New Tasting Notes
Those Jingmai Moonlights are like a cuddle in a cup. So sweet, so smooth, so easydrinking.
I have used today 90°C water and just finished my thermos full of that water with various, definitely uncounted and random steeping times; and there wasn’t a single bad steep.
Some were distinctly stonefruity, later ones were more herbaceous and meadow forward; with hot fresh hay notes.
All steeps were companied with velvety smooth and long mouthfeel and perfect as usual.
Comparing it to the 2018 harvest I had, I find this a wee better, although my impressions of that harvest are very faded by now.
Preparation
I have been looking for evening decaf teas that are not always Roobios, which is iffy for me, although I seem to have plenty of blends. I generally adore most of Simpson & Vail tea, and I have had three of their standard similar black blends that are not decaffeinated – for some reason this one is WEAK. I have tried three times and it’s like weak store bag tea. Even the consistency of the leaves is almost a powder type. Very disappointing.
Thank you, Marshall, for this trade! The simple joy of getting tea in the mail is so nice.
Dry Appearance: The leaves on this one are so long! Definitely 3rd, 4th, and 6th leaf on the branch. Even some cute stems! They are dusty-looking with rich, deep chocolate brown notes.
Initial rinse: 1880s house. Lots of old wood notes.
Mouth Feel: Very smooth. Blanketing.
Flavor: Bits of charcoal. Burnt toast. If you steep it too long you really feel like you’re licking a very old wood house.
Sheng is a category I think I would have to explore more deeply to pull out some of the nuanced notes.
February 14 Sipdown Challenge Prompt – International Book Giving Day
Not a sipdown but a brand new tea! My daughter gave this to me for Valentine’s Day. And because flowers don’t mean a lot to her and she has plenty of candles, I followed the prompt and gave her books for Valentine’s! (Or for International Book Giving Day, however you want to look at it!)
I cut open the pouch and sniffed the dry leaves and was transported to that place I loved to visit where I can no longer go – A Southern Season in Chapel Hill, NC. This is TEA.
Though it is labeled an English breakfast style tea, the directions call for 185F for 1-2 minutes. I decided to be bold and go for two minutes.
It is delicious! I taste the Assam first I think, and then the Malawi black tea gives it another layer of interest. What surprised me was that it has a moderate creaminess to the body, something totally unexpected.
I thought I might need milk since I am sometimes an Assam wimp and I did go the full steep, but I didn’t. Either it is smoother than many non-golden tip Assam teas, or I am better-faster-stronger than I used to be and can enjoy more teas from India. The lower steep temp and time also help make it smoother, no doubt. I need to remember that next time I run into an Assam I can’t handle. By the end of the pot of tea, the last sips in my cup were becoming a bit more assertive but were welcome, nevertheless.
Edit to add: I resteeped the leaves about an hour later. Just as good as the first steep, and I may even have liked it better.
additional notes: This one almost ended up in my last order, but didn’t. Then I just had to place another recent order on a few of S&V’s retiring teas. This is retiring. noooo. I will always need a rooibos vanilla around, I think. This might be my favorite rooibos vanilla. I’m sad they are retiring this cupboard staple. The vanilla DOES seem like vanilla extract. It’s just so smooth and cozy.
A lovely tisane from Tealyra. I sipped the brew straight and hot and unsweetened, and got no hint of the titular cream. Chamomile was also absent in aroma, flavor, and appearance. Zooming-in on the scoop-ful in the saucer photo I’ve uploaded, I see no evidence of the reputed chamomile. I don’t know the flavor of nettle, “blue mellow flowers” or corn flowers, so I can’t say that I noticed them, either. I do think I got a good hit of rose hip, along with hibiscus, as their bitterness was present & pleasant, contrasting with the sweetness of peach, apple, and orange peel. I suppose if one really wanted a creaminess, one could always add milk or cream. The peach appears mainly as an aroma, but I liked the way the other flavors enveloped my entire mouth, stimulating much salivation! In the last 1/3 cup, I dumped in a yellow packet of sweetener, and the brew opened up wonderfully into a thick, syrupy swill that I could drink all evening! It felt like I was drinking the heavy syrup from tinned fruit salad. Very nicely balanced to my senses, so I’ll rate it strongly at 88. With the rose hip, this is bound to have a good dose of vitamin C.
Flavors: Apple, Hibiscus, Orange, Peach, Rosehips
Preparation
Now that I have NOT mistakenly thrown this tea into the infuser with another tea, I can write a proper tasting note. This blend sounded intriguing, so I just HAD to buy a sample of it. Mango and coconut! Such an abundance of these fruits are in the blend itself — huge pieces of coconut. Huge cubes of mango. I wanted the starchiness of these fruits to shine. Sadly, not much starch in the mug. Really, the fruits here somehow mostly tasted like apple to me (though there is no apple in the blend and no apple flavoring). If I had to guess what tea I was drinking, I would almost guess it was Simpson & Vail’s Apple Cinnamon French Toast blend —almost exactly. That was surprising! A good flavored tea, but not really what I was expecting, as 52Teas flavoring is usually very on point.
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug // 25 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 3-4 minute steep
A sipdown! (M: 7 Y: 23)
While it seems I am not so fond of this tea anymore; it was still a very pleasant session with slightly smoky note combined with birch / woody note. The impression of Finnish sauna was there and it complemented so well my planning of a summer trip — that will probably actually start there!
