White Licorice

HAD to drink another cup to RELAX!!!!! A friend of mine texted me that they are in the middle of earthquakes and aftershocks in AZ. 5.9 followed by a 4.9 so far! Ek!

Whoo! The goal is to finish off some teaness, and I figured I’d start with tea that I wasn’t too hot on, but was still nice and somewhat non-caffeinated for bedtime. And also, to finish off bits of samples that I have lying around, when I have more tea coming in. The vicious cycle continues…

Anyway, this one today was a lot lighter than I remember it. Maybe it’s because I had not enough leaf this time around? In any case, the licorice is really soft and gasp inviting, even though I don’t particularly care for its brand of flavor. The white tea here adds a nice sweetness and backdrop to the entire thing. It’s almost sort of like a caffeinated lullaby.

I can’t see myself ordering this one again, just because I’m not the biggest fan of licorice. But people who love fennel/anise/licorice root would definitely be able to get on board with this Golden Moon offering. It’s refreshingly sweet and flavorful, while having a very authentic star anise flavor.

Pretty cool indeed.

I don’t like licorice. At all. It’s evil. Oddly enough, I don’t anticipate liking this tea. But I’m a glutton for punishment so we’ll give it a quick go.

The dry leaves smell horrid – exactly like licorice. The juice smells like someone dropped a licorice candy in my tea to dissolve. Those bastards. It’s not as strong as the dry leaf but still smells like licorice so it’s icky.

But oh my gosh. The taste is… good! What the what what? There’s a faint sweetness and a little hint of licorice but not actually licorice. Not icky licorice. A sweetness that lightly melds with the (silver needle-tasting?) white tea giving it an almost dark nectar-y, somewhat floral taste.

I’m really really shocked at how delicious this is. I don’t know if this needs to go on the ‘to buy’ list but it has potential. Sadly, I only had enough leaf for one cup but I’ll see how the resteep goes. Because this was really quite yummy!

ETA: The second steep was more licorice tasting but not in a bad way. It was more identifiable but without the cloying… stickiness that I associate with licorice. Really surprising how good this one was.

Golden Moon sample No. 4 of 31, randomly selected. Patience isn’t my strong suit and every drop I have of it goes to my small kids, so it shouldn’t be surprising that I do things like pick the next random sample even if I may not drink it right away, just so I know what it’s going to be. I was lucky tonight, I picked back to back whites — so I can get away with trying another one before I go to bed. (I hope.)

I’m guessing the same white tea is the base for this as was for the Persian Melon. Looks the same in any case — I won’t repeat the visual description here. These do have that anise/fennel smell of licorice, but it is far more mellow and earthy than I’d thought it would be. I’m finding that in flavored teas, the smell of the dry mixture is often much more intense and concentrated than the smell of the steeped tea, which I suppose makes total sense. I am visualizing a textbook style diagram showing little bubbles of aroma-containing particles wafting upward as the tea evaporates and having more and more space coming between them the farther away from the liquid they go. Here, I’m wondering how much flavor there will be in the steeped tea since the licorice fragrance in the dry leaves doesn’t seem strong enough to sustain infusion, but then, licorice is a pretty strong flavor and I should give GM the benefit of the doubt for knowing what they’re doing.

Color-wise, the liquor is very similar to the Persian Melon as well, pale golden yellow. The licorice component of the steeped tea’s aroma is mild and mellow.

Taste-wise, it is as well. It’s definitely licorice, but soft, smooth, gentle. Which is great, because if it were stronger it could get scary and become Tazo Cinnamon Spice minus the cinnamon. Where in the Persion Melon the white tea seemed to add a fermented note, here it lends more of a earthy note. Together with the anise, the earthy note brings to mind tarragon. And now all of a sudden I’m thinking of Samuel Beckett. I wish that hadn’t happened right before bed. I enjoy thinking about Samuel Beckett, so now I’ll probably want to stay up and read.

But back to this tea. As a licorice tea, this is v. nice, but do I want/need licorice tea? It’s not my favorite flavor, I never crave it. I enjoy it if I’m in the mood and it’s presented to me but I wouldn’t ordinarily seek it out. I think that sums up how I feel about this tea. Unlikely to crave it, unlikely to seek it out, but if it was presented to me most likely I’d drink it and enjoy it.

Unfortunately there isn’t tea-on-demand capability, where you can open your magic beam me up Scotty fax machine and pull out just the right amount of leaves so that you don’t have to order a #*^!load of something you’ll want only once in a while. If I had one of those, I could see requesting small samples of this from time to time.

So who is going to invent that, please?

From the looks of it, I’m one of the few people here who actually like licorice. The dry leaf smelled quite delicious. The tea smells more herb-y (as in parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, not the horrible Lindsay Lohan movie with the talking car) than licorice-y.

This is very pleasant! The licorice doesn’t smack you in the face, so there is no need to fear this tea. Up front there is just a taste of general herb. The licorice is only a very quick note on the tail end. It leaves your tongue feeling heavy and tingly (and in my case, happy).

I could certainly see myself buying this again. It’s light enough to enjoy as a hot summer tea, but the mouth feel is curious and heavy enough to enjoy this in the winter, too.

I’m not sure how I feel about this one, which is in all probability unsurprising as I have a long, long history of disliking licorice. I suspect that this probably deserves a much better rating than I’m giving it, in fact, but I’m having trouble hopping over the mental hurdle of ‘oh no, licorice’.

