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“This is the first time I can remember that the flavors described on a tea have represented almost perfectly the flavors that I get when I sip it. I know that the gap between what’s suggested and...” Read full tasting note
“Sipdown no. 57 for the year 2014 and also the end of revisiting the handful of Golden Moon samples I couldn’t decide about the first time through. I will say that although this sample was tiny...” Read full tasting note
“Golden Moon Sampler Tea #30 Almost at the end of my Golden Moon sampler! Basically took the entire month to go through it. Which is a pretty good pace, I think. My mom called right after I set...” Read full tasting note
“I’m afraid that I may have prepared this horribly wrong. My sample was the tiniest sample I’ve ever seen. I don’t have a scale, so try to picture the length and width of 4 toothpicks laying...” Read full tasting note
Rare. Exotic. A Reward For The Curious and Adventurous.
Mood: Introspective, scholarly
Time: Anytime – in the study or garden courtyard
Cuisine: Fruit, chocolate, or mild cakes and cookies.
Price Per Cup: .31+
Caffeine: Low
Rarely – maybe once a generation – will a tea blend come along with flavors so rich and pure. Close your eyes. Concentrate. You’ll note the subtle wash of dates, chestnuts, cedar, and orange blossoms. It’s a constant reward for those willing to give it a chance.
The fanciest silver-tipped leaves provide a remarkable durable blend good for many infusions without a loss of flavor. It’s a fine value if you’re willing to step out on the skinny end of the branch and reap the awards of risk. Why not add it to your cart today?
Golden Moon is dedicated to offering outstanding, whole-leaf teas of the greatest quality and finesse. All Golden Moon Teas are hand-plucked and meticulously crafted to enhance leaf character, aroma, color, clarity, body, complexity, and above all, flavor.
This is my first attempt at oolong… and I feel I should try again in the future.
I think overall it’s too dark for me, and I seem to be tending toward lighter teas (in both color and flavor). It tasted like black tea with a spicy aftertaste. Is spicy the word? Maybe it’s the woodsy, cedar-like taste. I can’t knock it too hard, though. By the end I was looking forward to that aftertaste. Gave it a little kick.
A long and tiring day. Going for a golden moon sample of oolong.
It seems a bit watery, and I can’t really taste much of a flavor. Maybe the water wasn’t hot enough when I put it in… but the color is rather dark.
When I do get a good sense of the flavor, it tastes awesome. It’s a little nutty, with a flavor very similar to a typical black tea taste, but lighter. It’s so very relaxing and calming, and hopefully it will be enough caffeine to help me get through finishing the last bits of my homework.
I will definitely try a second infusion, but this may very well be a tea I’d want to buy again.
Another Golden Moon sample. This is a darker oolong (more up my alley than the light ones). It brews up to a nice amber color. Tastes ok with some floral notes and a light malty finish. I agree with teaplz that it has a high astringency and it leaves you with a dry mouth feel. It’s nice but I probably won’t order more.
Lowering my rating on this because the more I drank, the less I liked it and about 1/2 way though, I poured it out.
I had this tea hot yesterday and I am drinking cold and unsweetened today.
The first thing I need to confess is that this tea sample is probably super old. My impressions of this tea may not be fair and a really fresh batch might be as spectacular as the company describes.
Having said that, it is not a bad tea. The color of the steeped tea is lovely – a very clear, crisp amber color. There is a slight nuttiness, I pick up the chestnut flavor they mention, and it is smooth with a touch of briskness and a touch of minerality.
I don’t mean this in a bad way, but I get a lot of the mineral taste we have here when you finish your drink and the ice in your glass melts and you drink the melt water. Is that a touch of iron? Like freezer frost? You guys are mostly too young to have had freezer frost!
But really every flavor here is light. It is light minerality, light nuttiness, light briskness…all adding up to a medium bodied and medium flavored tea. Most DHP I have tasted are deeper and darker in notes than this, if that helps explain this tea.
I like it, but I am not finding anything to wax poetic about. It is good, though.
Ugh, I hate that “melted ice cube”/“freezer frost” taste! No matter what I do trying to make ice (use filtered water, store ice cubes in a freezer bag, etc.) they always taste that way to me. For that reason I have to chill my tea overnight in the fridge, I can’t make “iced tea” by pouring tea over ice cubes. And I cannot add ice cubes to the “straight out of fridge” tea either. It’s like my tea somehow tastes wrong or dirty as soon as I do…
I do the same, Mastress Alita. My strategy is that I always make three teas at once, at least one that needs to go in the fridge (a few hours is enough) and one that can be enjoyed right away. Then I never go thirsty! :P
I usually always have a mason jar at the ready in the fridge. When it gets empty or close to empty, I get a new one going in the evening and strain it the next morning.
The problem of freezer frost is cured for some of us? I’m confused!
Tea-sipper: when I was a kid, all the refrigerator freezers use to get a snowy frost. It could build up quite thick. We used to put the vacuum hose on the exhaust and thaw it so we could “clean” the freezer without turning off the whole fridge. If the frost got thick enough you couldn’t fit as much food in and sometimes it would jam the door open. We would also rake our fingers through it like harvesting snow and eat the ice while the adults threatened us that we were going to get some weird food poisoning from it. As far as I know, only big chest freezers do that now, so I doubt people still eat the frost. Is that the part you were confused about?
The freezer in the fridge that came with the apartment I was in until I bought my place in 2019 definitely had the thick freezer frost layer that constantly made it hard to fit in my food. The ice smelled foul, too. I think all the appliances in that place were from the 70s…
So newer freezers don’t get that ice build up? However did they get it to stop?
Add to that the flavor of ice cubes frozen in those metal trays with a lever opener poured into sweaty aluminum tumblers… (In retrospect, this might be why I always drank out of the garden hose at grandma’s house!)
Ah yes, the metal ice trays with the handle! We brought one home to show the kids when we cleaned out their grandma’s house!
I haven’t had a freezer make frost inside since the 90’s at least, tea-sipper. Maybe it is better insulation or somehow they dehumidify the air of the freezer compartment.
Wow, that is good to know ashmanra. NO MORE DEFROSTING?!?! (Can you tell older fridge and freezer here? haha)
oh wait… i’m just thinking of the pain mini-freezer and outdoor freezer. I forgot the main freezer doesn’t ever have to defrosted. But the weird ice flavor is still there.
I was in the mood for something oolong so I gave this one a try from my sampler.
The leaves them self have a very nice and pronounced nutty and fruity smell . Resulting infusion is a light golden-yellow liquor that has a nice nutty, fruity and slightly smokey and earthy smell. The taste is quite the same, Mostly nutty with notes of fruitiness and earthiness and also lightly smokey and astringent. I really liked the nutty taste that this tea has and going to be sure get more
Brewed 5 min. No additives. Hot.
This is a very dark fermented oolong. The flavor comes very close to being a light black tea but it still holds on to the roundness of an oolong without the tannin taste.
I have gotten 4 good infusions per tsp.
It has a good, woody sweetness.
