__Morgana__

Luscious Lemon. With a name like that, how can I not be at the end of my perfect lemon search? And let’s look at the ingredients, shall we? Is there anything in there that doesn’t have the word “lemon” in front of it? There’s even a cute story on the bag it came in.

In the bag it does smell incredibly lemony, and steeped, it still maintains its lemonyness in the aroma. But alas, the taste. It’s lemony, but it seems… not really weak, but light. And I can’t decide if it is sweet or whether it needs sweetening. There’s a hint of sweetness to the aftertaste, but there’s also a bit of tart vegetalness and a slight bitterness in the finish. I do like a little sweetness in my lemon flavor, not that it has to taste like candy.

This is the second night I’ve tried this. Last night it was really disappointing; it tasted washed out. Tonight, I made it in a smaller cup and I must have gotten the tisane/water ratio better because it has more flavor and tonight it’s actually somewhat sweeter. I think it tastes better a little cooler, too.

As an experiment, I made another cup to which I added some Upton Peppermint. I thought that might tame the tartness and approximate what I like about I Love Lemon a bit more since that also contains peppermint. It really does help with the tartness and adds some depth to the flavor as well, except that I don’t love the Upton Peppermint. It has an earthy, dirty taste to me. And I think I put too much in, too. So there is a downside as well as an upside. Note to self: try with another peppermint. I have a sample from Adagio, and I opened it up to take a whiff. It doesn’t have that same earthy smell the Upton does, so that may work better.

Last variation: Luscious Lemon plus the last of the Upton Peppermint (decupboarding after I finish this note) plus my all purpose sweetener, two bags of Tazo Honeybush. Not good. The peppermint must have been a bit dusty at the bottom of the can and I have this strange coating on my tongue now. Mostly, I seem to have overpowered the lemon almost entirely. I’m going to try this one more time before I give up on it, with the Adagio peppermint and less of it.

Not perfect, and not as close as the Harney & Sons Lemon Herbal or the Teavana Strawberry Lemonade. But it does show promise, if I can get the steeping and peppermint right.

For my 200th note, I thought about celebrating by pulling out a Steepster favorite and giving it a try. Maybe Jackee Muntz, or Florence, or Dawn or Dragon Balls. Or what about waiting for that Hawaiian tea Auggy just wrote about, and that I sent off for this morning? Nah. I’m much too compulsive to wait that long. ;-) And it’s late, and I have a 7 a.m. conference call tomorrow. And there’s always no. 300. So this instead, as I figure it has minimal caffeine, and that’s what I’m about right now.

I had them toss this sample and another rooibos, and a fruit blend into my last order of samples for the sake of completeness, because that was all that was really left by way of samples once I’d ordered all the green, black, white and even oolong samples. I figured it would give me something to taste and write about at times of day when I had no business drinking caffeine.

This one, as it turns out, is all over the map.

The mixture is colorful: red rooibos, green mint, dark brown chocolate pieces, light brown dried apple. Yogurt? I didn’t see anything that really identified itself as yogurt though I saw some little white chips which were probably it. Dry, it smells like chocolate mint, which was promising.

After steeping it’s a cloudy, red cider color and mostly smells like apples and rooibos, which was not at all promising.

But then, there’s the flavor. In the initial sips, my fears were allayed. Chocolate, mint, and rooibos, in that order. The chocolate tastes dark and isn’t very sweet, but it goes well with the mint. The mint isn’t overpowering, but it is tasty. The apple and rooibos are present, but well below the screaming rooibos threshold. This is promising.

But, as the cup goes on, the promise fades. The rooibos stopped sitting quietly in the corner and made me aware of it, in its woody, tobaccoey way.

Then, it has the audacity to end on a high note: the aftertaste isn’t rooibos at all, but mint and chocolate!

Thanks for making me earn this one, Peppermint Pattie. I can’t rate you as high as your Rootbeer friend because you’re so confusing and inconsistent, but you were better than I expected. I would think flavored rooibos fans would like you just fine so I rate you with that in mind, and not as a reflection of my personal intentions toward you.

