Organic Darjeeling

So I picked up my sample black tea packet to review for the Toronto Tea Festival 2018. I noted that two of the teas in the packet will be heavy on bergamot as if to purposely torment our Sil. Hopefully, the others will make up for it.

The dry leaf is a bit on the green side. After steeping, the first few sips were a bit on the green side too, with a richer muscatel coming through as the tea begins to cool. Still, the sip is a bit drying in the mouth.

I too am missing the promised malt and cinnamon. Nope, not there.

I’ll be steeping subsequent cups at a lower temperature and will withhold rating till then. I am hoping that the drying aspect disappears altogether with the cooler steep. Let’s see.

This one was included in the taster box for the Toronto tea festival. Though i’m not a huge darjeeling fan, i vastly prefer this as an option to the lavender earl grey that i’m also going to have to weigh in on. lol I’m never sure how they make these taster boxes up…. i feel like there should be a winner in all 6 categories for straight teas and then maybe have a flavoured tea and a herbal category. No idea. I guess at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter except for the winner, but given that it’s entirely a 1-10 scale for each tea it’s already a little silly. No commenting on the tea for things like flavour, aroma or even a “I don’t drink flavoured tea so my rating shouldn’t count” sort of option.

just Not preferred to excellent – scale of 1-10 for whatever sampling of teas you happen to get.

Oh well…happy just to try new teas and hopefully folks are getting some exposure to different teas. This one for me, isn’t too bad a tea given that i don’t love darjeelings. The description says grape, malt, cinnamon….i’d say more grape than anything but not malt or cinnamon at least as far as i can tell. A nice option though and i’m certainly open to finishing off the rest of my sample. I like the sweetness of this one and it’s not too drying or off putting in the way that many darjeelings are for me.