New Tasting Notes
Lounging in the hotel room, about to get ready for the day. So glad that this is the last day ofthe conference!! Have had quite a few cups of this tea this morning…and I do believe this one’sthe last of my stash. Here’s hoping the last few sessions aren’t mind-numbing.
Ok. So I went back to the Fall 2009 version of this tea: awesome. The aroma wafted between honeycomb and crocuses and the flavour was similarly sweet and nectarlike. Energy is light and uplifting: effervescent. This is a sublime tea. It reminds me, each time that I drink it, of my first truly fresh oolong experiences when I was living in Taiwan.
I have to say though, that although the Spring 2010 version is tasty, it doesn’t quite live up to the standard of Fall 2009. Can’t wait till Fall 2010 arrives!
Preparation
A friend of mine is VERY into coffee (http://lesvieuxtrottoirs.com/) and recently brought some of this very interesting “tea” back from London. Since I’m more of a tea lady, I asked if I could try some and he gave me some to bring home and try.
This is backlogging, and will have a cup later to give you more up-to-date thoughts.
So anyway, this “tea” is made from the dried fruit of the coffee cherry. For more information see the tea description. It’s highly caffeinated (surprise surprise) and it’s really quite interesting.
Dried, it does smell like a mixture between cherry and licorice. Very bold smells. It reminds me of a rain forest, though I’ve never actually been to a rain forest so I’m not quite sure what that means. It smells like what I would expect really lovely soil would smell.
Updates later on taste!
Preparation
Ahhh. I love this tea so much. There is nothing better than a fine cuppa Yorkshire tea. A friend of a friend came to stay for the night from Sheffield and brought me another box of this and some crumpets… so guess what I had for breakfast? :] hehe
I take mine with milk, no sugar. Always steep for about 2 minutes as I find any longer is a bit too bitter.
Preparation
Don’t you just hate it when you’re carrying a full cup of tea and then you sneeze before there’s time to do anything else than just hold the cup away from your body and hope?
Anyway, I’m not really very much of a Darjeeling fan at all. I had a short period a few years ago where the thought of a first flush Darjeeling filled me with song and sunshine, but the infatuation ran out, to the point where these days I find that green grassy-spicy Darjeeling-ness a little bit unpleasant in a blend. It’s so spicy and it gets wickedly bitter on me at the drop of a hat.
How wonderful for me then, that the black sampler box from NBT had some 10-15 or so Darjeeling samples in it… Single estate, see. In many cases both first and second flushes, which I can’t really tell apart anyway. I have used some of them and I’ve given away a few and this one is, I hope, the last one of the Darjeelings. After this I should be completely unblended Darjeeling-less.
Obviously I’m not going at this as the most optimistic person in the world. But this one, being autumnal, I’m hoping should be sufficiently different from all the others. Already in the product description I’m learning something new which adds to my hopes. Supposedly the ‘make-up’ of Darjeeling has changed over the last forty years or so as the German market appears to have preferred the light, almost green, version we get today, while these darker leaves are more similar to what was exported to the UK some forty years ago. Interesting.
The aroma of it is sweet and very grain-y. It doesn’t really have much of that spicyness that I’ve come to avoid. It’s a slightly heavy sort of rounded aroma. Smooth and solid. The spicyness comes out if you concentrate and search for it, but it doesn’t assert itself front and center.
It is present in the flavour, however, and it does have a good deal of astringency and a slight bitterness. This is not a smooth tea. This is the sort of tea where you can almost imagine the brown miscoloration that you get on the inside of the cup cover your tongue.
And then that strong strong note of spice. The aroma was so promising on this one, but the flavour is all grassy-spice. It’s not quite as offensive here as in the spring flushes, but it’s still there and it’s still dominant. Unfortunately the sweetness and grainyness that was in the aroma and sort of gave me vague hopes that there might be a Keemunesque edge to it were nothing but trickery.
I don’t care if Darjeeling is supposed to be ‘the Champagne of Tea’. I would prefer a Chinese, any Chinese to a Darjeeling any day. I think I might even prefer a Ceylon…
The Final Sipdown: Day 20.1
I’m going to cheat, y’all. I can’t keep my eyes open and the snoring little dog next to me is making me further crave sleep.
