Doulton

2. from my Golden Moon Sampler, selected by plunging my hand into the basket and grabbing.

Today I was a little more careful. I used only 4 ounces of water. I still don’t think I’m getting the full effect. I’ve noticed that the tasting notes are all over the place on this tea. I can smell the floral aspects which are pleasant but not to-fall-in-love-with. I can also pick up on a sun-shiny buttery aspect of the tea.

I think my palate prefers the big boom to the delicate touch. In terms of being a tea drinker, I feel a bit like Sir Walter Scott felt about Jane Austen: "The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. "
The exquisite palate is denied to me but I certainly enjoy those Big Bow-wow teas.

My ratings, by the way, reflect my own pleasure in the tea and have nothing to do with the tea’s actual merit or lack thereof.

This tea is a tea revelation. If you read my notes, you probably think I have tea revelations on an hourly basis. At the rate I’m going, they happen no more than weekly.

This Keemun is a deeply rewarding tea. It has many moods, nuances, and overtones. It’s very rich and one does not need to seek out subtlety or wonder “could that really be a fleeing taste of chestnut?” or “is this deeply walked-in shoe leather a figment of my imagination?”

Ku Cha, which provides very speedy delivery and excellent service, has a real winner here. The full-bodied tea makes me want to stand up straight, starch my collars, and salute. The aroma and taste is a bit playful yet staunch at the same time: some very light smoke, some fruity grape (or is that wine?) some cocoa, some floral. This is a tea with a lot of character and depth. I know that Keemuns are not particularly old teas, but this one seems to have travelled ancient paths and seen many sights and made many sage observations.

I made a large mug and figure that it probably costs about $1.00 TOPS. Possibly more like 75 cents. It’s a little more costly than the average tea, but the extra price is worth it. I could most certainly buy this again.

I’ve got to thank Soccer Mom for sending me this tea. I have parted ways with Rooibos teas, but this steep was a timely admonition: I should not make sweeping categorical break-ups with all teas based on a rather small sampling.

Firstly, the coconut aroma is deeply enticing. Secondly, steeped, this is a smooth sweet coconut with no woody or sawdusty rooibos overtones. The aftertaste was excellent. I felt that I had been drinking a nice creamy coconut drink. No tell-tale woodiness! It was nice to have a tea-like beverage to drink in the evening. I may have to order this.

Thank you very much to Ricky for sending me a sample of this. I was quiet overwhelmed by the aroma of the dry leaves. They really smelt like a rose bush. It didn’t smell overly synthetic at all.

And it tastes like a rose—just like a rose. I like strong flavors and I like it when teas defy expectations. No daintiness at all here: it’s really like a rose. The tea gets lost amidst the rose.

I had a bunch of conflicting contradictory thoughts. I wanted more tea in my roses. Yet this tea was heavily evocative. I could imagine it being drunk by the Pre-Raphaelite painters. I could imagine it being on foot lotion or in perfume, as others have noted.

Most of all it made me really miss my mother. It’s one of those times when I really wish I could call her up and say “You wouldn’t believe what I just drank!” And she’d get excited. And we would have a long talk ranging from roses to beverages to a special bush that somebody planted in 1904.

So it is certainly an old-fashioned experience for me although I imagine that the ability to infuse tea with such exceptional flavor must be a newish technique.

I have no idea if I will wake up in a few days or a few weeks or a few months and NEED to buy a full container of this or if it will waft away into oblivion like yesterday’s perfume. I’m certainly glad I tried it but I wonder if it isn’t simply a novel-Tea.

David’s Tea has a most delightful habit of including several free samples with each order I place. I had an order come in today along with three free samples and one of them was Senchamental. I don’t mind a bad pun. I don’t even mind a ridiculously bad pun. I don’t mind a reference to Star Wars either. It takes me back to the days when my children insisted that we constantly play Star Wars. They were Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, respectively. Their father was Darth Vader (alternating with Obi Wan Kenobi). And I got the best role of all—I stepped in as the Princess Leia, as Jabba the Hutt, as Greedo, as Boba Fett, and as a jawa. My own private young Skywalker is a balding middle-aged man and he hasn’t come at me with his light sabre in decades.

