Harney & Sons
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This was a sample that came with a Harney and Sons order from some months ago. I kept meaning to get around to trying it, but I am glad I didn’t because it made a nice tea to share with oldest daughter tonight after we went out for Mexican food. Drinking green tea together each time she comes has become a bit of a tradition, and she loves minty things.
I steeped this at around 175F for three minutes. That is my standby green tea steeping method unless I have seen something that leads me to do otherwise.
This is a really pretty color, and since it has been over a hundred degrees for the past few days, my first thought was that this would probably be pretty awesome iced. We drank it hot, though.
The green tea base and the mint are really well balanced. This is a very smooth green tea and I didn’t detect any bitterness or bite in it. I wonder if sme green tea lovers would find it bland? But for me, it was very pleasant. The mint is very pressing but doesn’t overpower the green tea. I have had mint tea before that left me feeling a little TOO tingly, like I might never taste anything else again ever!
We made a resteep of this sachet and that was very pleasant, too.
I am glad we got to taste it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if my daughter asks me to order some for her. I do not usually drink mint tea, other than my Moroccan Mint from Tin Roof Teas, so I doubt I would order it, but if you like mint greens this one is very good.
I went to Fresh Market looking for soup and couldn’t pass this up. They used to have a lot of bottled Argo Tea drinks but this time around there were only 3, 2 I’ve had and 1 hibiscus one. Now there’s 2 Harney & Sons ones too.
It’s sweetened with cane sugar and honey, and just black currant flavored. It’s not too sweetened, given there’s 5g of sugar per cup and not like 20. I think the honey is stronger than the black currant. It tastes really good anyway, because that’s a pretty nice pairing of flavors as is. The black tea tastes like it was just made unlike a lot of already bottled iced teas.
Yeh, baby! That’s what I’m talking ’bout!
I am having my umpteenth steep….okay, maybe fifth, of this and it is so good. This is a really different tea, and this steep is much like the last. It tastes like tea that has been aged in a wooden cask. I hesitated at the price before, but these leaves just keep going and going.
Edited to add: I think I know what the other aroma is. Tobacco!
Thank you, Russel and Harney and Sons!
Ah it is already on my shopping list! Yay!
I know in the description of this it says that it isn’t a pu-erh which puzzles me, I was wondering if you or anyone knows exactly why it doesn’t qualify as a pu-erh haha. Nevertheless, sounds good.
KWinter: it is illegal to call a tea puerh that doesn’t come from Yunnan province. That is my understanding, just as in the US, Vidalia onions have to be grown in Vidalia County, Georgia. The same onion grown elsewhere is just a sweet onion! The same rule applies to champagne and many types of cheese.
Oh, I see. Thank you. :)
Gah! I want this too!
I know, Amy, I know! You NEED it! I am sure you can ’splain that! I bet Russel will send you a sample if you ask! :DDD
Yes, the 20 Chinese Famous Teas are a “protected” product in the same way that France, Italy, and now the EU in general, protects regional specialties when it is recognized that “terroir” plays a crucial element in a thing tasting like a thing.
This is done less in the USA, but there are some prominent examples. Vidalia onions are one, Hatch peppers are another. There are also informal examples (some of which ought to be formalized in my opinion) like Philly cheesesteaks (there is something about the local bread, probably due to local water, that makes these “not the same” anywhere else), New York pizza, Atlantic City salt water taffy, gumbo from the Gulf coast, and of course the myriad varieties of both pork and beef based barbecue techniques which produce radically different flavor profiles depending on whether you’re talking about Memphis, Carolina, St. Louis or Houston.
For those who have access to the HEB speciality Chain ‘Central Market’, there is an exclusive offering from Republic of Tea in the bulk dry goods area which is an aged green cake tea of excellent quality which sells for something like $50 a pound. Which is actually quite cheap compared to pu-erh. Even their loose shou pu-erh sells for twice that much.
I hope I don’t die. Well, I know I will die someday, but I mean right away, because I am doing something I probably shouldn’t do and have never done before. I am steeping leaves from over 24 hours ago! O.O
If you don’t see any more posts from me, please send my husband a card. And tell my kids I said I love you, clean your room.
This tea has a learning curve! But I am enjoying learning about it! I should never have used that whole chunk in my small pot, even in a big pot! Today as I poked through the leaves I saw how ferociously compressed these are! This is a lot of leaf. I took two bundles about a rounded teaspoon in size and put them in a larger pot than I used last time. This may be a wee bit on the weak side though, so next time I would use three. This has been through multiple steeps but there is still nice flavor here. The liquor is golden brown and there is a pine-y taste or maybe it is cedar! It is sweet and smooth, like tea aged in a wooden cask. This reminds me a wee bit of that taste in Mengku Palace Ripened Golden Buds – a sense of antique wood polished with Murphy’s for decades, maybe centuries. Minutes later, the sweet aftertaste rises like a soft breeze, like a gentle ocean wave rolling in. Aaahhhh. This is a tea to which you want to pay attention!
