Harney & Sons

Hi all! I have been offline for a bit as you may have noticed. Work became impossibly busy and there were a few dramatic incidents with the kids (who are now teenagers — I may not survive, it was hard enough when I went through it the first time) and then I got off the habit. My coffee consumption went up because of the work things. I needed mega-caffeine to get through the very long days. But now things may be getting back to normal. Plus, I like the idea of bringing my own drink to work in these days of communicable diseases. So I’m going to try to get myself back into the tea habit.

This is a backlog, as are the next three entries. I can no longer remember whether this sipdown occurred in October or November of last year, but it was either November or October of 2019 because by December I was off of tea.

So let’s call this Sipdown no. 5 of October 2019 (no. 104 of 2019 total, no. 592 grand total).

My original note on this will have to suffice as I have no notes. But it reflects my recollection of how I experienced this.

Sipdown no. 38 of 2014. This may be so long for now, but it isn’t goodbye forever. I like this one too much for that to be true.

I barely had enough leaf left for the lowest Breville setting, which makes me wonder whether the last time I tasted this I overleafed some. I know from looking back at my note that I found the rose very strong, and perhaps that’s why.

Because this time, I didn’t find the rose too strong at all. Now, it is true my sample is old (but ziplocked in the sample packet and not subjected to indignities in storage), and it is also true that because there was so little of this left I may have gone a bit in the other direction and underleafed some. Even so, the aroma is a lovely rose with a mild, sweet black tea base, and the flavor is pretty much the same.

But I think that just means this is a versatile tea that can work both on the somewhat strong and somewhat weak side, and, I have to believe, in the perfect in between.

Bumping the rating some because however you slice it, this is a keeper.

I enjoyed the rose Earl Grey from H&S, Sally’s Secret, quite a bit, so I was looking forward to seeing what this one was like.

In the sample packet the scent is very strongly of rose. Although I escaped an association with bath products, I can see how others might not. The ingredient list indicates that this contains rose oil, and there is a sort of volatile quality to it that makes it smell stronger than one might expect simply from fresh roses. This isn’t to say that the smell is bad or has a false note. I didn’t find it to be that way, but then I’m a really big fan of rose fragrance.

The intensity of the fragrance smooths out some with steeping and I can smell the biscuity sweetness of the tea underneath. There’s still a nice rose scent to the tea.

The rose is very, very present in the taste and I liked it quite a bit. It has been a while since I tasted the GM rose, and this is stronger, at least as far as memory serves. It’s about on a par with the degree of flavor present in the Numi Velvet Garden White Rose, only it may seem a little less because the black tea provides more of a buffer than white does.

This is a little too rosy for daily consumption, even for a rose lover like me. However, it’s an amazing flavor for an occasional dose of rose.

Wonderful black tea with a lot of nice favors and an absolutely wonderful smell.

Sipdown no. 28 of 2021 (no. 648 total).

Another “84” that I’ve decided to demote. I just think I overinflated my rating the first time.

As smoky teas go, it’s about the right degree of smoke for me. Like Puer, I think I tried too hard to really love smoky teas and while I can appreciate them once in a while, too much smoke and ash reminds me of why I gave up smoking more than 20 years ago.

A small amount of smoke is fine, but I think that maybe a nice keemun without the lapsang would be plenty for me to have that hint without being hit over the head by it.

I do have one lapsang I quite like, though I could never drink it every day. I’m not sure I would need this in addition, but I’m not saying I’d never buy it again. I’m really, truly, on the fence.

Sipdown no. 30 of the year 2014.

Revisiting the delights of tea after some time away feels in some ways like being a tea virgin all over again. I remember the first time I encountered smoky tea and was blown away that tea could taste like that.

I’m getting flashbacks to that experience drinking this. This is an easy smoky tea to drink. It’s mild in its smokiness and not resiny or piney, but still enough to make you think of walking through the neighborhood while folks have wood fires burning in their fireplaces. I tend to drink smoky teas when its overcast and rainy for this reason, but I’m enjoying this one just fine on a sunny, warm-ish day.

Slightly more than 100 pages into War and Peace and I can’t believe I didn’t have the guts to pick up this book before. It’s bulk scared me. But man, is it a fast read. I needn’t have been scared, it’s such fun I feel like I want to lock myself in a room with it and only come out to make tea. But alas, that’s unlikely. I have to go to that wretched weight work out soon and then we might go see Toy Story 3 or at least I’d like to if we can pull it off.