So this tea begins as a sentimental journey for me. The dry aroma is pronouncedly orange. And a delightful orange with a true flavor. Nothing synthetic here. Orange is the predominant taste as well. And it’s vigorous and strong. The mint makes its way though but it’s clearly a supporting member of the orchestra while the orange is the soloist in this concerto.

I like this blend because it’s an original to me—I’ve never had such an intriguing marriage of mint and green before as back-up players to orange. The aftertaste has more mint, but remains quite orange-y. The orange – mint blend is strong to the point that I don’t taste the vegetal elements of the green tea coming through. I’m enjoying this hot, but it might make the absolutely perfect iced tea for the summer (I’m doing iced tea auditions right now and this one has made the cut). Now I’ll have to put in a full-order with David’s Teas. Was I compliementing them on the free samples? Now I say it’s like the old dope peddler giving a free sample to a gullible child.

Super-nice tea.

23 days ago I wrote a rather luke-warm review of this tea. I got it out today to send a sample to Lena and decided to give it a try. It’s not been the most successful tea day for me for various reasons and I thought that an uncomplicated, unblended straight-up tea would be a good cure-all for whatever it is that ails me (Who saw “Office Space?” “Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays?” Well, that’s me. I recommend this movie highly. Put aside any reservations you might have about Jennifer Aniston and see this now! “Office Space,” however, did get me into some flabberghasting moments with my students. I told them I wanted them to add “pieces of flair” to their writing. A student’s idea of a piece of written flair is to say that something is “very unique”.

I apologize for the bad digression. In any event, I’ve finished my mug of Black Frost and my opinion is revised considerably. Since I first tasted this tea, I’ve been exposed to too many blends; to quite a few bad teas, and to too many meek and shy little teas.

Black Frost is a bold single note Nilgari. It brews up into a good strong cup that does not play around. It does have some taste overtones—slightly vegetal for a black and a bit sweet but not in a bad way. I don’t think it has the taste complexity of Dawn, also by “The Simple Leaf” but it’s a good no-nonsense tea. I think such teas should win higher accolades. It has made me perk up from my cast of the “Mondays” (not to mention that the clock is right at 3 PM).
Nice to get some real caffeine here, too.

Golden Moon Tea Sampler #1
I picked out a packet at random and got this one. I wonder if I used too much water? I tried to use about 4 or 5 ounces of water, but my eyeballs are not well-trained precision tools. Glancing at the other tasting notes, I see that I’m off from the general consensus. Aroma, to me, is sweet corn in green tea and I can’t get the “corny” flavor out of my mind as I sip.

It tastes like a pleasant, weakish, generic green and I’m missing out on all the sensation. I will carefully measure water for my next steep and then possibly revise my note.

Oh, this is such a ridiculous confection that it’s wonderful. The black tea smells like a very serious old-school tea but the raisin and chocolate aroma emerge after a few seconds. Steeped, the tea is naturally very sweet and the chocolate taste is pervasive.

FLASHBACK TO CHILDHOOD MEMORY: I remember, I remember—being 5 or 6 years old and somebody gave me some Raisinettes. I remember pain-stakingly licking the chocolate off the raisins and then discarding the raisins. Those were the days when I didn’t believe anyone should put “food” in the sweets.

52teas are, typically, bursting with flavor and this one is no exception. It’s excellent but does not match the Buttered Raisin Toast—perhaps because that “toasty” flavor seems more difficult to find in a tea than a chocolate or raisin taste. You’ve got to try this if you are a Raisinette fan. And 52teas might want to try more “Cinema” flavors—that would be nifty. Junior Mints. Twizzlers. Lemonheads. Charleston Chews. Hot buttered popcorn. Nibs. Jujubes. Just stay away from Dots—a confection I always found perfectly pointless.

