1353 Tasting Notes

55
drank Caramel by Fru P Kaffe & The
1353 tasting notes

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.

KiwiDelight

One of the neighbors hung a red fox to the back of this pickup truck, but this takes the cake.

Angrboda

First time I saw it, I was waiting for a bus and it drove past. Afterwards I actually wasn’t sure if I really did see it. :)

K S

Did Boris and Natasha finally kill moose and squirrel for Mr Big? If that went over your head, sorry, I’m old.

Angrboda

KS, possibly not as much a question of age as of different nationality

ashmanra

Oh no! Bullwinkle! Rocky will be heartbroken!

K S

Angrboda, I realized the nationality thing after I hit add comment.

Sil

you can bet you i’ll be messaging you! :)

MegWesley

It’ll be a moose! Lol, love the picture!

Fjellrev

That person has smashing taste in decor.

teataku

(facepalm at previous comment) X-D

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60
drank Wild Pu-Erh 2008 by Chaplon
1353 tasting notes

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.

Kashyap

sounds like a shou/shu pu erh…and I have found that on the whole, most seem to grow smoother as they age, though rarely more complex. There have been a few exceptions…but the explosive flavors and exotic notes are definitely more in the Sheng….I love drinking Shu after heavy foods and dinner

Bonnie

I love shu in the mornings during Winter too.

Angrboda

It was. I tend not to enjoy sheng so much. Frequently I find them a bit too vegetal.

Angrboda

Bonnie, yes, I tend to think of pu-erh as a morning sort of tea as well. Mind you, I don’t usually allocate teas to specific times of day, but I do try to put some thought into which tea to serve on Pancake Saturdays. Pu-erh fills that spot nicely, actually. I’m glad you reminded me of it. I have that other one that Husband’s parents gave me for Christmas. I think I’ll serve that one next time.

Kashyap

shu’s also make wonderful chai bases

Angrboda

Meh, I’m not a chai-person, really. :)

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95

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.

Anyanka

I read it as fo’ sho too and it always makes me smile when I see it in the tasting notes.

TastyBrew

Me too! Fun note!

Angrboda

I’m glad it’s not just me! :D

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73
drank Golden Fleece by Verdant Tea
1353 tasting notes

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.

Starfevre

You like what you like. No need to feel sorry at all.

Sil

haha i don’t love it either, seemingly for similar reasons as you. :)

Angrboda

Starfevre, I’m not really either. I don’t know why I added it, because it tends to annoy me when others make excuses for themselves in that way. When I read it, it sounds more dismissive than sincere in my mind. :)

Sil, yeah, I’m just not a Yunnan person. I like the dragon pearls from Yunnan, but that seems to be about it. On the other hand, now that I’ve got started on this one, I’ve steeped it three times. Might as well get my money’s worth. :) It’s not by any means bad, it’s not even really boring. But it’s just a Yunnan.

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18
drank Tetley Tea Bag by Tetley
1353 tasting notes

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.

alaudacorax

I often find myself wondering whether advertisements really work. Years ago, I used to love the telly adverts with the Tetley Tea Folk – little cartoon men. I particularly remember the ‘Tetley Tea Folk, Folk Dancers’ one – with the chap having little bells on the tips of his habitual carpet slippers. I used to look out for them. Yet it never once occurred to me to actually buy the stuff, so I never tasted it!

alaudacorax

Actually, I suppose it’s quite odd that we Brits are a nation of tea drinkers, yet it’s quite difficult to get a decent cuppa outside the home. Or it used to be – gave up trying years ago – in a cafe I drink coffee or a fruit juice.

Angrboda

The stupid thing is that Husband actually suggested that we bring some with us to share with his parents, but he thought of it so late that it wasn’t possible. (I can’t just randomly grab something off the shelf with no preparation like that)

Ysaurella

this is something lovely in the Uk, in any hotel I went, we had the ability to do coffee or tea thanks to a generous kettle.
I think this is the same problem in France, in cafe you often get a stupid tea sachet (tetley, lipton, richard) It’s quite rare to find out good teas except when you choice a tea room.

Ysaurella

oh , one good point for Tetley is their “tir press” system on sachets :)

Angrboda

This wasn’t even a sachet, just a regular old paper tea bag.

Ysaurella

you were definitevely unlucky with this Tetley so :)

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62

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.

Kashyap

mate is definitely an acquired flavor/taste and I have found that its vitamin boost is my go to for long cycling and running adventures and have yet to find anything that balances with its taste…so its straight-no-chaser for me

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100

“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.

ChariTea

Aww I hope you feel better!

Angrboda

It’s more or less gone now. I think I must have eaten something that couldn’t decide wether it agreed with me or not.

