Golden Moon Tea

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #28
As the Japanese would say, Aaa, natsukashii….Ah, how nostalgic.
Drinking this reminds me of my time in Japan, where for two years I basically drank either sencha, hojicha, ooloncha, or a combination thereof in the case of some of the more terrifying bottled iced teas. Before I lived in Japan I hadn’t had much experience with green teas at all, so this is basically the taste I have come most to associate with green tea.

The leaves were a dark green and looked slightly crumbled. The taste has only a hint of the vegetal. It doesn’t have the sweet note that the green tea had. No candied pineapples here! Instead, there’s a somewhat buttery note which I, personally, prefer. Or maybe I’m just so used to it that I think I prefer it.

While there is a comfortable feeling of familiarity around this tea, I don’t think I really NEED it around. Still, for the moment, if I were to get any of the Golden Moon greens, it would be this one.

Golden Moon sample No. 14 of 31.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t be in a position to taste this today, but I had to sequester myself at home today to devote myself to finishing a project for work rather than go into the office, and that put a sort of crimp in the day that had me feeling out of sorts, so I decided to give my latest random pick a try over lunchtime and see if it cheered me up.

And boy, did it ever. I have gone from feeling peeved at how my day was unfolding to feeling lucky that such decadence was at hand to improve my mood. And this after having a not so great experience with an earlier Golden Moon oolong. I had been worried that I wouldn’t like this one that much, either. I’ve never been so glad to be wrong!

Tightly curled dry leaves that smell of — crackerjacks! Or maybe those cube shaped caramel candies in the clear plastic individual wrappers. They smell of this, and nothing else I could detect. It’s a delicious, strong scent. It brews to a pale yellow, clear liquor.

When I steeped them the first time, I didn’t get so much caramel in the aroma, though it was there. What I got more of was the butter of green oolong. So I wondered what I’d taste.

And on the very first steep — yum. It’s caramel. Not overly sweet, not overly strong, but definitely caramel. And soothing. There’s butter as well, and a slightly vegetal flavor, but for a green oolong it’s leaning toward nutty/toasty. I suspect because of the caramel, which could easily turn it that way.

Second steep: 3 min. More sugar! The flavor deepens to reveal more sugar and more caramel. The sugar has the quality of the sugar from a dried fruit, which I suppose could be dates.

Third steep: 4 min. A step back on the sugar, though it is still there. The caramel is as well. There is less butter, and less vegetal flavor, and more toasty nuttiness.

Fourth steep: 5 min. The sugar and caramel is mostly gone, but the buttery, nutty taste remains, though it has weakened some. I fear a fifth steep would be disappointing so I am quitting while I’m ahead.

I really like the feeling of something suggestive of candy that is, at the same time, so obviously not candy. That’s why I feel so decadent having this and why I am going to have to order more.

There’s no heaviness to it like what you could get from eating actual caramels, nothing to stick in your teeth. There’s no feeling of guilt afterwards, or bloatedness, or a sugar high or precipitous fall. But it gives (at least the illusion) of the same serotonin-inducing comfort one could get from eating handfuls of caramels.

And I needed that today. Two thumbs up.

Golden Moon Tea Sample # 15 or thereabouts, selected at random

I was not surprised to see that other people have not had a fantastic experience with this tea. I thought the aroma of the dry buds, or pearls, was faint. The tea itself was virtually tasteless! I did a second brewing paying excruciatingly careful attention to time and temperature and amount of water, but again came up rather empty. I don’t know if the sample size is too small to match 4 ounces of water or if my tongue, spoiled by the strength of Lapsang Souchongs is just not willing to accept too much subtlety.

I would not buy this but I would try it again.

Amazing, light, creamy coconut! Check out my blog for a full review…

http://bit.ly/qaTVvh

I absolutely love this one. Slightly sweet, creamy coconut in flavor, a touch silky. Just divine. I am running low and drinking is sparingly but I will be keeping this one on my permanent list.

A delicious as usual. A yummy way to end the day. I just love the toasted coconut flavor of this gorgeous tea.

I have said it before and I will it again…Coconut Bread and Coconut Pouchong…AWESOME!!!

Upon additional sipping I just have to say this tea really makes me HAPPY! :-)

OMG!!! I can see why this tea won the award for best iced tea at the Tea Expo. Wow just amazing. The flavor balance was perfect. The coconut had a toasted feel the pouchong had just the right flavor for a match made in heaven. I will have this time and time again.

