Golden Moon Tea

So I’ve read so much on here about this tea and couldn’t wait to try it. I haven’t really been craving black teas since it’s starting to warm up here in TX but this morning is dreary and yucky after last nights rain. So I decided to pull the trigger and go for Sinharaja this morning.

The smell in the dry leaf was just tea smelling to me. Steeped it and took a taste while it was still hot and you probably are going to think I’m crazy but when I went to take my first sip I smelled tomatoes and tasted tomatoes and now I can’t stop thinking tomatoes as I sip this cuppa. I also get slight maltiness which I love and I find no astringency which is also a good thing.

It’s a smooth tasting ceylon I do enjoy this cup and if I find some other GM’s that I like as much as this one in my sampler I will order this one along with the others. Oh and BTW I’m not picking up on any of the berry flavors that is mentioned on the package but I am also not using milk or sugar just drinking it plain as I always do!

I’ve never had gunpowder tea before but the description on the packet sounded great. I really like smokey black teas so I thought this had potential…

The dry tea smelt like burnt green tea leafs to me. After steeping, the tea smelt more like cigarette smoke then the smoke of a fire. (By the way, cigarette smoke is one of the worst smells in the world to me). So, now I’m hoping that the taste is spectacular or I’m not going to have time to brew more tea to take to work with me today.

Oh! As I’ve typed this the tea has cooled a bit and the smell now has more of a green tea scent. There is hope! Ok, not great but the tea tastes of a green tea with bitter aftertaste. It’s not the bitter I’m use to though, a different one.

So this isn’t great and I wouldn’t buy it but I don’t have to dump it at least.

I had this again very recently in both a cold version and a hot, and I believe I gave it short shrift when I first tasted it. If you like coconut, this is a very good way to experience that flavor without it tasting fake, or off, or otherwise weird. The coconut in this blend is none of those things and I stand by my recent hypothesis that pouchong is a particularly good delivery vehicle for flavors in tea.

Bumping the rating by a whopping 10 points!

Golden Moon Sampler No. 5 of 31, selected at random.

Wow, back to back selection of the teas Ewa said she was dreading. [Twilight Zone Music]

I’m also dreading this one, not because I don’t like coconut, but because when I looked up Pouchong I learned that it is between a green tea and an oolong. I’ve only had one flavored oolong which was good, but I’ve never met a flavored green tea that I really really liked, with the exception of the Samovar Moorish Mint. I really wanted to like this one. It seems as though it has many fans, so I was hopeful as I started out.

The dry leaves are medium length, twisty, a dark to medium green with yellow highlights and smell like toasted coconut. It’s like someone put a maccaroon in this tea! (I heart maccaroons, so now I’m even more hopeful.) There is also a pronounced floral note. I looked at the ingredients to make sure there wasn’t a flower scent in there as well, but if there is it isn’t listed.

My first steep didn’t go particularly well. I decided to make this in a small teapot, and I thought I’d use just the amount of water that I’ve been using in my tastings of these samples — but that amount of water wasn’t sufficient to cover the leaves. So I had to add a bit more. I am concerned that it was too much. The liquor was a very pale yellowish color, almost colorless, and the aroma and flavor were buttery with a hint of coconut but not a great deal of depth to the flavor.

For the second steep, I used a Finum filter and steeped in the glass. This definitely made a difference in strength. The color was deeper; still pale, but very definitely yellow. The aroma was milky/buttery, floral and toasty/maccaroony.

The first, too-watery tasting made the buttery note primary, and a little on the weak side. But the second is much more satisfactory. Yes! I can taste coconut! It’s a mild, mellow flavor, but it is there. And now I’m kicking myself for not getting this right on the first steep as I can only imagine it should have been a far more accessible flavor the first time through.

I’m thinking I have to order more of this and keep working at it until I find the steeping sweet spot. If and when I do, I expect this will be extraordinary and deserve additional points.

Dear chai, it has been far too long since we’ve met. Now that our paths have crossed again, I wonder if it will be the same or not.