I’ll be logging this tea tomorrow.
And, to further cheat, it’s getting decupboarded now.
BOOYAH.
ETA: Since this log is already all about The Cheating, I should say [and I have alluded to this, if not flat out said it before] that I am dumping entire samples into my strainer instead of separating them out into proportional bits per cup. The Final Sipdown would take MUCH TOO LONG otherwise, and seeing how far behind I am alREADY, well.
Strawberry Shortcake. This tea does not do well with a generous amount of leaf, it seems. It brings heaps of astringency to be lumped among the lighter, sweeter, tart, strawberry flavors. The shortcake, and the creamier aspects of this tea are still present, but much more difficult to find.
This would likely do well as a dessert tea in anyone’s repertoire who enjoys the namesake, but the ratio seems to be important. It could be fussy, it could not be; I’ve only tried it two ways. All I can say is that this time it was radically different from the first go and that my dumping an entire sample in for one cup isn’t exactly a fair way to compare two trials of tea.
Anyhow, astringency aside, this tea was still good. Not good enough to keep the rating as high as I left it though, I’m afraid, but I can see it wriggling its way back into my heart down the road. And so, with a small bumpdown, I bid farewell to Strawberry Shortcake.
Teas Downed: 31
Preparation
This has almost no flavor. I used three bags in a standard 12-oz mug and it was barely tea. It’s not actively bad like Lipton or Red Rose decaf, but if you’re looking for a decaffeinated tea in a grocery store go with Tetley’s British Blend decaf which is much more satisfying.
Somewhat disappointing, as I kind of like bagged Twinings Prince of Wales tea.
Preparation
Intensely mediocre, with little flavor. The girlfriend complained that it didn’t just taste bland, but it was actively bad. I finished my cup, she didn’t finish hers. I didn’t think it was quite so awful with milk, but it had little flavor in any case. Not recommended.
Preparation
This is a tea that has been sneaking up on me. The first time I tasted it, I was a bit disappointed, thinking it was too dark, too toasted, not enough fruity sweet spice. But that was a gongfu session. But although it was not making me dance for joy, there was nothing particularly bad about it, so I set the rest of the sample aside for brewing thermoses of tea for the road.
I can’t really give proper brewing parameters, because I don’t measure out when I’m doing it for the thermos. But I put the tea in my 6 oz glass pot, strewing it across the bottom to cover lightly but not pile up—just a few grams of tea. Then I just start making infusions with hot water—195-212—until the thermos is full. How long or how short each is doesn’t matter too much, because at the end, they’re all mixed together in a quart of tea.
The first cups from the thermos are very dark, toasty, just a hint of sweet grain—rice? barley?—under the dark toastiness. Then, as it sits longer, it starts to sweeten, as though some of the deeper roasted flavor elements are being transmuted into lighter sweeter things.
I’ve noticed this effect—the seeming sweetness with long holding—in other deeply roasted teas, notably some Wuyis—but this one takes it to a whole ‘nother level. And I ended up buying more. Couldn’t stop with just the sample.
Preparation
The Final Sipdown: Day 20
Decupboarding Total: 40
Apparently it is decupboaring white tea day for me today. Sad to see this one go. I think it was the first white tea that I really liked. And I still like it. But it is gone. And I am sad. But I still have CTG’s Silver Needle so I’m not without a yummy white tea and that makes me happy.
This is a very nice Oolong – much different than I’m used to, so it’s a rather nice change of pace. I can taste notes of spice and even a hint of bitter in the sip – not an offensive type of bitterness, but a savory one that adds a nice contrast to the sweet, nutty flavor. Roasty-toasty flavor is very pleasant. I’m not getting a strong vegetative taste, but there is a nice peach-like background to it.
A very good Oolong!
Preparation
This tea may have lost much of its flavor from being open in my cupboard for so long. I’m not really getting but the faintest hint of peach and something rooibos tasting/cardboardy, so I will not rate this tea. At least it is something warm to drink as my heating blanket attempts to warm me up from the outside.
