Darjeeling

Dear Toronto Water:
YOU SUCK!!!… all the goodness out of Darjeeling tea. You leeched out the lovely deep fruity round and delicate notes and left me with soggy flowers and mulch.
Please leave my innocent Darjeelings alone. I offer you my White teas in lieu. Deal?

Sincerely,
your neighbourhood tea lover IndigoBloom

Another sample from Indigobloom. Thanks be!
I love Darjeeling and the more tea I drink, the more I love Darjeeling. I choose it, want it, yes even crave it sometimes. This is deep, full and as already stated fruity. That vintage fruit is one of the things I love about a good Darjeeling. This is definitely one of them.
This one lingers long on the tongue after the sip is gone almost begging you to take another and another…

Many thanks to Indigobloom for a package of lovely teas to sample. I chose to drink this first as I have had a long and sordid past with Darjeelings, originally deeming them unworthy of drinking due to thier tendency to turn bitter and over extract, but found myself stunned by Darjeeling Ambootia and finding the error was mine, by lack of water temp, steep time and g. weight control. Once I realized this, I was won over heartily by Darjeelings and now find them to be a benchmark of craft and flavor complexity.

I was surprised that this one did not have an estate assigned to it; this usually meaning that the tea is a blend of 2nd and 3rd flush. The very fine cut of the leaf would also seem to support this.

Indigobloom was kind enough to have send 5g, which I place in a porcelian gawian and transfered to a traditional cuppers cup; using 200 degree water and almost pour directly from gawian to cup. 5 grams allowed for nearly 5 hearty steeps and while normally I would go the distance with aroma profiling, the package it came in also included a fragrant coconut oolong that dominated the other teas and I felt I wasn’t sure what aroma was carried over from that.

Upon first sip I thought perhaps the scent from the oolong had also gotton to the Darjeeling, but after 3 steeps I decided that the fruity flavor I was tasting was actually from the Darjeeling itself. The cup produces a dark caramel liquor, with champagne-golden accents. The flavor is overall very smooth, with a silken body and distinct lack of traditional muscatel, but rather this was replaced by a deep fruity character that combined with the body to have a taste almost like a Mckentosh apple. There was a lack of bitterness or astringency, but I was keeping the extractions very short, but was getting the hue I would expect, so I felt this lack of bitterness was a character of the tea. There was also a distinct lack of spicyness that I usually associate with most Darjeelings and while I missed it, I found the smooth fruity character to be quite pleasant.

The fine cut of leaf did allow for some particulate to end up in the cup, but the leaf was soft and fine and pleasant to nibble.

Many thanks to Indigobloom and I will be sending her and a few others some tea very, very soon.

I picked this tea up at the Spice and Tea Exchange in John’s Pass near St. Pete’s Beach in Florida. The owner of the shop explained how he prepares and blends all of the tea and spices he sells by hand using only fresh ingredients, and it really comes through in his products.
The Darjeeling is a slightly sweet and fruity loose tea, but not overwhelmingly so. As opposed to a lot of tea I have had, this one has no bitter aftertaste at all which is great. They recommend steeping for 3 to 5 minutes which I found it a bit weak; I increased the time to 6 minutes and it was perfect. A bit of sugar and milk suited my cup perfectly.
Overall, it is a great tea that I would not hesitate to recommend to others.

Dry leaves have an alluring chocolate-covered-berries aroma. They’re a roughly cut mix of leaves and some stems averaging out to tobacco-brown, but with a range of colors from black to green.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of Spice and Tea Exchange, but this brews up a quality cup of tea. It has a coffee-like richness with a fruit/sweet quality, finishing with a touch of spice. It’s pleasantly smooth on the palate. This is a versatile tea that would be great on its own, with milk, or iced.