A Southern Season

This is what it says it is. Organic. And breakfast. When I opened the tin I smelled the assam right away. (I am accustomed to Harney’s English Breakfast, which is 100% keemun.)
With milk and sugar, this is a very drinkable tea, but nothing out of the ordinary. It doesn’t really have any of the light smoke you get from a keemun, but it has sufficient heft to make me happy. I enjoyed my pot of it this morning well enough as I really just wanted a sturdy pot of tea beside me while I read.

This is a decent breakfast tea – nothing out of the ordinary but very serviceable and went well with my “faux Mexican” food lunch. (Tortilla full of cheese rolled and squished in the Breville, then doused with enchilada sauce. See? Fake Mexican food!) So now I have had 40 ounces of tea already and have a small tea party to do on one hour! I will definitely be sloshing by 4 pm, but at least I am getting lots done with all this caffeine coursing through my veins!

A decent breakfast tea, but nothing earth shaking. I add milk and sugar to this one, but I always do with morning tea. I like the fact that it is prganic, but there is nothing in the flavor that would make me go out of my way to get this one. I would swim shark infested moats for Queen Catherine, Harney and Sons Englsih Breakfast, and Emperor’s Red by Premium Steap!

Good breakfast tea, just basic, nothing too spectacular to say about it except that when you are in the mood for a breakfast tea this should satisfy! Better than many, but it doesn’t beat Harney and Sons English Breakfast!

A nice tea, but when tasted side by side with Harney and Sons English Breakfast (the loose leaf one, not the sachets of Royal English Breakfast) I must say the Harney and Sons wins. Still, it is a very good tea, and I always feel a little more responsible when I drink organic!

Excellent cup this morning! It is medium strength, not smoky, not astringent, full of good tea flavor. Yum!

Early today – One friend stopped by walking her dogs. Another drives over so we can do lunch later. But we all NEED tea! So youngest fixed a pot of this. So good, mellower than many breakfast blends, but smooth and good. Lots of flavor, no astringency, takes milk and sugar very well. Aaaahhhh…..

Twenty-two ounces, count them, twenty-two! Consumed with milk and sugar, accompanied by gingerbread biscotti ensconced in my wall of jasmine vines that curtains the back patio! A great way to start the day.

Oh boy, was this ever good today! Added milk and sugar as is my wont with breakfast teas. After having to do without the good stuff for 18 days (ARGH! Can you believe it? Eighteen days!) this went down like water in the desert. Ahhhhh. And Southern Season now has a Facebook page if anyone wants to check them out!

Good stuff! Drank this right on the heels of a pot of Irish breakfast from the same source. This was a little stronger, somewhere between an Irish and English Breakfast in taste and temperament. I think I will be keeping this around.

Done! I finished this today as youngest and I ate Snickerdoodle bread with cinnamon chips and read Robert Louis Stevenson – The Bottle Imp.

I may buy it again someday. It is certainly a great tea. I have been drinking it for years and find myself at A Southern Season a couple of times a year. Right now I have so much tea I really shouldn’t consider buying ANYTHING…but you know I will. I already had a friend pick up eight ounces of Blackberry Flavored Black that will be delivered on Tuesday. sigh.

This is a smooth and drinkable tea that even the newbie and ambivalent tea drinkers like. It is still interesting enough to entice the seasoned tea lover.

The first tea of tea party today – this was served with a warm Blueberry Upside Down Skillet Cake that my youngest daughter made in my ancient cast iton skillet using blueberries from my friend’s blueberry bushes! We also made home made vanilla ice cream to serve with it.

The tea is smooth and rich, not too strong but resteeps decently. It is great by itself or paired with food, doesn’t need milk and sugar but can handle it if that is how you prefer your tea. The dry leaves are curly and light as a feather with lots of gold mixed in. It looks almost like a Bi Luo Chun, but a black tea. Delicious!

This is one of the best teas carried by A Southern Season In my opinion. This was the first tea of tea party Wednesday. I always choose a nice black tea to start with if we are having a rich dessert, which we usually are.

