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Golden Moon Sampler Tea #25
whoops, WAY oversteeped this. Got distracted looking through google scholar search results and 15 minutes later…oh yeah, tea! (I get very single-minded)

The result is a black tea that smells and tastes very faintly of vanilla. The leaves smelled of creamy vanilla, so it’s kind of weird to go from that to this. It’s a shame because I think the quality of the vanilla here is quite nice, so I wouldn’t mind if it were just a bit more assertive.

It’s interesting to compare this with the vanilla mint, although at this point, all I have to go on is a vague memory and whatever my tasting note says. In any case, the vanilla and mint were so nicely balanced and worked with the black and green teas really well. What’s going on here is that the vanilla seems to be trying to balance itself with another flavor that is…not there.

As I get nearer to the bottom of my second cup, the vanilla seems to become more prominent. And the tea gets sweeter too, which makes me wonder if I’m not getting residual white chocolate from last night’s vanilla berry truffle.

Of course, this could all be the result of oversteeping and all of my problems will disappear with the next steeping which I will (hopefully) pay attention to. But for now, I give this an “eh,” which is like a “meh” but slightly more positive.

Back-logging from last night, when I was extremely busy playing video games and therefore had no time for tea-logging :P

So I think this is starting to edge out Chocolate Monkey in terms of general tastiness, but I’m still not getting everything that they say is there. I’ve got the vanilla and the berry sure, it’s very nice and tart and the vanilla smooths it out, but there is aboslutely nothing in the way of chocolate – white or otherwise. And I made sure this time to get two shavings of the stuff in the pot. There was a cloudiness about the tea that reassured me that it was THERE, but I think that I am forced to come to the conclusion that white chocolate simply does not have the personality needed to penetrate through the layers of berry, vanilla, and, of course, rooibos already in the tea.

I am continually surprised by the fact that I actually kind of like this tea. Despite the presence of a billion things to make it cloying and too sweet, somehow the black tea base still manages to assert itself. That said, the taste isn’t really anything special, just a “general sweet things” sort of taste. And, really, the vanilla kind of dominates the other flavors, although I DO get some caramel.

The further down the cup I get (and the colder the tea gets) the more I get the caramel. It’s DEFINITELY dominating now. As before, I begin to suspect that I am becoming spoiled by Really Good blends from other companies. Which is annoying because other companies tend not to be budgeted for graduate students. Sadface!

On a happy note, that was the last of this, so that’s another empty container! Yay!

Trying to get through my adagio samples.
So in my previous note I was all like, this is so lemony! But this time around, it didn’t seem that lemony at all. It was kind of bland. I think having all those wonderful extremely flavored teas from Art of Tea and Golden Moon has spoiled me. Or maybe I’m just not that into lemon. It does give that kind of ick back of the throat scratchy feeling. And the leaves still have that weird over chemically too much lemon smell. I wonder if this tea has a really short shelf life or something? Not a good quality for a tea in the cupboard of a compulsive sample buyer like me.

Down goes the rating!

I couldn’t find this or my River Shannon blend yesterday when I was sifting through my Upton samplers. I was getting weirded out and beginning to suspect tea gnomes or something when I suddenly remembered that I had transferred them over to some of my Adagio tins. Whoops!

This is my second try on this tea and I don’t know if I am just buying into the hype, but there is something about this tea that really does scream “afternoon” to me. Perhaps its because my delicate constitution is just unsuited to smoky teas in the morning. (They give me the vapors) This just feels like a good tea to curl up reading with. Like the spiced green it asserts its existence without being obtrusive; it’s a little weird to compare the two given that smoky IS smoky, but there you have it.

It also makes me happy to know I have this in case I want to make more tea eggs. Not sure if it’s quite smoky enough for that though. I really like the way the Golden Moon LS I used pervaded the eggs so I am taking a “smokier is better” policy on those. (The pinnacle would, I guess, be to just use bacon tea on them :D )

Wewt! Last bit of a sample tin! One day, there will be room in my tea cupboard once more!

It is still cold, although it DID only rain on me for a little while, so I suppose that’s an improvement. However, there is just something about cold that makes me want spiced tea/chai. And there is just something about trying to write my master’s thesis that makes me want to drink and review tea instead. So here I am.

I actually got a full container of this after ordering the sample (then was promptly inundated with samples and never finished the sample – until now) Somehow they got the balance of the spices such that the cardamon is actually dominating, and I believe I have stated before that I am pretty much a sucker for cardamon. There is a faint hint of cinnamon and the ginger is mostly present as an undertone and in the aftertaste. I really like the whole ‘chai, but lighter!" vibe it’s got going on. (I read somewhere today that no one actually uses the word “vibe,” is this true?) It makes for a tea that is not domineering and yet has substance. Very nice for the afternoon or evening.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #20 (…My count must be off, because I don’t have enough teas left to only be at 20…oh well!)
Edit: Ah, there’s the problem! two 17s…and two 8s and 7s and 6s…yeah I fail at counting.
Let’s try that again: Golden Moon Sampler Tea #24

It’s a little silly to me that I’m drinking the Jasmine Tea AFTER the Jasmine Pearls and the Vanilla Jasmine. Shouldn’t I have started with that? Formed a baseline or something? Clearly fate does not think so. Actually, fate probably thinks its funny. That’s the problem with consigning yourself to fate. You have to put up with its sense of humor.

So this tea was definitely hurt by going last in the group of jasminey things in the sampler. It basically tastes meh. I mean, not BAD or anything. I like jasmine tea and I like this, but it just doesn’t stand out to me at all. I think both the vanilla jasmine and the jasmine pearls have more character.

Went back to a staple this morning (although I am nearly at the end of my tin, and Adagio is still out! >:O )

Oh Earl Grey Bravo, you are the best Earl Grey. Why do I even try other Earl Greys, when you are so delicious and so good at letting early morning abuse roll off of you? You do not taste like soap, or like paper, you just taste like Earl Grey, super tasty Earl Grey. Perhaps there are better Earl Greys, but you also have the benefit of being relatively cheap! That is why I love you best.

Get back in stock sooooooooooooon

So, I pulled out the plain white tea sample from Golden Moon this afternoon, but then suddenly it randomly got really cold (in California! I want my money back, dammit) and I decided I needed something with a little more oomph. So I used up the last (!) of my Casablanca Spice.

Now, this is no longer available from Teavana, so this is the last I’ll ever have of it! It used to be the highest pinnacle of Chai for me, even though I guess it’s not officially a chai. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much, it wasn’t constrained by the standard chai base. However, after the super tasty kashmiri chai from Golden Moon, it just doesn’t seem as awesome…That makes me a little sad, but on the other hand, it’s good because I won’t feel as bad about not having more of it. It’s still tasty! But now that I have found something that gets closer to what I consider to be the pinnacle of all chai (the Borders chai that exists in my head but probably doesn’t taste anything like what I think it does) it just doesn’t seem that big of a deal.

Of course, that could also be because it’s like, four years old. Hey, when I ration, I RATION. (Also, two of those years were spent in Japan and I didn’t take my tea collection with me :P)

Second steeping!
Still delicious!
I just want to make a giant pot of this, set it on my desk and keep refilling my cup all afternoon. I would obviously have to think of a way to keep the pot warm (samovar) that would not involve fire (…electric samovar?) and did not cost over a hundred dollars (…I got nuffin)