A Southern Season

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Recent Tasting Notes

I decided to try one iced and lightly sweetened with my lunch. It made me change my mind about what is in this blend. This actually tasted like I had added lemon to it, so I am guessing that Ceylon must be a big component in this. I thought it was great iced but youngest said it was too astringent for her. I think she was picking the lemon actually, plus I put very little sugar and she likes a lot! I will definitely be drinking this iced from now until the tin is empty!

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I haven’t been having tea at breakfast lately, as I have been wanting to savor it by itself or with a small snack. Today I wanted a little boost, and I want to reduce my tea inventory. This one drew the short straw.

It is good, but not great. I don’t ooo and ahhh when I drink it, but it serves its purpose. It was inexpensive, on sale, and organic. I probably will not repurchase but I won’t be terribly bothered about having to finish this tin. With milk and sugar it makes an adequate breakfast tea, with a very mild Assam that has light cinnamon notes mixed with a Chinese black if I am guessing correctly. Therre is almost none of the smokiness kne finds in many keemuns. It is a great deal weaker than Harney’s Supreme Breakfast or even their English Breakfast.

Since I really want to reduce the number of tins I have I am eyeballing a lot of these teas as candidates for making iced tea. That will reduce the inventory quickly! The rest of this tin just might turn into a big pitcher of iced tea.

My kids are hovering over my nearly empty tins hoping to claim them for holding their Magic the Gathering cards. I have given up six tins already. They are making specialty and themed decks and decorating the tins to match the decks. LOL! This means they are pilfering two of my hobby areas…tea and papercrafts!

gmathis

Good tins are hard to find!

TeaBowing

Do you like tins better than zip pouches when it comes to maintaining freshness?

JacquelineM

That’s so funny! I gave my husband this nice box that Harney and Sons sent their black tea sampler in for his Magic Cards!

Uniquity

If my tins weren’t full of tea, I might consider using them for our Magic cards (Hey, it’s a fun game!). Alas, I prefer tea to Magic. : )

ashmanra

@Teabowing: at first I only bought tea in tins, or out them straight into them when I got them home. I have found that most of these teas have stayed fresh longer than expected, as some are two years old now. I didn’t start getting tea in zip bags until later in my tea buying experience, so I don’t know if they last as long. I think those nice foil bags may be good, but I don’t have a lot of faith in those single thickness cello bags that A Southern Season sells their daily teas in. It would probably be fine if you drink them fast. I like Rishi double lidded tea tins a lot for the price.

ashmanra

@Jacqueline: I shall have to order one of their samplers! (Just so the kids can have the box, of course. Heehee.) I bet that box is perfect for the cards! The kids are already buying special foil cards for prizes in a beach-themed competition to take place in May, and they are all building beach-themed decks. There is a store in Cary called Stuff and Such and they have a vast collection of cards, from common to rare, all available for individual purchase. I think blue and white cards are all they are permitting, with beach theme if possible!

Bonnie

I don’t really like tins. I wish you could get dark blue or green or opaque white canning jars in bulk to store tea in. No odor, easy to clean and easy to label.

ashmanra

@Bonnie: a long time ago I read about a company that clear glass jars for tea, but they are treated on the outside for UV resistance. You might like those! I saw some lovely porcelain tea jars at Tin Roof Teas, but they were ten dollars. Not bad, but if you need 115 of them….well….hubby wouldn’t understand. No, he is so sweet he would probably tell me to get them, what am I thinking? LOL!

gmathis

I bought a batch of clear jars on sale at Dollar General, and for small samples that I’m keeping in a closed cabinet anyway, they’re great.

Bonnie

I have some small pretty canning jars that I use to mix my own blends and keep in my dark cabinet. Works well enough…

TeaBowing

@ashmanra I’ve always felt like the zip foil lined bags are more air tight than tins so I’ve always preferred them, but I don’t have proof of that – they just look that way to me when I buy either.

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Ah, how the mighty have fallen! Once upon a time I could not walk out of A Southern Season without tons of tea. I thought it was wonderful tea. Then as I tried more and more tea I realized that SS tea was tasting weaker and weaker, and lacked the pizzazz of same name teas from other vendors. This was one I bought a while back on sale, mostly because it was a good price and was organic. It is okay, but as the last tea at tea party today there was really nothing special I could
say about it. Without additions, Royal English Breakfast had qualities to make you take notice. All I noticed about this SS tea was that there was nothing special there for me. It is fine as an eye-opener loaded with milk and sugar.

SS does sell lots of other teas like Mariage Freres and Harney and Sons, and scads of others, but they were sold out of all the teas I wanted to try on this trip! Ended up leaving with nothing but a Brie baker!