This has really grown on me. I’ve been drinking it in the mornings, and I’m down to my last few bags. This one I will miss when it is gone.

Very rich, sweet (yes, it really is sweet — for whatever reason it didn’t seem that way to me when I wrote my first note, and it isn’t consistently so nor is it overly so, but on subsequent tastings I’ve found it to have a malty sweetness), full bodied, and otherwise yummy, though I don’t yet know how it compares to other Yunnans. It’s better than any of the other bagged blacks I’ve sampled, and it’s so good at what it does that it deserves to be kept in reserve for those times when a teabag may be the only viable tea delivery vehicle.

Bumping the rating.

I’ve now been through three steeps of this and it has grown on me sufficiently to be able to answer the question I’d posed to myself. Yes, I could see myself choosing this over an unflavored white. Maybe not all the time, but it could happen. The ginger has a staying power that I think would be really useful for an off-tummy day, and it also seems like a really nice season-shift selection for the time between summer and fall for some reason.

Golden Moon random sample No. 19 of 31. The bad news is it’s not the chai again; the good news is that if it was the chai I would have to wait for another time to drink it given the hour.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think this is the same white tea used in pretty much all of the Golden Moon whites. Looks and smells exactly the same to me, and my guess is still white peony. I can see little pieces of ginger root, but I can’t smell them in the dry leaves. I do smell that same salty/marshy/almost marine smell I’ve described in other Golden Moon white tea notes. The leaves have that mix of twisted/pointy and flat in this one, too.

The liquor is a light golden, and interestingly, I don’t get a lot of ginger aroma. I get more of a sweet, white tea scent. This is probably a good thing. I like ginger just fine, and I even like it in tea, though my tastes tend to run more toward the black tea/bakery flavoring profile. I’ve preferred my ginger in stronger teas with other spices rather than as a single spice in a green tea, for example. Mainly this is because the ginger tends to overpower anything but black tea that is strong enough to stand up to it.

But this reminds me of the GM White Licorice, where the licorice smell wasn’t very strong and the flavor seemed to hit the right note. So I’m hopeful, because I’m more likely to like a ginger flavored tea than a licorice one, and I liked the GM licorice one.

Now. This is interesting. I can definitely taste the ginger. This may be the first time I could taste something in a tea that I couldn’t really smell. Usually, it’s the opposite. But what’s really very nice about it is that it isn’t overpoweringly gingery. There’s a nice balance between the tea and the ginger flavor.

What I’m not sure about is whether I would pick this to drink over a non-flavored white tea, especially since I’m having a hard time figuring out when in my daily routine to drink white tea. I’ll think on it some more. If I don’t order this, that will be the reason — not the tea itself.

And bye bye. I’m having my last bag of this at work today. I won’t miss it, but I salute it for trying. :-) And for its role in helping me learn what I like and don’t like.

Looking forward to the day when I have to figure out the logistics of bringing loose tea to work!

Golden Moon random sample No. 18 of 31. With the way my luck is going I will draw Kashmiri Chai dead last. ;-)

Dry leaves have a creamy vanilla scent, similar to the creaminess of the Vanilla Mint. An ice creamy sort of vanilla. It’s not as rich, deep or powerful a fragrance out of the box as I recall the Mariage Freres Black Orchid, which is a pretty high standard to live up to. I can see little pieces of vanilla bean among the dark brown leaves.

The aroma is quite nice. I do smell a somewhat alcoholic note, which I suppose could be rum and a sweet underlying black tea smell along with the vanilla which continues to be an ice creamy/cream soda-y vanilla fragrance. I notice there’s a reference to tropical flowers and I am reminded that some tropical flowers do have a vanilla-like fragrance. I think some orchids do. In any case, if this was meant to refer to other tropical floral scents I’m getting a goose egg, though there is vanilla in spades.

