Golden Moon Tea

Double honey pear honey honey. I’ve only ever had one pear tea before, and I hated it, so I was really kind of reluctant to try this one. In the end, I’m a bit torn about it, and not for the reasons I expected.

The dry leaves smell really strongly of pear. It’s a heady, fruity, very slightly floral (honey?) fragrance. Just lovely, lovely stuff. At this point, I was still really hesitant, but also a bit hopeful: surely something that smells soooo good couldn’t taste bad, right? The tea smells a lot more like honey and a lot less like pear. Given my prior experience, this was actually encouraging to me, alleviating some of my anxiety.

The first (unsweetened) sip was okay. The honey and pear were there (honey honey pear honey), but so were some bitterness and astringency, of which I’m not a fan. I added my sugar and settled in to enjoy my mug.

Happiness: this tea has replaced my awful pear tea experience. Sadness: Too much honey, not enough pear. This was what surprised me—I actually wanted more pear. Happiness: It’s a pretty pleasant tea, one that I would put in the dessert category. Sadness: the bitterness, while not present throughout, randomly pops up now and again; it’s jarring and mars an otherwise nice experience. Further sadness: this tea’s dry mouth factor is higher than I anticipated. Do not like.

The great thing that came out of this is that I am now willing and looking forward to trying more pear-flavoured teas.

I am SO behind on tasting notes! I think I’ve just been drinking an unusual (for me at least) amount of tea recently, and it’s finally caught up with me. I’ve been doing 2-4 cold brews a day, and this is one from this morning.

Thanks to Nicole for this tea! I really like what I’ve tried from Golden Moon Tea, and I’ve had my eye on this one for a while. I’ve never had a black jasmine tea, though I do have a Jasmine Cream from NMT to try out. Ah, my sample backlog is getting overwhelming! Anyway, this tea has all the ingredients for success. It’s got a really nice kind of malty black base, a rich floral taste from the jasmine, and a wonderful creaminess from the vanilla. In fact, it reminds me of cream soda! Only, you know, without the fizz and a lot less sweet. The black base and the vanilla also tone down the jasmine a lot so it’s not perfume-y or overly floral.

While all the elements are there, it’s missing a little bit of pizazz. Don’t get me wrong, I really like it, but it just doesn’t scream “this is a special tea!” to me. I think it would be nice for an everyday iced tea, though it seems to be a bit expensive for that. I am really digging the cream soda vibes though, it’s a nice way to get a sweet fix without having tons of calories!

It’s become apparent to me that I can’t really tell one black tea from another. Not yet, anyway. This isn’t the best cup of black tea I’ve had, but it’s very nice. Its fragrance is comforting, as the tea smells exactly like what I think when I think black tea. This is a very humble, unassuming tea; it just ambles along, dum dee dum, doing its thing. It’s that A- student that gets her grades by keeping her head down and getting her work done, not by wriggling in her seat with her hand in the air every time the teacher asks a question.

Unlike a lot of people, it seems, I really adore licorice! I think I was probably expecting more of that anise flavor with this one, especially because it has such a strong, pleasant smell in the package.

I’m hitting it with all the allowed re-steepings though. On the subsequent ones, I found the liquorice smell was more noticeable, but the taste of it still isn’t so strong. What I am tasting is nicely sweet on it’s own, and mildly grassy like the other white teas I’ve tasted. Overall, it’s a very light and comforting tea, but the smell does leave me wanting something stronger.

Thank you to Sandy Stith for this sample (and all of the other samples that you sent as well- I look forward to trying them all!)

This is a very light breakfast blend- soft, sweet, honeyed flavor. There’s a brightness to it as well. I wouldn’t say that it’s enough to call it astringent, but bright. I’m also picking up a fruitiness. Figs perhaps? It’s making me think of fig newtons, so figs it is.

It isn’t a very robust tea, so I think it’d be one I’d drink in the afternoon rather than as a breakfast choice. It is quite lovely and something I would definitely drink a lot of :)

I think this is one of those tea types that you will either love or hate. I don’t think that there’s a lot of room for somewhere in between, here. I am in the latter camp. So far, this is the worst tea I’ve ever had.

I was excited about the prospect of trying a completely different, new-to-me kind of tea, and I am still very happy that I got to try it. I’m even happier that I didn’t go out on one of my tea-buying adventures and spend a bunch of money on this; the Golden Moon sampler was more than enough.

