First tea of the new year!
I’m all about symbolism or ‘monument moments’ when it comes to tea drinking so I like to time out my big tasting note milestones so I’m drinking teas with significance, and I like thematically appropriate teas for holidays…
So, I wanted my very first tea for 2017 to be significant. And so, instead of ‘Ringing in the New Year’ I’m bringing it in, instead, with a ‘Bang’. Bang Dong Hong, that is. Hooray word play! Seriously though – 2016 was such a shit storm of a year globally that I really wanted to get 2017 rolling in a positive way; and I’m also hoping that maybe choosing this tea might symbolize more of a shift in my tea drinking habits as my tea related new years resolution this year is to drink a larger amount of straight tea overall than I did last year as well as do at least one Gong Fu session every week.
Drinking Gong Fu is something I love but have a very hard time fitting into my work week, and which I really struggled with once I started working two jobs and pulling regular 14+ hour work days. I want to find/make time to get back into the habit of enjoying something I love and find peaceful and relaxing.
This wasn’t my first Gong Fu ceremony of the year – that will probably come later today. I drank this one Western while having a nice soak in the tub and trying a Ginseng face mask that ended up being a complete disaster: it never totally “set” even after twice as long as the recommended time to leave it on, and therefore I couldn’t peel it off. Instead I had to scrape/scrub that gross goo off. Bleck.
Tea was phenomenal though: I was quite taken aback by how nutty and sweet it was. Every sip felt very dominated by an almond/cherry or marzipan like note that was intoxicating and enchanting, and pulled me in almost immediately for the next sip. Other notes were malt, cocoa, and raisin – but they paled in comparison.
How interesting and unexpected.
I had Tea Trunk’s Long Island Green Tea as my first tea of the year. I didn’t think too much about it and it sorta just happened. I don’t know what to make of that haha.