of figs or similar fruits. It doesn’t really have any notes of smoke in the aroma at all. It’s just completely smooth and thick.
The flavour is somewhat more prickly, though. I’ve made a good strong cup, but not too strong, and the familiar pricklyness of pseudo-smoke has come out quite nicely. With it, a heavy floral aspect, a little dusty and forgotten, but not so much that it becomes a cup of perfume. Some would say, and sometimes so would I, that this was really the same thing but experienced in different ways, so that one person might call it smoky while another would call it floral. Most of the time, for me, it’s 100% smoky and not at all floral, although I can see what Team Floral mean when they say that. This time I’m getting both and it’s not a question of being unable to decide which of them I think it’s more like. It’s actually the fact that I seem to be getting both of them at the same time. It’s quite an interesting combination, really (although I’m not sure flower scented Lapsang Souchong would be such a brilliant idea…).
There isn’t really much of a presence of grain here, not the sort of thing that usually makes me think of proper danish rye bread, and I expect it’s because the floral and smoky aspects have come out so strong.
All in all, it’s a good strong cup of black tea that knows what it wants from the world as well as from the drinker, and by all appropriate deities, it gets it. This is right up my alley, this tea.
Added in the present present: Only a few hours out of the past it would seem. Yay internets!