Steeped with rock sugar, added a splash of milk. It has been way too long since I’ve had a tea with milk! The smell is so wonderful, and so blatantly chai. The cinnamon definitely adds great smell making me even more excited to try this tea.

This definitely has a great chai flavor. It almost is too subtle though, but I’m sure I steeped it the right amount. The cinnamon flavor is great, and just all the spices make this a very flavorful cup. What’s really odd is the aftertaste. It’s almost bitter, but not quite, almost like gunpowder. Oh wait, wikipedia tells me that kashmiri chai uses gunpowder tea as a base—no wonder! I’m still not used to the taste of gunpowder tea, making this cup slightly disappointing.

Aside from the gunpowder-y aftertaste this is really a great cup. I don’ know if I would buy this again, but it definitely reminds me how much I miss having chai around (even though I’ve only drank it out of bags before)

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #21:
Guys, I think there’s something wrong with my tastebuds. I’m getting…chocolate from this?

Let me start at the beginning, as usual, I drew this out randomly. I was pretty pleased because while out grocery shopping I had picked up a thermometer for frying that I am going to attempt to use to measure the temperature of my water. Yes, I am cheap. I’m a graduate student, this should not be surprising.

When I opened up the sample packet, I got melon right away. I marveled at the giant-ass leaves for a while but then got down to business. When I poured in the water, that’s when it began. The smell became pretty vegetal, but I was also catching whiffs of, yes, chocolate.

I did a two minute steep for my first cup and then brought it up to 3.5 minutes for subsequent cups. The first cup was…wow! Despite the smell this doesn’t taste vegetal at all! It’s light and sweet, and totally melony. Honeydew, I’d say. But I could be wrong, I don’t eat melon THAT often.

But there was still a problem. I was still getting chocolate! At the same time as melon. W. T. F.

Second cup, the longer steeping time has allowed the tea itself to come forward a bit more, and I am no longer getting the weird chocolate flashes. There is an undertone of, I guess fermentation that I think other people have likened to liquor, but it makes me think of overripe fruit more. I think the combination of the sweetness of the tea and the hint of fermentation was somehow combining to give me the idea of chocolate, don’t as me why. Maybe I haven’t had chocolate for too long and have forgotten how it’s really supposed to taste. Clearly a trip to the candy store is required.

But enough about me being weird. Let’s talk about the tea! I quite like it, but I’m not sure I like it enough to buy more of it. I am pretty much meh on melon, so I don’t know if this tea will have legs once the novelty wears off. I suspect it will not. Still, I give it a definite “maybe.” ;)

Realized that I needed to reintroduce black tea into my world — especially on freezing cold mornings. Just a nice black tea. I am noticing some more astringency this time around, but it could be because of not having a whole lot of control over the prep of it here at work. Plus I’m only on my second cup. NE

Ahh…I totally needed this today. This tea just gets me into a zen-like state at work (and I’m having to do a split shift today: blech). So on my extended two hour “lunch break” I’ve had several steeps of this gentle black tea. I’m getting less of the Sandlewood fragrance today, but that’s fine. NE

I received my order of this (along with their Sugar Caramel Oolong and English Breakfast) yesterday — and I totally did a happy dance. At work. In front of my tea-hating boss who just rolled her eyes.

Ah, just perfect for a chilly gray afternoon. I’m starting to get the tea-warm-fuzzies again. Huzzah! TG

I think that this may be the first black tea that I’ve added to my shopping list after trying a sample! For lovers of black tea I could imagine that this would be pretty boring, but for me I loves it. This is what I think I’ve always imagined a basic black tea should taste like.

Smelling the sample packet all I could think of was “it’s a black tea.” The smell of the cup at first was “black tea with maybe a teeny-tiny hint of floral or honey.” I know, my descriptive powers are beyond compare.