5-1-10. I just made this tea hot and it is still fantastic. I am in love with this tea.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #27:
So in my tea cupboard right now, I have Rishi Tea’s Maghreb Mint, and Adagio’s Casablanca Twists, both of which are riffs on the classic Moroccan Mint theme. I have yet to try the Maghreb Mint because I forgot I had it for a really long time and it got into a corner of my tea cupboard which is organized according to the highly scientific “shoving things in and leaving them there” principle. Now that I’ve found it again, I’ll be sure and try it! At some point.

In any case, I am trying to think if at any point I have had the original Moroccan Mint or if I went straight to the variations, and I am forced to come to the conclusion that, even if I have, I don’t remember it. So thank you, Golden Moon, for giving the opportunity to try the theoretical baseline for these other teas.

Obviously, the dominant taste here is mint. In fact, it’s mostly mint, I’m not getting much of the underlying green at all. It becomes a little more dominant as it cools, although it probably helps that I am done with my super spicy, super basily dinner. The stronger green taste makes the whole thing very vegetal, not sure if I’m a fan. Either way, given that I have a giant thing of straight spearmint, a normal sized think of Casablanca Twist AND a pouch of the Maghreb Mint, I am thinking there is just not much room for this in my life, even if I did like it.

Well that’s weird, the sent is more of grass. I was expecting a sent of ginger… I choose this tea today since my stomach is a little off.

Ok, where is the ginger? The taste of ginger that I’ve come to expect in anything labeled ginger is not here. (Now, I don’t really care for the taste of ginger anyway but how do I know it will work if I don’t taste it…)

This is a very mild tea. There is a hint of grass but otherwise, I’m just getting white tea. Although as it cools, the scent of ginger is there, ever so slight.

Oh, there is the ginger in the aftertaste, very much not strong. I have to say, if this tea works as well as the intense ginger ones at calming a stomach, I prefer this!

Wow, the second brew is so different. It smells distinctly of ginger and has a stronger ginger taste.

Golden Moon Sampler Number #13 or 14 (The numbers do not matter so much now because I picked out two or three of these to send to Angrboda!)

I liked this tea, but I was not blown away by it. I’ve had some first and second flush Darjeelings that are more memorable; I don’t think that this tea will be memorable. I don’t want to imply that it’s not memorable; drinking it was a good time. But I can find other Darjeelings that I would invest in before this.

Am I becoming a tea snob? I don’t really want to be, but if you drink enough tea willy-nilly one heads towards the realm of making discriminations and being discerning. Golden Moon has done better teas, in my opinion. I also would like to say that their sample package is a brilliant idea and has been one of my best tea money investments. I hope that more tea companies follow this lead in terms of offering a lot of samples without a huge financial commitment. When I am done with this adventure in sampling, I am almost certainly going to place an order.

Sipdown no. 7 of 2022 (no. 657 total).

I’m now to the point where the lowest rated black tea in my cupboard is an 84. Not a bad place to be.

I’m on winter break — the company is shut down for a little more than a week, and I have no plans to go anywhere. I’ve been spending a lot of time going through stuff to throw or give away in anticipation of starting our addition and remodel in March.

I was reminded that I still have a ton more tea than any sane person needs, so I thought I’d start making an effort to make a dent in what is left.

There was just enough of this left for a four cup pot, and I enjoyed it — the rich, malty part in the description is spot on and while I’m not 100% sure what is in it, I think there’s likely some yunnan golden tips in there which gives a nice character without any unpleasant bite.

Golden Moon sample No. 13 of 31. Have been eyeing this since I pulled it out of the basket a couple of days ago and waiting for work from home Wednesday when I have all my necessary tea accoutrements near me to give it a go.

I’m pretty sure this is my first Irish Breakfast. So I don’t have anything to compare it to on that score. Also, I think this one should probably steep a bit longer than I steeped it for full effect. That said…

They weren’t kidding about “the beautiful golden tips highlighted against deep black leaves.” Though I’d say the leaves were more brown than black and straight in shape, the tips are huge and an amazing contrast in color as well as in texture. The nose of the dry leaves is roasty, even slightly smoky, and seriously malty in a Guinness Stout sort of way. I am guessing that that is what characterizes Irish Breakfast, though I haven’t yet looked it up.

The aroma after steeping is sweet, sugary, definitely malty and interestingly complex. Maybe I’m just suggestible today, but they told me there were cherries and I found cherries, they told me there were prunes and I found prunes, they told me there was honey and I found honey. I didn’t really find hazlenut, though there was something I could call nutty. In addition, I detected a chocolate note and a caramel note. The liquor is a very lovely deep tawny red-orange-brown.

