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And I decided to drink a cup of the Master to bring myself out of the Angry Stage of a very bad day indeed, because the Master understands my pain.

As far as drinking it goes, it’s intense. The most notable presences are spice and smoke, set against a backdrop of chocolate, with an almost buzzy texture contrasting with the intensity of the flavour. It’s definitely a brew that goes best, I think, with milk and sugar to complement its full-on sex appeal.

Also goes well with bitter feelings about the weather just HAVING to go crazy when you need to travel, and feeling like you’re probably going to die alone. The Master wouldn’t die alone. He’d at least take a few planets with him.

AAAAAAAAAA THIS DAY HAS BEEN EVEN MORE RIDICUOUS THAN I ALREADY THOUGHT IT WOULD BE. So those high winds I mentioned earlier? Yeah, like gale-force, and meant trains were cancelled, roads were closed, and various other impediments to travel. And I’m taking a train to Heathrow Airport first thing tomorrow morning. Oh hello, panic attack, how much am I not surprised to see you again?

Oh yeah, and I got dumped.

Calmer now, as trains appear like they’ll be up and running by tomorrow morn danced angrily in my kitchen to angry lady hippity hop music for a while and made a cup of mambo.

And it’s a smooth and gentle brew. I’m definitely getting the cocoa notes in the beginning, with a subtle aroma almost reminiscent of apricot. Whoever aid that this tastes of cocoa-dusted peaches isn’t far off. This flows into an earthier, autumn leaf finish. I tend to take my black teas more robust and punchy than this one, but as this is a bit oolong-y as well, it makes for a lovely change of pace.

And this time tomorrow night, I’ll have nearly touched down in sunny Los Angeles, where I expect to be bought strong drinks until I forget that I was ever seeing someone in the first place.

The winds outside my apartment are so loud and so intense that the flat is shaking and rumbling. It’s one of the few things I hate about living here, when it gets this windy! It seriously sounds like the building’s going to be plucked from the street an transported to Oz :( As such, I’m calming my mounting anxieties with many cups of tea. This raspberry was a gift from a kind soul with my last order.

It is just as a raspberry tea should be. The raspberry is a welcome sweet-tart addition to the black tea base, without overwhelming the flavour completely. Redolent with flavours of sunny, fresh-picked raspberries and raspberry leaf, with a softly tannic finish. It’s a perfect, simple pleasure.

I’m on my second cup, and to try and further decrease my I’m-definitely-not-going-to-die-in-a-wind-related-natural-disaster-nope-not-at-all anxieties, I blended a little of this with some Assam and served it with milk and a squizzle of vanilla syrup, because it’s very cold and between the crime and the high winds, my neighbourhood can be a really scary place, and I need all the comfort I can get.

PLEASE NOTE: one of the flavours in this tea has been discontinued, so it’s recently been reformulated with elements to best approximate the original flavour profile, but I bought mine when the original was still available, so it’s probably slightly different now to the tea I’m reviewing here. Still:

Where do I begin to describe the Brigadier? The fragrance of the tea leaves is rich and complex, and sort of hits you in stages: first, the honeyed sweetness of the fruit, which is then underscored by a layer of rich chocolate, followed a lingering trace of caramel that mostly hits you about a minute later. When brewed, the flavours come together perfectly. Chocolate floats over brisk, slightly fruity black tea with a caramel finish and it’s all surprisingly harmonious. It works really well with milk and sugar. It’s bright and comforting all at once. I think it’s single-handedly diffused the social anxiety attack I was having earlier.

Also, one of the lads at my regular comedy night has officially told me I can add baker to my CV, as I bring experimental cakes to share with the guests and punters every week. Somebody tweeted about how good tonight’s cake was! beams with pride

I don’t really feel I can give this a proper rating, as I’ve yet to meet a lapsang I can actually drink on its own; indeed, I bought this one to blend with other things and cook with. It’s good for infusing smoky flavour into other things.
I’m giving this a decent rating because it’s probably decent for a lapsang, there’s just something about the campfire-y flavour that I can’t do on its own. Last night I took two bags and steeped them in milk, then used that milk to give a smoky, deep note to a chocolate cake. It’s also sandwiched with black cherry jam and topped with almond buttercream. Nom.