Our dessert this time was Fudge Pie, the recipe from a local beloved restaurant that closed decades ago, and I made a raspberry sauce and homemade vanilla ice cream, also drizzled with raspberry sauce, to go with it. A single raspberry topped each serving. It was so rich that we needed a nice, plain black tea that had good body and flavor to stand up without standing out too much.

This was a very good tea with it, but I think that an even stronger one, like a Keemun, would have been better as the raspberry sauce was really flavorful.

On a side note, I have just been joined by the dog because my daughter’s hedgehog is keeping him up. He just started running on his wheel and he runs all.night.long.

I have been neglecting this tea and wanted to have a go at it this morning before heading out to the plant nursery. A Southern Season sells this spelled Zhen Quo but I have seen the very same tea sold under the name Zhen Qu, and the appearance is so distinctive that there is no doubt it is the same tea. What confuses me a bit is that most sites say it is from the Fujian (or Pan Yang) province, but there are several listings for Zhen Qu Yunnan, and I don’t know if that tea is the same or not.

I am drinking it plain and it is very smooth. I steeped longer than most people do, yet it isn’t bitter. There is the slightest – and I do mean slightest – astringency after you get through a half a cup or so, but not much. The aroma is lovely – honey and a hint of molasses, and a bit of unsweetened cocoa. The flavor leans more toward the honey side, but not with the rich, thick body and mouth-feel of Golden Monkey.

This was one of the first teas I took plain, and Sandy introduced me to it. Hi Sandy! By the way, Sandy, I saw my hubby smooching Sasha on the head last night! They were having some lovely-dovey time when he got home from work!

I haven’t had this one in a while and decided I had better drink it up before it gets too old! I plan to go to Southern Season again when Sandy gets home from New Zealand and I need to empty this tin so I will have an excuse to buy a fresh batch.

The leaves are black and gold, and the gold ones are the softest and fluffiest I have ever seen in any tea! The tea has light honey notes and a bit of cocoa or chocolate-y aroma. This is good plain or with just a touch of sugar. I resteeped once, as a cold, gray, and rainy day like this requires more than one pot of tea! This is hitting the spot after having had to go to a doctor’s appointment followed by grocery shopping and cooking a big pot of tomato rice soup…I am worn to a frazzle! I shall now quietly commune with my lovely cup(s) of tea!

Wonderful tea! I drink this one with no sweetener, no milk. This is one of my little luxury teas that I enjoy in the afternoon with a light snack like tea cookies or little eclairs.

Mmmmmm….your honey aroma and flavor grows on me more each time. A fine tea, to be enjoyed with eyes closed while you make yummy noises…..

Finally off my antibiotic that separated me from my beloved caffeinated teas! I broke the fast with this one – an excellent tea full of the fuzziest golden bits I have ever seen. Smells like you have poured a big glop of honey in it, but doesn’t taste like it. Just tastes GOOD! A little bit like Golden Monkey, and you can resteep the leaves!

Gotta love this one!

This is a great black tea when you want a complex and interesting cup. I would liken it to Golden Monkey, but I really like this one much better. There is a very strong honey aroma and flavor, but a little more natural sweetness than Golden Monkey with none of the astringency. The dry leaves are deep black but there is an abundance of the fluffiest and fuzziest golden tips I have even seen. You can brew this tea at least twice and still have a great cup of tea.

Another sipdown! I guess I should log this elsewhere as a mashup but the teas are from two different companies so here it stays.

We had very little of this left and my daughter was helping me polish off some older teas. There wasn’t enough for a whole pot so she added a couple of teaspoons of Lapsang Souchong by Dammann Freres. How could that ever go wrong. I walked by the pot and the scent teased my nostrils and I growled uncontrollably. Good golly, that was some good tea. And here I thought I wasn’t going to have any Lapsang until cool weather comes back…

I have been having this for breakfast in order to speed the sipdown of this rather elderly batch of tea. I don’t want to use it for iced tea with all that assam in it. But wowie, today it is so very fruity! This only has a tiny bit of edge to it and I can drink it without milk or sugar pretty easily. It is a good price and I don’t need anything stronger in the mornings.