In any case, I decided drinking something with the word Russian in its name would at least keep me feeling like I’m locked in the room even if I’m not. In the sample packet this one smells nice and smoky, as I’d anticipated, very much like the H&S straight lapsang with the volume turned down by a half to two thirds.

After steeping its aroma is a bit milder. I wonder if Keemun is one of the four teas in here? Maybe Ceylon as well? The underlying tea has a sort of sweet, woody smell to it with a bit of smoke.

There’s a mild smokiness in the flavor, which is actually quite nice, and there is also some gentle woody flavor. I could see this one being a nice morning tea. Although I haven’t tasted it in a while, this one is making me think of Upton’s Baker Street Blend but without the perkiness. If there is darjeeling in this, I can’t tell. This one has a mildly smoky flavor that would make a nice segue into smoky teas for someone interested in giving them a try but not yet up for the very tarry, piney strength of the more intense lapsangs.

This is going to make it into my Russian run off, for sure.

Pretty good vanilla flavor. Kind of toasty. But not as good as their decaf one-Vanilla Comoro. The aroma is similar, between the two. Although for pure, rich, caramelized flavor alone, Vanilla Comoro wins hands down.

But for a “real” (non-decaf) tea, I’d go for this any day. The black tea base is prominent and has a definite kick. The vanilla flavor is more in the background and serves as a delicious accent—it’s very smooth, creamy and authentic and seems to have a slight floral edge.

Pretty good, overall. I’m happy with it. :)

Sipdown no. 4 of May 2019 (no. 66 of 2019 total, no. 554 grand total).

It was a rather heavily bergamot-ed version, with a lighter base (darjeeling). These features make it tasty and interesting, but not the top of the list Earl Grey for me.

It’s good cold, too.

Sipdown no. 19 of the year 2014 (a tiny one as there’s almost nothing left in my sample)!

Steepster is angry with me this morning, I think. I can’t “like” anything, get my notices, etc. and when I tried posting this before it disappeared. I hope that’s not an omen for the rest of the day.

I put this one on my shopping list. My problem with Harney & Sons is I have a hard time disliking anything they make. I did honestly want to try to whittle things down, try to make some fine distinctions among their black blends, but I think I have to admit that I’m at the point where I just throw up my hands and say you can never have too many Earl Greys and you can never have too many delicious black blends.

And be grateful that tea takes up less space than shoes.

I felt like I needed the Earl this morning, so I gave this a try. It’s good, but I need a sterner Earl for the morning, I think.

In the sample packet there’s a very obvious bergamot smell that leans toward perfumy, with a little sharpness from the darjeeling underneath.

The tea’s aroma isn’t perfumy at all, much fruitier than perfumy. It’s sort of orangy/grapey in a wine-like sense.

The tea is light bodied and mildly flavored. It does taste like Earl Grey, but like a baby blue version of what is ordinarily a navy blue flavor.

Not a breakfast tea, at least for me, but I could see it being, as others have said, a nice choice for afternoon if for some reason the Earl is calling at tea time.

I loved the description of this so I decided to order some with my initial H&S sample order.

It’s got whole flower heads in it, which I thought at first might be chrysanthemums. Thankfully they are chamomile flowers as I don’t get along well with mums. The leaves are a green/grey, and look like white peony. The smell is, oddly, chocolate/vanilla mint/creme. Like Andes mints with vanilla ice cream. No idea where this comes from given the almonds and chamomile, but I’ll go with it as I like Andes mints just fine. ;-)

It still has that Andes note in the aroma after steeping and there’s some almond here as well. The liquor is sort of a light amber. A bronzed yellow. Clear.

The taste is pretty interesting as it’s very similar to the aroma but not at all something you’d expect from the ingredients list. For one thing, it’s like the cardamom is chocolate instead of itself. I wonder whether that’s why some chais that aren’t chocolate chais still have a sort of chocolate note to them. I don’t taste anything that tastes like what I’d expect cardamom on its own to taste like. This isn’t a spicy tea. It may be spiced, but it isn’t spicy. The almond is sort of hiding as well. The vanilla is there, but paying homage to the chocolate/vanilla continuum in that it’s kind of hard to tell where one flavor stops and the other starts. Though let me reemphasize that as far as I’m told through the ingredients, there IS NO CHOCOLATE in this tea. Tell that to my taste buds.

I maybe get a little of the underlying white tea, but it seems mostly a base here for the flavors to do their frolic and detour on. Flavored white teas, it seems to me, are tricky. Not as tricky and more forgiving than flavored greens, but tricky nonetheless. The flavor of white tea can’t really stand up to anything intense. It does best with subtle fruit or floral flavors superimposed on it, nothing heavy which obliterates the tea.