The flavor is smooth, sweet but not too sweet, with some deep, fruity notes. I definitely tasted prunes, which made me smile. The maltiness isn’t as great in the taste as in the aroma, but it is definitely the backdrop. I’d like to steep it stronger and see what that does. I was a little distracted by work (heavens to betsy!) as I was drinking, but since this is definitely tasty enough to enjoy again, I’m looking forward to exploring its mysteries further.

If breakfast blends are to tea as black is to shoes, soon my cupboard will be mimicking my closet. I don’t even remember how many pairs of black shoes I have. [hangs head in shame]

Another gorgeously fragranced Golden Moon tea! Those people are good. There’s vanilla up front, of course, but there’s also this lovely suggestion of milk chocolate in the background. The jasmine comes to life in the steep, as the vanilla mellows out a bit. After around 2-3 minutes, the resulting brew is a gorgeous amber brown color (a VERY welcome change from my earlier tea today, which was a scary, medicinal yellow). The sample pouch calls for a 3-5 minute infusion, but I’m erring on the side of caution – I’ve had enough bitter tea for one day!

Unsweetened, you get a lovely, soft mouth feel, not unlike the sensation of a really good piece of chocolate melting away. Jasmine up front, with a vanilla-y wash on the end. Definitely another one I’m saving the pouch from, so I can sniff it..

Sweetening this has the same interesting reversal of taste that the Coconut Chai did. Golden Moon, you tricky little people, how do you DO that?? The scent of the vanilla jumps back to life after sweetening, and the tastes kind of flip flop, but not entirely. It may just be my nose playing tricks on me, but I definitely get more of the vanilla up front in the sip, which washes into the jasmine, and back to the vanilla again.

I have no idea how Golden Moon does it, but they do it well. Another incredibly tasty, and
satisfying, cup! This is going perfectly with a babka one of my co-workers made (which is
more like a drier, lighter hot cross bun!) Yum. =) Can’t wait to see what a second steep does!!

After trying to pick a tea randomly, and only getting greens and blacks. I just decided to go for a white tea from the golden moon sampler.

This tea has been tempting me for a while, but I’ve held off since the description says it is “enchanting with a touch of honey,” which i dont have any of right now!

The smell is lovely and melon-y, and the color is so delicious looking as well. Can’t wait, here goes! Wow, so subtle, yet so delicious. This is a flavored tea done right. It’s making me feel foolish for drinking Teavana’s “flavored whites” for so long. The melon is making such a sweet tea, and the taste of the white tea still lingers. But this cup is oh so subtle and utterly fantastic.

Really, this tea is absolutely amazing, I think i’m going to finish it so fast, and I wish I had more than a sample size. This is going on my shopping list, immediately!

This morning I felt The Force (i.e. __Morgana__’s tasting note from last night) compelling me to try this tea. When I popped open the packet I was really surprised. There was so little tea inside. I really debated on whether or not to stick to the parameters I’d set for this entire sampler (one bag = the same big-arsed cup). I’d tried spliting up the first few samplers and then gave up since I don’t have a super-accurate way to measure and really wanted to give the teas an equal chance. Well, I stuck with my brainless parameters.

You might want to get ready for my crazy scent-association-o-rama: The packet smelled like a piece of 2X4 that had been cut with a somewhat dull circ saw. Not the burned aspect – but after the wood cools and you get that smell. Kinda woody, but there’s something more to it.

The first steep was really unremarkable. It tastes like if you took a black ceylon tea and removed all the black tea and replaced it with genero-green. Green Drink. And I’ll second __Morgana__’s “Pineapple? Wah?” Nope. It’s genero-sweet that I’m beginning to associate with Ceylon. I actually tried to use the power of suggestion on myself and would think of random sweet things: caramel, honey, and even strawberries and thought that I should be tasting “subtle notes” of each one. Yeah, it pretty much worked. So I’ll say it: “subtle notes of candied pineapple my hiney!”

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a pleasant tea. I did steep it about a minute and a half longer on the second go around. It did give it a teeny-tiny bit more oomph, but not enough to make me want to purchase a larger amount of this tea. NE

Golden Moon sample No. 12 of 31.

Fate apparently wanted me to drink this one, too, right away — because I drew it out of the basket on the heels of another green and so happened to have the water in the Zo still at 175. (The next one to come out after this was Irish Breakfast, so we’ll be waiting a while to drink that one…)

I’m sure this is the first Ceylon green tea I’ve had, which is interesting in and of itself.