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This is what it says it is. Organic. And breakfast. When I opened the tin I smelled the assam right away. (I am accustomed to Harney’s English Breakfast, which is 100% keemun.)
With milk and sugar, this is a very drinkable tea, but nothing out of the ordinary. It doesn’t really have any of the light smoke you get from a keemun, but it has sufficient heft to make me happy. I enjoyed my pot of it this morning well enough as I really just wanted a sturdy pot of tea beside me while I read.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C
gmathis

Whatcha readin’?

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This is a decent breakfast tea – nothing out of the ordinary but very serviceable and went well with my “faux Mexican” food lunch. (Tortilla full of cheese rolled and squished in the Breville, then doused with enchilada sauce. See? Fake Mexican food!) So now I have had 40 ounces of tea already and have a small tea party to do on one hour! I will definitely be sloshing by 4 pm, but at least I am getting lots done with all this caffeine coursing through my veins!

Preparation
Boiling

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A decent breakfast tea, but nothing earth shaking. I add milk and sugar to this one, but I always do with morning tea. I like the fact that it is prganic, but there is nothing in the flavor that would make me go out of my way to get this one. I would swim shark infested moats for Queen Catherine, Harney and Sons Englsih Breakfast, and Emperor’s Red by Premium Steap!

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 15 sec

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Good breakfast tea, just basic, nothing too spectacular to say about it except that when you are in the mood for a breakfast tea this should satisfy! Better than many, but it doesn’t beat Harney and Sons English Breakfast!

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C

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A nice tea, but when tasted side by side with Harney and Sons English Breakfast (the loose leaf one, not the sachets of Royal English Breakfast) I must say the Harney and Sons wins. Still, it is a very good tea, and I always feel a little more responsible when I drink organic!

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec

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Excellent cup this morning! It is medium strength, not smoky, not astringent, full of good tea flavor. Yum!

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 30 sec

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Early today – One friend stopped by walking her dogs. Another drives over so we can do lunch later. But we all NEED tea! So youngest fixed a pot of this. So good, mellower than many breakfast blends, but smooth and good. Lots of flavor, no astringency, takes milk and sugar very well. Aaaahhhh…..

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 30 sec

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Twenty-two ounces, count them, twenty-two! Consumed with milk and sugar, accompanied by gingerbread biscotti ensconced in my wall of jasmine vines that curtains the back patio! A great way to start the day.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 30 sec

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Oh boy, was this ever good today! Added milk and sugar as is my wont with breakfast teas. After having to do without the good stuff for 18 days (ARGH! Can you believe it? Eighteen days!) this went down like water in the desert. Ahhhhh. And Southern Season now has a Facebook page if anyone wants to check them out!

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 45 sec

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Good stuff! Drank this right on the heels of a pot of Irish breakfast from the same source. This was a little stronger, somewhere between an Irish and English Breakfast in taste and temperament. I think I will be keeping this around.

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec

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A very sad sipdown.

One of my favorite things to do as a rare treat was go to A Southern Season and browse the tea. It was so hard to pick what I wanted! There was the fine tea wall, and the loose leaf daily drinkers display, and a whole section of loose and bagged tea of brands from Lipton to Steven Smith and everything in between and sideways.

Gradually the selection got smaller and smaller but there was still always something good to try. And this was one of their best teas. It is flavorful and hearty, mild enough for me and my dodgy tummy but satisfying to the coffee drinkers who came over.

A Southern Season was billed as a gourmet grocery and had everything from a huge wine and craft beer section, to grocery items, small appliances that you don’t see just anywhere, china, candy, a deli, a restaurant, a cooking school, fine handcrafted chocolates, kitchen linens, and a gift basket department. They carried tea from a local woman who had successfully grown tea bushes in their town! Very limited quantity, of course. They were definitely expensive.

Another Steepsterite, Sandy, was the person who introduced me to the place and it was where we bought our first ever puerh (a low quality mini tuo that smelled of shrimp but tasted okay) and where I started building my loose leaf stash.

And now they are gone. Not because of Covid. They closed before quarantine.

But how I will miss the smells of that place. Walking in at the coffee department and being enveloped in the aroma of the coffee beans they were grinding and knowing that my beloved tea section was just up ahead. If I close my eyes and imagine the smell, the feeling of excitement of all the possibilities of lovely tea discoveries floods my memory. I don’t know of any other place that has made me feel that way!

Now my Zhen Quo is gone, and I must eventually try to find another source. I will miss the light bitterness, the way it paired beautifully with desserts.

Martin Bednář

It is always sad to see small shops closing down. No matter what they were carrying, I like to visit coffee shops as well, although don’t drink any coffee. Same with shops like this one, they offer just everything and we love them for that.

Leafhopper

It’s sad to hear about shops like this closing.

tea-sipper

Aw, sad to hear! This place sounded amazing. At least covid wasn’t the reason it closed.

