I love this tea. The dry aroma seems to arise from the dead ashes of last nights campfire with the assorted drippings of the barbeque’s mixed grill and even the s’mores.
The taste is smoky deliciously deep.
This is one of those teas that make me want to expand and expound like Walter Pater did in his study of the Renaissance period. He wrote: “A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike.”
For me, this tea burns with Pater’s gemlike flame. It seems ancient and wise as if it had witnessed the lichen growing on the rocks and the mosses forming around the firs.
I do love smoky teas with a passion. I wish that Andrews and Dunham would maintain a constant collection of teas. If they always sold Caravan and Jackee Muntz I would be relaxed and happy and not need to constantly roam, with a hungry heart, looking for the next great Smoky Tea.