Turlough, I do love you, you darling, ginger sassmaster. In the bag, the tea smells like earl grey, but not quite earl grey – it’s earl grey and, which it turns out is my favourite way to drink earl grey. There’s something mysterious and a bit sweet lurking behind the familiar bergamot, something a little otherworldly about it. When brewed, the currant and cream really smooth it out, especially with milk and sugar, while the earl grey retains a lingering edge. It’s bright and sweet, with a creamy mouthfeel, and definitely a little unusual; currant gives it an extra dimension that makes it more interesting than a straight earl grey cream would be. Turlough might not have liked a lot of things about Earth, but he was certainly fond of tea, and I think he’d be chuffed to bits with this one. It’s a big bowl of comforting when you’re feeling mopey and alone and listening to a lot of Echo and the Bunnymen and feeling sad that none of these mere humans can possibly understand what you’re going through. Not that I’ve ever experienced all of the above or anything. Yep.

This is my second last cup of this Darjeeling before I’ve run out, and I’m going to miss it so much when it’s gone. It’s the last of my Good Darjeelings. I’ve got plenty of an Okay Darjeeling, which will have to do.

But this one. THIS ONE. Not my absolute, absolute favourite, but lovely. Light body, sweet, characteristic Darjeeling-ness and nice and woodsy-fruity. Holds up well to milk and sugar, in spite of its lightness. My favourite Darjeeling is a bit fuller than this one, but this’ll do very, very nicely.

I’ll miss you, Good Darjeeling.

I’m not drinking enough soymilk.

I keep forgetting this and buying soymilk anyway, even though I’ve got unopened cartons at home, so now I have a ridiculous surplus of soymilk and ought to try to correct this.

And most of the time when I drink soymilk, it’s in a chai latte.

Soymilk because dairy milk makes most chai taste oddly sugary to me, even before sweetening. Soy lets it retain an edge for some reason. One day I’ll be a good enough flavour scientist to explain it.

A lot of people seem to think this chai is sort of meh, but it ticks a few important chai boxes for me. First, it’s not heavily clovey, which is good since I’m not fond a ton of cloves at all. Second, peppercorn, which makes me happy. And there’s enough cardamom and ginger happening in there that it doesn’t taste like hot soymilk that somebody’s sprinkled a little cinnamon into (why bother?).

Now I just have to make sure to finish the other two-thirds of soymilk in the carton before it starts to go. It’s so hard to eat all the servings of food before they start to go funny when you’re single and you live alone.

There’s something profoundly magical about the combination of stone fruits and almond, and this is indeed a profoundly magical tea. The first thing that hit me straight out of the bag was the scent of sweet, ripe cherries. once brewed, it’s joined by the fragrance of almond, with notes almost reminiscent of glace cherries and marzipan. The first sip, however, reveals a much more understated, pleasant sweetness, with a tart undertone and crisp, lingering apricot finish. Magical. It’s sweet, slightly playful, definitely sexy, with a complex mouthfeel that’s at turns sharp and velvety plush. If you could hug tea, I’d hug this one until my arms stopped working.

Also, discovered on the way to dinner this evening that the tea place that’s hiring in the same building as my erstwhile dayjob. As far as dayjobs go, I think I could handle selling people tea, yes?

It’s hard for me to give this tea a rating on its own, because I barely ever drink it straight.

I bought it because I needed a basic Earl Grey to make biscuits with (which I sandwiched with blackberry and lavender jam, GOOD) and now I use it as a kind of inexpensive guinea pig when I want to see which other teas/flavours do or don’t pair well with Earl Grey.

So today, after making a cup of the white blueberry I mentioned earlier, I decided to mix it with some of the Earl Grey, a measure of oolong, and a bit of almond. Tastes like blueberry muffins. Win!