I put the water to boil, took out my kitchen scissors, and snipped the end off the packet. There was no need to stick my prodigious proboscis in the packet and inhale deeply—it was like the aroma was just waiting to escape, and within a matter of moments my whole kitchen smelled like a smokehouse. Having no knowledge of lapsang souchong, I was quite taken aback and rather sceptical. Instead of adding my customary demerara sugar to the tea, I actually felt like adding salt. The whole thing was a very strange experience, and I hadn’t even tasted the tea yet.

Well, things only rolled further downhill from there. I took one (unsweetened) sip of the tea and the flavour accurately matched the aroma. I didn’t like it, but I thought I would give it a chance, so I tried a few more sips. In my mind, I was drinking water that had been poured into a mug by way of a bed of coals. This might be the first mug of tea that I couldn’t finish because it made me physically ill. Lesson learned: I do not like lapsang souchong. =)

My first taste of this1 was reminiscent of Lucky Charms marshmallows marinated in oolong. This second taste was a second steep, this time correctly pressing the oolong button on my kettle. The leaves, prior to steeping them a second time, were almost fully unfurled, making themselves quite comfortable in the roomy infuser. This time, the fragrance was not of Lucky Charms marshmallows, but of…cotton candy. The tea itself smelled mostly like the oolong, with faint, sweet undertones. The flavour is a bit hard for me to describe. Adjectives that come to mind include “mature” and “baked,” maybe “layered.” It’s quite nice, really.

1 http://steepster.com/bleepnik/posts/127666

So…I read “green leaves” and pushed the “green” button instead of the “oolong” button. Oops. I’m going to see if I can get a second steep out of this at the oolong temperature and see how that goes. Aaaaanyhoo…

This is, hands down, the oddest tea I’ve tasted thus far. When I opened the packet, my first whiff of the tea was just sweetness, nothing else. I gave it a minute and inhaled again, and this time I could smell the oolong base. The first “eh?” moment came when I steeped the tea: the sweetness all but disappeared from the fragrance; mostly I just smelled the earthy, vegetal fragrance I associate with green teas. The second “eh?” moment came when I took my first (unsweetened) sip: how do you have sugar-caramel flavour without it actually being sweet? I just don’t get how that works, and it made my brain hurt because the taste didn’t match the fragrance. So I went ahead and sweetened it, as I usually do. I’d left out the sugar because I thought the tea was going to be sweet on its own.

It was upon taking a sip of the sweetened tea that I got my third “eh?” moment: Basically, if you take the marshmallows from Lucky Charms cereal and add them to your oolong base, you get this tea.

Odd, right? See, toldja.

After my recent spate of mediocre-to-blech tea tasting experiences, I’d say the universe owed me this. And whoa boy did she deliver. There are loads of other reviews here, from Steepsterites of whom I’m regularly in awe, that dissect this tea, that will tell you all the different flavours and notes you’ll get from it. Whether it’s my lack of experience or my underdeveloped palate, all I can tell you is that this smells like black tea and tastes like very yummy black tea. Note that I steeped it for eight minutes (my tea mug is 16oz.) and there wasn’t even the hint of bitterness. If you’re anything like me, that just might be enough information. =)

(It’s really, really yummy.)

(Really.)

Omg, what a delightful smell! I’m sure this one will be a winner. It smells of sweet coconut. I could just sniff it and be happy :)
But lets steep it… Its yellow, quite light.

It has a similar smell, just less coconut and more green tea. Still delicious.

Tastes good, it’s scented very good with this coconut essence. Sweet, coconut-y and you can taste delicious green tea too. One of the best scented teas I had so far for sure. A perfect desert tea :) Too bad I only had this sampler.

Funny thing is, I’m not even a big fan of coconut ;)

I decided to try this because I wanted to get it out of the way. See, I don’t really like vanilla or mint, so I figured I wouldn’t care much for this. Sometimes when I make such assumptions I’m pleasantly surprised, but not this time. Dry, the tea smells like one of those pinwheel candies, except I can’t quite make out whether we’re talking spearmint or peppermint, here, or a combination of the two. Steeped, the minty fragrance is dulled just a little bit; I’m not able to detect much vanilla, at all. The taste is balanced, though. The very first sip had an odd bitterness to it, but it didn’t reappear. The aftertaste is again a bit odd: neither mint nor vanilla lingers, but suddenly I feel like sweet spots are covering my tongue like glitter. So weird. (The tea is sweetened with demerara sugar, but I didn’t eat or drink anything before this, so my palate should be clean/neutral.)