Flavor wise, this is a decent vanilla black, but not spectacular. Far better than the Numi decaf, not as good as the Mariage Freres Black Orchid, possibly not even as good as the Jade Teapot Starry Night, even considering the missing stars and all.

It would not be my go-to vanilla, but I’d be happy to accept it were things I like better not available.

The scents of bergamot and vanilla are strong in the packet and seem to be duking it out between themselves. Steeped, the aroma is more of the creme than the bergamot. The flavor of the underlying tea seems to me similar to the Tazo Earl Grey. It’s a fairly stark, strong, bergamot, though it is mediated to some extent by the vanilla and therefore generally more pleasant.

This is my first Necessiteas black blend sample and I think it is a real step up from their green flavored teas, though it still seems to feel much more an assembly of individual flavors than a true blend.

Today I had to go to Toys R S to get a present for a birthday party this afternoon that the almost 6 year old is now well enough to attend thanks to the miracle of antibiotics. I got there before it opened, so I wandered into the adjacent Starbucks armed with my increasingly detailed order. This time I got nonfat, no water, make it from leaves not concentrate.

There is definitely a difference between the leaves and the concentrate. Made with the leaves, the flavor was much spicier. The pepper was really, really pronounced, too. It did taste much more like it does when I make it at home, only creamier.

Surprisingly I’m not sure which way I like it better. It seems obvious I should say with the leaves rather than the concentrate, but the concentrate had a much more blended taste while the leaves were much starker.

I think this decision will have to be case by case and will depend largely on my mood at the time.

This morning I felt like giving myself a treat, so I decided to depart from my morning habit of attempting to drink up some of my starter teas before my tastebuds are fully awake and drink something new and likely to be quite nice. So I reached into my box ’o goodies from the French buying co-op that Doulton organized and picked this out.

The name of this one is so romantic. Makes me think of sidewalk cafes; lofts on the West Bank; misunderstood, tortured souls bursting with angst. In other words, being in my 20s and an American in Paris. ;-) Or maybe Rimbaud and Verlaine.

All of the flavored Dammann Freres teas smell divine when you open them up. Like walking into a pastry shop. They look rich and dark and beautiful. Steeped, this one smells like apples with a touch of cinnamon and caramel. There’s a lemony high note that seems ornamental rather than necessary to the substance, like a grace note.

What a nice way to start the day. Apple pie fans should like this one. It’s tea, but it’s also apple pie flavor, and the flavor emanates organically from the tea rather than feeling pasted on or dropped in. It’s not overly strong, nor is it too subtle. It’s mostly apple and cinnamon, but like the best apple pastries, it is well balanced between the two flavors.

I got this tea mostly so I could compare caramels. I’d thought I shouldn’t give up on caramel flavoring after my bad Necessiteas caramel apple experience so I decided to try a number of caramel flavored teas to get a sense of the possibilities. This isn’t really a caramel tea. The caramel is around the edges giving the flavor a depth, rather than a sweetness. But it is still a very nice apple pastry tea.

I had two cups, so I could stay in Paris just a little longer.

Golden Moon sample No. 17 of 31. Still no Kashmiri Chai. Sigh. And I’ve not been looking forward to this one as I have recently discovered I don’t care for the way dried chrysanthemums smell to the point where it sets my stomach on edge. I have also discovered that I am able to drink the plain chrysanthemum and enjoy it reasonably well (though I wouldn’t buy it after the sample is gone), as long as I don’t allow myself to smell the dry leaves, or to inhale the aroma of the tea too deeply while I’m drinking. The steeped aroma is just a shadow of the dry, so it’s not quite so problematic for me.

In any case, after reading Rabs’ note on this I realized for the first time this actually did have chrysanthemum in it so I was a little worried about trying it. Fortunately, I do not have the stomach-driven aversion to the scent of the dry leaves here, perhaps because there are only two flowers in the sample. Or perhaps because the salty/marshy note to the white tea that I noticed with the snow buds is present here as well and it overpowers any smell the chrysanthemums might contribute. Or it could even be that this is a different kind of chrysanthemum. It is white, where the others were purple.

