3010 Tasting Notes
Review up in plenty of time for St. Patrick’s Day:
http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/1685/tea-review-golden-moon-tea-irish-breakfast/
First of all, this is absolutely beautiful dry. Springy pink potpourri.
Second of all, this does not taste like perfume, which I feared might be the case. It steeps up a gorgeous light champagne color and is just subtly, lightly sweet. The rose tinge is at the back of each sip; it doesn’t lead the way.
This was one of those unusual almost-March mornings where it was warmer outside when I woke up than when I went to bed. So the tea o’the a.m. needed to be springy. After prowling through the light stuff that migrated to the back of the cabinet, I pulled this out and I’m glad I did.
Wonderfully sweet aroma, gently salad-y taste with a little Cheerios hint in the background. Ahh…I hear birds chirping! (I really do…come on, spring!!)
Stuck my nose in a bin of this at my favorite herb & health food place and it just smelled too good not to try. (I’m all for cheap luxury!) The dry mix looks like meadow-gold potpourri with a wonderful peachy-apricot whiffle.
The apricot-itude disappears a little once it’s steeped about 3 minutes. Yellowy as it is, it turns surprisingly dark red—there’s the hibiscus in action—but the other ingredients cut the tartness down to just a hint. (Which is good; I’m generally not a hibiscus fan.)
Hey, for a mere $1.50 an ounce locally, it made for a nice springy “vacation” from a cold, dreary day.
Full review’s now up:
http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/1671/tea-review-mark-t-wendell-victorian-afternoon-3/
…though it’s not one of my better ones, writing-stylewise; it has come to my attention that I’ve used the “pork rinds” metaphor to describe lapsang souchong perhaps one too many times. Mike was kind to post the review anyway. In the meantime, I’ll work on honing my adjectival vocabulary.
I’m going to go ahead and post my comments here, although my sample is labeled Thurbo FTGFOP 1 CH (SPL) EX4 (Experts, I know FTGFOP, but can you help interpret the rest of the alphabet soup)?
I’ll have a longer review later also, like Jillian, but this is really good stuff. My favorite feature is the aroma of the steeped tea—-smells like the tray of communion cups at my church, or the inside of a Welch’s unsweetened grape juice bottle. This Darjeeling has personality!
Preparation
Continuing to enjoy the fact that a) I can actually find this inexpensively and loose leaf locally and b) You cannot ruin this tea, not by understeeping, oversteeping, being chintzy with the dry leaves, or spiking with condensed milk that’s just short of questionable expiration. It’s all good.
Wait, you can find this cheaply?!? Buy in bulk my friend, buy in bulk!!!
When trying to explain to my daughter’s boyfriend (who lives in Northern Ireland) the taste of a tea I was offering, I finally said, “Have you ever heard of PG Tips?” and he answered, “Of COURSE, I have!” This is very popular there! Some of our nicer groceries carry it but you can’t find it in many of them.
In my part of SW Missouri, most people’s idea of high-quality tea is flavored Lipton or grocery-store Tazo. So the ability to pick this up affordably at a little locally owned health food store is a real treat!
I missed that this is the loose leaf kind! I have to drive over 2 hours to get that….locally they only sell bags.
When I added this to the database, I clicked pu-erh as the variety because it’s listed on the “Pu-erh and Yunnan White” page, but please correct me if I’m wrong—I still have lots to learn!
Anyway, this is a lot different than I expected from a tea that comes in a sheng—a cake, right? It steeps up a nice golden brown, and does not have a potting-soil taste at all. Has a green tea taste without the spinach. It’s sweeter, even a little floral in the background and dances around on your tongue before and after you swallow.
(Actually, I don’t know that any of the descriptive copy in the previous paragraph are doing it justice, but it’s really, really nice!) Second steep and it’s still going strong. Thanks, Gingko, for the opportunity to experience this one!