This isn’t an unpleasant drink at all, it just doesn’t seem very self aware. I would think it could call itself White Chocolate and get away with it, but the Christmas name suggests something heavily spiced or appley, maybe. This isn’t that. Probably a good thing as I’d think that would make for an even worse white tea.

I don’t feel compelled to reorder this but I would drink it again if it were offered to me. And I wish there was some way to reconcile the actual ingredients with the flavor that didn’t leave me feeling entirely disassociated.

Sipdown no. 2 of February 2019 (no. 20 of 2019 total, no. 508 grand total). A sample teabag.

I had this with a cinnamon breakfast bar (still doing Nutrisystem) and it went very well with that indeed.

Also, black tea seems like the best accompaniment to binge watching Broadchurch. I’m on season 3.

Sipdown no. 42 for the year 2014. But it’s not forever as this is definitely on my shopping list!

keychange’s note about this earlier today put me in the mood for this. I’m working from home today and the BF wanted some as well, so I think that, in an effort to stretch this to include a cup for him I underleafed a bit.

It was definitely Red Hots I smelled in the packet, even given the age of the sample. Very cinnamony but in a sweet-hot, candy way, not the woody, herby way that cinnamon can sometimes smell.

And that’s what I taste as well. Sweet-hot cinnamon. All the other ingredients—orange, cloves, even the tea—may be there in the flavor somewhere and doing something to make the flavor what it is, but I’m not able to isolate them.

And in this case, that’s a very good thing. Because for me they aren’t the reason to drink this. The reason to drink this is for the warming, sweet-hot cinnamon flavor.

Yum.

Wow! Hot cinnamon, no kidding! The sample packet gives off a strong Red Hots smell.

It’s only slightly more mellow after steeping. Same general cinnamonny hot smell with a smidgen of black tea trying to smooth it out underneath. There are some funky fuzz balls that must be from the cinnamon that have settled to the bottom of the cup.

The flavor is pretty amazingly cinnamon with nothing to mitigate or obstruct it. It’s surprisingly sweet as well as spicy, sort of candy like in its flavor. I like it much better than just about any other cinnamon flavored tea I’ve had, and it definitely seems like a go-to cinnamon. Not much argument there.

Sipdown no. 42 of 2017 (no. 323 total). A sample.

More of this is winging its way to me even as we speak, so time to say goodbye to the sample packet I’ve been hoarding.

The name makes me think of my best friend who died a few years ago. It’s nice to think of her while sipping.

I reduced the steep time to 3 minutes because my last note suggested that I try that.

It’s interesting having this right after the ATR Qimen Imperial. It has many of the same qualities of roundness, heft, maltiness — but there’s something more. My guess is it’s the Yunnan — it softens the edges even more and makes this one of the more awesome tea experiences I’ve had lately. I think the reduction in steeping time to 3 minutes may have made all the difference with this one, at least for me.

I originally rated this 85. What was I thinking?

The smell out of the sample packet is rich and delicious. It made me go “wow.” Chocolate! Coffee! Sugar! A tiny bit of smoke, and some planty earth.

Deep dark reddish liquor. The many fragrances of the dry leaves smooth out into a malty, Yunnany aroma. There’s a little bit of smoke but it’s not super smoky.

The flavor is strong, bordering on intense. I wonder how it would be steeping only 3 minutes. Will try that next time. It’s definitely an eye opener at 4. The flavor has the intensity of coffee. Wonder what milk would do?

It isn’t quite as smooth and mellow tasting as it smells; it has some… not really bitterness, more a lack of sweetness that is surprising given the aroma. There’s smoke in the taste, but it’s not strong. The consistency isn’t chewy but the impression is stout, like a dark ale. There’s a kind of cocoa note in the aftertaste.

This one is going to be worth spending an extended visit with to see what variations might be possible. It will be interesting to go into a second tasting at another time now that I know what to expect.

Rating this because it has a lot of interesting things going on with it. Not sure how I feel about the intensity yet.

I haven’t been around Steepster lately, as you may have noticed. The weather turned blisteringly hot seemingly overnight (don’t they have spring here?) and I just cannot cope. I’m not as fond of iced tea, so I’ve been drinking less and less tea. My job is keeping me spectacularly busy as well. I hardly have any free time, but I do have more money to my name than ever before (I don’t mean to brag, just simply to tell you how strange it is to buy stuff without feeling guilty). It is burning a hole in my pocket, just itching to be turned into tea leaves and teacups and teapots. I’ve already converted a large portion of my paychecks into books – I now need another shelf.

