Ed Fladung

When I look on my tea app this is the number one tea that I drink. Whatever I drink, I always come back to this one. It is an excellent Darjeeling. I have had a number of others: more expensive but not better, some too brisk for a Darjeeling, but this one really has qualities and price that make it the one I always reach for.

I just got this in yesterday from Harney. I brewed up a cup this morning, 5 minutes in the steep and drank it with cream and sugar. It’s really a beautiful tea, very mellow but with a decent kick to it. I’ll have to try it tomorrow without the cream, just a little sugar and see how that is. A very nice tea.

This one has been on my shelf for a while forgotten for the moment. I usually drink black tea with a little sugar and no milk or cream. I tried another tea in the morning with half and half so I decided in the afternoon to give this a try with half and half. I found that I like it a lot better that way. It reminds me of a Russian Caravan type tea. It has that Lapsang Soochong slight smoky flavor. It is very smooth and with cream and sugar it was very enjoyable.

I keep coming back to this one. It has a wonderful flavor that I don’t find the equal of in other Ceylons. I got the Harney catalog and was not too surprised to find it not listed in their current catalog while it is still listed online. I suspect that it is not a high volume item but I am afraid that it will disappear one day. It’s one of the nicest teas in my cupboard. I hope they continue to carry it.

I had a lovely cup in the late afternoon yesterday and this tea really is something special. It has deep darjeeling flavor without heavy briskness. It’s nothing like a first flush, having good body and an etherial after note of smell and taste probably from the Rose petals in the tea. Wish I had brought back a lot more of this one.

I keep forgetting about this one. It’s such a fine tea. I feel like a old Chinese Zen poet when I drink it. ;-)

I tried a batch of this one yesterday afternoon. Mary and I were both feeling the need of a mid afternoon Chai lift. I tried adding a few thin slices of fresh ginger and I took the seeds from 3 cardamom pods and crushed the seeds in a mortar and pestle and added the powder to the milk/water mixture before adding the tea. I think it really improved the tea. That being said, it is also very fine without the additions when I don’t have the time to fiddle around.

I have been sort of off chai all summer but with the cooling weather, yesterday afternoon I decided to brew up some of this chai. It is as good as I remember it. I did note however that I wish it had a touch more cardamon and a touch more ginger. Cardamon is a tough one to put into a tin. Ideally it should be fresh ground as it has aromatics that decrease markedly over time. The same with ginger. Dried ginger just cannot compete with fresh ginger.

That being said I really enjoy this one a lot. I might try this afternoon crushing a cardamon pod and adding a slice of fresh ginger. In India they only add the ginger during cool weather since it is very warming. This morning the temperatures dropped significantly so maybe more ginger is the ticket.

Ah! An Afternoon first flush experience! My timer says it’s done!

One thing I love about this one is when I pour the water into my Bodum carafe, this wonderful flowery aroma comes wafting up and smells so good. I was never a great fan of first flushes, but the last few years they have become one of my favorite afternoon teas. This one is really special: flowery and soft with a light brown-green liquor.

It has no need of sugar or milk. It is wonderfully subtle with that magical Darjeeling perfection. Ah!!!

I’m not really an experienced green tea drinker, even though I’ve drunk it for years. Lung Ching comes in a large variety of grades, which I can’t really speak to. This one compares favorably with the ones I’ve drunk from my Chinatown supplier and from Mark T Wendell. This Lung Ching has that grassy, fragrant, fresh scent and nice yellow liquor I expect from a Lung Ching. It’s smooth and delicious. I always notice a really fine sense of alertness that accompanies the cup. Sometimes I brew it in a brown clay tea pot and give it several pours. Today I wimped out and used my Bodum glass press pot, 4 minutes at 90 degrees celsius.

I’ve about finished my first tin of this tea. It’s a fine Darjeeling with all the qualities I love in a Darjeeling. I like it with a tea spoon of sugar to mellow out the woodiness. It’s brisk, but not too brisk that it would need milk. It has the light Darjeeling like floral notes that I associate with first flushes. As it turns out there is some first flush in the blend. I could drink this one on a regular basis.

This is a really beautiful Darjeeling. My first impression was that it was the best Darjeeling I’ve encountered. The flowers in the tea add a very subtle soft fragrance that is wonderful. It is a full bodied Darjeeling, very smooth with a lovely finish. More as I get into this one…

Amba Ceylon again this morning. The more I drink this tea the more I fall in love with it. It is beautiful and subtle. I find myself lingering over it and inhaling the perfume. Very satisfying.

I’ve been drinking this tea for a month or so and for a few days have been having it as my morning tea. It has that briskness of a Ceylon, but not too much. It makes a nice brown liquor and is very soft on the palate. It is a very coarse tea, meaning that the leaves are whole leaves not broken bits. It also has some of the camelia flowers in with the tea. All in all I have been really enjoying this tea, stronger than my usual Darjeeling but really nice in the drinking and nice in the finish.