Mariage Frères describes this tea on their web-site as: “A highly original orchestration of the essences of selected fruits. Harmonious aroma and flavour.”

Very helpful! What selected fruits are in the orchestra? They promise harmony and not cacophony. I got this tea based entirely on the name. I know that I’m a Pavlovian dog when it comes to names. If Lipton’s packaged their tea bags as “Beethoven’s Ninth Tea” or as “Van Gogh’s Struggles” or as “Jay Gatsby’s Jazz Age Party Tea” I’d probably be slurping it up.

Yes, name yourself or your tea “French Impressionism” or “Italian Opera” and you’ve got my credit card number. In this case, however, Mariage Frères did not disappoint me. I get a taste of vanilla and chocolate both along with a fruity mélange of perhaps strawberries or currents? The fruit is hard to pin down but I know it’s there. The aftertaste is not to be trusted but having had a full mug I will say this: aftertaste of banana? Or a little pineapple?

Yes, this is a symphony of fruity chocolate with some vanilla. Have you ever had a “banana baby?” They sell them in my local supermarkets: http://www.dianasbananas.com/our-products/

Anyhow, elegant tea is delicious and the aftertaste runs riot in the mouth mimicking the essence of a Diana’s Banana Baby. It seems like a very French thing to do—a bricolage of high and low art; bringing Vivaldi to the tropics; having Jerry Lewis be the lead tenor of a Bach Requiem Mass.

I’ve been tasting a lot of French flowery/fruity/chocolatey tea of late and it’s often difficult to distinguish them. What makes each one unique? Vivaldi has most certainly established itself on my palate as distinctive. As Randy Jackson might say to this tea, “You’ve made it your own”.

This appears to be a promising green tea.

I messed up my order and through my own miscalculation was only able to try a small portion of a tea-spoon so I tried to adjust with only a small amount of water and a longer steeping time….well, maybe you know how these things go. I certain detected a very fruity aroma and not so much of a vegetal one. I’ll be interested to hear what others think.

This is very good and the smell is delicious. The rum raisin aroma is the pervasive one. I was hoping, a bit, that this tea would be very similar to my beloved “Brioche” from the American Tea House, but it is more like rum raisin and Brioche is much more cake-y.

The NecessiTeas and I have a troubled relationship: we are in a repetition compulsion that goes like so: I make an order of $90 or $45 dollars and pay them promptly via Pay Pal. Three weeks later I call them and nobody answers. I then send a plaintive email and get a response that my package is in the mail. Package arrives shortly thereafter, always post-marked one day after my bewildered email. I honestly do not have a dysfunctional relationship with any other tea company.

So…anticipating that this would be a problem, I placed a reorder for this tea a week before my first order arrived. It’s nice that they offer sample packs for $2.00 but I really feel as if ordering from them is a huge imposition for them. I feel like some sort of tea mendicant who is as annoying to them as a panhandler. It’s too bad that their tea is so good.

I’m really happy that I’ve tested this tea; it is going to be a full-size order. It’s a great “gateway” tea for those who are contemplating trying a smoky tea. It does not have the taste of a bonfire, a forest fire, or even a Barbie Que, but it does have a touch of smoke. This smoke is presented with a natural sweetness and a definite buttery cocoa taste.

Upton called for a 4-5 minute brew and I had wandered off and allowed it to oversteep by about two minutes. The tea was graciously forgiving and does not taste at all rancid, bitter, overcooked, or unpleasant. What a sweetheart!

In case you wonder about why I’ve been giving so many high marks, it’s because I am only drinking tea that I am pre-disposed to like. I’m also drinking higher up on the financial chain, which probably makes me both more eager to like the tea but also makes the tea worthy of a higher price point.

