Golden Moon Tea

It’s creamy and caramely-like…a bit malty…a beautiful reddish brown. I can taste the toastiness as well. It’s quite strong and full the more I sip. The taste lingers for awhile after the sip has passed and seems to keep me warm and fuzzy all over…lol…

Having only put a small dent in my Golden Moon Tea sampler, I figured it was time to really get to work on here. I must confess, that though I will try anything and usually do not have any trepidations about anything, I was a little nervous trying this. You should be happy to know, that my concern was unfounded!

The leaves smell sweet yet earthy. I brewed it hot, with no additives. The aroma of the brew smells fantastic: earthy and woodsy and like early spring when you are getting all sorts of fresh nature smells that you haven’t smelled in a long while because of winter. I’m rambling, but the scent is so difficult to describe. The taste somehow combines all of these different fragrant notes into a flavor: it is earthy with a little smoke and a little sweet.

Overall, this tea played to the senses, fantastic aroma both brewed and dry and delicious flavor.

I absolutely love this tea. It smells smoky and woodsy, like a campfire or fireplace on a cold winter night. The tea flavor is different though: there is a sweetness upfront, which melds into a piney-woodsy flavor. This is definitely a love it or leave it tea.

This was drank hot with no additives.

Not as spicy as some of the chai’s that I’ve had. This is nice and mellow, especially with some creamer and milk added. It’s not a chai for when you’re craving something with a kick. It’s more of a comforting kind of blend. The cardomom is definitely the start. There were two pods in my sample pack, which is quite a lot for the amount of tea in the sample.

I would recommend this. I’m adding it to my shopping list, which is now about 50% teas from Golden Moon.

When it comes to Jasmine tea I don’t consider myself very expert. Other than Chinese restaurant teas I’m relatively new to them. After reading what others wrote here I sense that those who are into jasmine teas probably like them for various reasons. I’m not a big floral flavored tea fan. But jasmine is pretty nice in tea, if it’s light. I think that’s why I like this tea, not in a big way but it’s a nice evening tea to relax over.

I steeped it 2 minutes for my first steep and didn’t add anything else. This is not usual for me as I usually sweeten my teas. I think this one without sweetener is nice. The Jasmine flavoring doesn’t overpower the light green tea it’s based on. The tea leaf starts out in a tight ball and unfurls. it wasn’t quite unfurled all the way in 2 minutes so this clues me it’s got more steeps in it’s future. The brew is light colored and a pale mostly yellow color.

The second steep I did about 3 minutes, again no sweetener. It was just as flavorful as the first time. The leaf reveals a quality leaf that is skinny and long from fresh leaves of the plant. Again enjoyable. Obviously you Jasmine tea fans must have other sources you really enjoy for your own reasons. I’ll have to try some another time to compare. Feel free to share your faves and reasons why.

I think the best way to describe this tea is “gentle”.

The leaves smell of vanilla and black tea. The brewed tea (hot with no additives) smell again like vanilla with a hint of flora aroma. The taste is “gentle”. There is a slight vanilla flavor to the otherwise naturally sweet black tea. It is not overpowering, it is not artificial, it is not overly sweet (with nothing added) and it is not bitter, but the flavor is there, just slightly, again, “gentle”.

I think I wanted something more out of this tea, I wanted it to be slightly more vanilla or a stronger black with less vanilla, something stronger than gentle. Oh well.

This cuppa is a little stronger than normal because what I had in the sample bag amounted to about a teaspoon and a third – so not enough to get two uses out of it. I ended up just shrugging and dumping the whole thing in my mug.

This time I added some skim milk to the tea as an experiment, as many teas have been improved by adding milk or milk substitutes to them. In this case the results were a bit disapointing. The milk make the tea taste very…ordinary. I’m not picking up those berry-like notes anymore and the honeyed/burnt-sugar flavour is somewhat dulled. It’s not bad – it’s still a smooth, nice-tasting Ceylon – but it’s lost much of its uniqueness.

I wanted to try this tea sweetened but I only realized as I brewed the cup that I only had cherry-flavoured creamed honey, lol! It doesn’t seem to have hurt the flavour of the tea though – if anything the cherry sort of enhances that little hint of berry flavour. The biggest change I tasted was that the natural honey/molasses flavour of the tea was really brought out by the honey – now I’m beginning to see what people are talking about. ;)

I actually did get a bit some something that might be likened to honey this time. It was more of a malted-honey sort of taste though, like molasses maybe. I’m also getting that berry-like note at the end aswell. Unlike most Indian black teas it also gave up a recent, if lighter, resteep.

