Nepalese Afternoon Tea

I’ve had this sample for a little while now, and decided that I wanted a nice relaxing afternoon cup today. This is really quite nice. It is one that I think is best if you let cool for a few minutes before drinking. The first couple of sips actually seemed a little harsh but after it cooled for about three minutes, the flavor became much smoother and actually quite lovely. I could taste the floral tones distinctly, but they weren’t sharp or bitter. Just very calm and smooth.

Steeped as instructed – love sandalwood so much. This was just NOT okay.
Bitter astringent – wonder what I did wrong. It seems like the flavors were there … but I fear I messed it up somehow. I mean I could taste the POTENTIAL … hummm

I’m actually really enjoying this one this morning.

When you bust open this package, lemme tell you, this tea smells delicious. I kept inhaling. There are some cocoa notes overlaid with honey smells, and a dash of a floral component as well. It smells three-dimensional and it beckons you out of that awful stupor upon waking up.

And the dry leaves themselves? People have mentioned this before, but they’re absolutely adorable! Very wiry with golden and brown hues. So pretty! Little curls, some in almost an eyelash shape. So I put a tsp. of this in my IngenuiTEA (which I just marked with a Sharpie in increments for 6 oz. and 8 oz., so I feel pretty special) and watched it steep up. I figured that the leaves wouldn’t do much and… they didn’t. Just sort of floated around.

The wet leaves smell more like a regular black tea with some honey blended in. And the infusion smells just as good as the dry leaves. The cocoa is a bit subdued, but the honey and floral scents are still there. Now, I’ve never had lotus or sandalwood anywhere near me, so I can’t speak from experience of those two scents/flavors. But I’ll try and explain how it tastes.

It’s fairly light with a bit of spice. I’m not getting any bitterness, but many floral and honey components, melted into a traditional “default” tea taste. This almost tastes similar to the Keemun Imperial I had by SpecialTeas the other day, if you tripped out the smokiness and added floral/honey components instead. At points I’m thinking this is full-bodied; at other points, it feels a bit watery. My cup doesn’t really have any astringency; Ancient Emerald Lily had much, much more than this. There’s a subtle sweetness underneath it as well, and some spicy qualities. I can’t pinpoint what spices, exactly, but it’s that feeling of warmth that comes from some of the more comforting spices out there.

Overall, really enjoying this cup. I’d rate it higher, but I don’t think the flavor profiles and components are really going to stick in my mind. It’s like that one acquaintance that you have that always remembers your name. They come up to you and say, “Hi, teaplz!” And then you feel awkward because you can’t for the life of you remember theirs. So you stand there and go, “Hi…. hi.”

And then the rest of the night you’re trying to deduce their name. You’re eavesdropping on their conversations with other people just on the sheer chance that someone might say their name. And if someone does, you’ll remember it that night. But after that night, it’ll be gone. That’s sort of this tea. I bet two weeks from now, I’ll probably forget I even tasted it.

The dry leaves’ scent does seem like sandalwood! “Honeyed sandalwood”, like the description implies—delicious! My anticipation of the actual tasting increases!

First sip….

The taste is super mild and subdued. I’m not getting much taste, actually.

Sadness! :(

Maybe the heat of the water is obscuring the flavor. I’ll wait for it to cool down.

After slight cool down…the taste is a little nutty, a bit woods-y, a tiny hint of sweet.

Conclusion: A very soft and _quiet tea. It seems to require a lot of focus to understand and much patience to unravel its nuances. Which means it’s either very mysterious….or very insipid. ;)

Sampler Pulled out at random—perhaps #15

I loved the aroma of the dry leaves: it was sweet as if the tea leaved had been infused with honey (although there was not physical evidence of that). It’s a very nice tea; it’s a better than nice tea. But it did not establish a very strong identity with me. I would certainly drink it—it’s a good black tea. But I did not make a note to purchase it. I would, however, recommend that people give this a serious test or consider ordering a sample if you are placing an order with Golden Moon.

Golden Moon sample No. 15 of 31. About halfway through my random grab bag and loving every minute of it! Today I have a sick kid home from school with me, and had a hectic working morning, so for my lunch break I wanted something distracting and, hopefully, soothing and stimulating at the same time. Fortunately, yesterday after the caramel oolong, I hooked this tea on my random line.

The leaves on this one are really pretty. Some are very dark and brown; some are lighter and green; and some are silvery white. It’s identified as an organic black, though, so these colorful variations are all the more interesting and even a little puzzling. They smell to me like wood, and somewhere between the wood of a living tree and that of an unfinished board. It’s a dark, sweet scent, with a roasty/toasty tang.

