In going through my recent tea inventory/cupboarding project, I made a discovery.
I have way too much lapsang souchong.
I seem to have made a habit of dropping in a lapsang sample or tin in pretty much every order I ever made. This despite the fact that while I do enjoy lapsang from time to time, it is very much a sometime thing for me. I can’t see myself drinking it daily, and I have enough to be able to do that for a number of months.
One of the reasons it is so much a sometime thing for me is that I’ve had widely varying experiences of it. Some versions have been so incredibly smoky, I felt I was going to die of smoke inhalation, and I continued to smell the tea in my nostrils for hours afterwards (or until my next shower). I’m always a little worried before trying a new lapsang that it is going to be like that, so I have some apprehension of them as well, which leads to a lower rate of consumption than I might perhaps otherwise have.
When I smelled the dry leaf of this, I thought I was going to get a mouth full of ashes, but as it turns out, this one is one of the good guys. Smoky, but not ash try tasting, and not stomach turning.
There’s a sweetness to it as well, in both the aroma and the flavor. The smoke isn’t so much that it completely obliterates all other flavors in the tea. It’s not particularly resiny either, but it does have a suggestion of pine, particularly in the aroma.
It’s nice on a cool day that started out rainy and is still overcast. It’s like sitting by a fireplace. Come to think of it, it would be really nice to drink by a fireplace.
Flavors: Malt, Pine, Smoke, Sweet, Wood