In any case, no problem on the smell front. The dry leaves are interesting in that they have some flat, open leaves in them. Almost as many are flat and open as are twisty-pointed. I am not well versed enough to know what kind of tea this is but if I was guessing I’d guess white peony as it is fairly dark in color and seems to contain mostly leaves.

The sample wasn’t big enough to make a full cup, so I’m making about 2/3 of a cup. It makes a pale yellow liquor with a sweet, delicate, lightly floral aroma. No problem here either — either the flowers smell different or there aren’t enough to contribute to the aroma in a significant way.

Tastes like… chicken! Not really. I just have always wanted to say that in a tasting note and just finished having some broiled chicken breast for lunch and was wondering how that would affect the taste if at all.

In reality, it doesn’t taste anything like chicken. It does taste a fair amount like the tea base for the Numi white bagged teas that I was writing about around this time last week, only not as heavy and fresher. It’s sweet and slightly green/floral, with an interesting almost black tea note to it.

At least in my experience, White Tea is an apt descriptor here as I don’t really get any chrysanthemum flavor, unless it’s an intangible contributor to the overall sweetness of the tea. But from my perspective, not getting the chrysanthemum is a really good thing.

I’d probably just as soon try it straight, though. I do worry that in a full tin, the chrysanthemums would be harder to avoid and perhaps have a different effect than I experienced here. That’s enough to make me not want to take a chance on buying more of this.

Golden Moon sample No. 16 of 31. Selected randomly. I was sort of hoping for the Kashmiri Chai, but this was what came out.

I have some, but not a lot, of experience with jasmine tea. Most of my experience is with teas that don’t claim to be exemplars of the genre. So I was really pleased with how the dry leaves smelled when I opened up the sample packet. The jasmine provides a rich and very fresh floral scent. There is a lot of jasmine growing in my neighborhood and on cool spring evenings, it smells wonderful. This strikes me as very similar in fragrance. The tea smells quite nice too. Quietly herbaceous and a little earthy. It is darker than I’d thought it would be, not very green in color — more toward the browner side.

The tea is a dusky, light yellow, and it smells lovely. It’s pretty much only jasmine I’m smelling. Warmed and diffused by the water, the aroma smells even fresher than it did before.

Though I know it isn’t the best descriptor, the adjective that comes to mind upon tasting this is “pretty.” The tea is not distracting, nor is it absent. I am going to try steeping at 2 minutes and see if it becomes more present. It has a sweet, floral flavor, with a very slight vegetal note.

It seems to me a solid jasmine tea in my limited experience, but I had hoped for more green tea flavor to show through.

I looked back at how I rated the Numi jasmine which I think is the only other non-flavored jasmine I’ve rated, and which isn’t as nice at this. I gave it a 71, which is pretty high on my scale. Rather than bump this one up significantly higher, I’m choosing to bump the Numi down a bit. The Golden Moon is tastier and tastes higher quality to me, but as I’m fairly new to jasmine green tea, I am not yet sure it is the best example of its kind. So I’m making it the de facto standard “very good” for now, to be revisited as my experience grows.

This is the last of my free Herbal Infusions samples. And it poses something of a dilemma because if I’m reading the description correctly, it could be either a black tea or an oolong depending on what they send you? Or is it a mix of black tea and oolong? No idea.

I honestly can’t tell by looking at it either. A good bit of the volume of the sample is fruit chunks, and of the leaves I see, some could be stevia. I haven’t seen a stevia leaf except in the picture I just googled, so I am not sure. The leaves that look like tea are a medium brown and could be either black or a v. oxidized oolong. I’m going to use boiling water just because I’m feeling lazy today.

The mixture smells fruity, mostly a nonspecific non-citrus fruit scent. Apple and apricot primarily. There is some spiciness as well, which I have found in a number of samples from Herbal Infusions and which leads me to believe it is more likely this is primarily a black tea base, since that’s mostly what my samples were.

