This is my favourite tea of all time, and what better way to celebrate my 100th tasting note? There’s nothing I can rate this tea other than 100, because it is just that beautiful.
After spending ages writing up this note and concentrating really hard on it, Steepster decided to crash on me and delete the entire thing. I wanted to give this tea an amazing review, but that will now have to wait for another time as I have work to do. So sad I lost my review! It was almost finished, too ):
This tea is crazy good. The scent is perfect maple syrup when hot, and then the woodsy base and the pecans come out to play when it cools a little, though the maple is still prominent. The flavour is fairly similar – sweet and maple syrupy when hot, with the Nilgiri frost becoming more prominent as the tea cools. This brings out some woodsiness and nuttiness, which work perfectly with the pecan, which also becomes more prominent when cooled slightly. I also get fairly strong buttery notes as it cooled, which I would tentatively attribute to the Nilgiri, although I’ve never had it in its unadulterated form. These buttery notes come across to me as pastry-like, and I think that one of the reasons I love this tea so much is that it reminds me strongly of a pecan plait – a Danish pastry filled with a thick mixture of pecans and maple syrup. I love the flavours of the pastry, although they’re maybe even better in the tea, in my opinion, but I have a couple of issues with them in that they’re so unhealthy and after the first couple of bites become far too sweet and sickly. This tea is the perfect alternative – all of the flavour amped up by a wonderful base tea, with none of the guilty, greasy-fingered queasiness afterwards.
The mouthfeel of this tea amazes me. It’s thick and syrupy while I’m drinking it, and afterwards I get a feeling which is difficult to put into words but it’s exactly the texture I associate with pecans.
I can get three wonderful western-style steeps out of this (4 mins @80, then 5 mins @80, and finally 5 mins @90), although now that I have a limited supply I will probably try to eke out all the flavour I can and maybe go for a fourth or even fifth steep. I once managed to get 7. I would like to try this gong fu, but I’m a little hesitant to use some of my already-far-too-small supply to do so, as I already know that I love it brewed Western style.
Drinking this is bittersweet. Each sip brings me closer to never drinking it again, and I just don’t know how I’ll handle that.
Decadent and elegant and so so good.
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Oh, the feels! Thanks for this note, since I just went to the Butiki site to see the change for myself (closed for business). It feels so final now.
http://s1245.photobucket.com/user/plnwhitesocks/media/Gifs/SOBBING/tumblr_mbicn4e_ABX1ruut6g.gif.html
Yeah, the flavored teas are the hardest to part with. We’ll be able to find replacements for most of the straight teas easily enough, but nobody does flavor alchemy like Stacy. I’m actually starting to consider finding flavorings so I can try to recreate some of my favorites.
That was my plan at one point. Buying flavourings at retail is ridiculous, they’re all such large quantities.
You’re right about the flavour alchemy though – I doubt I’d ever be able to do what Stacy does did. ):
Oh, the feels! Thanks for this note, since I just went to the Butiki site to see the change for myself (closed for business). It feels so final now.
http://s1245.photobucket.com/user/plnwhitesocks/media/Gifs/SOBBING/tumblr_mbicn4e_ABX1ruut6g.gif.html
Yeah, the flavored teas are the hardest to part with. We’ll be able to find replacements for most of the straight teas easily enough, but nobody does flavor alchemy like Stacy. I’m actually starting to consider finding flavorings so I can try to recreate some of my favorites.
That was my plan at one point. Buying flavourings at retail is ridiculous, they’re all such large quantities.
You’re right about the flavour alchemy though – I doubt I’d ever be able to do what Stacy does did. ):