I’m not sure it’s worth raving over like some people are, but this is a nice tea and probably the favorite of the pure Ceylons that I’ve tried.

2nd steeping and the flavour has been toned down quite a few notches. I am picking up a bit of a sweetness to the tea, but again none of the suagr or honey everyone else has raved about. Which is kind of odd – are my taste buds deffective?

Anyway to me the dominent taste on this steep is a mild toasty flavour. It’s probably my favorite of the few straight Ceylon teas that I’ve tried, although I guess that isn’t really saying all that much. I think it might be nice with some milk, so I’ll try it that way next time.

Another of the teas I got from Takgoti. The dry leaves are long, dark and wiry, I supposed I’m used to seeing my black teas more broken-looking. The scent is interesting in that it’s not what traditional black tea smell – actually it reminds me more of a Yunnan tea than a Indian tea.

The flavour is a bit like Yunnan too, sort of malty but with tannin undertones, although it lacks the strength and smokiness of the Chinese teas. However at the very beginning I’m also tasting something that reminds me of berries, but it’s quite elusive and it disappears quite quickly. I’m not sure where people are getting ‘sugar’ and honey’ from because I’m not really tasting it, although I think there’s a bit of sweetness on the tail-end of each sip.

GM Sampler | Tea 5 of 31

Coconut Pouchong | http://bit.ly/9WQQq0
[Eventually to Become]The Full Spread | http://bit.ly/bDtnNn

This was the tea that finished off my GM day back in January, and this was the best one of the bunch. If you had told me that I would hate the pear tea and love the coconut tea in this sampler, I would have laughed at you for five minutes. Maybe more. Because coconut and I don’t see eye to eye all of the time and, as we have established, I love pear.

The tea in the packet smelled, unsurprisingly, like coconut. Macaroons, the formerly named Samoa cookies from the Girl Scouts, suntan oil…all these things popped into my head. Wet, the leaves smelled vegetal with a hint of coconut. It reminded me of beansprouts, which I thought was weird, but they ARE tea leaves, so whatever.

Sipping the tea, it had a hint of that vegetal flavor, but it was much lighter. Mainly, what I was getting out of it was a buttery quality. Oh, it was good. Buttery with whiffs of coconut flavor and a cookie-like finish. It reminded me, undeniably, of coconut macaroons. Really freaking good coconut macaroons.

There were some other things going on in the tea, but all I could think of was coconut macaroons. That is what has stuck, and that is why I will be ordering this tea.

I never would have called that one.

COCONUT MACAROONS!

GM Sampler | Tea 4 of 31

Sugar Caramel Oolong | http://bit.ly/ds1ZuN
One Big Happy Family | http://bit.ly/bDtnNn

After the experience that was Honey Pear, I couldn’t end things on a bad note, so I decided that I’d dive into the basket and try something else. I almost didn’t try this one, because I was thinking that if another set of flavors that I typically liked bombed horribly again that I’d begin to build some real resentment against the sampler. But, feeling brave, I decided I’d try it anyway.

Slicing open the foil packet, I was greeted with the smell of maple candy. Maple candy always makes me giggle, because it makes me think of the Friends episode where Ross eats all the maple candy and he gets all crazy. [Hair dryer, no no no! But shampoos and conditioners, yes yes yes! – http://bit.ly/snFLh should you want to watch.] So, already I was off to a better start.

The wet leaves were oily and almost looked like leather. They smelled like oatmeal and burnt sugar, which was interesting, but at least somewhat in line with what I was expecting. I smelled the liquid and it smelled more like oolong and caramel, which was very comforting.

The tea was arright. It had more of a burnt sugar taste than a caramel taste to it, which was cool, but I like caramel so much that I was hoping for more. Not soul-crushing, but not elating. I’d push it more towards the good than the bad, but I don’t think that I’ll be ordering this one either.

GM Sampler | Tea 3 of 31

Honey Pear | http://bit.ly/cy1HXR
Gotta Catch ’Em All | http://bit.ly/bDtnNn

This tea made me so angys!!!

Like, for real, pissed. I want to photoshop a big frowny face all over the Honey Pear picture.

I think I’ve professed my love for pear in enough gory detail already, but if you missed that log – I LOVE IT. Like, scary love. And I like honey well enough. So to say that I was excited to try this tea is a bit of an understatement.

The dry leaf smelled like bazooka joe. And medicine. This put me on edge right away, because it tripped my WTF alarm straight off. But I dumped the sample into the infuser and began the process of making the tea.

When I pulled out the infusing basket, I smelled the wet leaves.