After steeping, there is a very fruity aroma. Mostly apple, maybe some pineapple. The taste is sweet and fruity, with a dominant apple flavor. The tea base is what keeps this from tasting like a very lightly flavored fruit punch.

It’s fun to drink something with this name, and it’s flavorful, but I tried it mostly because I liked the name and with the expectation ahead of time that it wouldn’t likely become a favorite. And I was right.

Another sample that came with my order.

Group A streptococcus has paid a visit to our house, and between the sick kidlet not sleeping well and his younger brother being jealous that he was getting all the attention in the middle of the night and choosing to have a tantrum about it, I did not sleep well either. My eyes are pretty much at half mast this morning and we’re out of toothpicks.

So I though I’d invite the Earl to tea and see what sort of impression he made.

Yellow and blue petals among dry leaves that smell strongly of bergamot. Steeps to a very dark, reddish caramel color. Less bergamot in the aroma after steeping, instead it is more of an orange scent and a very rich, almost chocolatey black tea undercurrent.

The taste is quite nice. The bergamot is not strong and perfumy, which is great. Strong, oily, perfumy bergamot upsets my stomach. It’s more of an impression the tea gives rather than an outright taste. It’s like the way a good jasmine or other flower scented tea gives the impression more than an actual taste. To the extent it’s a taste, it’s orangy, fruity and mild rather than tasting like rubbing alcohol smells, as some bergamot oils do.

The underlying tea is a yummy, smooth black tea. Medium-to-full bodied and medium-sweet with low astringency.

It’s a gentle, polite Earl and he’s welcome to come back to visit any time.

Finally! My inaugural tea of the Doulton-engineered French buying extravaganza!

MmmmmmMMMMmmmmmMMmmmm.

And that’s just the smell of the dry leaves. Amazing raspberry. Reminds me of the filling in linzer tarts, which I used to get from a little pastry shop in Cambridge, MA. I can smell it from several feet away; if I stick my nose into the bag (that has an adorable little giraffe sticker on it :-)) it becomes extremely concentrated. Dark chocolate color leaves with flecks of lighter brown.

The variety and complexity in the aroma becomes more apparent after steeping. I can smell some vanilla, and berry, but I’m also getting a note that seems lemon or orange. Some citrus in any case.

The taste has wonderful berry things going on. It’s not the Kool Aid of some berry teas I have tried, it’s more of the kind of berry note you’d find in a nice wine. It adds a tiny bit of tartness to the tail of the sip. Vanilla is there, but not a strong presence. I’m trying to figure out what berry I’m tasting and I think it’s mostly raspberry and strawberry, but what a contrast to the strawberry of other flavored teas. It’s subtle, but deep and smooth. Apart from the tart berry-tail, the tea is medium-sweet. Not sugary like some blacks. I can see what they mean when they say caramel, though it isn’t the sweet caramel of the Sugar Caramel Oolong. It isn’t bitter either, it’s just a number of notches down from carmelized-sugar sweet. There’s a fresh note to the finish which strikes me as floral.

Note to self: try more leaf next time. I used about 1.5 tsp in about 8 oz water. I think it could go stronger and perhaps unfold even more.

Free sample with my last Adagio order.

I have experienced a lot of bad iced tea. Usually it’s pretty tasteless, or nauseatingly bitter restaurant stuff from mixes, bottled Snapple with flavors that seem artificial or with too sweet artificial sweetener, or my own pretty lame attempts at iced tea that never quite get the water ratio right.

On the other hand, I haven’t experienced that much good iced tea. As I sit here and think about it, I think the best iced tea experience I’ve had is Arnold Palmers at the Cheesecake Factory, and since they are half lemonade I don’t know that they really count.

So that may explain why I liked this even though it seems a lot of other people didn’t. Compared to my baseline, this is way good. :-)

No sweetener, but doesn’t need it. Nothing that tastes artificial, not weak, not bitter. The jasmine permeates the tea and is very flavorful. The tea has a chestnutty/waterchestnutty note to it that lingers in the aftertaste.