The dry leaves aren’t as deep green as other greens I’ve had. They’re a little browner, with some that almost reach yellow, even. They smell a little toasty. They seem to have some oolong-like characteristics, except in shape where they are long and for the most part not curly though some are almost balled up.

Liquor is a very pale yellow green and has a sweet, vegetal aroma that is similar to that of Chinese greens I have had, but less. By which I mean it suggests a light-bodied tea. Which is, in fact, borne out by the drinking.

In taste, this tea has less depth of flavor than the Teavana Three Kingdoms Mao Feng, which I found lacking in depth. Less vegetal, and not particularly buttery, though it does have some sweetness. I was looking for the subtle candied pineapple and didn’t find it. Candied pineapple in my experience is extremely sugary and that is not this tea. I did, however, taste something that if I stretched (reach out with your feelings, Luke) suggested fresh pineapple, but ratcheted down several major increments from the best fresh, juicy, sweet, pineapple.

I’m glad I got a chance to try something other than a Chinese or Japanese green tea. I probably would not have sought out a Ceylon green. I don’t like this well enough to order more, though.

Sipdown no. 7 of March 2019 (no. 42 of 2019 total, no. 530 grand total).

Looking back at my original note on this, it’s clear to me I was trying very hard to taste things in this tea that would make me like it and also make me feel as though I understood white tea. And maybe I did taste all of those things and all these years later, the tea has lost flavor which explains why I didn’t taste those things in the tea I just sipped down as a take it to work tea for the past week or so.

If I was rating this now based on my most recent experience, I’d rate it somewhere in the 60s because I really taste very little in this that makes it distinguishable from hot water.

But I hesitate because I can’t say for sure that when I wrote that first note, the tea I tasted was fresh and that made a difference.

Anyway, it’s gone now.

Golden Moon sample No. 11 of 31. Plucked from the basket at random.

I may have used too much water in steeping these leaves. I had about enough for .9 cups in the sample. I played a little with water levels over the course of several steeps.

The dry leaves are long, and silvery green. Snow seems an apt description; it’s like you’re seeing the green of the leaves through a light dusting of white. I didn’t notice any fuzziness to them but I was a little rushed as it was right before dinner so I didn’t get to do a relaxed examination of the leaves. For me it wasn’t an obvious snow, certainly nothing near Christmas tree flocking. Rather, it was all in gradations of color.

When I first started with this one, I thought this was going to be the story of the tea that wasn’t there. The dry leaves don’t have a strong nose. It took a while to get my olfactory muscle memory working enough to detect something describable. When I finally could smell something I could put into words, the words that came were “salty green.” Like the plants in a marsh leading into an ocean. The saltiness also had a sharpness. I know this will sound weird, but it reminded me of the smell of the brown powder in Lipton Onion Soup Mix.

The liquor was virtually clear. It was only a slight green tinge that kept this from being the invisible tea. Aroma-wise, also nothing very strong. Dew, maybe pollen. The borderline between green and floral.

The taste was similarly subtle but surprisingly complex. It took several steeps for me to get a handle on and appreciate the taste. I took it through four steeps. The complexity gradually started to show itself; at the end of four steeps, I wished I had more of this so I could follow where it led.

Here is what I tasted, in no particular order: a light film of butter, a grainy nuttiness (like the kind you find in “Grape Nuts”), a little whiff of salt, a sweet spicy/salty flavor that reminded me of sauteed leeks at times and at others of sauteed scallions. Then I read the notes here and saw macademia nuts. Yeah, I can see that too; it’s a sweet, mild, buttery, salty nuttiness that I associate with those.

After steeping, the leaves looked the color of overcooked asparagus or green beans, a faded olive green. The silver was gone, but they were still pretty.

So yeah, I want to give this another try. It’s surprisingly interesting and even a little challenging, and like good literature, I think there is a lot more there than I found on a first “read.”

My first tasting from my GM sampler pack!
So the “mushroomy” taste I got from the Keemun, I got it here too. So maybe this is what they call a “caramel” finish? It has the same aroma and smooth round mouth feel to it. So I’m concluding that it is a caramel, not a mushroom. I know, vastly different in the mind, but to my nose and tongue (and the memories that they have) it is the same. The tea also has a sweetness to it, a richness and depth to the flavor, not much of the berry note that was in the description. It’s yummy for sure, again not what I might go with every day. But it’s definitely getting better and better every time I taste this mushroomy caramel thing!