For me, the money’s in the taste. Whatever type of tea is its base doesn’t have that astringent tongue-killingness that I’d begun to associate with most black teas. It’s smooth and there’s a natural sweetness to it that I adore. I think “nectar” is right on in the description. I can sense honey, but as for lotus and sandalwood my tastebuds do a collective “Wah?” I’m dying to read the other tasting notes to see if I can start to have a better understanding of what I like/don’t like in regards to black teas. TG

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #7 selected at random

I was glad to select a robust tea. It’s too early in the day to go in for an airy-fairy white muskmelon with breath of lilac type of tea. This English Breakfast did not disappoint me. It’s full and rich and the blend is a lovely combination. I would consider making a full purchase of this. I’d like to have a breakfast tea in stock aside from my beloved Lapchang Souchongs to offer visitors or in case my taste shifts—-and taste, as we know, can be fickle.

I’ll see if this tea calls to me in the next several weeks. Overall, a hearty recommendation.

Mmm…I do love a good smoky lapsang souchong, and Golden Moon delivers on that with this tea. The dry leaves have an intensely smoky sweet aroma…almost bacon-y. Almost. I usually mix lapsang souchong with an oolong to get a more rounded mouth feel, but I didn’t need that with this one. The smoky flavor carried through to the initial and second brews. A good morning shakeup from my usual matés.

Golden Moon sample No. 4 of 31, randomly selected. Patience isn’t my strong suit and every drop I have of it goes to my small kids, so it shouldn’t be surprising that I do things like pick the next random sample even if I may not drink it right away, just so I know what it’s going to be. I was lucky tonight, I picked back to back whites — so I can get away with trying another one before I go to bed. (I hope.)

I’m guessing the same white tea is the base for this as was for the Persian Melon. Looks the same in any case — I won’t repeat the visual description here. These do have that anise/fennel smell of licorice, but it is far more mellow and earthy than I’d thought it would be. I’m finding that in flavored teas, the smell of the dry mixture is often much more intense and concentrated than the smell of the steeped tea, which I suppose makes total sense. I am visualizing a textbook style diagram showing little bubbles of aroma-containing particles wafting upward as the tea evaporates and having more and more space coming between them the farther away from the liquid they go. Here, I’m wondering how much flavor there will be in the steeped tea since the licorice fragrance in the dry leaves doesn’t seem strong enough to sustain infusion, but then, licorice is a pretty strong flavor and I should give GM the benefit of the doubt for knowing what they’re doing.

Color-wise, the liquor is very similar to the Persian Melon as well, pale golden yellow. The licorice component of the steeped tea’s aroma is mild and mellow.

Taste-wise, it is as well. It’s definitely licorice, but soft, smooth, gentle. Which is great, because if it were stronger it could get scary and become Tazo Cinnamon Spice minus the cinnamon. Where in the Persion Melon the white tea seemed to add a fermented note, here it lends more of a earthy note. Together with the anise, the earthy note brings to mind tarragon. And now all of a sudden I’m thinking of Samuel Beckett. I wish that hadn’t happened right before bed. I enjoy thinking about Samuel Beckett, so now I’ll probably want to stay up and read.

But back to this tea. As a licorice tea, this is v. nice, but do I want/need licorice tea? It’s not my favorite flavor, I never crave it. I enjoy it if I’m in the mood and it’s presented to me but I wouldn’t ordinarily seek it out. I think that sums up how I feel about this tea. Unlikely to crave it, unlikely to seek it out, but if it was presented to me most likely I’d drink it and enjoy it.

Unfortunately there isn’t tea-on-demand capability, where you can open your magic beam me up Scotty fax machine and pull out just the right amount of leaves so that you don’t have to order a #*^!load of something you’ll want only once in a while. If I had one of those, I could see requesting small samples of this from time to time.

So who is going to invent that, please?

Between an amazing Star Wars event at my library and the US premiere of the new Dr. Who tonight I feel wiped out. (I gots me a photo of a Stormtrooper and me holding a cookie! Yes, I’m that sort of nerd). All this is to say that I’m struggling writing this note. It’s a fine oolong. It seemed very very woodsy (like moss, dirt, greenery – all that jazz) in both scent and taste. I looked at the little sample packet to read what on earth I was supposed to be tasting. Maybe “musky cedar?” My wacky taste buds really couldn’t pick up anything else. My mouth did a quasi-half-hearted dance of sweetness. I had to stop at the 4th steep, but it still seemed to be going strong. I keep waffling (mmm…waffles) between thinking that I’d order more of this or not. And since I’m uncertain, then I probably won’t. NE.