I’d drink it again over most iced tea I’ve had, but as I said, my experience is pretty limited when it comes to good iced tea.

Almost at the end of my Herbal Infusions samples. I don’t know if they’re even offering this tea anymore. I went to the web site to see what was listed in the ingredients and all they have there now when I search the site is Caramel Cherry Cheesecake, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the same as this.

So I have to guess at the ingredients. There are some yellow and red petals in among the dark brown tea leaves, I’m gonna say jasmine and maybe some hibiscus. The leaves certainly smell like they have some hibiscus in them to me. They have an indeterminate cherry/berry aroma. I don’t smell cheesecake or anything creamy or otherwise suggestive of it.

Steeped, it smells more cherry like and there is a hint of something that could be cheesecake, though to me it’s a more generic cream/vanilla note. The taste is, however, mysteriously suggestive of cherry and cake, though more shortcake than cheesecake.

It’s nice, and I’d drink it again, but like the Ontario Ice Wine it doesn’t bowl me over.

Golden Moon sample No. 15 of 31. About halfway through my random grab bag and loving every minute of it! Today I have a sick kid home from school with me, and had a hectic working morning, so for my lunch break I wanted something distracting and, hopefully, soothing and stimulating at the same time. Fortunately, yesterday after the caramel oolong, I hooked this tea on my random line.

The leaves on this one are really pretty. Some are very dark and brown; some are lighter and green; and some are silvery white. It’s identified as an organic black, though, so these colorful variations are all the more interesting and even a little puzzling. They smell to me like wood, and somewhere between the wood of a living tree and that of an unfinished board. It’s a dark, sweet scent, with a roasty/toasty tang.

V. pretty red/gold/brown clear liquor. The aroma is of vanilla and brown sugar with a woody undertone.

Wow. It tastes not a lot like it smells, but I like it. The note that the taste and smell have in common is wood. I find the taste hard to describe in comparison to other blacks. It’s almost easier to describe what it isn’t than what it is.

It’s not sweet except through the finish where I can taste some maltiness. I don’t get vanilla taste at all, nor do I get a strong floral taste. It’s like a super concentrated version of a high grade “tea-flavored” black tea. It’s super concentrated, without being overly strong or bitter. Oddly, despite its strong flavor, it doesn’t seem full-bodied so much as medium-bodied. But I am noticing that I am finding the Golden Moon blacks I’ve tasted medium-bodied in comparison to blacks from other companies. I also don’t think I’d call it smooth so much as “brisk.” Though it isn’t overly drying either.

I like it well enough to drink it as a staple black, I think, at least until I hone my tastes in black tea a bit more.

Had the last bags in my tin last night, which is something of the end of an era. This was the first thing I tried when I started my tea adventure last February and at the time I fell in love with it. Though I’ve long passed the pixie dust stage with it, it will always be special to me, though I’m not sure I’ll keep it stocked given my ambivalence toward rooibos. But this isn’t truly goodbye, at least not yet. I was so excited by it when I first tried it, I bought my boyfriend a tin, and his is still pretty full. :-)

Tonight, steeped at 1 minute instead of 1.5 to see what difference that might make.

Either it’s the steeping or it’s the luck of the draw of the flavoring agents out of the sample packet, but this time around I’m getting less sweet and more suggestion of rum. It’s a darker note, but it’s present in a faded sort of way so it gives the overall impression of less flavor.

Second try, with 1.5 cups water, 1.5 tbsp chai, 1.5 cups milk. Much creamier, much nommier. Bumping the rating a tad.

Made this using the stovetop method. This is the first time I’ve made more than a sample size of any chai using that method, and I learned something pretty major.

