Whittard of Chelsea

First: why do I have oolong teabags? The whole idea is anathema to my being. They must have been out of the loose leaf. I must have been desperate.

Second: what am I smelling as this brews? Something brown. Smoke? Burn? Chicory, definitely chicory. It’s like somebody threw some of my mum’s evening coffee substitute in with the tea leaves in here. This carries over into the flavour too, over the usual sort of leafy, autumnal flavour typical of this kind of oolong, and something that reminds me of, I dunno, the smell of fish food maybe? But the memory of feeding fishies in my kitchen in the 80s when I was very little. Confusing.

All things considering, it’s all right, but not mind-blowing.

Now I really need to stop procrastinating and finish this painting commission of Jo Grant escaping from a space prison.

I’m skipping the queue with this one. I’ll do a queued post later, probably. I think I obtained it from the EU travelling teabox, the teas from which I mysteriously didn’t number and note in my notebook like I normally do. I used all the leaf I had on one enormous pot, which I then decanted into a second pre-warmed pot, so I’ve been drinking this all morning. I’ve had an electrician round this morning to fix a few things on the house. Some sockets that didn’t work and a cable on the outside which originally supplied the out-building that the previous owners tore down. This cable just ended in a plastic bag in the crawl-space under the house and turned out to actually be live! When selling houses in Denmark, it’s mandatory to have an inspector round to go through the house and grade all the faults and things for severity, and you also have an electrician around to inspect the electrical installations. The electrician that inspected here put that cable down as something that needed to be looked at more closely. Why he didn’t say that it needed fixing NOW as it was extremely dangerous is beyond me. I’m fairly certain having live cables just end in a plastic bag like that is probably wildly illegal… Oh well. It’s not live anymore and the electrician can easily just change it back if we decide we want to use it for something.

At any rate, I didn’t know for how long he would need to turn the electricity off for the whole house, hence the jolly big pot of tea made in advance. Provisions, you see! Turns out he only needed to turn it off twice for maybe ten minutes at the time or so, and all the work he had to do took about an hour, but I wasn’t to know that.

So back to the tea.

This is a blend of Darjeeling and Assam, and I can definitely taste the high-grown-ness of the Darjeeling. There’s a whiff of unmistakable flower-y dry grass in here. It’s not actually unpleasant though, like it frequently is for me in a pure Darj, so I imagine that it’s tempered by the Assam. I wouldn’t have guessed Assam myself from the taste, though, but I can definitely tell that there’s something stronger and with more oomph than your average Darjeeling.

All in all, it’s actually a surprisingly pleasant blend. Quite sweet and smooth too. However, it also tastes fairly anonymous. It’s a nice blend to drink while puttering about the house trying to entertain oneself in the morning with something that is vaguely productive but not requiring a lot of light or electricity. It’s not really a blend that invites me to try and analyse the flavour in depth. It merely wants to be drunk.

Okay, I can handle that.

(Also, tea cozy that I got for Christmas last year and hardly ever use appears to be surprisingly effective in combination with a pre-heated China pot. It’s kept the brew suitably warm for nearly two hours now!)

Downed a cup and a half before breaking down and actually peeking at the ingredients I couldn’t identify…odd that I’m not overfond of rose, jasmine, or bergamot individually, but together and with a light touch, they combine to make a properly civilized and elegant cuppa.

Anne Perry, one of my new favorite authors (she’s been around a while), writes a Victorian mystery series about detective Thomas Pitt, who married above his station. His wife, Charlotte, relies on her proper society connections and adventurous Aunt Vespasia to assist Thomas in infiltrating the ugly underbelly of the London uppercrust. I would proudly pour up a pot of this for either of the ladies.

Hellooooooooooooooo baby. I don’t know what it is, but this is totally hitting the spot today. I totally didn’t time how long this steeped for, but yeah. It’s light and lovely.

This tea pairs especially well with hoovering an entire bag of bbq popchips and bingewatching Archer before going to work. Yeah, perfect.

Ok, I don’t know what it is I did differently this time (I think I might have underleafed slightly?) but this is the best cup of this tea that I’ve had. It’s a lighter tea, as befits a Darjeeling, but there’s a distinct raisiny flavour that comes through just before the end, when it goes a little leafy/earthy and it’s actually really nice. Bumping the rating accordingly. I’m glad I bought this one. I still don’t trust Darjeelings that don’t stipulate whether they’re first or second flush (it makes such a difference) but I’ll happily drink this one in the meantime.

And it ought to give me enough of a boost to push through day two of this wretched headache and finish this painting of the Ninth Doctor!

Okay, so this isn’t the greatest, most spectacularly transcendent Darjeeling I’ve ever had, but for the price, it’s more or less what I expected. A decent cup, though, when I’m in a pinch and want something that tastes like Darjeeling.