I can’t buy any more of this right now because I just ordered the Moroccan Mint glasses they sell at Harney and Sons! (Missy, that is why I havent tried those samples you sent me yet! I want to do a head to head comparison between them all in the real glasses. LOL!)
When I build the tea budget back up, though, this one is on the list.
If anyone else tries it, I recommend doing whatever you must to get that clump broken, remembering it will expand GREATLY and you don’t want to waste it!
Thank you, Russel and Harney and Sons for this special treat!
I had an e-mail on how to save leaves. Spread them out to dry then cover for use later. You want to prevent bacterial and mold development. I live in a super dry climate so leaves dry in 20 minutes. I save leaves all the time. Reuse for iced beverages or elongated brews.
Oh, thanks, Bonnie! I will definitely do that! I will be saving these for more infusions and more experimenting. This is a fun tea! I guess it is mostly because it is a new type for me.
I reuse leaves from the day before all the time. Especially sheng or sheng-like teas.
I find that if you keep them damp, they steep better, but obviously that radically shortens the amount of time you can keep them.
As for the compression of the leaves and how much to use. Yes, you want a big, open space. I have read people who use yixing and then cram it full of leaves, but I genuinely believe this is not the best approach.
I do a lot of my steeping in open top pyrex and I’m finding with sheng and sheng-like tea that less leaf is actually better because you avoid the extremely sharp, biting flavor that comes from lots of cramped leaves.
When I do sheng in my gaiwan, I’m only using an ounce or two of leaf at this point. The results are fantastic.
Yes, Jim, and this tea was fine while it was still so tightly compressed because there just wasn’t much actual leaf exposed to the water. As it loosened up, I could see there was waaay too much in the pot to continue! I often steep leaves a day after, but I think I actually drank this one Monday, so it has been sitting in a one cup measure in the kitchen since then! I read when I first started looking at steepster to keep the leaves wet for resteeping, but you are right, I think that should only be if you will use them the next day . There is so much leaf here I will not be able to do that, so I will dry part and keep part wet for steeping throughout today.
Hey, you’re pouring boiling water on it. What can go wrong?
Lol I totally get it. I have tea faceoffs too. :)
Unusual, indeed! Thank you to Russel Allyn and Harney and Sons for this sample!
I started out with good intentions. I was going to break my sample in half and make some for me tonight and save the rest for my friend tomorrow. Boy, is she going to disappointed! Heh heh, she didn’t know about this one so we just won’t say, shall we?
I couldn’t break this in half. It was as hard as a brick! I gave up and tossed the whole chunk in my pot. I did a very quick rinse since it was hard, but perhaps it should have been longer because when stabbed the chunk with a spoon during steeping it still didn’t want to break up! But the aroma was very intriguing!
I know it isn’t a puerh, and isn’t supposed to have the earthiness of one, but there was something earthy about this to me. The liquor is golden with a brown tinge. There are tiny specks of leaf in my teacup, which I find beautiful and artful, like a sprinkling of parsley In a white sauce, or ground pepper on top of potatoes. We eat – and drink – with our eyes first!
The taste is smooth, with a little tiny tingle of astringency. No, this definitely isn’t tasting like a puerh. This is smokey! And after the second steep the leaves have a tiny hint of coffee aroma! The liquor has a coffee taste as well, but light and fruity at the same time. This is most unusual.
Looking in my little pot, I see that the clump has broken up and my pot is FULL of leaves. I decide that the third steep will be extra short so as not to become bitter. There is a definite learning curve with this one.
Steep three now tastes like a sheng! With a drop of coffee in! My friend need not worry. I am going to stop here for the night, and we will be drinking this tomorrow, probably quite a few more steeps from the looks of things.
This tea is all I hoped it would be…different, unusual, a new experience, and worthwhile!
Thank you, Russel and Harney and Sons!
Some shengs are a bit smoky. This sounds like an interesting tea though. I wonder if it will keep for a long time like a pu-erh?
I don’t know! I would love to know if it has the beneficial tummy effects of puerh and is probiotic. The wet leaves now smell like freshly cut timber!
Ooh! I’d love to try this one. On the shopping list it goes!
Yup added to the list too!
I’m intrigued.
Oh, my, I need to get my eyes checked. I thought the name was HUMAN Aged Green Cake. (Soylent Green Tea? ;)
Soylent green is people! LOL!
What I do with sheng is use a paring knife to pick it apart. Any long, thin, flat, whippy bladed knife will work. Obviously, a pu-erh pick is ideal, but I hate buying specialized tools that do only one thing.
I’m a bit confused by H&S is insisting this isn’t a pu-erh. Green pu-erh is not all that uncommon. Is it pressed? Is it aged? Then it’s pu-erh.