This time, since I put in two cups of water, the water didn’t boil away in the first ten minutes of boiling. I actually think it tastes better when the water does boil away, so next time I’ll either boil until it’s mostly gone or I’ll make it in smaller batches. On the other hand, having two cups of milk go into the mix allowed me to boil for five minutes after adding the milk. I expected this to take the excess water out, but I don’t think it quite did the trick. The flavor is delicious, but the consistency isn’t as creamy and chewy as it was when I made the Samovar and the Golden Moon. My guess is there was about a fourth of a cup of water left in the mix and that this was enough to dilute the creaminess.

I used two tablespoons of chai, which frankly seems the right amount — I can imagine maybe using 1.5 instead, but not much less than that for this amount of water/milk. Tasting it now, it’s strong, spicy and has a kick, but it’s really yummy.

Note to self: Next time try less water, maybe 1 or 1.5 cups, and maybe a tiny bit less chai, maybe 1.5 tablespoons, boil 10 minutes, then add 2 cups milk and boil 5 minutes.

As for the flavor, there’s a lot of cardamom and a lot of pepper. It’s less gingerbready than the others I’ve tried, which I think has something to do with the consistency as well as the spices. Although I’ve never had authentic Indian chai, I have had authentic Indian food. It’s a somewhat intangible thing, but the feel of the spices in this is similar to the feel of the spiciness of the food — without necessarily being the same spices, if that makes sense.

Not sure where this will ultimately fall in my chai pantheon, but for now it’s getting a fairly high mark.

Golden Moon sample No. 14 of 31.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t be in a position to taste this today, but I had to sequester myself at home today to devote myself to finishing a project for work rather than go into the office, and that put a sort of crimp in the day that had me feeling out of sorts, so I decided to give my latest random pick a try over lunchtime and see if it cheered me up.

And boy, did it ever. I have gone from feeling peeved at how my day was unfolding to feeling lucky that such decadence was at hand to improve my mood. And this after having a not so great experience with an earlier Golden Moon oolong. I had been worried that I wouldn’t like this one that much, either. I’ve never been so glad to be wrong!

Tightly curled dry leaves that smell of — crackerjacks! Or maybe those cube shaped caramel candies in the clear plastic individual wrappers. They smell of this, and nothing else I could detect. It’s a delicious, strong scent. It brews to a pale yellow, clear liquor.

When I steeped them the first time, I didn’t get so much caramel in the aroma, though it was there. What I got more of was the butter of green oolong. So I wondered what I’d taste.

And on the very first steep — yum. It’s caramel. Not overly sweet, not overly strong, but definitely caramel. And soothing. There’s butter as well, and a slightly vegetal flavor, but for a green oolong it’s leaning toward nutty/toasty. I suspect because of the caramel, which could easily turn it that way.

Second steep: 3 min. More sugar! The flavor deepens to reveal more sugar and more caramel. The sugar has the quality of the sugar from a dried fruit, which I suppose could be dates.

Third steep: 4 min. A step back on the sugar, though it is still there. The caramel is as well. There is less butter, and less vegetal flavor, and more toasty nuttiness.

Fourth steep: 5 min. The sugar and caramel is mostly gone, but the buttery, nutty taste remains, though it has weakened some. I fear a fifth steep would be disappointing so I am quitting while I’m ahead.

I really like the feeling of something suggestive of candy that is, at the same time, so obviously not candy. That’s why I feel so decadent having this and why I am going to have to order more.

There’s no heaviness to it like what you could get from eating actual caramels, nothing to stick in your teeth. There’s no feeling of guilt afterwards, or bloatedness, or a sugar high or precipitous fall. But it gives (at least the illusion) of the same serotonin-inducing comfort one could get from eating handfuls of caramels.

And I needed that today. Two thumbs up.

Continuing on with the project of finishing up my earliest batch of tea splurge, I am saying goodbye to this one today.

It actually grew on me quite a bit from my initial tasting. After drinking my way through a box of it, I was used to the tartness and could get right to the berry flavor pretty quickly. It’s a cheerful flavor that doesn’t obliterate the tea, but it may be a little too strong and too weak at the same time — it reminds me a little of Kool Aid.

Hail and farewell! Thanks for the memories.