Jeeves & Jericho

This has been in my cupboard for more than 2 years so it is likely that its present taste differs from its original taste. I love peppermint tea and was attracted to this tea for it claimed to be “peppermint tea with a twist”. Indeed the addition of lemongrass and other flowers to this tea has made it more special, but I really can’t say it is amazing (I can’t taste the flowers btw, but this can be due to the fact that the tea is rather dated). The tea is minty for sure. Lemongrass has enhanced its relaxing and soothing properties so this makes a nice cup of post-meal tea. Just don’t expect it to be anything unusual or extraordinary. :P

I was so delighted to find a coffee shop serving interesting local teas when I was down in Oxford on Friday, and I thought an oolong would fit the bill nicely before my interview.

I’m also grateful I had enough time to do a wee before going to the interview too, as I kind of hoovered three cups of this in the space of an hour. Yum!

This brews up a lovely, pale shade of buttery yellow, and yields a lovely, sweetly floral flavour. Beautiful notes of honeysuckle to this one; a real treat on a sunny spring day. I’ll be seeking out more from these folks when I’m back in Oxford on Thursday, for sure.

This is another winter warmer full of spice, but it has the added bonus of the sweet fruitiness of the mango, papaya and orange. Although I couldn’t taste any of the white chocolate, the sharpness of the fruit was not as prominent as I expected, so it must work to blend and add a touch of creaminess to the cup.

It’s such an inviting tea in the tin, as is J&J’s Girlie Grey. It’s lovely to look at as the different ingredients pop out against the dark brown assam, and the smell is intense but very pleasant. Very sweet from the choice of fruit but with classic winter spice.

It’s tastes just as good too. It’s another tea that I immediately want to go out and share with people. It would be great to have as an afternoon refreshment when you all sit down having spent a long time out in the cold.

The tea in the background works very well with the other flavours. In my opinion sugar and milk won’t get anywhere near this cup as it is sweet enough as it is, and any more creaminess will take away from the sweet definition of the fruit which help distinguish this blend.

I was very impressed with this tea. It certainly lives up to it’s ‘girlie’ tag over traditional Earl and Baroness variates thanks to it’s blend of citrus and sweet flavours alongside the flora. I enjoyed this tea during an afternoon tea outing with family, and the three of us that tried it all loved it. It is one that I will have to purchase more of.

This is like the mullet of teas. But instead of “business in front, party in the back”, it’s “Assam at the beginning, Ceylon at the end.” Assam’s malt, cardboard and a hint of honey show up while it is hot, a milder Ceylon woodiness and lighter body (and something fairly rye-like) shows up as it inches closer to room temperature.

Needless to say, though, this is both tastier and more stylish than a mullet.

Aaaaaand book done. It was awesome! And there were stuff at the end which I totally called two books ago! flail Big Dramatic Oh My Ceiling Cat sort of stuff! Took about 25 hours all in all, because I am old and no longer capable of reading through the night. And it still got late enough that I found myself forced to succumb to a good long nap this afternoon. Which would have become way too long had the post-woman not woken my by ringing my doorbell. Took a while for that to penetrate, but thankfully she still waited until I managed to drag myself to the door. And thus my Verdant order has arrived. Haven’t tried any of those yet.

…Gosh. Rambly.

The rest of this post was typed up a few days ago.

This is a blend of Assam and Darjeeling and as such a completely un-me thing for me to buy. I don’t know what I was thinking. Other than the fact that I found out a shop in the city where I live sells a small selection of Jeeves & Jericho teas. WHAT THE PLOCK ARE THE ODDS??? It gave me an excellent opportunity to buy the Oxford Blend again which I bought when I ordered from them and which we turned out to rather like. And then while I was there, I got this sort of mad craving for a Lady Grey blend and they didn’t have one. There isn’t one on the site either, so I can only conclude that it doesn’t exist in this brand. There is the Girlie Grey, but that’s a completely different beast from Lady Grey. Disappointed that I couldn’t get the sort I had wanted, I decided to get something else and chose this one without really paying too much attention to what was in it. It has a lady on the tin, see? Close enough, I decided.

When I came home and smelled the leaf, though, that’s when I became a little more sceptical, wondering what I had been thinking. It smells very much of Darjeeling, and not very much of Assam. What had I got my Darj-disliking self into??? After steeping the Assam came out a lot more, which put my mind a little at ease. I’m not super-fond of Assam either, because I find it so difficult to consistently get a good cup out of it, even when religiously following the same method every time, but I prefer it over Darjeeling any time.

