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Sipdown no. 54 of 2018 (no. 410 total).

It was next in line, and now it is gone.

This wasn’t the most spectacular iced tea, but it was serviceable. I’m not changing the rating, though, because I try not to base ratings on my reactions to iced things, much less those that have been in my cupboard an unseasonably long time.

When I wrote about the green version of this a while back, I was surprised to find I hadn’t written a note on the black version. I know I’ve had this before, but somehow never wrote about it.

I intend to try this at different temperatures and steeping times given the variety others have used. Starting with boiling for 3:30.

In the tin, I smell cocoa and berries. In the steeped tea, I smell berries and vanilla bean.
The berries I smell are red, rather than black or blue, but as between strawberry and raspberry, I get a bit of a mash up. There’s a sweetness that is very strawberry like, but it’s almost like it’s at a distance, which is very raspberry like.

The tea is a clear, medium-dark amber. I wouldn’t describe it as smooth in the sip, but it doesn’t have a bite, either. The aftertaste is quite smooth, though, with a somewhat silky mouthfeel. It’s got a magical French thing going on with the flavors, which are very like the aroma with the added bonus that they integrate and balance seamlessly with the tea base, which has a depth that gives the tea a lot of character.

It’s got to be one of the best I’ve had from Mariage Freres, so it’s no surprise it’s their signature tea. It’s not the best tea I’ve ever had, but it’s awesome and something I’ll want to keep around.

I think of Margaret’s Hope second flush as the quintessential second flush Darjeeling. I haven’t had enough first flush Darjeelings to identify one as an examplar.

But what blows my mind is how different the two are from each other. This first flush is so mellow and gentle. Nothing sharp about it. The description says it has a balanced pungency, but I don’t find it pungent — or at least so far less pungent than some other Darjeelings that I wouldn’t think of that word to describe it.

I steeped according to the package directions, which is hotter than I’ve read is the temperature for first flush. This yielded a light honey-colored clear tea that smells like peach to me. The flavor is pleasantly nutty, grapey, and and stone fruity as well. I don’t really taste lime zest to the point where I could have identified it had I not read the description, but I think I know what the description is getting at. There’s a slight bitterness, not enough to be unpleasant, but reminiscent of citrus skin.

The tea is light bodied and it does produce in me a bit of that waterlogged feeling I get from first flush Darjeelings.

Cracking this one open on a rainy day in sun land.

This is interesting. The dry leaf does have some sort of fruitiness to its fragrance, but having had the dragonfruit tisane recently I’m smelling that more than pear. I smell the caramel, too. There’s not a lot of underlying tea aroma in the dry leaf.

I’m with Rosehips on this one. Steeped, the aroma is primarily of caramel and I’m not really able to discern a pear smell, either separately or as an add on to the caramel. The tea is a medium-dark copper and clear.

I taste the caramel for sure, but I have to really focus to get anything that I could identify as pear. It’s not completely missing, but I taste it more in its effect on the caramel than as a separate flavor. It broadens the caramel flavor, for lack of a better word. Spreads it out, so that it isn’t a concentrated flavor and adds a “fresh” note.

This tea isn’t sweet, as so many caramel teas are. I could add something to it, but I wish it was a bit sweeter on its own. I have the sense that some sweetness could bring out the pear more as well.

The tea is enjoyable and flavorful. I’m only docking points because I wanted and expected more pear.

The BF is quite sick with a bad cough. He’s a big peach fan. The two together resulted in him saying this is the best thing he’s ever tasted.

I’m not on the same page, though I do like this quite a bit.

Honestly, I’ve tried so many peach tisanes lately I can’t keep them all straight. There’s the Teavana, the Harney, the David’s and now this. There may even be others in there somewhere that I’m forgetting.

They all have in common the big chunky fruit blend thing. This one has one of the peachier aromas in the dry mix. It’s pretty peachy after steeping too, but there’s a fair amount of apple as well. The color is a pretty intense, dark wine red.

It’s a good solid peach fruit blend. I think it may be a bit mellower than the Harney and not quite as wonderful as the David’s. But it’s hard to know without tasting them all back to back. Rating accordingly.

Sipdown no. 53 of 2018 (no. 409 total).

I’ve been taking this to work for the past couple of weeks as a break from taking green tea to work. It got chosen as it was currently the lowest rated non-herbal in my cupboard. This is pretty deceptive because most of the teas I’ve got in my cupboard don’t have notes yet, and in any case 73 is not a low rating on my scale.

My default, I’ve discovered, is somewhere in the 80s most of the time. I’m working to be a bit more critical than that as I think clumping so many things together sort of defeats the purpose of rating.

Part of the issue I have with this one isn’t really it’s fault. It’s that it’s a white tea, and frankly, white tea doesn’t do a lot for me. If I can get flavor out of it at all, I consider that a plus. I have a lot of white tea, but honestly, I think once I pare down my stash I might have one or two at the most at any given time going forward. That’s how much I don’t get them.

The ginger is what makes this at all interesting to me. It’s a nice ginger flavor. Not too strong, too heavy, or too spicy.

Sipdown no. 52 of 2018 (no. 408 total).

Drank much of this tin as cold brew, since this tea managed to be the lowest rated plain black tea in my cupboard. Which makes me think I’m pretty much a softy when it comes to ratings.

It’s not a bad tea. It’s a good tea. It’s even a very good tea. It just doesn’t make me do cartwheels and back flips, and given that there are teas out there that do, I don’t see a reason to put this on the must have list.

Lupicia has a way with melon. Their white melon was quite wonderful. This is another success.

You wouldn’t know it from the dry blend — it has an intense, pungent smell that was mildly disturbing in its intensity and somewhat chemical. But all that goes away with the steeping.

The aroma is just honeydew — no distracting other flavors, and even the rooibos is undetectable. Fortunately, that’s also the case with the flavor.

It’s a little subtle, but not too much so, nor does it taste like the run off from a melon. It’s got a nice balance, a touch of sweetness, and a fascinating freshness to the mouthfeel. The liquor is a pretty astonishing intense orange and clear.

Definitely a keeper.

The dry mix smells very earthy and fresh, with some berry thrown in. I think the earthy fresh smell is the kiwi.

Amusingly, after steeping, the aroma reminded me of hot Mogen David concord grape wine. Very sugary sweet, and something about the mix of the strawberry and kiwi recalled Mogen David to me. And I’m not just saying this because it’s Passover. I didn’t even get it together to make a seder this year.

The color is a deep, dark red. Sort of wine colored, but not the purple color of concord grape. Thankfully.

I like the taste. I think I actually like it better than the Magic Dragon from David’s the other day, so I’m rating it higher. But I wish I still had some Necessiteas Strawberry Kiwi to taste it against, as I quite liked that one. I’m not sure now, as it has been a while, but I may even like that one better. I see I rated it a 79. So I suspect I’d bump the rating now.

Sipdown no. 51 of 2018 (no. 407 total). Sample tin.

Given my lukewarm reception to this yesterday, I decided to go cold with it. (See what I did there?) Just enough in the tin to make a full pitcher (with a tad of River Shannon Breakfast Blend to round out the last spoon).

It’s steeping away in the fridge right now. We’ll see what that does — tomorrow.

P.S. Took the kids to see Ready Player One over the weekend. Enjoyed it. VERY different from the book.