Jim, I am confused by it too. Recently Verdant put an aged silver white needle cake on their website, it’s under the white tea section and they don’t call it a pu-erh. There must be something we are missing!
Well, that’s a bit different. That’s something genuinely distinct from the pu-erh processing tradition.
But from what I’ve read, pressed, raw, green tea is a fairly typical kind of pu-erh.
In fact, back when all tea was essentially Chinese green tea, when it was being traded up the silk road, it was also essentially all green pu-erh as well. Packing it into bricks is what made it “transport ready”.
Like anything else pressed, age can only do it good, not ill, provided you store it properly.
I wonder if this isn’t pu-erh because it is from Hunan instead of Yunnan?
Jim is right on track. Pu-erh is exclusively from Yunnan, and has an a time honored tradition of tea leaf variety and processing. It is also my understanding that it is in violation of Chinese law to market non-Yunnan teas as Pu-erh.
There are twenty “famous teas” in China, of which pu-erh is one. In much the same way that EU law protects certain regional products such as Champagne and Parmasen, the law in China protects these teas.
I didn’t realize the rules on the famous teas were just as strict, but it appears that they are.
I plan to have some more steepings of this later on, while I pick up some puerh attributes, it really doesn’t taste exactly like a puerh. I would say it resembles a sheng puerh more than anything else, but isn’t exactly the same. I am sure the regional protection is the reason for the name. It was quite an interesting experience, and that is what I was looking for!
For what it’s worth, the Dr. Oz episode that aired locally yesterday touted pu-erh as a fat-burner when drunk first thing in the morning. (White tea recommended at lunch, chickweed tea in lieu of afternoon snack and bilberry tea—tisane—suggested to reduce cravings.)
question for Harney and Sons: will this tea keep for years and improve like a pu-erh?
Interesting. All the CTM folks I know talk about oolong as the tea to drink during exercise, not pu-erh.
This was a free sample from Russel Allyn and Harney and Sons.
The last time I tried this tea – which was also my first time trying it – I used the parameters suggested on their site. Honestly, I wasn’t that taken with this, but I thought the instructions a bit odd for a green and white tea. Also, I haven’t been drinking greens that long and perhaps I am a bit of a wimp! The first steep that time was a bit sour and not too floral, while the second was very astringent. I put it off to user error and decided to try again, this time using steeping parameters that made more sense for ME and what I like. I thought perhaps the higher temp was to facilitate the unfurling of the pearls, but they unfurl just fine at a much lower temp.
The website says 195F for 4 to 5 minutes. This time I gave it 2 minutes at 175F. MUCH BETTER! For me, at least. The liquor was the color of pale champagne or cream soda and the texture of the tea was creamy, the flavor sweet. The jasmine is not very pronounced this way. Nice! Very nice!
No soapiness.
Second steep, I got bolder and used hotter water and added a minute, so still well below their suggestion. The color is much deeper. Now it is astringent again, but not undrinkable. My tongue is tingling and a light sour taste is present. Not my thing, but some people like it.
I combine the two steeps. The color of the second steep was so much deeper than the first that it deepens the whole glass pitcher to its color. I like this better than the second steep alone, less than the first steep, though with a meal i might want it to be this strong. Again, the jasmine is more subtle than in Teavivre’s while the green tea is more prominent. It is a little more reminiscent of Grace Rare Tea Flowery Jasmine Before the Rain, which is a pouchong.
I think I will continue to steep this one my way – keeping the water temp low, and the time shorter. (Ah! Here it is! It hits! My beloved late rising plum sweetness that follows some greens!)
I have been meaning to try this for a while. Thanks to Russel Allyn and Harney and Sons I can! They sent a free sample of the loose leaf version.
I have only had one other Jasmine Dragon Pearl tea and that is the one from Teavivre. I will try to compare and contrast the two teas as best I can. I gave some of the Teavivre pearls to a Teavana employee, and he said that the Teavivre ones seemed more earthy than Teavana’s. Let’s see how these two stack up.
Appearance: the pearls are very similar. Teavivre’s pearls are ever so slightly larger overall. I notice that the Harney and Sons says green and white blend on this page. I had not noticed that before.
Steeping: both smell great! Neither has a sickening, artificial perfume aroma, and that is important because my first jasmine tea experience was somewhat traumatizing.
Color: the liquor is very similar. Both are golden, but there is a tiny peach colored cast to the Teavivre when the level is low in the cup. When the cup is filled completely, the Teavivre tea is slightly darker. H&S remains golden.
Wet leaves: though the Harney pearls were smaller, the unfurled leaves are larger, especially in width. They are a bit lighter in color than Teavivre’s, which have more…stem?…attached. They are long and wiry.