What a wonderful aroma! I opened the bag and felt as if I had been transported to an orange grove. This tea is serious about its flavour.
This basic black with orange tea is so deeply and richly flavored with orange, that it’s the best citrus tea I’ve sampled so far. The taste is delightful. With a big of milk, it tasted that a really high class gourmet Creamsicle—or as if somebody like Todd English or Gorden Ramsay or Ina Garten had decided to create an orange Creamsicle and serve it with the best black tea.

The American Tea Room has become one of my favorite merchants because of their speedy delivery service; because of their sample sizes, and, most of all, because of the high quality of their tea and their flavor combinations.

I’ve fallen in love with smoky teas;
Their ashy taste will always please.
The flavors are strong with no dearth
Of tar and of peat and of earth.

That’s me! I know that most people disagree with me, but smoke is my niche; my dream lover; my mystic muse. I went to France to obtain this—or really, I emailed to France. I also ordered a superb jelly and just had a most smoky afternoon snack: I felt as if I were in a Paris “une boite de nuit” with the smoke of Gitanes and Gauloises curling all about me. Let my calico cat stand in for Josephine Baker, and I’m flying “en avion de l’ame!”

Here’s the jelly, which I had with bread and un p’tit beurre:
«Tarry Souchong» tea jelly:

Created by the Mariage family in the 19th century, these collection of tea jellies, manufactured in the traditional way in copper pans, are a wonderful accompaniment to toast, brioches and scones. The fruit of this ancestral knowledge, this tea jelly, flavoured with a smoky Formosa tea, combines its subtlety with the splendour of the best teas."

I am utterly enthralled! The smoky teas that I adore are typically far less costly than the delicate whites and the carefully cultivated greens, so I am in luck. This is my moment of Tea Nirvana, of ecstasy that fills my being with a thousand pulses of pleasure.

I’m sampling this today with much gratitude to Auggy. I’ll need to invest in a full-size. It’s certainly the best Irish Breakfast I’ve had in…well, in forever, I would guess. Although I’m not picking up on the delicacy of prunes or hints of truffle or whatever else is promised, I do have a good strong cup of flavorful, malty, fresh caffeine. I liked it better with the addition of some sugar and milk, but I’m a milk/sugar addict. Or a milquetoast? Or a milksop? I must consult dictionary.

Very smooth, just slightly astringent, this is helping me to wake up on a lazy Friday morning that is now approaching 2 PM.

Thank you, Auggy. You send out the best and most beautifully packaged samples.

My 125th tasting note!

Place Saint Marc is a good medium-strength black/strawberry tea with an aroma that suggests various florals that I cannot quite put my finger on. It’s very good, but I don’t think it is “to die for”. Were you to be served this at the actual Piazza Santo Marco, it would cost you about $75. American dollars. Walk around the corner, however, and the same drink would translate to about $3.

This is an excellent afternoon tea choice, with a lovely fragrance. All of the French teas I’ve been sampling are very good and worthy of high ratings but none of them has yet “popped” as being far and away the best and the brightest and utterly unique. On the other hand, none has disappointed me in the least.

The lingering after-taste of strawberries is really quite lovely. I don’t understand why a poetry textbook, edited by Kennedy and Gioia, in most respects a very good book, asserts that “your breath smells like tea” is a terrible simile, although I would specify the type of tea.

I’ve had the pleasure of trying many magnificent teas recently. This is another way that sustains a very high standard of a creamy chocolate black tea with clear citrus notes. The aroma is floral candy; the taste is a citrus chocolately black tea, and the after taste is where the coffee emerges a bit.

Another delightful beverage! Very good straight up but I think I like this one with the milk and sugar I added midway through.

I was so impressed by the flavor and the quality of other teas that I got from American Tea Room (plus their speedy delivery) that I wanted to try this. I am not disappointed. It is a sweet, rich caramel with a full body and a full taste. I added a bit of sugar mid-way through my first mug, plus some milk. I don’t think that the sugar is needed—it’s naturally sweet on its own. The milk seemed nice. I think that there is a natural milkiness in caramel candies, so it belongs.