Strawberry runts and banana boat suntan lotion. I’m really confused at this point, but I sip it anyway.

You might have read my post about how much I loved Art of Tea’s Caramelized Pear, which uses apple bits to achieve the pear taste to great effect. This tea is like what I imagine using the power of apple to pear for EVIL would be like, because the tea tasted like bad, mealy, apple. It was Bad, Bad, Mealy Brown apple. Once I had that mental image in my head, it was impossible to shake and there was no way to enjoy the tea after that.

Building upon the suck that is mealy apple, the tea had this bitterness to it that would get really high and sharp at some points. And to make matters worse, at the back of the throat the tea created this horrible sour taste.

I sat with it long enough to eventually get a hint of sweetness at the tip of my tongue, but unfortunately it was impossible to recover from all the bad. I had to dump the cup, but I consider it an accomplishment that I got halfway through it.

I honestly think that this was defective because it does not at ALL sound like what the majority of the other people got, and while I think that tastes diverge this was just…wrong.

GM Sampler | Tea 2 of 31

Madagascar Vanilla | http://bit.ly/aOFn6g
All of Them GM Pictures | http://bit.ly/bDtnNn

Eh.

That’s going to be the gist of this review, so if you want to skip it there you have it: eh.

It smelled like vanilla extract in that it had that kind of alcoholic tinge to it, with a darker notes that made me think of chocolate. It was promising, and I was excited, and then I sipped.

I’ll give it that it actually did taste of vanilla, but it was thin. It didn’t have enough oomph and it lacked that richness I’ve come to enjoy in some of the better vanilla teas I’ve had. I was hunkering down to expand upon this, but now I realize that there’s really not much else to say. It was one-note and a bit weaker than I’d like. Maybe some milk would help thicken it up, but I don’t have anymore and I don’t see myself buying this one.

All that being said, it was decent. Just…

Eh.

GM Sampler | Tea 1 of 31

Sampler Picture 1 | http://bit.ly/9xGx6q
Sampler Picture 2 | http://bit.ly/dBJHvN
Vanilla Jasmine | http://bit.ly/dtaOd0
L’Entire Set [Which Shall Be Updated Accordingly] | http://bit.ly/bDtnNn

AND SO IT BEGINNETH.

Or, rather, it beganneth about a long while ago. I’m going to be writing the first leg of this from notes since I was a bad logger. [This makes me think of lumberjacks. Which makes me think of Monty Python. Suspenders and a bra! I should mention that I’m cresting on a bit of a caffeine high at the moment.]

The tea smelled distinctly, unmistakably, of jasmine and vanilla. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how it was going to taste, but I didn’t buy this sampler so I could smell the tea and dump the cup.

So, I drank. And, it would have been more surprising if I hadn’t read the other tasting notes, the jasmine was hiding in the wings on the taste. I mainly got vanilla, which is not how I would have thought this all would have gone down, but it’s not to say it wasn’t pleasant.

The vanilla taste was rich and a bit creamy. It reminded me of these lollipops my family gets sometimes when we’re near a See’s [which used to be a mainly west coast deal but I think has spread across the country with some success] that are vanilla flavored. [For the record, vanilla and butterscotch lollipops = good. Chocolate = meh.] I like those lollipops, so it probably goes without saying that I enjoyed the vanilla aspect of this tea, but I’m going to say it anyway. I liked the vanilla.

The jasmine came gliding out right as the tea was exiting my mouth to whisper its presence, leaving a very light, floral aftertaste to the vanilla. The entire thing was kind of strange, but there was something about the way that the vanilla and the jasmine played off one another that made it work.

A small note: while it was still hot, I didn’t find this tea very good. It stifled the jasmine and drowned out the sweetness in the vanilla, so I’ll gently advise to wait until it tips towards lukewarm.

Overall, I’d call this a win, but I think I’ll wait to see whether I want to order more until I’m done with the sampler.

1st steep: 3 min, 180 – I tasted a whole lot of nuthin. I used one teaspoon, so that might have been the problem. Maybe my water was too cold? The directions say just under boiling.

2nd steep: 3 min, 190 – I added the rest of the packet for this second steep. The tea is much darker. I’m tasting a nice, lovely gentle white tea flavor and the barest hint of ginger. Not even a tingle. Nary a burn! If I was a catty lady, I’d call this tea “Milquetoast!”

I like it, but it’s much more subtle than my tastes run. I rather have a gingery peppery herbal if I was going in the ginger direction, and more of a green tea taste if I was going the tea way.