The flavour was very Darj-y as well, but the Assam laying down the bottom for it made the Darj a lot more easy to handle for me. It’s like Darjeeling in blends goes down much better for me, because the things I don’t like about it gets diluted out a bit more, whereas on its own, it’s just too much. Curiously, this blend reminded me a little of the Scottish Breakfast blend from Mark T Wendell that Hesper June shared with me. It’s a shame I didn’t get this until afterwards, or I would have shared some of it with you!

All in all, I found it a pleasant blend. It won’t ever become a favourite, but it was a nice change from the China, since Chinese black makes up roughly 95% of all the black tea I drink that isn’t flavoured with something else. That came as rather a surprise for me! It shan’t usurp China’s place as favourite black tea producer, though.

A big thanks to TeaEqualsBliss for sending me a bit of this tea.

This is really refreshing. The mint is STRONG, but I like it! The citrus tones in the background really brighten the cup, while the peppermint provides a cooling, crisp flavor that is just what I need after eating my left over chicken salad (made with spicy grilled chicken, red bell peppers and bacon) – it was delicious but, the spices sort of kick me about an hour after I eat it. This is helping to soothe the stomach just a bit.

Sweet and tasty, pleasantly minty. I like that while the mint is strong, it allows the citrus to come through. Nice.

The first sample finished of hopefully ten this week, is one of the three freebies I got with my Jeeves & Jericho order. The other two I was fairly certain I wouldn’t like (and one contains hibiscus, so that’s a confirmed dislike), so I’ve given one of them away and will have to sort out what to do with the last one. I’ll probably unhand that one as well.

Anyway, this one was the only one that I thought I would find drinkable and even then, I’m not super-keen on EGs at all.

I found this one to be quite strong in both flavour and aroma. Actually, as the flavour and the aroma were so close, I shan’t bother to write about them separately.

It’s quite strong and very bergamot-y, rather too bergamot-y for me, but it’s also slightly creamy and quite smooth.

In spite of the strong bergamot, which I don’t really care for, I found it surprisingly enjoyable, although to bergamot-y to be really good. For someone who is fond of EGs, this might be a pretty good choice.

Ag! You are AWESOME! Thanks again!

This is truly unique and the more I drink it the more I like it! It’s lemon/lime but more importantly MINT…and it’s tremendous! If you like mint you will probably like this! I can taste the mojito likeness more in the aftertaste but the MINT is first followed by the lime and it’s darned tasty! I would drink this again! YUM!

OMG OMG OMG Angrboda – THANK YOU!
This smells AMAZING!

Now…I have never been accused of being a girlie girl but this is down right tasty! YUM!

The EG paired with Lemon and Vanilla – Lovely, indeed!! All flavors are present and accounted for and I think this is a great offering! Ahhhhh!

I really enjoyed this cuppa!

I have guilt squared! Just dropped the kitties off at the animal hospital for spaying, ear tatooing and vaccination. Luna was looking at me as I left, betrayal painted across her little face. Will be picking them up again between 2 and 3 o’clock this afternoon and we’ll see if they hate me horribly then. In the meantime I must have something to soothe my frazzled nerves.

This is the last of the three I ordered from J&J, the three in my cupboard from them that I have left to try are the three free samples they included. I’m not sure why I bought this one, actually, given my reservations towards the Grey family. I think it’s some sort of thing where that’s a kind of tea that I have decided that I would like to like, so I can’t quite get myself to completely ignore it. The straight up Earl Greys are not the problem. It’s the variations that attract me. This one, I think, had me at ‘Girlie’.

Now the aroma of the leaves does indeed very much resemble the description by J&J, as ‘a boudoir in a cup’. I can easily pick out the bergamot, and lemon is not hard to find either, given the huge chunks of dried lemon in the leaves. And not just lemon peel as has been seen before by other companies. This is the first time I’ve actually seen actual dried lemon pieces in tea leaves. Peel and fruit bits and all!

Secondly there is vanilla and rosebuds, giving the aroma a sweet and floral aspect respectively. These two are what actually provides the majority of the girlie quality for me. It doesn’t smell quite pink, but we’re definitely in the lightly purple area here.

All in all, the aroma is quite pleasant, if a bit heady.

The flavour is very smooth and citrus-y. The vanilla is giving it all a creamy sort of feel to it and the bergamot is not too strong. It’s very clearly present, but it’s not overwhelming and it seems quite fresh and crispy. I think it’s the lemon that’s giving it that lift. It seems to me that I have a tendency to enjoy the Grey family more in general if there is either smoke or lemon involved. Perhaps one of these days I should try to make myself a classic EG with a slice of lemon in the cup.

I’m not sure what the rosebuds do here. I can definitely find some floral notes in the tea, but that might as well just be bergamot top notes. I can’t tell one kind of floral from another, so I can’t be certain of this at all. I choose to believe it comes from the rosebuds in this case.