Taste: wow, I feel so spoiled. Both are these are very good. The Teavivre tea is softer and smoother, the jasmine perhaps a tiny bit more pronounced up front with the tea flavor following, and it gains astringency as it cools.
The Harney and Sons tea tastes more like the greens I have been drinking for the past six months with just a hint of sour astringency at the front, and the jasmine following at the end. This is not a bad astringency I am referring to, but the palate cleansing property. I am getting that sweet, late rising aftertaste that comes with many greens, and I suspect the Harney and Sons tea is the source of that as I haven’t noticed it before drinking Teavivre’s, and the Harney tea has the sort of taste up front that I associate with teas that do that.
Summary: both are great. Teavivre’s version is jasmine followed by green tea flavor until it starts to cool. Harney’s is the opposite – green tea flavor that says, “Here I am!” followed by soft jasmine.
Different people and different tastes mean some will prefer one, some the other. I hope this review helps!
If you love jasmine tea, also try Harney’s tea just called Jasmine. It is incredibly inexpensive, you can drink it every day at the price, and very, very good. I actually preferred it over one of their more expensive jasmine loose leaf offerings.
I just tried this tea, and loved it so much!
It was my first taste of any kind of Jasmine Tea, so I do not know if that counts for a educated opinion.
I agree the tea has a very decadent feel to it, like you are really spoiling yourself and like it should almost be a naughty treat:)
I am sold on Jasmine Pearls and cant wait for my H&S order to come.
I also ordered H&S’s Jasmine Tea, I am hoping that it will satisfy my Jasmine cravings, so I do not drink up my pearls right away:)
I think you will really love their Jasmine tea! It was quite good. I tried to place an order for it a few keys back but they were sold out at the time. I saw it was back in stock!
Haha! maybe that was me, I bought them out and they finally got it back in stock;)
Glad you were finally able to do this side by side for us. Very nice!
I can’t believe this one wasn’t listed yet and I am the first one to review it!
This was a free sample provided by Russel Allyn of Harney and Sons. Thank you for sending this for me to try! This is one whose description has intrigued me for a long time. The only thing that held me back was that it is only available in sachets, and I prefer to buy loose leaf.
When I steeped this I thought the ginger was the predominant aroma, so much so that I wondered if I would like it. I like a bit of ginger, but not too much. The sip was different, though. While the ginger is plainly there, it didn’t bully me. It added a nice sweetness to the cup. I have had only one lychee flavored tea and that was also by H&S, and I remember thinking that it tastes like light rose scenting instead of fruit. (I tried the fruit once and it was ><. It tasted like bathroom cleaner to me. The brand I won’t use because it smells so bad. Like lychee fruit. Maybe I got a mutant one.). The H&S Lychee Black tea was so good I would consider keeping it on shelf as a floral black.
In this one, the ginger and lychee are running neck and neck in strength, with ginger maybe winning out a bit. This is leaving a sweet taste at the back of the mouth, sweetness at the end of the first sips, and a lingering heat on my tongue from the ginger…not a really strong heat, just an aftertaste.
I have never had Thai food, but I bet this is what it tastes like. Very nice to get to try this! Thank you!
My daughter asked me to choose tea for her boyfriend in Northern Ireland for his birthday. He loves mostly black tea but drinks a lot of herbals as well. He isn’t really keen on greens. I chose RMS Titanic Blend because the Titanic was built in Northern Ireland, and I chose this one because…well, it was for his birthday!
He loved both teas, but this one seemed to fascinate him. He said it tasted like a birthday and he couldn’t explain how, snce it didn’t taste like cake or ice cream. He said it was fruity and floral. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about so I asked for sample. Thank you, Russel and Harney and Sons for obliging me!
I made one sachet. Pouring the boiling water over, the first thing that happened was the rush of color from hibiscus. That soon stopped and the cup began to take on more tea color, though it remained fairly red. The berry aroma is the most appealing thing about this to me.
I drank this, I wouldn’t turn it down if offered another cup, but I don’t think I would order it for myself, unless I find that it makes a delectable iced fruit tea, which is very likely. What I definitely WOULD use it for is to replace the horrible Little Citizens tea offerings from Republic of Tea so I could serve something that isn’t disgusting to young children who come for tea with their moms. If you have read many of my reviews, you know I seldom say anything strongly critical, but the two I tried from RoT were awful. This is a much better choice. Soon I will ice it and see if I like it that way, and I think I will try it in the Zoku pop maker as well. The Moroccan Mint pops and black tea pops were awesome!
Haha, once upon a time, I had a boyfriend in Northern Ireland _
can we make up the rest of the story…
who drove a Farrari real fast and wore gold chains on his hairy chest
…who drove a Honda and loved his dear sweet mother-
Hahahahahaha :P “who was tall and blond-haired and quite a wonderful guy.” :D
I probably shouldn’t follow that up with anything else, because I actually still keep in contact with him, and he’s read some of my posts on here (not that I think he follows this or would ever find this… but still!)
