Nepal

Another Traveling Tea Box tea!

I think it tastes like beer-tea! Sorta like some darjeelings taste like wine tea…this tastes like beer tea. Slighty lemony beer tea. It’s not exactly unpleasant, but let’s just say I’m glad it was just enough for tonight’s after dinner pot of tea.

My logic in picking this tea is this: as soon as I got home from work, I fell asleep. While napping, I was dreamt about tea. Andrews and Dunham tea. Not this tea, though. Jackee Muntz. I woke up fully and decided to get some tea. I was going to get some Jackee, but this tea was sitting on the counter and therefore much easier to find than Jackee. So I made some.

It was only when I went to log it that I realized I had never had it before. I’m not sure how I could have let those lovely leaves escape me for so long. Seriously, I love the leaves on this. The brown, gold and copper little squiggles. So pretty.

It smells like a cocoa-infested Darjeeling. It’s got the bright smell of a Darjeeling – the one that makes my mouth water but that can also come across as bitterness – but running under it there is another smell of fuzzy warmth. It’s quite lovely.

Taste-wise, it’s not quite as comforting as it’s smell but it is nice. There’s a hop-y taste that makes me think of beer but it’s not strong enough to turn me off (sorry, not a beer fan). It’s got an overall dark, fuzzy taste to it with highlights of an almost green rawness (related to the hops flavor, I think). Normally that rawness doesn’t work for me but here it mostly does, probably because of the other feelings/flavors this has going on. The edges are smooth with none of the sharpness that can come up in these types of teas but as it cools a menthol-esque bitterness starts to show up in my mouth after a sip and the fuzziness decreases a bit.

I’m not totally in love with this tea, but I do like it. I’ll probably try a lower temp next time to see what that does to the raw highlights and if that keeps the bitterness away once it starts to cool. If I can decrease these two things just a bit, my rating will go up.

Most black tea I’ve tried has this really distinct flavor that I can’t seem to pick apart, so in my head I’ve just labeled it as “black tea flavor.” This tea has that. I took a sip and it was all, “O hai! I’m in ur cup, blackin ur tea.”

It doesn’t have any smokiness, but it doesn’t quite read as “smooth” to me. It’s somewhere in between the two, which would almost be unsettling if it wasn’t sweet. It’s a pleasant kind of sweet; I enjoy it. And it helps with the bitterness that greets you at the tail of the sip.

About halfway through the cup I started to notice that it was drying my mouth out a bit. Not a ton, but enough to be noticeable. Also, the cocoa started to really come through, especially when combined with that bitter taste at the end. It was much more noticeable when I was inhaling, and if I kept my mouth closed and breathed in through my nose I could taste it a bit, too.

The last little bit of what I had in my cup got rather cool, which confirmed my suspicion that this tea runs best for me when it’s between hot and lukewarm. Overall, a pleasant tea that doesn’t really stand out all that much. Might be good for a lazy afternoon spent perusing the newspaper.

Backlogging from yesterday.

Lots of tea this weekend. Including my final brew on this tea (and another to come) from Ricky. Brewed hot, 3 minutes, no additives. The aroma on this is black tea. It is not strong, it is a subtle smell, yet relaxing and familiar. This is what a good black tea should smell like. The taste is the same, gentle and familiar, exactly how a black tea should taste. The tea is smooth and delightfully plain, there is no astringency, there is a faint suggestion of vanilla flavor. This would be fantastic with milk and sugar, though it does not need it. Overall, this was very good.

As a final note, I drank a lot of tea this weekend, unfortunately about five of them are NOT already in the database of Steepster, and since I am uber busy and even more lazy, it will be a few more days before I can get them in. Sorry.

