The London Tea Room Blend

Backlogs incoming since it’s been a busy day. I’m exausted and want to go to bed but i just got off the phone with china and i really want to track my teas before i forget. :)

I have devised a plan for getting through all the teas that terri sent me by putting any random tea from her straight blacks into my morning rotation. The other tea can be whatever. This morning it was this one. Let me tell you, i’m pretty sure i really enjoyed this one as a basic breakfast tea that is a really nice even keel sort of morning tea. There is none of that morning tea acidic taste that makes me go ick.

I have one more small cup of this left that i’ll have when i have more time to sit and focus. This was soooo many hours ago. but it was good.

Hey Steepsterites! I hope everyone is having an awesome Sunday!

I woke up around 9, drank my last cup of Yunnan Jig (adadio, I like their Yunnan Noir better) while Tony had a cup of his beloved Jubilee (London Tea Room, aka LTR). We went out to breakfast, where we both had a cup of Numi’s Breakfast blend (basically, it’s ok for a restaurant bagged tea…). Then we headed downtown to the LTR, where we each ordered a pot of tea. He had Lavender Earl Grey (which he bought 2 oz of, along with another 4 oz of Jubilee), and I had Keemun Mao Feng (sweet, malty, a little smokey). I got 2 oz of this LTR Blend, as I haven’t tried it yet, and I’m having a cup now.

Some breakfast blends have what I would call a ‘bright’ flavor, and an acidic quality. This one does not. It is a dark and bold cup, with a buttery mouth feel. I like dark and bold much more than I like acidity and brightness. I’ll add it to my breakfast rotation.

On Monday, I made a cup of this but I came down with a headache and a fever and I felt like I wanted to vomit, so instead of activating plan A [studying and drinking tea], I activated plan B [sleep until my next class]. Consequently, this cup went cold.

Today, I decided it deserved a take two, so I made a cup of it.

It says “blend,” so I can only assume that there are multiple types of tea in this. I tasted what I thought might be some Ceylon, and than I got some nearing intense bitterness that made me think Darjeeling. The bitterness wasn’t as strong as a previous encounter with the Autumnal Darjeeling Auggy sent me, but it was familiar enough that it made me “hurm.”

I became even more suspicious when that bitterness began to sweeten in the aftertaste, and then as it cooled a bit more became even more indicative of that muscat taste.

Upon reading the description of this tea, I’m somewhat confused because I didn’t get any Keemun out of it. I didn’t really spend a lot of time smelling the leaves or the tea. I don’t know why, as I seem to be very much all about that lately. Anyway, I’ve got enough left of this to play around a bit, so I’ll be doing that.

Sorry this log is lacking in complete thoughts and cohesiveness. All I wrote down from my drink earlier today was:

DARJEELING.
ceylon?

And combined with the fact that Craig Ferguson is talking at the screen with an alligator puppet in a Cajun-Scottish accent, it’s making this difficult.

Okay, I’m done.

I haven’t tried this tea yet so I thought I should break it out today. The smell is nice. My first thought was “Cardboard? I didn’t think there was Assam in this?” But then I stuck my nose in the cup (instead of just smelling the wafting scent while pouring) and that changed my mind. The main scent is a slight smoky + earthy, stout Keemun but then there’s a bit of lighter, somewhat fruity Ceylon dancing around in there, too. Once it cooled just a tad, the smoky hint was gone and there was a solid tea smell left… I’m having trouble picking the scents of the tea out as well but it smells almost like… grape. There’s a little faint earth + wine scent and a little faint muscadine scent. Super-light, I really had to smell to find it, but it keeps it from being ‘default tea’ and makes it ‘good tea’.

And it tastes like good tea, too. No sugar, no milk, but it is probably stout enough to deal with a little of that because it does have a very nice body to it. (Insert wolf whistle here). There’s a taste that, if stronger, might develop into cocoa at the front end and a taste that, if stronger, might be a Darjeeling-esque citrus/muscadine sharpness at the end. And the aftertaste has a dry, starchy sweetness to it. As it cools, that Darjeeling-esque tartness increases just a hair but the dryness of the aftertaste decreases, too.

And now my cup is empty. Overall, a good standard tea. I feel kind of bad that I can’t say it’s great or bad, just good. But it’s not hard to get through, it’s not a special occasion tea. This is like the clothing equivalent of a pair of lounge pants. They don’t make you look a few inches taller and 10 pounds slimmer, but they look a whole lot better on than those sweatpants with the little elastic at the ankles and you know you’ll wear them at some point (if not pretty regularly). The same with this tea. It’s not quite a ‘need a cuddle on the couch’ tea or a ‘makes my mouth sparkle’ tea. It’s just good, solid tea.

I shared this tea with the husband and his response when asked his thoughts: “Kind of like a Darjeeling with the bitter notes at the end… the first part makes me almost think of a pu-erh”. Overall, though, he wasn’t a big fan (but then, he’s not a fan of Darjeelings or earthy teas). This was more up my alley than his.