He does love his mother though :D
Nice!
Lol!
hehe you guys crack me up!
Never fall in love with a guy who doesn’t love his mama.
And garlic!
My mother always told me to pay attention to how a man treats his mother, because that is how he will someday treat his wife. She was right!
I needed a firm foot to the butt tea today. We are cleaning and cooking and cooking and cleaning for Christmas soup night. I need to go shopping at two groceries to finish but I have to get the first soup on. The second one cooks faster so it can wait a little while.
Here is my firm foot! I made a whole pot and put it on my beautiful new vintage cast iron warmer that was given me yesterday by the puppy I keep on Tuesdays! I love it!
Here is something you almost never see in my tasting notes…this one gets milk and sugar, almost always. But when you drink this, you KNOW you have had a cup of tea.
I got just got my first mandoline! I had used Sandy’s and liked it so I decided I neeeeeeeded one. As a surprise for hubby, I made potatoes au gratin, bacon, eggs, and pan-fried toast with triple berry jam while he was out buying stained glass. I chose this to serve with it and wowzer was it great!
This was hearty seasoned food and not every tea would pair well with it. I really enjoyed this pairing. The tea wasn’t sipped so much as thrown back with gusto, and this time I really felt that malty wash go over my tongue. Also, the fruity/orangey tang of Ceylon came out a little more with this food. The chocolate notes were not as prominent with this food, but would probably be more noticeable with sweets.
I am so glad I bought this. Russel at Harney and Sons had sent me a sample and I just had to order a tin!
I did make it very differently since hubby is pretty particular about his tea and doesn’t like strong tea. (He adds a lot of milk and sugar to most black tea.) I steeped the leaves in 198F water for 3 1/2 minutes and felt it was just right for me to drink plain. Hubby did add his usual additions.
I had a mandoline for about a week. Could not figure out how to fret it. The neck is so tiny and the frets are really close together. I know a week isn’t really long enough, but it was apparent very quick that I would rather bash out power chords on the six string.
K S: I WISH we had a mandolin, the musical instrument. A relative in SC is internationally known for his hand made ones and my mother-in-law offered to buy hubby onesince he plays guitar. However, I am taking about a mandoline, which is a French word for the blade platform that cuts veggies super thin and uniform! Thus I made potatoes au gratin with extremely thin slices of potato! Next up, I am going to make oven baked potato chips!
Call me naive and red faced. I couldn’t figure out the connection but thought you were on a ramble. Even now realizing their is not supposed to be an “e” at the end, I still would have no idea if you hadn’t explained. I’m off to google the blade not the instrument ;p
Don’t be red-faced! Even autocorrect didn’t know what it was! And mandolin with no e is considered an alternative spelling for mandoline. I don’t know of an English name for them. “Sharp cutty thing that shaves off knuckles” might be a good start…I must say, I love it. I don’t have room for lots of countertop appliances and would far rather use this than pull out a food processor, then take it apart and wash all the bits, and put it away again. Come to think of it, I don’t think I even own a food processor anymore. I got my mandoline from Williams Sonoma at a big discount and with a coupon! :) it just does plain slices, not waffle fries and such.
Googled and yep, I’ve seen them. Now I know what to call them. Yours would make julienne fries if you had got the model that came with the ginsu knives. (that’s a joke – I watch too much TV)
Hooray! I have a whole tin of my own for my cupboard now! I had looked at this for years on the website, and other things kept bumping it out of my cart. Then Russel Allyn kindly agreed to send me a sample and I was taken with the cocoa notes that fool you into thinking you have sme Fujian black tea in the mix. The aroma of the leaves in the tin is soooo nice – rich and fruity.
Youngest steeped this one a little more aggressively than I like but it was still good. To protect the Ceylon Silver Tips, I like to go 205F for about four minutes.
I do not deserve to be tasting tea.
I have been very bad tonight, I did not wait for my friend, and I have already sampled three of the teas and I am about to burst. I DID save enough for a pot for us to share, so maybe I have redeemed myself a little.
But the main reason I do not deserve to be tasting tea is because I got this one…ALL WRONG!
I remembered that there were Ceylon Silver Tips in it, but that was all I remembered of the description. I could see the long, silver leaves in the tea as I dipped it out of the pouch. The dark leaves were rather fine, but there were plenty of long thin leaves.
The dry tea smelled great, the steeped liquor even better. I took a sip, hoping this was yet another I could drink plain, and oh my goodness the smell! As I lifted the cup to my lips and inhaled, there was a delightful, slightly smokey, chocolate-y Keemun aroma. Mmmmm. Keemun. Some are too harsh for me, some hold a dear place in my heart. This one was just about perfect. I could really see us oo-ing and ah-ing over this one at tea party day, especially since it was so perfect with my lemon pound cake made from freshly ground soft white wheat and that is the sort of thing we serve at tea party.