I’m obviously biased, but I think even if I loved vanilla and mint (in tea), this one wouldn’t be at the top of my short list. Unrelated to this tasting note, I’m also giving this tea growly face because it burned my tongue. Hmph.

It smells and tastes like…black tea. Yep. Just straight-up, run of the mill, black tea. It’s the type of baseline black tea that Mum used to make chai whilst I was growing up. As someone said in an earlier tasting note, it’s like a “way better Lipton.” (Mum used Tetley, but eh, same diff.)

Like using The Fifth Element to demonstrate the benefits of a superior home cinema, I’d use this to demonstrate the benefits of proper loose tea to Lipton and Tetley drinkers: it’s familiar enough that anyone should be able to taste how much better this does the basic tea they’re used to drinking. In spite of its obvious quality, it’s not a tea I’d run out and buy again. As you probably know by now, I like my tea with a little more oomph, a little more flavour. If I had more than a sample of this, I would likely have blended it with something else for my next cup.

My first sencha. Underwhelmed. It smells like run-of-the-mill green tea, both dry and steeped. The flavour, though, I dunno, it tastes almost a very a tiny bit…spoilt? Is that even possible? And it even has a very teensy bit of dry mouth going on, something I don’t generally associate with green tea.

I’m very glad I only had a sample of this. From your reviews, it kinda seems like I mightn’t have been able to find anyone with whom to swap the rest if it were more than a sample.

This episode of Sniff ‘n’ Sip brought to you by…Lemon Pledge. For that fresh, lemony scent throughout your home.

This was my first Earl Grey. And a very fine first it was, indeed. Fragrance, dry: Basically, I wanted to strap the packet onto my nose like a horse’s feed bag. Goodness, me, does this smell good. So refreshing. Fragrance, steeped: More of the same, really; I almost burned my nose. Oops.

Flavour: Just as good as the fragrance and exactly as expected. No false advertising here!

Verdict: More, please. I have too much tea to justify buying this right now, but it’s definitely been added to the shopping list.

Sometimes I like to read what you say about a tea before I say anything. Sometimes I’m inspired by your words, sometimes I’m inspired to completely disagree with you. =) Sometimes I just borrow some of your vocabulary to avoid getting repetitive. In this case, I gotta tell ya, I’m feeling a bit bad about having read your reviews, because I’m afraid I’m going to pull the average down on this one. I’m really glad you love the tea; I just wish I did, too.

Reminder: I’m a tea-ophyte and especially new to black tea. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a Darjeeling and a Ceylon; until recently, I didn’t know there was one. I read some of your reviews talking about flavour profiles and notes of this and that, as if you were describing a fine wine1, and honestly, I feel like my senses must be dulled or something. =) This smells like black tea. Molasses? Caramel? Sweetness? None of that. About the most nuanced I can get about this tea is that it smelled to me like “green” black tea. This makes sense, if indeed it’s picked from land bordering a rainforest. I do agree that that “green” smells and tastes somewhat roasted.

I like strong flavours and I like flavour infusions. While my most recent foray into black tea (the Nepalese afternoon tea2) left me wanting more, this Sinharaja just made me want to get through it so I could try a different one. It’s not bad for what it is, I think, it’s just not my cuppa, so to speak.

1 I don’t get wine, either. It all tastes like grape juice + rubbing alcohol to me. =)

2 http://steepster.com/bleepnik/posts/126825

There’s nothing very special about the fragrance of this tea. Dry, it smelled like black tea, but it smelled really fresh. Steeped, it smelled like more of the same, with a hint of floral undertones. I didn’t get a whiff of sandalwood at all, though, or of honey. So overall, pleasant, but not amazing.

Which is why the flavour kind of bowled me over. The floral notes became more apparent and made this a really yummy, yummy cuppa. Sadly, I made the mistake of letting it cool a bit, at which point I tasted very, very slight bitterness that I didn’t like. Other than that, it was great.

Just a quick update to my previous tasting note1 on this tea. I fell asleep before I finished it, so it was cool when I woke up (not cold, just cool). Turns out, it’s quite nice this way.