All in all, I am not in the least bit disappointed. I keep evolving as a tea drinker and just a few days ago when I ordered this I was all about the sweet, candied teas and have since evolved into a purist. BUT I know that in the course of human events, I will naturally return to a love of the sweet, candied tea.

I came across a tea reference in a poem by WH Auden (Letter to Lord Byron, part III):

“For now we’ve learnt we mustn’t be so bumptious
We find the stars are one big family,
And send out invitations for a scrumptious
Simple, old-fashioned, jolly romp with tea
To any natural objects we can see. "

I like the idea of a “jolly romp with tea”. That’s what my life has been like lately!

Excellent! I love strong smoke and this is a fulfilling start to the day. I can just hear Paul Robeson singing the anthem “Peat Bog Soldiers”:

“Far and wide as the eye can wander,
Heath and bog are everywhere.
Not a bird sing out to cheer us.
Oaks are standing gaunt and bare.

We are the peat bog soldiers,
Marching with our spades to the moor."

I don’t know why drinking this tea makes me feel like I’m a peat-bog soldier, preparing to
resist tyranny, but it does. It’s good strong smoke in a tea with a lot of earthiness and a bit of saltiness.

Seven Cups sponsors tea tours of China. I wish I could go.
Delivery time from Arizona was 48 hours. Exceptional service from Seven Cups.

This is a very nice and elegant tea. I like the aroma and taste of melons of all types, and this has a good, true aroma. The taste is excellent as well with the green base being a true showcase for the melon. I did not pick up on the other flavors, but hoped not to.

The American Tea Room has some superb blends and excellent customer service.

I let this, my first cup of East Frisian, brew about 30 seconds too long so I might need to revise my review. I have not had this kind of tea before, but have read much about it. Getting it right is an art (or a science?) according to many people. Although I’ve overbrewed it, I can taste the delicious maltiness and can detect the aroma of good solid earth. I think that this tea is stolid and robust and quite strong, which makes it an excellent candidate for early morning and any other time in which more caffeine is essential. It’s not delicate, but it is tasty and it’s doing the trick. I’m sitting up straighter and feeling more alert right now.

I’ll be trying this again and will probably invest in a larger size. Thank you to Upton for providing so many sampler sizes and for speedy shipping.

SECOND STEEP: I can certainly understand why many people are so devoted to this blend. It’s strong and earthy and a great substitute for coffee, providing plenty of caffeine and plenty of flavor. I really like the addition of a bit of sugar and some milk to this tea.

“School mates, School mates! What became of the kids we knew? The boys in knickers, the girls in curls” sing Jim Copp and Ed Brown. “Photo de Classe” does have a nostalgic taste to it. It’s a light chocolate which allows the notes of the nuts and the orange to emerge. It’s got, of course, a natural sweetness and verve.

It is a delightful blend.

Early this morning I made some of this to put on ice in the refrigerator. It worked out well. The result is a nice clear iced tea. If I do this again, I will steep for one minute less or add a pinch less tea. I added two brown sugar ice cubes to the hot tea (it was in a 24 ounce pitcher so it won’t be too sweet). Trumpets did not blare; fireworks did not ignite, but this will make a perfectly serviceable iced tea for frequent summer consumption (for me the year has but two seasons: winter and summer).

This is one sweet confection! It smells a bit like one of those Easter baskets my parents would prepare when we were young—a melange of fragrances. The black tea seems to be a foundation for the candied fruity florals. This tea is a bit like the Easter Bunny on steroids of sweetness.

I am absolutely loving these Dammann Frères teas, but it is getting a bit cloying. They are so delicious and maybe I’m at the point today where I’m craving the smokiness of a Lapsang Souchang. I think I need to bring them out sparingly and not try to dash through them so quickly. I’m bedazzled by the wonder of it all!