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Done! I finished this today as youngest and I ate Snickerdoodle bread with cinnamon chips and read Robert Louis Stevenson – The Bottle Imp.

I may buy it again someday. It is certainly a great tea. I have been drinking it for years and find myself at A Southern Season a couple of times a year. Right now I have so much tea I really shouldn’t consider buying ANYTHING…but you know I will. I already had a friend pick up eight ounces of Blackberry Flavored Black that will be delivered on Tuesday. sigh.

This is a smooth and drinkable tea that even the newbie and ambivalent tea drinkers like. It is still interesting enough to entice the seasoned tea lover.

caile

That bread sounds delicious!

ashmanra

It is so good! It made two loaves, supposedly for tea party tomorrow, but one loaf is already gone. My husband couldn’t keep his hands off of it!

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The first tea of tea party today – this was served with a warm Blueberry Upside Down Skillet Cake that my youngest daughter made in my ancient cast iton skillet using blueberries from my friend’s blueberry bushes! We also made home made vanilla ice cream to serve with it.

The tea is smooth and rich, not too strong but resteeps decently. It is great by itself or paired with food, doesn’t need milk and sugar but can handle it if that is how you prefer your tea. The dry leaves are curly and light as a feather with lots of gold mixed in. It looks almost like a Bi Luo Chun, but a black tea. Delicious!

Rosehips

Ohh that sounds lovely!

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This is one of the best teas carried by A Southern Season In my opinion. This was the first tea of tea party Wednesday. I always choose a nice black tea to start with if we are having a rich dessert, which we usually are.

Our dessert this time was Fudge Pie, the recipe from a local beloved restaurant that closed decades ago, and I made a raspberry sauce and homemade vanilla ice cream, also drizzled with raspberry sauce, to go with it. A single raspberry topped each serving. It was so rich that we needed a nice, plain black tea that had good body and flavor to stand up without standing out too much.

This was a very good tea with it, but I think that an even stronger one, like a Keemun, would have been better as the raspberry sauce was really flavorful.

On a side note, I have just been joined by the dog because my daughter’s hedgehog is keeping him up. He just started running on his wheel and he runs all.night.long.

Veronica

Your tea parties sound glorious!

ashmanra

We have a lot of fun, and since my youngest daughter became obsessed with cooking I have gained four pounds and more visitors. LOL

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I have been neglecting this tea and wanted to have a go at it this morning before heading out to the plant nursery. A Southern Season sells this spelled Zhen Quo but I have seen the very same tea sold under the name Zhen Qu, and the appearance is so distinctive that there is no doubt it is the same tea. What confuses me a bit is that most sites say it is from the Fujian (or Pan Yang) province, but there are several listings for Zhen Qu Yunnan, and I don’t know if that tea is the same or not.

I am drinking it plain and it is very smooth. I steeped longer than most people do, yet it isn’t bitter. There is the slightest – and I do mean slightest – astringency after you get through a half a cup or so, but not much. The aroma is lovely – honey and a hint of molasses, and a bit of unsweetened cocoa. The flavor leans more toward the honey side, but not with the rich, thick body and mouth-feel of Golden Monkey.

This was one of the first teas I took plain, and Sandy introduced me to it. Hi Sandy! By the way, Sandy, I saw my hubby smooching Sasha on the head last night! They were having some lovely-dovey time when he got home from work!

Preparation
Boiling

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I haven’t had this one in a while and decided I had better drink it up before it gets too old! I plan to go to Southern Season again when Sandy gets home from New Zealand and I need to empty this tin so I will have an excuse to buy a fresh batch.

The leaves are black and gold, and the gold ones are the softest and fluffiest I have ever seen in any tea! The tea has light honey notes and a bit of cocoa or chocolate-y aroma. This is good plain or with just a touch of sugar. I resteeped once, as a cold, gray, and rainy day like this requires more than one pot of tea! This is hitting the spot after having had to go to a doctor’s appointment followed by grocery shopping and cooking a big pot of tomato rice soup…I am worn to a frazzle! I shall now quietly commune with my lovely cup(s) of tea!

Preparation
Boiling

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Wonderful tea! I drink this one with no sweetener, no milk. This is one of my little luxury teas that I enjoy in the afternoon with a light snack like tea cookies or little eclairs.

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 30 sec

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Mmmmmm….your honey aroma and flavor grows on me more each time. A fine tea, to be enjoyed with eyes closed while you make yummy noises…..

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 30 sec

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Finally off my antibiotic that separated me from my beloved caffeinated teas! I broke the fast with this one – an excellent tea full of the fuzziest golden bits I have ever seen. Smells like you have poured a big glop of honey in it, but doesn’t taste like it. Just tastes GOOD! A little bit like Golden Monkey, and you can resteep the leaves!

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 45 sec

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