Golden Moon Tea

I feel like I need some caffeine, so more blacks it is. Luckily about half of the teas in Golden Moon’s sample box are black, and all of them sound interesting.

This one is a bit of a letdown after a few of the other cups I’ve had today. It’s not bad, but it’s not very exciting. It’s a bit savory with some light honey notes toward the end. So far not in love with it, but I still have at least one more serving in the pouch, so we’ll see.

ETA: I figured out why I don’t like this one; it reminds me of soup. Which soup I have no clue. Something smoky, perhaps? Regardless, it’s not what I’m looking for in a tea!

A wonderful cup to relax with. The vanilla emphasizes the jasmine and cuts its usual bitterness, and the jasmine lends the vanilla a nice floral touch. This is a very smooth tea. Again, it’s just a touch sweet and I didn’t have to add anything.

I think I’ll have to choose a few of Golden Moon’s teas to keep around at any given time, because this is ridiculous: I haven’t found one yet that I dislike. I guess this means I’ve accidentally stumbled on a new favorite company.

Okay, I caved. I opened the enormous bag. Sometimes you just have to have a favorite, and this is probably my favorite straight black. That said it will probably be in my cabinet for a long time (8 oz!), so I’m glad I like it.

This is so intensely honeyed. I love honey flavors but this is so natural it’s amazing. It’s really as if I dumped a large amount of honey into my cup. It’s identifiable as a Ceylon—there are those citrus notes and the lightness of a good Ceylon—but it’s so intensely fruity and honeyed that it’s easy to forget that’s what it is. Such a great way to wake up in the morning.

This tea tastes like honey. Not the slightly over-the-top honey flavor of several of my other recent cups, but true honey as though I added some myself. The black base is smooth and light like a good Ceylon should be.

There are few things I like more than a simple, well-done black tea, and this is one of my favorites that I’ve tried.

The smell of this is absolutely incredible. Strong honey and fresh pears. I’m at least considering buying some of this just to smell it/use in sachets/something because it is so impressive.

The taste of this is really good to me. I admit it’s not quite what I expected from the smell. It’s much more subtle, with more of a pollen-y taste than true honey (which makes sense considering the ingredients). The pear comes in at the end, very true to the fruit as I expected. With honey added this is just about perfect, exactly like honey-covered pears. The smell of this cup is also wafting all over the room! I think I’m in love.

I think I’m obsessed with Golden Moon’s white teas. I have now tried all of the ones that were in my big sample box—before any of the blacks or oolongs! That’ll change in the morning, though: there’s a pear and a rose that I think I’m going to love.

This smells incredible dry. I can’t stand licorice as a candy, but anise is amazing. Star anise isn’t something I see much around here, and the smell is really impressive. The taste is a little closer to licorice, but it’s not that gross candy taste. It reminds me of some unusual mints I picked up at a kitchen store a few months back, which may be the first “anise” thing I really liked. This tastes like those but tea. I don’t know that I’d buy it exactly, because I wouldn’t reach for it enough, but it’s very nice.

Okay, I’m bad at this no-caffeine thing. In my defense, this is probably the lowest-caffeine option I could have chosen. I was craving one of Golden Moon’s white teas, and I’m honestly thinking about ordering one or two more. They’re just so delicate and wonderful! I’m also thinking about getting 8 oz. of Sinharaja, which may be too much but mom and I both love it. Plus with the promotion they have going on it’d be about $2 more than the 3.5 oz…

This smells so mouthwatering. It’s probably the only way I’m getting fresh melon anything in the middle of winter, so I’ll enjoy it. Not sure what I did differently this time around, but this cup has a bit of a spicy vegetal note to it. Still absolutely delicious either way.

This smells like VERY fresh melon. As in eat it today, it’ll only get worse from here. The dry leaves aren’t quite as melony and smell more green.

Again, I feel like I’m drinking fruit: this time melon instead of coconut. Again very true to the fruit, very refreshing, almost surely wonderful iced. My bank account is really going to hate me if I continue to love all of Golden Moon’s teas like this. :(

Second sample out of my box! I did not expect this company to introduce me to white teas (that I not only like, but love), but I’m pretty happy about this turn of events. I thought a whole type of tea was lost to me, but it turns out I was just doing it wrong!

This one has a lovely, delicate ginger smell both dry and brewed. “Delicate” and “ginger” aren’t usually found together in my experience, but this manages it. Again, the ginger doesn’t hide the white tea flavor, instead blending with it nicely. It has an almost floral, sweet aftertaste that follows the ginger. I also think this would be wonderful iced.

Okay, I admit it: I don’t “get” white tea. I tend to like bold flavors in my tea and whites just don’t deliver. I’m constantly afraid of burning/oversteeping/take your pick, even more than with greens. In general, white tea is Not My Thing.

But this tea! First off, it has chrysanthemum in it. How could I not try it first out of my huge box of samples? The taste is great, too, and much stronger than I expected from my previous experiences with white teas. Mellow, just slightly sweet, and very satisfying. Is this my first good white tea experience? I think so. I think this also means I’m pretty darn impressed with this company so far.

