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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, due to not paying attention and accidentally putting the initial teaspoon into my ingenuitea while it still had the previous tea’s leaves in it, I have finished another sample! Yaaaaaaay….?

I like how this tea looks, with the long curling leaves – very different from the Scottish and Irish breakfasts! Today was one of my “forget until the last minute to make tea” mornings so short steeping time, and I think it really shows. The taste is a little malty, a little smoky, but only a little of both, and in general, it looks like it doesn’t do well with short steepings. Clearly it is meant to be brewed up properly. All in all, I have to say I’m pretty meh on it. I’ve got golden monkey for maltiness and Baker Street blend for smokiness and as I said in one of my earlier notes, smokiness just isn’t for me in the mornings. Honestly the only reason I even had it was because I wanted to have an unflavored simple black tea around just in case a friend of mine who hates any sort of flavors in her tea visited. But now that I’ve got a plethora of Upton black teas, it’s kind of lost it’s purpose in life.

Almost to the end of this sample, which makes me sad because it is super tasty.
The weather today has been extremely ick, but I am still in the mood for something fruity. Solution: Fruity chai!

Although I am still in love with this and am going to be ordering a big thing of it at some point, I am no longer filled with the same urgency as when I first started drinking it. In fact, I am going to bring down it’s rating a bit, just because I’ve had so many super tasty teas lately. But I still love you Spiced Apple Chai! Don’t be sad! You just do not amaze me with your tastiness or amazing blendosity like coconut pouchong and caramelized pear do! I still drink you in the space of about 2 minutes!

I quite like the fact that as a chai it is not quite so spicy as other chais are because I am reasonably sure that is all that is allowing the apple flavor to get through. It’s just enough chai to give me the “comfort against the cold” feeling, but not enough chai to keep the tea from being quaffable. Not that quaffability is a quality that I desire in ALL my teas, but having a couple around is nice.

Ok, caveat guys: I am not, in fact, sure that this is River Shannon. It is in an Adagio Masala Chai sample tin, but it is definitely not chai. Because I am a giant nubcake, however, I failed to make a note of what it IS. HOWEVER, it is the only one of my Upton Samples that is unaccounted for, so…odds are pretty high!

It’s very weird, because the tea smells totally oversteeped, but I was having one of my “forget to make tea until last minute” mornings instead of my “forgot I made tea and let it steep for like 20 minutes” mornings. (Those are basically the only two kinds of mornings I have. I don’t like mornings) That means that I, in fact, steeped it for about 30 seconds. But it still has a kind of weird burnt, overdone smell to it. Very strange. And not particularly appetizing given that I have a presentation today and my belly is in knots about that already.

The taste is much nicer, though. A nice assertive black tea taste with only a hint of astringency, just to let you know it’s there. No hint of oversteepedness at all. The fact that it was able to have this much personality with even a short steeping time is heartening, but that combined with the smell make me think that this would not be suitable for my other kind of morning. Sadly, I have no way of knowing what kind of morning it is going to be until it is already happening, so no way to plan ahead for that!

There is also a weird underlying piquant note in the aftertaste that makes me think of cola for some reason. I am going to go ahead and attribute that residual chai taste due to being too lazy to clean the sample tin out properly.

So everybody seemed to be having froot tea today, and I was filled with the urge to have some myself, but! I had no fruity tea! It’s all desserts, or minty stuff, or earl greys, or straight blacks or chais or…well, not fruity anyway.

But then I found this! I mean, it’s still a black, but it’s at least blueberry flavored, so that’s you know, close enough. This was a souvenir from mum’s trip to Alaska, and other than being charmed by the fact that the name is stupidly long (Story aside! When I was an undergrad I was in a program called Plan II, which was an interdisciplinary honors program that offered a general education and was characterized by the fact that all of it’s classes had ridiculously long names, let me try to remember some of them for you: Religious Sectarianism And Civil Violence in Modern Times; Emerging Selves: The Autobiographical Impulse in Women’s Writing; War Games, Military Intelligence And Other Oxymorons. They were ALL LIKE THAT. Ever since, I have had a weakness for things with stupidly long names) I was somewhat skeptical. Icewine? Yeah, sure ok. I am not even sure that is a real drink (it is).

The tea (it’s in bags, I know, ew) doesn’t really smell like anything except black tea. Once steeped though, I start to get the blueberry. And indeed, if it were just called blueberry tea, it would be great! Exactly what it says on the box! Well-balanced! And I’m a big fan of blueberries, so awesome all around! But…where’s the Icewine? Now, as revealed by my skepticism of it existing, I have no idea how Icewine tastes, so that COULD be the problem. But when the box says “contains real icewine” on the side, you are expecting something noticeable! Oh well, at least it’s tasty.

