Golden Monkey

Golden by name, golden by nature. Like a featherweight boxer, light on its feet but can hold its own when cornered. The slightest of bitterness to give an edge to the smoothness. Fine with a slight dribble of milk, but consider without.

This is another tea from the european teabox, and a sample I picked to remove more or less accidentally. I needed space and this was in a big original bag with a relatively small amount of tea for the space it occupied, so that was that. And while I lucked out on this selection, I am now feeling sorry i won´t read the next person´s opinions on this, because I really liked it and love seeing reviews by others of teas I liked.

For me it´s a quintessential Chinese black tea, though that is an opinion of a non-expert. It´s light, delicate, full of background flavours ( wild honey? some nuttiness?), refreshing. The kind of tea I really like.

But I confess to being a bit baffled by the descriptions and other reviews and wondering if I screwed up amount or brewing times. They mention this as being full-bodied, but with me this turned out light-bodied and delicate and graceful, a ballerina black tea, a perfect afternoon tea. I also find it a very sweet, naturally, tea.

A very tasty and mellow cup of tea, it is my favorite black tea I’ve tried!

I liked this one less than the Yunnan Noir because I found it to be more bitter, but still enjoyable.

This is a good full bodied tea. Had good flavor. I could easily make this my everyday morning tea. I would highly recommend this one!

Nice stuff. So far, really bitter unsweetened. I’ll need to take my temp down a few degrees. With sugar, though, it gets really interesting as the taste reminds me a lot of coffee.

thought it was excellent on first taste; second taste i’n not so sure. i’ll have to see about the third time

I made a second cup, because I though that the first was a little weak. Yup, still on the weak side. It tastes a little grassy to me, but then I’m partial to greens for their lightness. Maybe it’s my stuffy sinuses, but this comes across my palate as pretty simple and straightforward. I let this steep longer, since it was a re-brew, but it didn’t go bitter, which was good. The longer steep mad the flavor come through a little bolder, but it’s still one of the lightest blacks that I’ve ever sampled.

Although this is a fine, bold black tea, I find it to be a bit much for my tastes. I haven’t compared it to others in the same class and might find them overwhelming, as well. As a fan of more of the lighter, less intense teas, I recommend it for those who like the heavier flavors and not so much for others.

For some reason, I have great luck with black teas with the word “golden” in them. A good everyday tea, not mind boggling… but sometimes I don’t need to be boggled.