Thank you Doulton for sending me this tea a while back. It’s stormy and not nearly as hot today – only 74 degrees – so I don’t think I’ll suffer heat exhaustion if I enjoy a cuppa. Hopefully.

The aroma is that of an apple pie baking in the oven. This storm has both my dog and myself on edge, so the first sip felt like sinking into a warm, cinnamon scented bubble bath.

Doulton has made me a liar! This is really hitting the spot, so I’m not going to be able to have just one cuppa today… I made myself another pot and this time took it with milk, just as an experiment.

Either absence (of tea, in my case) really does make the heart grow fonder or this is an exceptional tea. The milk adds a whole new layer. It is now like eating a cinnamon bun but without feeling like one is simultaneously developing type two diabetes. Thank you, Doulton, for helping me to remember what it’s like to take a metaphorical chill pill in the middle of my day.

If you like rooibos based tea, and if you like Cranberry Autumn by Harney and Sons, you will probably like this tea. One friend who only drinks greens and whites loved this one. I bought it so I would have a decaf option for evening, but in the evening I find myself longing for black tea, so I will mostly stick to Decaf Orange Pekoe and Vanilla Comoro. A good tea, though.

That soft, buttery oolong taste with just a mild zing of ginger. I foresee an empty tea tin in my near future, as I will probably be drinking a lot of this.

I tried this tea last night, I have been wanting to try this for a while now and thanks to TeaEqualsBliss I was able to :-D The tea smells pretty sweet, almost like a snickerdoodle cookie! While steeping I noticed that the tea was fairly dark for a white tea, which I thought was a bit odd, but figured it may have been from the spices. Now, when I took my first sip this Immediately reminds me of a sweet, powdered chai mix that you would make at home like a pack of hot chocolate…except it was missing that oomph or perhaps depth, maybe even boldness? After all this is a white tea instead of a black tea so what could I expect? All in all I believe this was a pretty good tea, but not my cup of tea since it reminds me too much of a chai and for me I need a black tea to enjoy a chai…but, putting my biases aside and rating this solely on what this tea brings to the table I would say it is a decent tea and will rate it accordingly.

Since becoming a chai fan I’ve been adding samples of anything that looks remotely like chai into my orders, which has been fun. But I think I’m starting to get tired of dating chais and ready to settle down. Not with one, of course. With a small harem’s worth.

I bought this sample with my last H&S order. In the sample packet, it has rather mild spicy scent. I can detect something that seems slightly like anise under the cardamom. Unlike many chai blends, I can smell a strong tea fragrance here. The Assam has an earthy scent, like soil, with an interesting chocolate note to it.

I prepared this on the stovetop, using TeaFrog Assam as extra black tea.

It makes a creamy, chewy, tasty, and very mildly spiced chai. Very, very mildly spiced. It’s on a par on the mildness scale with the most mild I’ve tasted so far, the TeaFrog.

What makes it somewhat different is that it seems to have a stronger tea flavor than a good many other chai blends I’ve tasted. Particularly in the aftertaste. This might be because of the CTC leaves. Since I haven’t tried this without milk and sweetener, it could be that the tea itself is much stronger with long brewing because of how it was prepared, and that this, accordingly, comes out as tea flavor under the milk and sweetener. Whatever the reason, it’s a nice change.

Still, I like even my mild chais a bit more strongly spiced than this. While I liked it, I don’t think it’s going to be selected for the harem in the long term.

The last cup of a sample packet. A mild peach flavor, with a stronger (but still mild) ginger finish. Good body for a flavored tea. This would be excellent with a drop of whipping cream or heavy cream in it, stirred and taken with dessert. Also excellent with a few drops of whole milk. Does not get bitter when brewed with boiling water. Recommended if you like ginger.

I’ve been looking to try this tea for sometime since I love Pomegranate. I’m not such a fan of Oolong so I held off. I got lucky when I attended the World Tea Expo Harney had a booth and I was able to get a sample to try. I must say it smell wonderful. I think I smelled it more than I drank it. I liked it but not as much as I enjoyed drinking Paris. I don’t know if it has to do with my not liking Oolongs or not. I have a 2nd packet to try the tea again.
It may also because I have changed the way I brew my tea at work. Rather than drinking from my regular mug I’ve added water to an 8 oz cup and steeped the tea. Will have to give it a 2nd try and compare the two tries. =)