Sipdown no. 23 of 2023 (no. 681 total).

Had the rest of this last week as a take it to work tea, and the melon flavor was still as I remembered it and predominated. Fortunately, the flavor kept the tea from that planty weirdness I don’t like in a lot of white teas.

I still don’t really get white tea. As much as I would like to get it, I don’t. I’ll keep trying, though.

Golden Moon Sample No. 3 of 31. Another random pick.

There was an amusing, crazy, humongous open leaf among the dry leaves, that looked something like a bay leaf. Never seen that before in the teas I’ve tried. Other than that they looked greenish grey with flecks of white. Not sure what kind they are, maybe white peony? They smell sweet and, I guess, melony, but it’s really too pungent to be just melon. The smell reminds me of something I can’t place. Maybe jelly beans? Candy corn? Cotton candy? A tiny bit like caramel? This worried me a little at first. I was afraid this would be gag-me-with-a-spoon sweet. But it turns out I didn’t have to worry.

When steeped, the melon scent becomes evident, and the candy smell recedes greatly. Sometimes the aroma smells a bit like honeydew, sometimes like cantaloupe, sometimes like a mix. It’s a juicy and mildy fermented smell, with a high white wine-like note. The liquor is a clear, pale golden-yellow.

Wow. I’m tasting this as I type and it does taste just like a melon! It’s like drinking a slightly watered-down version of the juice left on the empty plate where the honeydew was at a breakfast buffet, but there’s more to it than that. It’s mildly sweet, but with that same slightly fermented note to it, which must be the underlying tea. Winey. Almost yeasty. It’s very nice indeed. It is the best flavored white tea I have tried so far, not that I’ve tried that many.

I’m giving it a provisional rating that puts it above the other flavored whites I’ve had but isn’t out the roof as I don’t yet have enough of a comparison base in flavored whites to feel comfortable saying this is the best of the best. It may change as my experience changes, but for now I’m calling it a smashing success as a white melon tea.

Hmmm….Ginger Chicken with Asparagus?? ;)

Actually, no that was just my initial impression—it’s the steamed ginger scent that’s throwing me off a little bit. But this does taste kind of “brothy” to me. I’m not detecting any sweetness like the description implies.

This is definitely a warming cup of tea and seems soothing to the stomach. But I guess it’s the white tea I’m not favoring too much. Very faint and tannic.

A sort of “anemic” tea that’s been invigorated by ginger.

The more I sip, I can’t help thinking that this reminds me of chicken soup! There’s this noodle restaurant near me that serves the best chicken noodle soup and they put a lot of ginger in it. So, I think this would be very good if you have a cold….kind of like a tea equivalent of “chicken soup”, I guess?

“Over the years I got to be quite a connoisseur of soap. Though my personal preference was for Lux, I found that Palmolive had a nice, piquant after-dinner flavor – heavy, but with a touch of mellow smoothness. Lifebuoy, on the other hand…”

+5 cool points to you if you recognize the quote.

So I generally don’t dig black teas. I love white teas, and I’m crazy about oolongs. Tisanes are nice too. Black teas usually don’t float my boat unless it’s a smoky lapsang souchong or a chai blend. Golden Moon might’ve just won me over with this rose tea. As I opened the package, the smell of fresh-cut roses immediately hit my nose. The aroma is intoxicating and subtle. I brewed it up, and much to my surprise, that same subtlety carried over to the cup. I took the first sip (and sniff), and only one thing came to mind.

Palmolive soap.

This tea has a very soapy mouthfeel. And honestly, I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, because I gulped this cup down and brewed up a second one. (No, my mom didn’t wash my mouth out with soap, but the earlier quote immediately came to mind when I finished the cup.) It certainly doesn’t have the astringency and bitterness that usually comes with a black tea. I’d be tempted to probably buy this one.

