Castleton Moonlight Darjeeling

This was one I purchased during my HUGE haul from Black Friday. Butiki was my main Black Friday order! I mean I definitely laid down some mulah for this order. Ha ha anyways… I made a cup of this as I made some chocolate brownie cookies:)

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Mmmm mmmm mmm. This tea was a great compliment. All the different types of nuttiness and the sweet honeysuckle notes! Perfect duo. This tea was very bold and to my likings. I will have to sit down with this tea and do better tasting and more steepings to give this the true rating it deserves :)

Darjeeling No. 3! This tea is not what comes to mind when I think of Darjeeling. It’s not quite like any oolong I’ve had either. This is a very different tea.

The liquor smells like it could be a Darjeeling; it’s vaguely hayish, sour, and fruity. One sip completely evaporates that image though. It’s smoothly floral-sweet, with a prickly dash finish of something that verges on spicy. When I chugged down a mouthful, near the bottom of the mug, I picked up notes of almond butter and melona bar. It left a thick sensation and a sweet aftertaste. Best mouthful of tea today.

Maybe this could be a typical darjeeling on it’s softer second steep. It doesn’t have the astringent teeth I’ve come to expect with a darjeeling’s first steep. I feel like I cheated somehow, and got to my favourite part first.

The last couple servings are going off to Heather Martin soon, so this is sort of a sipdown. I think I may miss this one.

This is a nice one. Very floral with something that hints at spice after the sip. There’s also notes of hay and the astringency that’s common with Darjeelings. Mmmmm. AS the tea cools I get more fruit than flowers. A lot of fruit actually. Very sweet and bright.

Thanks OMGsrsly for sending this to me. It’s been on my shopping list for forever, so it’s nice to finally have the chance to try it. It’s delicious! Also, it’s staying on my shopping list because I’m probably going to need more of this sooner rather than later. :)

In other news… I am officially finished with Christmas orders! I put the tag and cleaning instructions on the last two pieces I made, and they are boxed up and about to be shipped out. My Christmas vacation has begun! Yay!!!

I really really actually like this one. I had a second steeping today, and I did 6 minutes. The tea is wonderful, and I’m enjoying it out of a ceramic travel mug (highly breakable, obviously, so I don’t like to use it much).

I don’t have enough of a brain today to figure out the notes or anything. All I can say is: Yum.

Another sample from Teamore. I like this one better than the Thurbo, although they’re not entirely dissimilar. I’m getting lots of grassiness and a fair bit of astringency from this one as well, but here these notes are brighter and crisper and juicier than they were in the Thurbo.

Backlog…had this one this morning. It seemed pretty smooth and not brash or anything. I don’t recall a whole lot of the subtle nuances or anything, but I remember it being very nice and easy to drink. I’ll have to report back after I have had it again.

Sample Sipdown!
On 2 of my orders from about a month ago, Stacy sent me samples of this tea. For some reason they were different quantities. One weighed in at 2G, the other at 5G. They were clearly the same tea, so I combined them into my 16 oz teapot, steeped 3 minutes at 180, & am enjoying the pot as my first tea of the day.

This is a lovely cup, with nuances of almond & melon, & after I swallow it, I taste cinnamon! There’s also a lemony brightness to it. It’s quite nice.

Thank you Stacy!

I have mixed feelings about this tea. It seemed to change its character over the course of the tasting, probably as a result of the tea cooling. It was a very interesting tea, but had a candy-like aroma and taste that I found distracting. (this may be what Butiki calls Honeysuckle and melon – I can definitely see the melon)

It starts with a soft aroma, slightly sweet. Very weak compared to the Thunderbolt teas I was drinking earlier this morning. The taste is definitely sweet and candy-like: light on the surface but with great depth. Layers of flavor with hints of fruit and grass. The finish is good but light. As the tea cooled, the flavors became more pronounced.

I have mixed feelings about this tea. I started out not liking it but it sort of grew on me as I drank it. Based on style I would have guessed it was a first flush rather than second flush, but that may be due to the Oolong-style processing.

This was part of my recent swap with Teamore

So I’ve learned a lot with tea. I learned a lot about the sorts of blacks I like, that I enjoy white tea, that I essentially don’t like green tea — as in enough to keep in the house, if offered I’d happily drink a cup — except for a couple exceptions, that I’ve almost completely lost my taste for flavored teas (though something about that Foxy Roxy Banana Walnut Treat is addictive. I greedily drank through that ounce and wish I had more. What did you put in there Stacy? Haha, just kidding), and that so far my limited experience with oolongs has been a positive one! :)

I’m also discovering that I’m not a big fan of Darjeeling teas. Which is okay, I’m super glad I tried them! I definitely don’t regret taking the chance and ordering some, because even when it turns out I don’t like something, the experience is still fun. That said, this one seems to be the exception because I actually did really like this one!

Since it’s an oolong, I steeped it loose in a 12oz pot and then strained it. The flavor was quite nice, I definitely tasted the pine needle, and I picked up on a pleasant fruit note that was quite juicy, though I didn’t identify it as melon. (I drank this blind and then looked at the description to compare) I tasted more going on too in this cup, but clearly my palate isn’t quite sophisticated enough to identify what each flavor was, and it was ever so slightly floral at the swallow.

Second infusion was also lovely. The fruit receded and had a nuttiness that was still sweet from the pine and floral. This probably could’ve gone further than a second, but I had to rush to work. Overall this was a lovely cup, and I’m already scheming to try another oolong or two come June :)

Got a sample of this with my order from Butiki a while back (thanks, Stacy!), finally got around to doing a sample sipdown today.

I think I’ve only had about three or four darjeelings ever (never had much of an opportunity to try them due to price and other teas distracting me), so I’m not going to give it a numerical rating. Plus, I’ve just been drinking this somewhat absentmindedly while studying for a midterm on Tuesday, hence the short note. A bit of astringency in the first steep, which mostly disappears with the second steep. Fruity/melon-y, bright, and crisp. I enjoyed it!