Darjeeling Giddapahar Muscatel Black Tea Second Flush By Golden Tips Tea

I figured when I saw this in the wonderful package KS sent to me that I would have a good chance of liking this one. Second, summer, autumn flushes – those are what I like in a Darjeeling.

This is very nice. It’s strong. Musty like the white film on grapes. It wouldn’t be my favorite but it’s certainly a very good example of the flush and type. It doesn’t beat my beloved Sungma but I’m still looking for its equal. :)

these leaves are small, spindly, and black, with slivers of green leaf mixed in. They smell of hay and honey.

I used just over 1 tsp of leaves in 10 oz of water, at 190 for 3 min.

the liquor is a nice amber. It has a slight astringency, but it is not bad. The taste is of hay and fall leaves, with a faint aftertaste of honey.

Not a bad tea, but i prob wouldnt go out of my way to keep this around.

Hooray! The horrid headache that I had yesterday seems to have mostly calmed down, I am worried it might be a side effect of my sleep meds, but I get awful headaches quite often, so probably not. My sleeping seems to be better, even if my sleep schedule seems to be all over the place, with luck that will even itself out soon. More important news, guess who is getting back into Dropzone Commander, yeah it is me, no real guess there. I had put it to the wayside for a while to focus on other things (and it seemed that no one was playing it at Tabletop) so when I got back from PA and found out it had become popular, well, time to get back to work on painting the Scourge! Brain-slugs for life! In all honestly I love the Scourge, but they are so creepy.

I heard that the best way to keep the Scourge from possessing you is tea (or a salt based shampoo) so that means it is time to break out some Golden Tips Tea! Today we are looking at Giddapahar Muscatel Darjeeling Black Tea Second Flush, I go back and forth as to which flush of Darjeeling is my favorite, clearly I need to sample a lot more before I can make an assessment, I know it is greatly based on my moods. So, about this particular Darj (is it considered uncouth to shorten the name, hope not because I have been doing it for year, at least it doesn’t sound as bad as when I shorten the name of Puerh!) it comes from Giddapahar (whose name translates to Eagle Cliffs) Tea Estate, located in the beautiful (seriously, I was just daydreaming over photos) Kurseong Valley, this particular estate was established in 1881 and has some of the oldest China bush varietals. It is actually thought that the second flush rather than the first flush is the best produced by this estate, being extremely heavy in the muscatel notes. Tea, you had me at muscatel, it might be one of my favorite notes in tea because (depending on flush) it reminds me of either Scuppernongs or Muscadines, two of the best grapes ever and possibly the best food to come out of my homeland (it is the South in case you didn’t know…not that I ever shut-up about it) Anyway, the aroma of this tea, at first is loamy and roasted peanuts, and then like a small raisin themed explosion, the aroma blooms into muscadines and slightly spiced wine. At the finish there is a hint of honey and dry leaves. I admit I spent the majority of the time waiting for my kettle to heat up with my nose in the tea, I just go crazy for that muscatel aroma.

Once I give the tea its required steeping, the aroma is less muscatel, it is still there, but the wet leaves are overshadowed by autumn leaves and loam. The finish, again, is honey, this time joined with the distinct aroma of sultanas. The aroma of the liquid has a surprising note of malt and a strong presence, it is a heavy tea, like I am sinking into a teacup…that is a good sign! There are also notes of raisins and honey with a finish of loam and dry autumn leaves.

The tea starts out a bit dry then switches almost immediately to smooth, I always find it amusing when teas do that. The taste begins with malt and loam, it is a bit brisk, but as it switches to the smooth mouthfeel it also transitions to sweet muscatel and honey. I should say that the muscatel notes are more on the raisin side, and a little bit like muscadine jelly and a touch like a spicy red wine. I am sure people who are into wine can name it perfectly, but since I have only memories of tastes and not names I cannot give an exact comparison. I liked this tea, I was expected the taste to be like the aroma and have more of a muscatel explosion, but the more subtle notes are quite tasty too.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2015/02/golden-tips-tea-giddapahar-muscatel.html

Once again, in brewing this Giddapahar Darjeeling from Golden Tips, I adhered to my darjeeling parameter principle: less is more. Low temperature and short steep are key to success with this type of tea, in my experience.

This second flush muscatel offering brewed up dark orange-amber, veering caramel, and tastes very smooth and full. Not a spot of bitterness here. I definitely recommend that everyone change their attitude toward darjeeling by acknowledging, first, that it is not really a black tea! It is not fully oxidized, so officially darjeeling is an oolong. Here’s a helpful link explaining the truth about darjeeling:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darjeeling_tea

This means that darjeeling has been done a huge disservice by being lumped together with assam teas now for nearly two centuries. Assam is hearty to the point of indestructibility. Darjeeling is tender and temperamental. Above all, darjeeling is sui generis!

I received this sample today as part of the July subscription box. When brewed the aroma has a hint of fruit and mustiness. As for the flavor, this Darjeeling has a characteristic bitterness and the aftertaste is a light muscatel which lingers pleasantly. I might try my second steep with a bit of tea sugar to bring out more of the sweetness.

Nice, really nice. It’s not as sweet as the Goomtee second flush from the GTT subscription, but it’s quite tasty. I like the finish.

I’m so glad I was working from home today. I just have been pulling a different tea out of my box of new teas all day long. It’s been fun! I never quite knew what I would get next.

Oh this was so tasty, especially after my extreme newbie experience with the ye sheng that I ruined this afternoon!
I just HAD to get the bitterness off of my tongue from that debacle, so I did add agave and milk after my first sip. …. Ah, the newbie shame!

I tried a darjeeling last week, and it wasn’t a great experience. But thanks to the encouragement of my fellow tea nuts on here, I am looking forward to exploring more. That’s a good thing since now I have SO MANY in my Golden Tips box!

This is delicious! It’s not terribly astringent, and it’s very flavorful. I do get the fruity aspect of it, although I might not have identified it as grape as in muscatel. It’s quite nice though. Now I am even more excited to try all of the other darjeelings in the box.

This was a really awesome tea drinking experience. I got this sample and saw the date picked and realized it is almost certainly the freshest tea I have ever had. There is just something SO cool about that. But, other than novelty, this was delicious. I am not particularly good at describing detailed flavor nuances, but to me it was a bit sweet and very fruity, but still having the hearty black tea taste. I steeped it twice, and it was a bit less sweet on second steep, but still very flavorful. I often have issues with black teas and bitterness so I kept this one at 200 degrees.