I decided to bite the bullet and try my second-ever pu-erh after having such a negative first experience. I read the little blurb on the sample packet and immediately my imagination took off for the whole duration of the steep. It’s “aged in secret caves?” Visions of the opening scene from Indiana Jones & the Raiders of the Lost Ark played in my mind. But this time the handsome adventurer is trying to steal a bag of this tea instead of an idol. And then my mind shifted gears and I thought of Batman sipping a cup of this tea. Yeah. I have issues.

Back to reality!

The packet smelled kinda musky/earthy. When I was adding the hot water I got an unexpected whiff of french fries. No, not fries, but of the hot oil used. Like when my brother used to work at a fast food chain in high school he’d come home with that greasy smell – that’s the smell I’m talking about. I put the teapot’s lid on and said a little prayer for my palate.

The aroma from the cup was like a barnyard after a light rain. Still not the greatest fragrance, but eons better than the Adagio sample I had that was “dirty fishtank.” It’s the taste that sort of took me aback. It’s so different than what I was expecting. Still not my favorite, but it was much more interesting to me. I spent the first half of the cup just totally absorbed in trying to figure out how to put this taste into words. Like licking a cave’s wall? Making some black tea out of water dripping from a stalactite? Licking a shag carpeting from the ’70s? And where on earth was that sweetness coming from?

Halfway through the cup I sort of got distracted by other things and so came back to it where it’s almost completely cooled off. This is where it really gets weird for me. I have trouble drinking Bigelow’s Constant Comment because it reminds me of my maternal grandmother who passed away when I was a young girl. My mom assures me that she drank it even though I can’t recall her drinking any tea, but in my mind that tea is part of my grandmother. This tea reminds me of my maternal grandfather. He lived much longer and never drank tea. But my lord. I’m drinking this and it’s rather unsettling. This tea is part of my grandfather. I can’t explain it further than that.

I’m actually looking forward to trying a second steep. I never thought that I’d say that about a pu-erh. I will edit to add something if I feel that it affects my initial note. I really don’t know if I’ll purchase this tea. I have a newfound curiosity regarding pu-erhs as a result of it so it gets a surprising NE from me.

ETA: Second steep was more earthy and less…mineraly than the first. I just added a minute to the steep. I’ll probably sample some more pu-erhs, but this one is a possible future purchase.

Golden Moon Tea Sampler #11, selected at random

I do like melon and was looking forward to this tea very much. It is not disappointing. I brewed only about 3.5 ounces of water because I didn’t want to flavour to get watered down too much. Am I the only person who uses a couple of tablespoons of loose-leaf tea for a decent sized mug?

In any event, I think I got the tea/water ratio spot-on; the water was boiled and then cooled somewhat (although I don’t know to what precise degree) and I set the timer for 4 minutes (Golden Moon advises 2-4 minutes).

So….I’m most certainly going to put this on my list for a “treat tea”. It’s a bit delicate for a morning tea and probably a bit costly for an everyday tea, but this is the first of my Golden Moon samples where I know that I will have to purchase the tea. I’ll wait to see what else becomes a “must”. This melon’s divine!

I’m finally getting to the part of the GM sampler where it’s tea that either doesn’t intrigue me or that I’m dreading. I never thought that a Jasmine tea would be part of either of those categories, but here I am and there it is.

This was a much better experience than GM’s Jasmine Pearls. The packet smelled pleasant enough (yup, it’s jasmine) and not once did a waft of “tootsie roll” happen whilst I poured the tea into the cup. Hooray! But I did sense its presence sort of hovering in the background waiting to spring it’s candy-trap-o-doom. That never happened, but that possible threat kept me from truly enjoying my two steeps.

On both steeps the tea aspect was pretty unremarkable. I really could not taste it. It was like I’d steeped a variety of jasmine that has a slightly sweeter aspect. No tea in it. And as it cooled it just bacame more jasminey. I think that it might indeed make a good iced tea (as the packet asserted), but I’m not willing to purchase more in order to find out. M

Steep Information:
Amount: 2.5 tsp
Water: 2 zarafina cups
Tool: Zarafina black-loose-medium
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: campfire
Steeped Tea Smell: campfire, sweet
Flavor: sweet smoke, black tea
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: black tea
Liquor: translucent orange-brown

MilitiaJim was a little excited to have some tea, and grabbed a random Golden Moon sampler pack, so I don’t have pictures of the loose leaf.

The reason I do not like lapsang souchong is not the flavor, but the constant fear and anxiety they give me – I keep looking for the fire and panicking that we need to evacuate.

Overall the tea is a sweet smoky smooth black tea with little astringency.

Resteep: Zarafina black-loose-strong = a very weak cup of black tea with smoky hints

Images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/04/golden-moon-tea-loose-leaf-black-tea.html