Is it time to go home yet. Struggling to stay focused at work. I’ve been pouring tea/caffeine in all day – I think I’m on cup 9 – and I’m still just falling asleep. 1 1/4 hours to go.

This is the other tea I’ve been drinking all day. I’ve been wanting to explore Golden Moon Teas for quite awhile and haven’t really had a chance (they either don’t ship to Canada or charge crazy shipping – one or the other). I was really excited to see a few in the awesome package ifjuly sent me.
I’ve decided to try first the Golden Moon that I think I’ll like least. I’m not usually a fan of ceylon. This isn’t going to be my favorite black tea, it’s to astringent/dry for me. What I have learned is that I am REALLY excited to try the other ones. If Golden Moon has a ceylon that I don’t hate, then how good are the ones the ones that are more in my comfort zone going to be? Really excited to try them. Thanks ifjuly for the opportunity.

No matter how many teas I try, I always come back to this one. I think it my be my all-time favorite, or if not it’s definitely in the top three. When I make two cups of tea at once I tend to make two that are extremely different just so I can tell them apart, but this one goes surprisingly well with the Houjicha I just drank. As always, refreshing and delicious.

After the near-disaster of earlier I’m not up to anything else new tonight. I decided to go with a favorite, and when I looked into my cabinet I was drawn to this one.

Why was this not rated 100 before? It’s by far my favorite of my full size Golden Moon tins. This is everything I like about simply flavored oolongs. Light, smooth, refreshing, perfect. I brewed this at a lower temperature this time and it made it amazingly creamy. I’ll have to do that again!

Resteep with the leaves from last night. Not sure why, but I wasn’t feeling much like tea yesterday aside from with meals. Today I’m back to wanting lots again.

This is actually wonderful resteeped. The first cup has a sharp, green taste like fresh coconut but this is much mellower and sweeter. It has a creaminess to it not present in the first cup. I can definitely taste an oolong base (although I’ve never had straight pouchong), and overall it’s refreshing.

Lovely as before. I let it steep longer this time and it produced a sweeter coconut flavor, which is really nice. I thought this would go well with dinner (Indian takeout tonight), and it’s wonderful. This seems to grow on me more the more I drink it, which is a characteristic of my favorite teas, so it may creep up in my rankings over time. I think I’ll resteep this one later.

My Golden Moon order came in today! Several days earlier than I expected, which is a nice surprise. I impulse-bought three full sizes—dangerous, I know, but sweet/fruity oolongs are a pretty good bet for me—as well as their sampler because I’ve heard such good things.

This tea is lovely. It brews up very light green, which might suggest a lighter flavor, but it’s actually nice and strong. At first I get the oolong flavor, which is lighter and more floral than I might go for if this was unflavored. Then the coconut kicks in. Coconut flavors can be iffy for me, because while I love the fruit itself, coconut “flavor” is usually unfortunate. This one is clean and fresh. It finishes off with a more dried coconut/oolong taste. It’s nice and refreshing, and I’d love to try this one both cold-brewed and iced.

This tea makes my taste buds happy. I can definitely tell that they used coconut milk in their recipe instead of flavoring because it doesn’t have that chemical taste that some coconut flavorings have. Combined with the Pouchong, it gives it an almost nutty flavor that rolls down the tastebuds pleasingly.

This is my first coconut tea ever! It isn’t bad but it isn’t what I was expecting at all. I think I may have set my hopes too high. I am a coconut junkie and love all things coconut, and after digging through the discussion board and searching the teas for “coconut” I was hoping that this would be my holy grail. Alas, I think the search will continue. I will try more coconut tea but hold off on rating this one, and see if maybe I grow to love it more once I sample some others. If anyone has any coconut suggestions I would love to hear them!

Another super-subtly flavored tea from Golden Moon, where you must hunt the flavors down (not the other way around) – and you know what, that’s the best part, because it makes you focus on the tea more than usually

So I definitely detect carmel in the aroma, not so much in the flavor. I can taste a little bit of burnt sugar, especially as it cools down a bit. But the key role is for the oolong tea itself here – it is slightly roasted, full bodied, with rich sweetnes (much richer than just sugar-sweet sweetness) to it. Golden Moon never fails! And I still have a whole bunch of samples from them that I haven’t tried yet :O

I’m on the second steeping of this beast. The beast is indeed exotic but at the same time pretty tame. I do feel comfortable with it. The first steeping hinted at caramel, another one yields more fruity notes (citrus). I will definitely resteep it at least once more as I am curious what kind of flavors will emerge then.

I am very happy with my samples from Golden Moon. I will definitely place another order with them, possibly next week so I can take advantage of the free shipping offer they are having until the 16th (I think?). A little pricey but SO worth it.

This tea has almost a peppery, burnt toast flavor that actually tastes quite good with the underlying black tea notes. It is full-bodied tea with a good mouthfeel and low astringency.