Except then I looked up the tea and found that there IS NO KEEMUN IN THIS BLEND! Oh, the shame!
I guess I don’t care that I got it wrong. What counts is that Harney and Sons didn’t. They got it right, and this is one sample of which I will buying a big tin. It reminds me of the Fengqing Black Pearls, and is going to be a near perfect afternoon tea. I wonder if it ices well? I wonder if they still sell the pretty little silver-plated caddy for it?
Russel and Harney and Sons, bravo on this one. Totally affordable enough to drink every day, yet tastes like a special occasion.
oooh – just added to my list. :)
Amy- I hope you like it, too! We already like their Ceylon and India a lot, and the site says this is a dressed up version! I don’t know why it smells like cocoa to me tonight but it sure was good, especially with my lemon pound cake with lemon fluff frosting. I am able to burst!
This particular blend of Ceylon and Assam is in my opinion the tastiest of the 3 H&S offers (Ceylon and India, Brigitte’s Blend, and Anniversary) and has a distinct cocoa aroma with lingering tastes of malted honey. So glad you enjoyed!
Can you elaborate on this “lemon fluff” frosting? I think I need it in my life!
It was a recipe in a Southern Living cookbook years ago! I am going from memory right now, but I think it is one stick of butter creamed with 3 cups powdered sugar and add 3-4 tablespoons of lemon juice. Realemon is fine, or fresh squeezed. It is very refreshing on a summertime pound cake!
Russel – I am so glad you said it had cocoa notes in your comment! So often, Ceylons are bright, lemony, minty, orangey, so when I got chocolate I thought there was Keemun and felt like a tea failure when I was so far off! Glad to know there really ARE cocoa notes in this. It really is Keemun up front and Assam at the end! Thank you! It was delicious.
DaisyChubb: here you go! 1/2 cup butter, 4 cups sifted confectioners sugar with a dash of salt, 3 tablespoons lemon juice, 2 tsp. lemon zest. Cream butter, add 1/2 sugar and salt and cream well. Add remaining sugar with lemon juice and cream until light and fluffy. (add lemon zest or grated peel here if you have it, I used to always use Realemon for this so I didn’t have zest and it was still great. Hope you enjoy!
Oh, I must try this one….. I think I will have to add a few ounces to my next shop order since the smallest amount you can buy on the website is 7 oz!
I made three steeps of this tonight, gong fu style, and mixed them. I still have enough of my sample to do this one more time. Hooray!
I went out with hubby for Chinese buffet tonight and this is my dessert. (Unless I cave and go to CookOut and get the 99 cent shake of the week which is cappuccino in which case THAT will be my dessert but we won’t talk about that right now. Then this will just be my after dinner tea.)
I did a quick wash of the leaves before steeping. They were nicely opening up when I made the first steep, but still not completely there. The liquor is a soft, golden yellow. There is a hint of astringency, not in a bad way. I am drinking this because a couple of days ago the memory of oolong suddenly it my mouth and I have been craving it ever since. For some reason, though, I have been having tea only with guests and have made flavored or plain black tea every time.
This is truly lemony, especially when you are not pairing it with food. It does pair well with food, but right now…Oof. Too much food in my tummy already!
go get the blasted shake! and shouldn’t this be ding dong the witch is dead?
I would, Bonnie, but I would have to throw up first. Or I can just wait two hours for my food to settle. It IS Chinese, after all. :D
I LOVE Dong Ding! Never heard of “light” dong ding – interesting!
I hate it when I really want a cup of tea, but I’m so full I have no room for tea…….and I HATE waiting-especially when i’m really in the mood for tea [which is most of my waking life!].
Woohoo! My samples from Harney and Sons arrived late this afternoon. I was like…a squirrel in the road! It was like…target confusion! What to drink first? What to drink first?
This may seem crazy, but I decided to save the ones I am most excited about for later. I try to taste new things with a friend so that we both get to experience something new and different and so that there is more sharing of thoughts on the tea.
I went with the Dong Ding Light, though I confess to repeatedly sniffing Blue Ginger which is driving me CRAZY with passion and I might just drink before my friend comes over Sunday. LOL!
The smell of the leaves was really, really nice. Many oolongs have a rich and strong aroma that reminds me of a can of paint when you open it. Don’t hate me! That is just what it smells like to me and I LIKE it! Perhaps I can find a more acceptable description someday. Maybe I should say that paint reminds me of oolong leaves, rather than the other way ’round!
First steep – I put two teaspoons in my small ceramic pot and steeped for almost five minutes. This tea is exactly what they said. The first sips were really milky but not creamy, and as I continued sipping, the lemony flavor came out and added that little bite. The liquor was a bright yellow that I would call pineapple yellow. I did use more leaf than they call for because I knew I wanted to resteep and resteep, plus my pot is about 8 ounces. As I start to cook, I notice that sweet aftertaste that comes with some green and oolong teas and seems reserved for those that have a bit of bite!