Would that make me a soap lover?

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #6, selected at random

I was glad that I picked this out rather early in the evening. I would have tossed back a very robust tea into the “ocean” of the basket.

I don’t hate licorice, but I’m not a huge fan. I found this tea more pleasant than anticipated, but I don’t think I would feel a need to keep it in stock. If I knew a big licorice lover, it might make a superb gift.

Pleasant and light, the anise flavour shone through but was not overwhelming. It was a great one-note white tea.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #20:
Running out of black teas for the morning, so looks like I’m going to have to settle for a flavored tea. Well, I say settle but I’ve been looking forward to this tea for a while now. I love rose flavored stuff. I realize it’s really overpowering for some, but to me it brings back childhood memories of confectionaries.

On the first steep the rose flavor WAS almost overpowering, I couldn’t really get much of a tea taste from it at all, but it started coming out as the tea cooled. Are you telling me that you wish to be an iced tea, Rose Tea? I am unsure if the world is ready for rose flavored iced tea. Especially without hibiscus. Everyone knows proper flavored iced tea needs to contain hibiscus. This is Fact.

The second steeping was more tea flavored, but it was also a little anemic. Hmm…I am, however, suddenly filled with a craving for shortbread. Mmmm, shortbread.

Ah Lapsang Souchon, after trying a handful of black teas, you’re the one I return to. ::sigh of contentment:: This is the second LS that I’ve tried – the other being from Adagio. I think that I prefer Adagio’s, but it’s been several weeks since I’ve had it. I think that I must have it tomorrow morning to do a mini-comparison. I don’t even know how to describe the tastes of either one of these. This sample seems to be a gentler smell of smoke. My initial reaction is that whereas the Adagio goes “RAWR!” this one goes “Meow.” Nothing wrong with that, but first thing in the morning I’d prefer the RAWR. NE

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #19:
This was actually my breakfast tea, but I didn’t have time to log it until now. Let me tell you about my day. Taught two discussion sections and was hard-pressed to say who won the “most people who didn’t read” award. Then I got to drive two hours to LA! Then I got to stare at microfiche/film for four hours. Then I got to drive back! In rush hour traffic! GOOD TIMES.
After a day like that, maybe you would say, you need some damn good tea. To which I would reply, after a day like that I need beer. Or possibly something stronger. The day I figure out a way to mix tea and alcohol without getting something absolutely horrific, I will probably give up beer (note: this is a total lie, beer is awesome). But that day is not today.
On a somewhat related note. Although I love beer and I love tea, I am much less willing to try new beers than I am to try new teas. Why is that I wonder?

Getting back on topic, Pu-erh! It was largely a mystery to me until my first Adagio black tea sampler a year ago. Adagio’s Pu-erh Poe, I have recently begun to suspect, however, is not really a good example of it’s breed. Or perhaps Golden Moon just really likes Pu-erh that has the funkyness factor turned up a notch. That said, the smell was actually not that weird, but as soon as I tried some, I was like GAH MUSHROOMS.

Then I took a step back. I said to myself, wait a minute, Ewa, don’t you like mushrooms? To which I replied (yes, I realize that it is only ok to talk to yourself if you don’t answer, but I’m afraid I crossed that line a while ago), well yes, but, you know, on pizza! And in pasta sauce! not in TEA. Well, I answered, why not? Isn’t there tomato flavored tea? There was a tasting note of it earlier this week! AND. There is a sweet Chinese dessert that uses fungus. Well ok, but if you recall, I rebutted, I don’t actually like that dessert…

This continued on for some time, but the end verdict ran. Ok fine, it is only the fact that I am unused to mushroom in my tea that makes me go gah, the taste itself is actually kind of neat. It certainly has more character than it’s Adagio counterpart. But I maintain that Pu-erh chai is just weird.

This moral of this story is: writing tealogs while exhausted and mildly inebriated is just not a good idea.