I was more worried before I opened the packet than I was afterward, actually. The smell wasn’t so strong that it punched me in the face, but it was still strong enough to leave me wondering why I was going to pour hot water on top of it at all. I sort of dumped the entire packet into my glass infuser cup, and watching it brew I realized that there are a ton of twigs in this blend. It’s not a very pretty blend at all, and there are more than a few fannings drifting around the bottom of my cup right now. Assuming that’s the non-tea stuff, though.

I was pretty gratified to find that the tea, once brewed, stayed soft and unassuming on the licorice front. The taste of the white tea — which brews to a pretty silvery-gold — reminds me of the silver needle I have from Adagio. Every sip has a little bit of licorice, but it’s…very mellow, and reminds me more of the background note of licorice you can sometimes get from bagged ‘medicinal’ teas, like the Yogi teas, for instance…it’s drinkable even for someone who viscerally rejects the strong scent of licorice. It does create a sort of weird feeling on my tongue and soft palate, though; not numbness, per se, and not a coolness like mint, but something that makes me think of both of those things on a much smaller scale.

I confess that I’m sort of baffled as to where to rate this. The rating should probably be considered very soft.

Sadly, there’s not any better place for this, so I’m just going to write about it here.
This cup is so win: http://www.teavana.com/Tea-Products/Tea-Cups-Mugs/Glass-Tea-Cups/Yves-Glass-Tea-Infuser-Mug.axd
There are only two points of potential annoyance: the first is that stuff sometimes gets stuck in the little glass vents. I find that a toothbrush and about a second-and-a-half of effort are enough to take care of that…I never spend any time standing around struggling to get them cleared out. The second is that occasionally you have to pause your pour to allow the water to vent through when the tea is small enough to clump against said vents, but again…10 extra seconds doesn’t really bother me. Your mileage may vary. I use this thing constantly. I definitely use it more often than my iron teapot; almost every cup of tea I make is a new flavor, so I feel like there’s less fussing, and it means I get to see the tea brew…and they get nearly the whole cup to unfurl in. The lid that comes with it flips over to make a pretty good infuser-saucer between steeps. Plus, it’s all glass, so it doesn’t retain any smells or flavors and I don’t have to worry about chemicals leeching out of plastic bits into my hot water. Not a bad deal for 15 bucks. I like it so much that I ordered two more.

True, it ain’t no sorapot (where the heck is my sorapot, btw? It still hasn’t come in!), but for 16 oz. of tea brewed for a steep-voyeurist and a minimum of effort it’s a good choice.

I AM BACK — WITH A VENGEANCE, STEEPSTERITES!
(Read: my life is finally basically under control. Ish.)

Full disclosure: I abhor licorice. When I opened the tin sampler, and smelt (through my already-unable-to-smell sick nose) a punch of herbs and licorice, I felt a little nauseous and considered opening another pack. But to my pleasant surprise, this tea is delightful — almost flower nectar sweet, and very light! The coloring is very pale, and the tea is soothingly smooth, like butter. Definitely more grassy than I anticipated, but I’m thankful the licorice taste isn’t overpowering, for one.

If this is the worst tea Golden Moon has in its sampler, I’m in for a treat! Definitely could see ordering this again for myself or for my mum, who loves peppermint tea. To be honest, I’d rather just hold it in my mouth than swallow it. This leaves my mouth a little dry, but there’s no bitterness. (Now now, no dirty jokes, kids.)

At my age one should not stay up all night. Yep my pulling all nighter days are long over on Wednesday night (technically Thursday morning) I woke up to the saddest dog crying ever and I had to sit up with him all night or he would start up crying again. So imagine this its about 3:00 am and me and my neapolitan mastiff (about 200lb) dog are sitting on my bedroom floor (well he was laying) with his head in my lap and he is in a weird miserable position I’ve never seen him in sorta tangled looking. He’s crying and I’m crying I mean he is my BEST FRIEND EVER and I can’t stand to see him in misery. I sit there and comfort him thinking about when the vet my open and if he will make it until then and lo and behold he is pulling through (Thank you God).

Anyway on to the tasting note I just had to let you all know where I’ve been the past couple days and what I’ve been going through if you’ve ever loved an animal you completely understand I’m sure. On to this tasting note I needed something soft and comforting and I thought why not go with this white licorice so here we sit me and the white licorice tea and all I can smell in the dry leaf is star anise which doesn’t remind me of licorice but pizza yes I said pizza when I was in H.S. I would rush home from school to eat and most times the easiest thing would be to throw a totino’s party pizza in the oven and wait well the sausage pizza had star anise so I’m thinking that’s why I think of pizza.

While I’m not tasting much of the white tea I do somehow know it’s there but mostly I’m getting the pizza star anise flavor and I don’t know that I like that in my tea. No I do know I DO NOT like that pizza spice in my tea. If you like star anise you probably would enjoy this tea unfortunately I do not.

P.S. Thank you to all of you who have been sending me your heartfelt wishes for Massimo I appreciate you all.

I can’t quite place the taste in this that isn’t licorice….It totally reminds me of something…hay? It’s not bad but I won’t be sad that I can’t make more. I gave my daughter a taste and her words were “mmmm hot water”. I measured not quite 2 teaspoons and used the whole thing with 6 oz. water. By the way, although I don’t necessarily love licorice. the black jelly bellies are my favorite so I thought I’d like this more than I do.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #6, selected at random

I was glad that I picked this out rather early in the evening. I would have tossed back a very robust tea into the “ocean” of the basket.

I don’t hate licorice, but I’m not a huge fan. I found this tea more pleasant than anticipated, but I don’t think I would feel a need to keep it in stock. If I knew a big licorice lover, it might make a superb gift.

Pleasant and light, the anise flavour shone through but was not overwhelming. It was a great one-note white tea.