Second steep – unabated! This is just as strong as the first, maybe stronger! Our Kashi Spinach and Mushroom Pizza was ready so we took this out to the patio to have dinner. With food, the bite of the lemon flavor no longer registers as lemon, but rather is strength to let you pair this with food and still taste your tea.
Third steep – still eating pizza and drinking tea. These leaves are still going strong. I steeped it for five minutes this time.
I have to say that the description on the H&S site seems dead on accurate to me. I think I would give it a higher rating than they did, though, It is refreshing to see a company put honest ratings on their tea, or leaving ratings off, rather than falsifying them like happened with that other company a number of months back.
Thank you, Russel Allyn and Harney and Sons for letting me taste these teas!
Backlogging and based on memory
Experience buying from Harney & Sons http://steepster.com/places/2779-harney-and-sons-on-line-millerton-new-york
I bought this in the hopes of using it to flavor the later steepings on our mid-to-lower quality green teas. It didn’t seem to blend well with one green tea I tried it with, and it’s not that great on its own, either. It looks colorful, but it smells artificial, not really like mango at all, and it has an ‘off’ taste to it. It’s surprising, as I have found all of H&S’s ‘real’ Teas to be of a good quality. I might try one of Teavivre’s fruit blends instead, as theirs are very inexpensive (~$5.50 / 100g). I have found London Tea Room’s Mango ’n Friends to be MUCH better.
I think this was my first fruit tea, so I’ll leave off the rating.
Preparation
This is a sample sent by Russel Allyn and Harney and Sons.
It was a beautiful morning, a miracle around here really because here it is getting on toward late June and it isn’t muggy and hot already at 8 a.m. There is a nice breeze in the mornings and evenings, too. So I had breakfast on a quilt spread under the pecan tree – an Everything Bagel with schmeer and my tea tray.
I noticed that Michael Harney says he drinks this for breakfast most mornings. I can see why. Though this cup has some heft, it isn’t aggressive, and believe me some of my first Assams were not very good quality and with the least bit of age became downright hostile! But this one was smooth enough….prepare yourself….for me to drink WITHOUT MILK OR SUGAR! There are not a lot of Assams I have tried that get that distinction.
And even though it was very smooth, throughout breakfast I found myself thinking that a coffee drinker would easily be able to switch to this and not feel like they are missing anything. Also, it held up flavor wise to an Everything bagel, and that is saying something! This is a nice, somewhat malty morning cup, and I think Assam fans would enjoy it very much!
Thank you, Russel Allyn and Harney and Sons for another great tea sample!
Sounds good! Unless you order online you see almost no Harney and Sons here. One store carries some (very few standard blah boring ones) .
Same here! We can buy some types at Barnes and Noble, and if I drive to Chapel Hill there is a store that sells a little more of their offerings, but nothing like what they have online! I always order for other people, too, so we end up with free shipping and bonus points. Their gift boxes are beautiful and so classic…I even bought myself one once! LOL! I still use the ox to hold my tea in pouches, and the sampler boxes and four ounce tins are perfect for holding your MtG card decks. Lol!
This is a free sample provided by Russel Allyn and Harney and Sons.
I have had this a few times already, but it still takes me by surprise. When I served the Luis Darjeeling that is very dark and earthy at tea party, my guest wasn’t a fan. It was one of only a few teas she put on her “list.” And I don’t mean a good list. Puerh is also on her list.
I served this as our middle tea of three. I only poured her a half cup and told her if she liked it we would top it off. It is so surprising to see a black tea that has a yellow liquor! She tasted, and said it was good, not her favorite tea but nothing like the last Darjeeling we had.
Then she had a cookie and sipped again. She said, “Fill ’er up!” Apparently it was just made to be paired with sweets. She was very taken with it. It had a very vegetal taste to me today and was reminding me a bit of my first Ruby 18. So here is yet another tea that I need for my Harney Tea shelf.
Many thanks, Russell and Harney and Sons!
This is a sample that was sent to me by Russel Allyn of Harney and Sons. What an amazing and generous box of goodness he chose for me! Thank you!
This is the third time I have made this tea today because that is what it took for me to be able to review it. My first steep this morning was intended for review, but oops! I had rescheduled a student who missed their lesson last week for this morning, and I had forgotten. I sipped the tea while teaching but didn’t get to do it justice. I made a resteep, but honestly this was so different from what I expected that I really felt I had to make another fresh batch to review.
First let me say that I used to maintain that Assams and Darjeelings are (were) my least favorite types of tea, though I do like some of them well enough. Most of that is my fault. My first Darjeeling was not a high quality one and as a newbie I made it badly indeed, treating it like any standard black tea. Wow, was it ever astringent! When I pulled back a little on temp and a lot on time, it was much better. Then I tried a really good Margaret’s Hope second flush that was quite good, but still a little astringent for my tastes.