This is a tea with a whole lot of stuff going on in it. Bergamot AND lemon AND vanilla AND floral rosebuds. It’s a very busy cup, which I find somewhat confusing to drink. It’s hard to get a proper grasp on the flavour as a whole, I think.

On the other hand, if it didn’t have so much going on in it, I’m not sure I would have cared for it much. A lot of these things are things I normally wouldn’t care much for but here are evening each other out in a pleasant way.

I think I will rather enjoy this tin. I’m not sure I’ll buy more of it after it’s gone though.

A friend of ours passed away last night following a massive brain hemorrhage.

Steepsterites, please PLEASE look after yourselves and your bodies and PLEASE learn the warning symptoms of stroke and brain hemorrhage. I cannot stress enough how important this is. It can strike like lightning from a clear sky and every single split second counts.

Then toast with me, please.

To Janet.

Oxford. I always get associations to something rather posh when I think ‘Oxford’. Same with Cambridge really, but having actually been in Cambridge, these days my associations with Cambridge have more to do with excessive book shopping to be honest.

Anyway, the tea smells rather posh too, and although the chap on the tin is definitely Oxford-y, he looks rather too mischievous to be associated with this sort of posh smelling tea.

The tea is blended of Assam and Keemun, and I have to say they’re pulling it off extremely well. I can easily pick out both flavour profiles. The high, slightly astringent notes of Assam, with semi-cardboard flavour and raisin notes and the grainy undertones of Keemun providing the body, with floral flower-y notes and smoothness.

It’s really a very pleasant blend this, well suited both for mornings and afternoons, and I suspect if you were a milk-in-tea-er, it would carry milk nicely as well.

I need something with a bit of kapow and sizzle this morning. So I’m not sure why I chose this one, which I stated earlier could definitely have benefited from having a little more of kapow and sizzle in it. Maybe because it’s new?

Dramatic evening was dramatic, as Luna is a very naughty patient indeed and have lost all but one out of four or five stitches. So it’s back to the vet we go today and see about getting her patched up. I suspect the Cone of Shame is in her near future.

Hence the need for something sturdy.

My first order from Jeeves and Jericho has arrived and it’s full of goodies. I ordered three tins of tea and a strainer shaped like a leaf.

I have received three tins of tea, a strainer shaped like a leaf, three samples of tea, a plastic measuring spoon, a button with their logo and a postcard.

The leaves have a lovely smoky aroma, which I could smell as soon as I got the lid off the tin. Smoky and wood-y and remarkably sweet. Like dark, dark caramel. Not just dark, but daaaaaaaaaaaaaahrk!

After steeping it’s almost the same, although the wood-y parts of the aroma has been rather turned down. Now it’s mostly smoky and dark, dark caramel. I can detect something vaguely floral now as well.

All this bodes quite well for the flavour, I should say.

Surprisingly, the first sip is Darjeeling. Forcefully so. Some of you may remember I had the Samovar blend from Kusmi, which I suspected of containing Darjeeling. I can’t remember, though, if it was merely a suspicion or if it was confirmed to have Darjeeling in it, and to be honest I can’t be bothered to look it up now. (I think it was confirmed) This tea reminds me of that blend, mainly because of that very bright initial meeting with Darjeeling in the flavour.

With the Samovar blend, I was mildly sceptical at first, but it really did grow on me, so in spite of my usual misgivings about Darjeeling in general, I am not concerned. Besides, I did know from the beginning that it would contain Darjeeling. But you see it also contains Lapsang Souchong. And LS trumps all!

Anyway, we have established that it reminds me of the Kusmi Samovar blend. First sip, Darjeeling. Bright and cheerful, bouncing up to say hello to the tastebuds. Slightly grassy and slightly spicy, but not offensively so. Hello to you too, Darjeeling.

Second sip is larger and contains more smoky notes than the first, but also more Darjeeling. That Darjeeling creature really is all over the place in this blend. It’s like a little over-eager dog who’s trying to greet every single family member simultaneously and so is bouncing up and down and around, very nearly actually succeeding in being in five places at the same time.

Let’s ignore the unruly Darjeeling for a moment though, and maybe it will calm down and behave itself.

There’s a grainy note as well here and something floral, which tells me the Keemun is present and accounted for. It’s very subtle though, and easy to overlook if one doesn’t pay attention or if one is overwhelmed by aforementioned Darjeeling. I could very much have wished for this aspect to be stronger.

I should have liked the LS and the smoke to stand out a bit more as well. As smoky blends go, this one is pretty mild. A beginner’s smoky blend perhaps. (I shan’t say a ‘girly kind of smoky’, although it was the first thing that popped into my head.)