V. pretty red/gold/brown clear liquor. The aroma is of vanilla and brown sugar with a woody undertone.

Wow. It tastes not a lot like it smells, but I like it. The note that the taste and smell have in common is wood. I find the taste hard to describe in comparison to other blacks. It’s almost easier to describe what it isn’t than what it is.

It’s not sweet except through the finish where I can taste some maltiness. I don’t get vanilla taste at all, nor do I get a strong floral taste. It’s like a super concentrated version of a high grade “tea-flavored” black tea. It’s super concentrated, without being overly strong or bitter. Oddly, despite its strong flavor, it doesn’t seem full-bodied so much as medium-bodied. But I am noticing that I am finding the Golden Moon blacks I’ve tasted medium-bodied in comparison to blacks from other companies. I also don’t think I’d call it smooth so much as “brisk.” Though it isn’t overly drying either.

I like it well enough to drink it as a staple black, I think, at least until I hone my tastes in black tea a bit more.

Didn’t realize I had so many teas left in my Golden Moon sampler! Picked this one out to go with a mediocre chocolate chip cookie this afternoon. This tea made the experience more than mediocre. There are sweet honey notes that I am really enjoying in this tea. I am getting something else too, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s a little woodsy, but not in the same way a rooibos is. I love being able to enjoy a black tea in the middle of the afternoon, and this one made for a tasty treat.

I put this in with some River Shannon for cold brewed iced tea. It made it extra special and delicious. It added a very sweet, honeyed note. Excellent.

This is interesting, but not for me I think. I can smell the sandalwood, and there is an oddly sweet honey aftertaste, but it’s still too bitter in the mouth – too much like a Darjeeling – for me. Milk helps a little, but it still tastes kind of weak and bitter to me at the same time.

If I wanted a smooth honey-like black tea, I’d go for either GM’s Honey Pear or Life in Teacup’s Yunnan Golden Buds over this.

1.6g leaf
4oz boiling water
1st infusion: 3 minutes
2nd infusion: 5 minutes, noticeably weaker

Very nice aroma on opening the packet: Darjeeling moments, but also a deeper woody sweetness and some floral notes too. Mmmm!

After four minutes it’s a medium-dark brown, and smells good. I’ve got some maltiness, that sweet wood thing going on and just a bit of spiciness. The taste continues in this vein – it’s not enamel-scrapingly strong, which is good, and manages to put forward an incense-like tone that I find very pleasant and not surprisingly reminiscent of Nepal. I’m not putting sugar and milk in this one, but I bet it would make a superlative chai with that and some spices.

As it cools the honey and wood flavors heighten their profile, and there’s just enough astringency for it to be a good afternoon choice for my taste. I’d definitely be interested in getting more of this and playing around with different permutations of steeping and blending.

Still have some of my sample pack left, so trying to finish it off. Cut open the pouch and inhaled the delicate aroma of the tea. The dried leaves definitely smell like black tea, with a slightly floral note and sandalwood.

Infused hot, four minutes, no additives. The brewed tea smells like sandalwood, however, I am not picking up any more aromatics. The flavor is mostly a black tea with a slightly woodsy note, the aftertaste is sweet. I cannot actually identify any floral or specifically honey note, just a slight sweetness at the end.

Overall, the tea was pretty good, definitely better while it was hotter. Note, as it cools, the woodsy taste starts to disappear, it is taken over by the sweetness and (finally) a hint of the floral.

A swap tea from jennlea – thanks!

I guess I’m losing my mind. I can’t taste any real floral or honey notes here. This tea is just screaming Darjeeling to me. It has a much lighter muscat flavor, but it’s there, and it’s drying out my tongue. Blergh.

EDIT: Maybe I spoke too soon; I’m getting a strong honey aftertaste the more I drink.

Had a little false start with this one. Went to sip from my cup and apparently I didn’t rinse it out well enough because I could still smell vanilla. So I poured it into a fresh-from-the-dishwasher cup (strawberry teacups from my MIL! YAY!) and we were vanilla-less from then on.

First of, the dry leaf? Lovely. So so pretty. Small but squiggly with love little bits of gold. So cute. And they smell sweet – I’d probably go with Lotus because it reminds me of the smell I got at Chusonji and I know they are big on having lotuses planted around the temple site. Plus, my other options based on the description were honey or sandalwood and neither quite fit.