I love the look of this tea’s leaves: A nice mix of cocoa, green and gold that just begs to be steeped. The smell of the leaves is on the subtle side, with hints of cocoa and earth. When steeped, it turns a nice caramel color that’s dark enough to imply flavor, but not so dark that it fools you into thinking the taste is going to be stronger than it is. The aroma is equally subtle, with just a bit of spice and a smoky/earthy side to it. I accidentally steeped this one for two minutes too long, so the taste is probably a bit more on the bitter side that it was supposed to be, but even still, it’s very mellow with just a hint of bitterness and spice. Summing it all up: Good tea, but not one that will wow you. Just a solid black tea that’s hard to go wrong with.

Backlogging
Napal looked at me this morning and said no more yucky black tea for you today now that you’re feeling more perky. What can I say? He basically told me I had to drink him. Then he went a bit floral on me. He was a most lovely golden brown color today though. 2nd steep: 4 min and a pinch of fresh leaves.

Today was just not my day. Seven o’ clock I was awaken by construction next door. I dragged myself out of bed and headed to work. I got into the office and all the lights were turned off, wait was it the weekend? Nope, the trains were running smoothly. I double check the holiday schedule and it seemed today was indeed a work day, but seeing as no one was in the office I decided to leave. Before I stepped back out into the frigid winter weather, I decide to take a sip of my delicious Nepal tea from Andrews & Dunham. As if the day couldn’t get any worse, the detergent smell was still in my thermos! I blame the plastic lid.

I needed something to pick me up from my fowl mood so I wandered into Wholes Food. I was on a quest to find tea. Strange, I know. At last, I found it, a mountain of RISHI piled sky high. I left the store with a box of matcha and a tin of China Breakfast.

I was still skeptical whether it was my thermos or Nepal’s natural flavor that was giving off a detergency smell. Maybe darjeeling no longer appealed to me. So I brewed up a fresh cup of Nepal in a glass cup and my first assumption was correct. The thermos had been the culprit. Darjeeling’s muscatel flavor came to mind. The tea was definitely bolder than their Ceylon. Each sip was sweet & smooth, yet there was a sharp spicy aftertaste (muscatel). I don’t know if I’ll have Nepal for a while after this experience. It’s not the tea’s fault.

WOW! This was my first experience with Damn Fine Tea and I am very pleasantly surprised. Admittedly I wasn’t sure what I was in for, as I am not too familiar with the descriptor of Nepal, but, I was expecting a plain, strong and generally normal black tea experience. That is not what this is at all.

Bottom line… this is an amazingly complex and BEAUTIFUL black tea. The tea is so very, very light with minimal tannins and the only bold, typical black tea flavors in the blend at all come at the very tail end of the flavor profile. The first flavors to hit your tongue are all honey and smooth sweetness and remind me of french pastries. Not the doughy part of the pastry but, the way that chocolate and vanilla can blend with caramels and hazelnuts to make a unique flavor that stands on it’s own. The initial impression is honey but, as the flavor develops it shifts from creme brule to hot chocolate and caramel. And even with all of it’s complexity it remains delicate and well balanced and fricken fantastic. Can you tell I’m in tea love?

At the end of each sip there is just a little bite to remind you that this is a black tea and not an oolong. This is seriously the lightest, sweetest most complex black tea that I can have with no additives and still be the happiest woman on the planet drinking it.

After the little tannin nip at the end the after taste fades into toasted caramel. sigh I wish they would put this out again so I can have more.

When I first recieved this tea, I tried it out and being a bit new to “real black teas” (versus flavored teas), I was not a fan of it at all. However, this past weekend, I retried it after some time and maybe my palette has changed, but I absolutely loved every sip of this. It was strong, a bit smokey,yet sweet at the same time. Funny thing is, my brother, who I just got to start drinking tea about 1-2 months ago hated this tea and said it tasted like he “just ate dirt”. I wonder if in a few months to a year if he will enjoy this tea as I did months later. :)

This was the last of it. Good stuff, just don’t over steep (3 min. only).

I’m going to be needing series 3 soon!

It’s ok, not worth the hype

Very…interesting tea. Not quite what I was expecting, but still a tasty tea especially with cookies or biscotti.

Delicious!