Nepal

The husband requested (black tea, I described a few to him, he picked one) this last night before dinner before he went to work on night shift. I drank the 2nd steep with Tupulo honey after dinner. OMG good! Wonderful, wonderful combo. The distinctive taste of the Tupulo honey married perfectly with the floral complexity of the Napal. I could not sip it fast enough. I will be doing this again.

2nd steep. Pinch of fresh leaf.

Delicious tea for breakfast today. :) I love the color and texture of the leaves. All shades of brown and curly. It is sweet, and I added sugar to it. :) Yum!

Nice cup this morning…check out my previous notes….

Another Traveling Tea Box tea!

I think it tastes like beer-tea! Sorta like some darjeelings taste like wine tea…this tastes like beer tea. Slighty lemony beer tea. It’s not exactly unpleasant, but let’s just say I’m glad it was just enough for tonight’s after dinner pot of tea.

My logic in picking this tea is this: as soon as I got home from work, I fell asleep. While napping, I was dreamt about tea. Andrews and Dunham tea. Not this tea, though. Jackee Muntz. I woke up fully and decided to get some tea. I was going to get some Jackee, but this tea was sitting on the counter and therefore much easier to find than Jackee. So I made some.

It was only when I went to log it that I realized I had never had it before. I’m not sure how I could have let those lovely leaves escape me for so long. Seriously, I love the leaves on this. The brown, gold and copper little squiggles. So pretty.

It smells like a cocoa-infested Darjeeling. It’s got the bright smell of a Darjeeling – the one that makes my mouth water but that can also come across as bitterness – but running under it there is another smell of fuzzy warmth. It’s quite lovely.

Taste-wise, it’s not quite as comforting as it’s smell but it is nice. There’s a hop-y taste that makes me think of beer but it’s not strong enough to turn me off (sorry, not a beer fan). It’s got an overall dark, fuzzy taste to it with highlights of an almost green rawness (related to the hops flavor, I think). Normally that rawness doesn’t work for me but here it mostly does, probably because of the other feelings/flavors this has going on. The edges are smooth with none of the sharpness that can come up in these types of teas but as it cools a menthol-esque bitterness starts to show up in my mouth after a sip and the fuzziness decreases a bit.

I’m not totally in love with this tea, but I do like it. I’ll probably try a lower temp next time to see what that does to the raw highlights and if that keeps the bitterness away once it starts to cool. If I can decrease these two things just a bit, my rating will go up.

Backlogging from yesterday.

Lots of tea this weekend. Including my final brew on this tea (and another to come) from Ricky. Brewed hot, 3 minutes, no additives. The aroma on this is black tea. It is not strong, it is a subtle smell, yet relaxing and familiar. This is what a good black tea should smell like. The taste is the same, gentle and familiar, exactly how a black tea should taste. The tea is smooth and delightfully plain, there is no astringency, there is a faint suggestion of vanilla flavor. This would be fantastic with milk and sugar, though it does not need it. Overall, this was very good.

As a final note, I drank a lot of tea this weekend, unfortunately about five of them are NOT already in the database of Steepster, and since I am uber busy and even more lazy, it will be a few more days before I can get them in. Sorry.

Most black tea I’ve tried has this really distinct flavor that I can’t seem to pick apart, so in my head I’ve just labeled it as “black tea flavor.” This tea has that. I took a sip and it was all, “O hai! I’m in ur cup, blackin ur tea.”

It doesn’t have any smokiness, but it doesn’t quite read as “smooth” to me. It’s somewhere in between the two, which would almost be unsettling if it wasn’t sweet. It’s a pleasant kind of sweet; I enjoy it. And it helps with the bitterness that greets you at the tail of the sip.

About halfway through the cup I started to notice that it was drying my mouth out a bit. Not a ton, but enough to be noticeable. Also, the cocoa started to really come through, especially when combined with that bitter taste at the end. It was much more noticeable when I was inhaling, and if I kept my mouth closed and breathed in through my nose I could taste it a bit, too.

The last little bit of what I had in my cup got rather cool, which confirmed my suspicion that this tea runs best for me when it’s between hot and lukewarm. Overall, a pleasant tea that doesn’t really stand out all that much. Might be good for a lazy afternoon spent perusing the newspaper.

My A&D Series 1 and 2 teas have been kicking around in my cupboard for awhile, but I haven’t really touched them since I didn’t want to open a new tin while I had so many teas already on the go. It says something that LiberTeas got to try my tea before I did, lol!

Cool and unique-looking tins aside the dry tea itself is quite pretty to look at – black twists of leaves with a mixture of silver-white, golden, and light brown streaks. The steeped leaves turn a uniform light reddish-brown colour, which is very close to the colour of the liquor itself.

The tea has a lot of superficial similarities to a Darjeeling tea – not surprising I suppose since the Darjeeling region of India is near Nepal. However it isn’t as astringent and while there are some muscatel-wine notes initially, the tea fades into a flavour that strongly reminds me more of a light beer. The tea also gains a sweetness as it cools off, much in the same way an oolong does, interestingly enough.

A huge thank you to Jillian for your generosity – thank you for sharing this tea with me!

After having tried a couple of other Damn Fine Teas from Andrews & Dunham, I really wanted to try some of their earlier offerings. Jillian was so kind to send me a few! Thank you!

My reaction to most teas from Nepal is “golden” because that is the best possible descriptive term I can find to describe the flavor of it. It seemingly sparkles on the tongue, it tastes so clear and crisp and sweet and golden

This tea is no exception. A sweet, golden taste – delightful on the palate. Smooth. A nice malty taste to it.

WOW! This was my first experience with Damn Fine Tea and I am very pleasantly surprised. Admittedly I wasn’t sure what I was in for, as I am not too familiar with the descriptor of Nepal, but, I was expecting a plain, strong and generally normal black tea experience. That is not what this is at all.

Bottom line… this is an amazingly complex and BEAUTIFUL black tea. The tea is so very, very light with minimal tannins and the only bold, typical black tea flavors in the blend at all come at the very tail end of the flavor profile. The first flavors to hit your tongue are all honey and smooth sweetness and remind me of french pastries. Not the doughy part of the pastry but, the way that chocolate and vanilla can blend with caramels and hazelnuts to make a unique flavor that stands on it’s own. The initial impression is honey but, as the flavor develops it shifts from creme brule to hot chocolate and caramel. And even with all of it’s complexity it remains delicate and well balanced and fricken fantastic. Can you tell I’m in tea love?

At the end of each sip there is just a little bite to remind you that this is a black tea and not an oolong. This is seriously the lightest, sweetest most complex black tea that I can have with no additives and still be the happiest woman on the planet drinking it.

After the little tannin nip at the end the after taste fades into toasted caramel. sigh I wish they would put this out again so I can have more.