I used to love chamomile. Mum would give me chamomile tea whenever I had an upset stomach, and it was always nice because chamomile is naturally sweet and usually medicine is…not. Now, whenever this happened, we’d be talking in Polish, so I only knew the tea as “herbata rumiankowa.” It actually took me an embarassingly long time to figure out that the rumianek that mum gave me and chamomile (which I read about in books – for some reason it appears a lot in fantasy novels – and was like ‘oh look, it are another herb that helps with stomach problems’) were in fact the same thing. I still have no idea how to actually pronounce the word, though.

Fast forward (mumble) years and we get to last fall when I had the Wussy Flu of Never Going Away for like three months. My fever never went above 100, and sometimes disappeared altogether (note: do not attempt to measure your fever orally right after drinking tea, it only leads to panic), but I basically felt gross, lethargic and nauseous for the entire three months. To counteract the nausea so I could, you know, actually eat something, I drank a LOT of chamomile, sometimes mixing it up by making a particularly chamomile-y cup of foxtrot.

Eventually, chamomile itself started making me nauseous. Which I call RUDE of my subconscious or whatever’s doing it. At the time, I just switch over to mint/ginger (or a combination thereof) tea, but the effect has persisted and has, in fact, extended itself to foxtrot. Which is why I have 1/2 a container of delicious, delicious foxtrot sitting in my tea cupboard that I CANNOT drink – although I’m hoping the association will go away at some point.

Why did I tell you this story? Well, for one thing because I enjoy whining. But also because I CAN drink cha cha. Maybe because it has mint in it? Mind you, doesn’t foxtrot also have mint? /checks. It totally does! In that case, I got nothing. Maybe cos the lemongrass is sufficiently distracting FROM the chamomile?

Actual Tea Discussion and Not Storytime: As displayed by my enthusiasm for Thai Chai, I enjoy lemongrass well enough, although here it is hard to distinguish where the bite from the lemongrass leaves off and the spearmint begins. Still, I am getting all three things here, so that’s good. It’s a nice refreshing tea, and leaves you with minty fresh breath! But if I could be drinking foxtrot, I would be.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #26
Like…well several other people, I am not a huge fan of licorice, so this was not a tea that I was looking forward to. The tea itself has giant honking pieces of star anise in it, and smells VERY strongly of licorice. Not reassuring! Proximity-to-slow-cooker induced sauerkraut smell would actually be an improvement.

The first cup (the shortest steeping), however, was pleasantly not licorice/anisey at all. So that was nice. Subsequent cups and cooling have let the anise taste come out. Nope! Still not a fan. There’s just something about the taste of anise that makes me think of plastic. I don’t want to be thinking of plastic while drinking tea!

Objectively speaking however, the flavors are very nicely balanced. White tea is, after all, very delicate and if you like anise or are at least indifferent to it, I could see the flavors complementing each other quite well. Still, (obviously I’m biased, but) I think the melon + white tea combo works better, simply because melon is a pretty delicate flavor to begin with, whereas you have to be careful with anise. Although apparently not THAT careful given how huge the pieces in my sample were.

Also this tea cooled really fast. I have GOT to get that tea cozy made.

Backlogging from last night, but also from today because I didn’t finish it and now am drinking it cold, yes I have terrible habits, thanks:
I have to say I’ve gone kind of eh on this tea. I just wish the pomegranate flavor was stronger. Or maybe that’s just because I’ve run out of pomegranate seeds in my sample. On the other hand, I’ve read in other notes that the presence of stuff like actual berries in other teas is just there for aesthetic purposes rather than actually affecting the flavor. Is this also true in the case of pomegranate seeds? Dunno! If it IS true, then what I had last night is exactly the same as it’s always been and the whole “make sure there’s a seed in” thing was persykerlogickal.

Definitely prefer the spiced green, which would be why I ordered an entire container of it, I imagine.

Another sample bites the dust!
Soon, soon my cupboard will be ready for moar samples! (I’m thinking of Harney & Sons for my next sample buying spree – but they are out of the Florence samples! ;_;)

I rather like Pu Erh Poe, which makes me suspicious that it is a baby Pu Erh – a Pu Erh for people who do not know any better or who cannot handle Real Pu Erh, like people who drink Bud (or, god forbid, Lone Star) instead of Real Beer. I don’t like it enough to buy more, mind you, but it’s nice, it brews up fast, and it doesn’t smell (as much) like dirt as other Pu Erh I’ve had. It does have a smoky, earthy taste to it, but what is important (at least to me) is that the smell isn’t overpowering. I pretty much cannot get over things that smell weird. (Like durian. or natto – although to be fair natto also tastes pretty awful)

Reading the other tea notes, I see (not for the first time mind you) that apparently the proper preparation of Pu Erh is a multi step process. That kind of effort is definitely not for me! Pu Erh goes with Oolong into “category of tea that I am probably just not that into” (Note: Oolong will be taken out of this category when I got to Japan this summer and am once again subjected to its iced form all the time)