1908 Tasting Notes
This ‘whole leaf’ tea isn’t very whole – the leaves look pretty torn up. The flavour is…interesting. Light for a black tea but the muscatel flavour may be a bit too much to take without milk and it makes the tea quite….sharp (for lack of a better word).
All in all I’m pretty ambivalent towards this tea, I’ll have to try it with milk and see if that improves things.
That sharpness you talk about is often referred to as “bright” when describing Darjeelings. Margaret’s Hope is a renowned tea estate, but I’m not sure they’re having a particularly good crop this year. Their teas last year were phenomenal, but I had a first-flush FTGFOP earlier this year (still have some left actually) that was just O.K. Try a short steep if yours is a first-flush tea, three minutes or slightly less.
Margaret’s Hope, unlike the other Darjeeling growers, has a high proportion of Assamica tea varietals in their tea (as opposed to the Chinese varietals used by the other Darjeeling estates). A had a second-flush Darjeeling from Makaibari, and it was much better. But that sort of thing can very greatly from year to year with single-estate teas.
I think this is a 2nd flush tea (though I’m not terribly familiar with darjeelings). I did try it with less time today, and my comments are on that entry.
It smelled lovely but the taste left a lot to be desired. It was quite bitter for a Ceylon so I had to add milk to make it drinkable. It’s flavoured with something that sort of vaguely tastes like maple syrup, but is more strangely synthetic than anything else.
This Canadian is not impressed.
That makes me sad. I keep looking for a good maple tea but so far nada. One day….
I’ve never heard of maple tea before. I can’t really get the flavour of tea and the flavour of maple syrup to ‘match’ in my head, it sounds to me like a relatively strange combination. But then again so did genmaicha, and that’s turned out to be one of my favourite greens. I wonder if I could get something akin to it by making an ordinary ceylon and sweetening it ever so slightly with maple syrup?
That sounds like a neat idea, actually. I have some plain Ceylon and some syrup so I’ll have to try it.
you can buy this tea from www.ceylon-store.com
I needed something to warm me up at lunch time, so I got a cup of this at the restaurant (it was a choice between this and ‘orange peacock’ I swear to god that’s what the waitress called it!). I didn’t steep it very long and it came out quite pleasently light with an almost floral, citrusy taste.
Not bad at all for a generic earl grey. I suspect the key thing was the fact that I didn’t steep it very long.
Preparation
This makes me laugh. And now I really want to see if there is a tea named “orange peacock” anywhere – or at least one that would have a orange peacock on the label. Because that would probably entertain me for a solid day at least.
You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to keep a straight face when she said it. XD
lmao Orange Pekoe