Once brewed though, the tea smells more like a mild version of one of the husband’s single malts. Spicy but sweet. I’m going to go with sandalwood with a hint of honey on that, but the spice isn’t as incense-y as I typically think of sandalwood. So maybe I should just go with faint single malt with light honey.

Sipping, it is nice. There’s a large flavor that is just ‘tea’ to me but it has notes. There’s a little spice (more pepper than sandalwood to me as I can feel it make a little prickle on the tip of my tongue) but it is sweet, too. Not overwhelmingly so. Just enough to keep this from making me think of chai. There’s a dry, slightly astringent hit right at the end of the swallow that hits the back of my tongue and reminds me of some rougher Darjeelings and it seems to oddly bring the taste full circle from the spicy tickle at the beginning of the sip (and at the tip of my tongue).

I think with the spice and astringency and only hint of sweet, this tea just isn’t for me. But it’s got some good notes and an interesting flavor so I can see people that prefer bolder or spicy teas enjoying this one than I did. It’s surprisingly dark and broody tasting for such a light-colored and light-bodied tea.

Pretty good stuff. The smell is wonderful. This tea is bold, nice for the midday boost. I taste the honey on the front end then the sandalwood takes over and lingers long after the sip.

the scent of the dry leaves is VERY inviting, its sweet and floral with a hint of malty-ness. the tea smells less floral that the dry leaves. the tea is am amazing amber color. the flavor is nice, and peppery. i really like that peppery taste! the end flavor is a malty honey taste that rounds this tea out nicely. i added 1/2 of my normal sugar toit because the pepperyness is prefect for me. this is very good with a bit of cadbury milk chocolate :)

I think that this may be the first black tea that I’ve added to my shopping list after trying a sample! For lovers of black tea I could imagine that this would be pretty boring, but for me I loves it. This is what I think I’ve always imagined a basic black tea should taste like.

Smelling the sample packet all I could think of was “it’s a black tea.” The smell of the cup at first was “black tea with maybe a teeny-tiny hint of floral or honey.” I know, my descriptive powers are beyond compare.

For me, the money’s in the taste. Whatever type of tea is its base doesn’t have that astringent tongue-killingness that I’d begun to associate with most black teas. It’s smooth and there’s a natural sweetness to it that I adore. I think “nectar” is right on in the description. I can sense honey, but as for lotus and sandalwood my tastebuds do a collective “Wah?” I’m dying to read the other tasting notes to see if I can start to have a better understanding of what I like/don’t like in regards to black teas. TG

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #12:
This was the first black tea I saw this morning, therefore making it my morning tea, despite the fact that it’s an afternoon tea. I’m glad that I did though, because MAN does this tea pack a punch. For once I was actually paying attention to steeping times, but even then it brewed up really really dark reddish, like a deep maroon. Very attractive. I’m afraid I didn’t really pay much attention to the leaves, but I recall them being lighter in color, so I wasn’t really expecting something quite so dark.

As I said, or at least implied, this tea has a lot of personality. It basically smacks you upside the head and goes I AM TEA DRINK ME NAO (OR ELSE). The taste is mildly astringent compounded by an underlying spiciness, but not as much as I get from your average darjeeling, and there’s definitely something else there. Floral notes perhaps? Definitely not honey. Or perhaps I only THINK it’s not honey because I don’t like honey but I do like this! That’s right, let’s turn this review into a meditation on human psychology.

Or not.

Suffice to say that this tea impressed me quite a bit this morning – a good way to start a Monday, even if I did drink it at the wrong time of day.

Edit: Whooooo tasting note number 50! I celebrate by having some tea!

Another sample from Golden Moon – I quite enjoyed the unique experience of trying this tea. Very aromatic woodsy smell upon opening the bag, which opens up with the honey-ish flavor after steeping. This does remind me of a darjeeling but I like it better than darjeeling, i think due to the presence of the “woody” element which made it a bit sturdier of a flavor, if you catch my drift. When it comes to black tea I usually gravitate towards those from China, especially Pu-erhs which are among my favorite. I could see myself enjoying this Nepalese tea on a regular basis.

Smells really nice. Quite gentle maybe of honey…
Tastes similar. Quite sweet. And quite flavory. Nothing overwhelming or impressive but its very smooth and drinkable.
Not a bad black tea…

This is actually a pretty good basic black tea. Now I am not very big on black teas, but this one is pleasent and bold which I like! I didn’t really taste any of the notes mentioned in the description though, just tasted like a good black tea.