La Petite Cuillère

My very first Darjeeling. It just sounded so intimidating before, it still does. Mostly because I have not yet progressed where I should be having straight black tea. I thought this would be really dark (black) and really bitter. I confess I haven’t actually seen a tea so dark that it’s black but I thought if any tea were to be that, it would be Darjeeling.

To me this tastes like straight black tea. The info says there’s cherry and strawberry, am not getting that at all. It is unfair to this tea that I’m drinking it and botching up a tasting note but we all start somewhere.

The dry leaf is so pretty, there are tiny orangey pink flowers in there. No clue what they are. They look prickly instead of soft though, like it would hurt if you ate it. Liquor is brown, almost reddish brown. Like clay. So much for the imagined black. It is slightly astringent after 3 minutes and there is a slight bitterness that most would likely tolerate. I don’t. Hope this doesn’t mean I won’t be able to drink straight black teas. I think beer is bitter too and someone said the more I drank the more I got used to it. Nope. Still don’t like the darker ales, I go with light lagers usually.

I feel bad for this darling of a tea. Although I am thankful to Sil for sending some my way, maybe my introduction to Darjeeling should have been done with a more of a peasant tea. But who would want that honour? Yes, I’m a sh**ty Darjeeling, drink me!

Sipdown! 810.

Shrug, this was pretty mediocre for me today. Yeah, I’m getting a bit of the muscatel flavour, which I can now attribute to darjeelings, but I’m getting very little in the way of additional flavouring. Still not bad, and no astringency at 2 min. Really, it’s quite enjoyable as a plain darjeeling, but I’m expecting a bit more!

After the successful darjeeling experiment of a day or two ago, I was super curious to try out this tea that Sil let me have a sample of! I think this is flavoured, but hopefully I can still get some “darjeeling” from it.

The aroma is rather bagged black tea-esque… but the flavour is certainly not. It tastes like a black tea to me, with definite raisiny/possibly muscatel flavours. Actually… this is a bit reminiscent of the raisiny notes in Butiki’s Premium Taiwanese Assam. They are lingering oh-so-deliciously… And… that’s pretty much all I’m getting from here. If there’s supposed to be flavouring, unless it’s raisin, I’m not picking up on it. I really don’t much care though, because this is pretty darn tasty as is. It’s just a bit astringent, which I’m not fond of, but it’s bearable.

From what I can kind of see under this tea note box, it looks like there are supposed to perhaps be strawberry flavours? I really can’t taste them, if so, unless that’s what’s coming off as raisin. (Ok, in my last sip I think I could finally taste what was probably strawberry.) It’s possible that being in a little sample baggie sucked some of the flavour out of this one, though.

I have another cup’s worth left (ugh, I thought it was going to be a sipdown), so will enjoy this again at a future date! Thanks again Sil!

ETA: Huh… cherry? Yeah no, not getting any cherry. I was probably imagining the strawberry, too.

ETA again: Bleh, second infusion is fairly tasteless and astringent. Oh well!

This was nice. I don’t agree with Sil on the zen tea strawberry cream comparison but thats okay I just REALLY really love LOVE Zen Tea’s strawberry cream. But this is very nice.

SIPDOWN! (bringing me to 255 and still a few more hours of tea drinking left in the day…..i can do this! lol) I’m not sure i agree with the steeping instructions on this one. 3 mins leaves a pretty astringent brew. I’m thinking 2 mins might be a better spot…and this is for sure a milk kind of tea. oh well…it IS a pretty tea lol Mostly i just wanted to drink this since it’s another one of those darjeelings i have kicking around in my cupboard. Still not a win for me…

Apparently i am rocking the tea today! Another tea tried, though I had apparently had it before with little recollection. A tasty enough tea but i don’t quite get the strawberry that they mention.

So i’m not sure if it’s just my taste buds but this actually reminds me of zen tea’s strawberry cream, only much smoother. It’s not quite a strawberry or cherry tea, rather it’s a really smooth black tea with a hint of “red fruit flavour”

I actually rather quite like one since it’s not quite a fruity tea, but it’s also not a black tea. I’ll have to try this again with a bit of milk added to it.

Darjeeling is one of those teas that I don’t often find as a flavored and/or blended tea … so I was really excited to try this tea from Amoda’s Sampler Box!

This is really nice. The cherry flavor is soft, and not at all cough syrup-ish. It is a very well-rounded taste with a pleasant mouthfeel. The strawberry is quite faint and sort of melds with the cherry note to create a sweet, delicious fruit taste that is not quite cherry, not quite strawberry … but somewhere in between. The description on Amoda’s website suggests a drop of milk to bring out the strawberry so I might try that in a moment. As it is, though, I really like this the way it is.

A remarkably smooth Darjeeling, lightly astringent, oh… there it is. The strawberry. It arrives in the aftertaste … beautiful, delicious berry!

I am THRILLED that I got to try this. Thank you so much to Amoda for including it in this month’s box!