I’ve been playing around with the water temperature and lower temperatures don’t do it justice. I let the kettle stop boiling for a minute but hardly longer than that. 5 minute steep time.

OK, I don’t like flavored teas. I don’t even have any Earl Grey in my tea closet. I was given this by an Indian friend of my daughter and I love it. We went to India for 7 weeks two years ago and we fell in love with the chai there and drank it at least 5 or six times a day. I have occasionally made chai from scratch myself, but this tea is so good I have given up making it myself. How they manage to get the spices evenly distributed through out the tea is a mystery.

This is as good as it gets if you love chai.

This is a staple in my tea cabinet. I never run out of this one!! Dragonwell to me is like ambrosia/medicine. My body loves it as well as my senses and my taste. It just feels so good drinking it in the afternoon. I sometimes forget I’m drinking it and wonder where it went!

I often get a second steep off the leaves which is less grassy and rarely a third but it still shines.

I can’t believe that I haven’t reviewed this tea yet. For me it was one of those sleepers. I bought it and tried it many times, but only realized how much I loved it when I ran out. At the time I was abroad and could not get any more until I returned several months later. Bummer!

It is a brisk tea as others have noted, but since I don’t use milk in tea it is still not too brisk for my taste. It has a wonderful taste/aroma that I can’t really find words for, perhaps floraly woody? All I know is I treasure it and love it as a break from my more often drunk teas. I do tend to steep it around 4 minutes to keep it from getting too brisk.

So I am still addicted to this unique tea drink. I think that Kombucha Brooklyn has really improved this tea over the two years I’ve been drinking it. Not that it wasn’t delicious in the beginning, I just notice that it seems to be perfect every time. it has a significant amount of fizziness and my spirit soars when I drink it. You HAVE to try it.

I really like this 1st flush. I particularly like it in the late afternoon straight with nothing added. It is light, but with a wonderful floral aroma and that unmistakable Darjeeling flavor. My cup is empty before I know it.

This is still my #1 favorite tea even though there are so many others that I like. On a day to day basis, this tea is wonderful. I just spent 2 weeks drinking an Assam tea because I ran out of my Darjeeling. It was so good to come back home and have a cup of this fine blend. Love it!!!

OK, I was initially disappointed that MTW did not have the Pattabong Clonal Queen this year, being a creature of habit, but I bought a tin of the Singbulli Estate believing that MTW knew what they were doing. I was not wrong. I have been enjoying this tea on many afternoons. Like most First flush Darjeeling’s it has that wonderful combination that puts it somewhere between a green tea and a black tea. They recommend a 4 minute steep, I do five because I like a little more flavor and it can take it without becoming bitter. I let my tea water stand for 3 minutes after boiling to not scald the fine leaves. MTW scores again!

I first encountered Nilgiri tea on a visit to the Kerala area of the Blue Mountains in India. I collected some Nilgiri tea there, but when I saw this one on MTW’s site I had to give it a try. This is a really fine tea with nice citrusy notes and something I can’t describe, sort of a plum taste. A medium bodied tea that lends itself to drinking without the need for milk to cut the tannin. I am not a fan of using milk in tea so this one suits me fine. I’ve had it for seven mornings not consecutively, and I really enjoy it’s beautiful difference.

I got this Oolong at a Chinese grocery store on Canal St. in New York Chinatown. They have a large variety of Chinese teas sold by weight and I have found them to be very good. I am a great fan of Tung Ting Oolong from Formosa. Formosa (Taiwan) is just across the Formosa or Taiwan strait from Fujian Province where this tea is grown so it’s not surprising that they have a similar taste and history. The Monkey picked Tea Kwan Yin is a light Oolong as is Tung Ting with a semi-rolled style and light oxidation and light firing. To my taste the Tea Kwan Yin is not as floral as it’s Tung Ting cousin. It is a very satisfying tea with some aspects of green tea and some deeper aspects brought out by the roasting. Very enjoyable.

OK. I first encountered Tung Ting from Peets Coffee & Tea out in Berkeley California. They have a changing series of teas that they call “Rare Teas”. I bought a 2 oz. tin of Tung Ting and fell in love with it. Since I moved from Berkeley in 2003 Peets has stopped carrying it and I used up the last of my supply. So for any years I’ve been looking for some more Tung Ting. This summer I did a search on the internet and found some Tung Ting and ordered 2 2oz. bags of it.

It is just as I remember it. To do it justice you should have a small purple clay pot and a small purple clay cup. About a half a teaspoon to a 10-12 oz. pot. Water should be allowed to sit a few minutes after boiling. I steep for 2 to 3 minutes before I pour a small amount. As I consume that I pour more a minute or so apart enjoying the increasing flavor and scent until I consume the whole pot and do a second pour on the leaves.

Tung Ting is a green Oolong which when you add the water, the leaves which are whole open up and give off an absolutely ethereal floral scent. The liquor is a light yellow but the combination of the floral scent and the light green taste puts me in another world. The second pour on the leaves is not quite as intense, but still excellent.