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60
drank Ceylon FOP by Fru P Kaffe & The
1353 tasting notes

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

Ysaurella

I understand how your husband should feel, my company moved and now my commute is more than 3h/day (1hour and a half morning and near 2 hours the evening…)

Angrboda

Yeah, his is about 5 hours a day at the moment. He’s going with my dad to look at a car on Friday though, so hopefully they’ll decide that it’s a good car and buy it. Then he’ll only have an hour each way. The problem is that you can’t get from where we live to the job on public transport without going on a big detour. With a car he can get there directly.

Ysaurella

I see- this is the same for me.The point is I don’t drive…as I was living inside Paris for years and working inside Paris, I never pass the driving licence…now I feel I should :)
Hope the car was nice enough to get bought and your husband recovers correct commute timings.

Angrboda

Well, he hasn’t been yet, it’s not until Friday. :)
I don’t drive either, I never learned. I don’t really want to learn either. The thought of me behind the wheel of a car rather frightens me. You can do a lot of damage with one of those things. O.o

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84
drank Wild Cherry by Fru P Kaffe & The
1353 tasting notes

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…!

Ysaurella

yes it’s rare to find a cherry black tea, lucky you to have found a pleasant one

Sil

this sounds delicious! I hate green cherry teas….so a black one would be fantastic heh

Terri HarpLady

Yeah, most cherry teas taste like cough syrup, but this sounds like it might have promise.
I have a sweet cherry tree in my yard, & although I always have to battle the birds to get my share, especially the blue jay family that nests in my pin oaks every year, it’s worth it.

Angrboda

Terri, I think the cherry/cough medicine must be an americanism. If I had flavoured cough medicine as a child it was always licorice or anise or some sort. So I couldn’t say if this tasted like cough medicine or not. Maybe it does, but I’ve never made that connection in my life.

Sil, I’m ambivalent on the green ones. I’ve had some that were great and some that were dull, so I don’t know how I feel about them. I think most of the ones I’ve tried were more cherry flower scented than cherry flavoured, though, which may make a difference.

Ysaurella, the closest I’ve come otherwise is as part of a four red fruits blend, which isn’t really the same at all.

Ysaurella

in France the medicines for children are flavoured with Banana or strawberry !

Sil

In Canada when I was growing up it was cherry, orange or banana

Angrboda

I take it back, maybe it’s an everywhere-else-than-here-ism, then. :) Fact remains, I’ve never to my knowledge had fruit flavoured medicine. Or actually, that’s not true. My father once bought some raspberry flavoured things once, of the sort that you had to dissolve in water and then drink. Can’t remember what sort of medicine it was. Didn’t taste like raspberry at all, though.

ashmanra

I am in the USA. Medicine tends to be grape or bubblegum flavored, though baby aspirin is orange flavor. I think this really horrible but effective cough syrup was anise flavored. I haven’t had it since I was a kid, but since Angrboda said that, I realize that must be what that was – a licorice taste. It was so strong it felt like it burned its way down your throat and all the way to your stomach!

Angrboda

ashmanra, I think I know the sort of medicine you mean. It’s called ‘Norwegian Chest Drops’ in Denmark and only available on prescription. I made a O.O face when I read the label on it and discovered that among other things it contains both opium (a small amount of course) and 34% alcohol. The weird thing was that my doctor told me I was not allowed to use more than 15 ml per day for a maximum of 10 days, and the pharmacy gave me a 250 ml bottle… I kept the bottle for absolute cough emergencies (vile stuff!) and it was still only half full when I took it back to the pharmacy after it passed it’s sell-by date a few years later.

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83

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

alaudacorax

I always write from notes – male – can’t multi-task – can’t concentrate on the tea and write proper sentences at the same time. And, yes, writing from notes does play hell with my tenses – I always struggle to keep them straight.

Angrboda

I often write while I’m having the cup. It just means I have to be careful to start with the middle, and then fill in any intro-y bits afterwards. Otherwise I forget about the tea and it starts cooling. :)

Thomas Smith

I like the map you have going. I put a regions map together once, going back and forth with a guy through emails from the Ceylon Tea Board but I always wound up with a few gaps in conflict with where the boundaries ought to be.

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=208473301948425979578.0004a7ff0b463233b3a64&msa=0&ll=6.915521,80.69458&spn=3.266012,3.532104

Kashyap

great map Thomas! Angriboda I also have a small booklet from the Colombo Tea Trader’s association kindly provided by Empire Tea Services owner Lalith (a former manager of several tea estates in Sri Lanka and now a guide, importer, and wholesale tea vendor)…let me know if you would like me to mail this to you and also check this out if you are on FB https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.436697746411386.1073741831.435275026553658&type=1
or look up Tea Around Town on FB

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Introvert, crafter, black tea drinker, cat lover, wife, nerd, occasional curmudgeon.

Contact Angrboda by email: [email protected]

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Bio last updated February 2020

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