Those that have the Golden Moon sampler – did you use the whole packet per 8 oz water for each steep with white teas? Am I missing anything else (like is my water temp way off?). I just want to make sure I treat the rest of the white teas in my sampler right :) Thanks!

So cozy!

I’ve only got 5 more teas left to try in the GM sampler, which makes me sad. Somewhere down the line, I’m definitely going to need to order more of their stuff, since it consistently falls above average for me.

Snow Sprout is pretty. Upon opening the packet, it sort of smells like a musty honey smell. With lots of sweetness. Maybe sugared flowered? Anyway, The leaves look like green Silver Needle! Very odd, indeed. They’re fuzzy, and slender, but… they’re not silver. They’re a pale green. Sea green, almost.

Anyway, I steeped up the entire packet of this, because it was around a tablespoon or so, and watched it steep. Funnily enough, once the water hits the leaves (or sprouts? What do I call these guys?), they look like twigs. Knobbly twigs. Very intriguing, indeed.

Anyway, this one steeps up to a very light cup. If someone handed me this, I’d automatically assume it’s white tea. It even smells like a white tea, in that it’s not very interesting on the nose. But does it taste like a white tea?

Yes, yes it does. WEIRD. There isn’t much of a body to it, and the tastes are kind of fuzzy, but here we go, trying to draw some tasting notes out of this puppy. It’s very subtle, like a white tea. For one, I’m getting almost nuttiness at points. I’ve narrowed it down to macadamia nuts! Yes, it’s that sort of nuttiness. There’s a sweetness at the end. It’s more of a green sweetness than a white sweetness. I can’t really explain that; I think it’s only if you’ve experienced the two you’ll be able to tell the difference.

Other than that, I’m not getting much else. It’s definitely a yummy cup of tea, but I don’t think it’s that memorable. For what it is, though, it tastes pretty good!

Wow! I don’t think I ever had a tea quite like this! It was STRANGE and DELICIOUS! I felt as if I was having an exotic treat from a far off land…in the middle of my parlor in New Jersey! The pear really did taste like a perfectly ripe pear – I loved the taste!! and the honey was really flavorful in almost a musky sort of way, and I didn’t find it overly sweet. It’s certainly not something that I’d want every day, but when I’m in the mood for something unusual, this would be a perfect one! I would purchase a full size of this tea for when the mood struck.

As you can probably tell, my Golden Moon sampler came yesterday :) I ordered it on Monday afternoon and it arrived on Wednesday – excellent turnaround! The ordering process was painless, and I was updated with a tracking number when it shipped.

I brought some sugar with me to work now so I’m giving this one another go. So I’m going to toss in a couple pinches of sugar and see if that makes this happy for me.

Things are pretty much the same as day before yesterday when I had this so I won’t repeat all that. Oddly, though, that spicy smell from yesterday is a little different (maybe because of the sugar?) and makes me crave boiled crawfish. Just thought I’d throw that out there.

The taste is sweet (duh) and light but the fruity isn’t as there any more – covered up by the sugar, I’m thinking. But the big question: does the sugar kill the astringency? Well, yes and no. The astringency isn’t there during the swallow or right after (yay!) but it seems to kind of sneak back up a few seconds after each swallow, coating the back half of my mouth with a tiny bit of bitter almost morning-breath taste/feel (boo!). It’s just barely a hint but I find I’m reacting to it strongly. Most of the time I can take a little bitterness – might even seek it out on the rare occasion. But something about this one just makes me wince a little after each sip. Not happy making.

Leaving the rating where it is. Oh well.

2g/5oz

Having a little post-lunch tea. This smells lovely – a little spicy, sweet and almost honeyed. I’m really enjoying smelling it while I let it cool. There’s another note in it that I can’t quite place. Figs maybe? Don’t know. Smells good.

Okay, so I just finished a big ole Cara Cara orange so I don’t know if that will affect what I’m tasting any but maybe. The tea tastes soft, but with a hint of astringency at the end that made me happy that I decided to do 3 minutes instead of 4. The flavors are fairly faint (a trade-off that I’ll accept for the lower astringency) but they are there, subtle and pretty. Sweet, maybe a little fruity, maybe a little floral. Mostly there’s the taste of tea with pretty little puffs of something dancing over top. Then the astringency comes in a kills the pretty but fortunately it isn’t strong enough to put me off though I’m contemplating a sprinkle of sugar. Okay, out of sugar so guess I won’t give that a try.

I’m not in love with this tea because of the ending astringency – that sort of thing really gets to me – but it has potential. I should have enough in my sample for another small cup so I think I’ll give it a shot later at maybe 4mins with milk and a little sugar and see how that goes.

2.3g/6oz