I am actually considering my first YS order to get a little more of this; but as I wrote in my previous notes — I need to reduce my stash first and ordering from Chinese company will need of course customs fees and everything related to it.
So, thank you derk for, great tea experiences I am going through with the teas you sent me and I just feel that I sent you, rubbish, if I am using nice words.
Preparation
Sometimes teas hide under other teas. Like playing hide and seek until they know you can fully appreciate them. This one was hiding in plain sight.
Wet Leaf Aroma: Buttered Popcorn. My husband disagrees. He says it’s nutty. Just can’t pin down what nut. Maybe Brazil nut? Also dried apricots and tropical fruits and flora.
Flavor: I’ve had better Jin Xuan in the past but besides the name, this is still a nice oolong. It lacks minerality in the beginning but kicks into gear as it enters your throat. More apricot notes emerge with more steeping.
I got this 4 oz bag from an eccentric tea shop owner in San Francisco in March. We got to learn about and sample all sorts of teas, and this was our favorite. I’ve learned since then that puerh is too caffeinated for me, so though I find this delicious, even the resteep makes me feel bad. The flavor is quite smooth, and it tastes like you’re drinking high quality hot chocolate. I always add plenty of milk and sugar, though when we tried it in the shop, it was still super good plain. It’s nice hot and even better cold. The only ingredients are puerh and cocoa nibs, but that’s all it needs!
I love choco-puerh combinations, and the shopping experience sounds like a hoot!
Vital leaf is an awesome place to visit, I try to stop by every time I’m in San Fran :)
Every tea we tried was super good! If they sold them in smaller sizes, I definitely would have gotten more!
February Sipdown Prompt – a tea you hoard
I wrote this prompt and yet I couldn’t decide what I really meant by hoard. Do I mean tea that I buy lots of and keep buying before it can run out, like a dragon adding coins and sparkly bits and bobs to his cave? Or do I mean a tea that I have and just don’t drink because I don’t want it to go away.
The beauty of it is that we are all free to interpret the prompts as we wish. I do hoard Lost Malawi, because I don’t want to run out. The tin doesn’t get very low. I drink it whenever I wish, though.
This tea I have purchased only once, after having a sample of it from lovely, wonderful beerandbeancurd. It always felt too nice and too rare to just open it and drink it, and Ashman doesn’t love bergamot so I knew I would be drinking it alone most likely and there it sat still sealed until today.
I was afraid I had left it too long and the flavor would be dulled, but the packaging must have really worked because it is fresh and lovely. The dry leaves are a thing of beauty – soft curls, impossibly light, gold and brown mixed but mostly gold. It looks like ashman has been using a handplane on an exotic soft wood.
For this first steep ever from this pouch, the bergamot is strong but not obnoxiously so. The base is one that tends to medium and low notes, which carries the bergamot nicely. I dislike bergamot on high grown Ceylon and other tea that has natural sharp or high notes.
For the previous samples we had, a few of us noticed that the bergamot fades quickly once the pouch is opened. I have transferred this to a double seal tin to see if that preserves the aromatics, but if it doesn’t I won’t be mad honestly, because the base is really good. It would probably also bring the bergamot to a level Ashman would enjoy.
I’ve been saving this for special occasions. “Snow day, I’m frazzled from working on home office matters all day, and I’m very tired” is an occasion, isn’t it?
Thus, to smooth out the frazzles, I made this as a latte with skim milk and left the bag in. It’s practically white chocolate cocoa. Recommended.
Cold Brew!
Smooth, fruity, floral, and fresh with a great balance between jammier Saskatoon berry notes with just a little bit of fleeting tartness on the top notes of the initial sip that capture the pleasant burst of flavour you get eating real Saskatoons straight off the bush in the summer. At times I felt like I was getting a smidge of welcome cranberry, and the aftertaste was a little rosy with the honeyed sweetness of the rooibos. Made me feel just a bit homesick.
Iced!
There’s a lot of different fruits in this blend and none of them specifically stand out as, like, a singular flavour you can taste. It’s sort of just a more mellow and refreshing tea that kind of tastes “generically pink”. I guess maybe mixed berry if you wanted to get specific, and if I was blind tasting I could see a world where I interpreted the notes as a more floral lean and less conventionally sweet/tart strawberry note??
But to be super honest I really think that my brain would go to strawberry more so because the aftertaste is sooooo fresh and basil forward? Just a really good clean, crisp herbaceousness from the tulsi. Why would that make me think strawberry? Simply just because strawberry and basil are a much more common pairing that really any other berries/fruits. But all that said I enjoyed this a lot! I didn’t need it to have a really clear fruity flavour direction to still be refreshing and balanced feeling with the white tea base and tulsi inclusion.
Another tea enjoyed earlier in the week. It’s very, very good but I honestly don’t really have the energy right now to do a whole big tasting note on it. Basically, read my last tasting note and know that this time around I made it in a travel mug and it was just as delicious. Travel mugs do not make every tea shine the same way they would in a mug, but there was no compromise of flavour here. Only sweet, creamy lemon curd goodness with an accessible, grounding shou pu’erh base.