My daughter brought a Darjeeling home from Budapest and I liked it a lot, but it is earthy, earthy, earthy. So when I tried this one, I said, “Whaaaaaaaat….?” it was so different!
The picture does not do justice to the leaf appearance. These leaves are much greener in person, highlighted with some beautiful leaves that are such a pale green they are nearly white.
The liquor is yellow, while the Luis one is brown. This is…..a bit buttery, a bit floral, a bit nutty, and a little astringent. Yet the muscat grape flavor is there, but hiding, then peeking. The Luis tea is dark, fruity, and very earthy. I am amazed at how different these Darjeelings are! I even had to brew a cup of the Luis tea to see if my memory was playing tricks on me. No, it is brown and earthy!
I see that Amy Oh noted a slight astringency at two minutes, while I did a four minute steep. I am not usually a fan of astringency, having once believed it to be undesirable and needing to be smoothed with milk and/ or sugar. Now that I have had a few of the Chinese palate-clearing greens I have begun to appreciate a little astringency.
The second steep still has a lot of flavor. I did try my tiny two ounce cup with about an eighth of a teaspoon of White Gold Raw Clover Honey and it was very nice. This is in interesting and complex tea. I just might get lured into stocking my cupboard with lots of Darjeelings after all.
This is part of the free sample from Russel at Harney and Sons. I made this for tea party today.
This was the third and final tea we served. It amazes me to see how light the liquor for this tea is, because the flavor and body are certainly not light! I really enjoyed this. In fact, I have found myself lately craving Ti Kuan Yins and drinking copious amounts of them.
This one is very good, and I meant to order it last time I placed an order but forgot. Good news!
Harney and Sons is offering free shipping, I think through Saturday, on orders over $25 with coupon code Ambessa. The first email said the shipping was free if there was at least one tin of Ambessa purchased. Two more have come in saying that you don’t have to buy Ambessa to use the code and get free shipping. If they had Lingonberry already in, I would be all over that! I am out of Cherry Blossom Green, too, so another Harney order is already starting to fill the notepad.
Wow. Youngest just helped me make the traditional June 21st pound cake. (Hubby proposed when I went to visit him at his university and I gave him a pound cake. I didn’t think to ask until much later if he married me for love or for the recipe! When I ask, he just sings, “I LOVE my baby’s pound cake!” Apparently it was a Van Halen song?). Naturally there was much licking of the batter bowl and beaters and I took a sip of this tea.
WOW! Somehow today it is extra fruity – like raisin juice! Yum! I think this one may become indispensable on the tea shelf. It isn’t a green oolong, but it doesn’t have that heavy roasty taste. Floral and fruity are good descriptors for this one!
Thank you, Russel Allyn and Harney and Sons!
I love family un-holidays!
OHHHH! This is sooooo romantic! I love this story! I love that you celebrate with pound cake! Happy June 21st!!!!!!
Sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvLxlVv9E5Y
I liked this one the first time I had it. I liked it even more today.
This was a free sample from Russel Allyn at Harney and Sons.
This was the final tea served at tea party today. We did not count the iced Vanilla Jasmine from Golden Moon when we voted for our favorite tea of the day, so it was just between this one and Sun Moon Lake from Fong Mong. My guest was not a fan of the Sun Moon Lake tea, but this tea elicited quite a response. She said that this tea reminded her of the sugar cane pressings that she went to as a child in Louisiana, when they squeezed the sweet juice from the cane and then boiled it in copper pots, stirring and skimming the surface continually, then pouring it from pan to pan as it gets purer and boils down. My great uncle had sugar cane fields and equipment here in North Carolina, so I had heard these stories from my mother as well.
There is a wild sweetness to this tea, a scent similar to sniffing a bowl of raw cane sugar. I know – I have a bowl on the tea table and compared the two! The taste that lingers is a dark sweetness, like honey. Dark and rich. In a way, it makes me think of liquid raisins. I like raisins by themselves, but if there is something black in my cookie it had darned well better be a chocolate chip! But the texture and stickiness of raisins doesn’t appeal to me. Here is a way to get that wonderful flavor in the most enjoyable way!
I also realized that this is the very flavor I loved in Black Ruby from the now closed Shui Tea. I am glad to find something that steps in so nicely to take the place of that beloved member of my tea shelf! This tea held its own against the cookie plate we were sharing, the Sun Moon Lake disappeared a bit under the cookies but was very good when the palate cleared, so I don’t think I would serve SML with food much.
Thank you, again, Russel and Harney and Sons! It’s a winner!
I think your review said it well. I just got a sample of this with my order a few months ago and was pleasantly surprised, as I usually go for black loose tea.