1 http://steepster.com/bleepnik/posts/126609

Doulton ‘s review1 of this tea pretty much sums up my feelings. I had to really work to enjoy this. I opened the packet and inhaled. The fragrance is light, fresh, green, very subtle. Not green like freshly cut grass, but green like young. When steeped, the fragrance is a bit stronger, but not much. The flavour is like the fragrance. I felt kind of bad drinking it, really, as if by leaving it in my cupboard, it’d continue to mature: so, little tea, what would you like to be when you grow up? I’m thinking my palate’s just not sophisticated enough for this one.

1 http://steepster.com/Doulton/posts/39590

tl;dr: I don’t really like vanilla, but I quite liked this tea. Therefore, if you really like vanilla, this tea may leave you rather…dissatisfied.

Upon cutting open the packet, my first whiff was of a vanilla milkshake. I couldn’t smell any tea at all. Then, I took another whiff, and thought, oh, hey, there’s the tea! I have very low tolerance for caffeine, so I don’t drink black tea very frequently. For me, its fragrance is quite a treat.

The powerful vanilla fragrance died down quite a bit upon steeping the tea, to where it was comfortably sharing olfactory real estate with the base tea. Very pleasant.

As always, I took a sip untainted by milk or sweetener, and it was okay. Then I added some sugar, and discovered that I (unexpectedly) like this tea! It brought out both flavours equally. I do agree with some other folks who stated that the tea is a bit weak, not hitting the palate with enough oomph and not really lingering, either. I was expecting a heavier sip, especially with the added sugar, but it remained very light. Now, as I’m not a fan of vanilla (except ice cream and milkshakes), I might have had an entirely different complaint had the flavour been stronger and longer-lasting. I’m kind of a pain that way. =]

All in all, I’m happy with the vanilla/base tea balance here. It’s a bit too light, and I would like to turn up both the bass and the treble just a little bit, so for that I deduct some marks.

Opened the bag and inhaled. Mint and gunpowder smokiness, but pretty light on the smoke. Ignored the instructions to pour boiling water over it and steeped for four minutes in 175-degree water.

I drink my tea sweetened, but do like to take the first 1-3 sips “untainted” by milk or sugar. In my first (unsweetened) sip and in every (sweetened) sip thereafter, I felt that the smokiness in the tea’s fragrance was absent from its flavour. And while I tasted the mint that seemed a combination of peppermint and spearmint, I didn’t feel any of the “coolness” with which mint generally hits the palate…until I swallowed. Then, to my surprise, the coolness spread in my tummy; I kind of felt like there were good little microbial soldiers going to work setting things right in there. While it felt like good things were happening in my tummy, my mouth wasn’t nearly as happy (that sounded so much better in my head, but you know what I mean): I’m beginning to think that “dry mouth” is a gunpowder thing. The gunpowder taste may not be strong in this tea, but it’s a champ at dry mouth. =(

I’m not really a fan of mint tea, so I probably should’ve saved this one for Mum, but it’s late, way past my bedtime, and whenever I blindly reached for a tea packet I kept coming up with black/caffeinated teas that wouldn’t sit well with me right now, so I just went for it. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. It’s kind of uneventful, really. I probably wouldn’t buy it, but if I had more of it, I’d drink it.

My first gunpowder. I opened the packet and inhaled. Hmm, smoky, I thought. I steeped. I inhaled again. Smoky, like roasted grass. Or…cigarettes? That was fleeting, and very strange. It sort of put me off the whole thing, but I carried on. The flavour is earthy, not as smoky as the fragrance. There’s a wee bit of bitterness, way back near my throat. And hoo-ee, does it leave my mouth dry. I drank about a litre of water after drinking my tea.

Is this the way it’s supposed to be? I dunno, I guess I’ll find out when I’ve tried some more gunpowders.

Smelled delicious! Like roasted coconut. I can taste the coconut on every drink, and it’s a very fluid and even taste.

Going to use the re-steepings and make some iced tea out of it, since I see so many people say it’s wonderful.

Maybe too subtle for me! I did notice the ginger taste becoming more noticeable with each drink, which was nicely curious. Loved the slight and spicy ginger aftertaste.

Second steeping: done at 195F at 3 minutes again. Much more distinct flavor this time, and I can taste the ginger from the start. Definitely not too strong – it feels like a very comforting tea overall.

Thank you to Nicole for sending me this! It smells so good in the bag. It’s a bit stronger in vanilla though. As soon as I poured in into my cup I got a HUGE vanilla smell in my face. Oh it was so nice. The taste is mostly vanilla with a hint of jasmine aftertaste. It’s creamy and floral. Very delicious! I think I might have to order more for myself!