Joshua Smith select Send Message

I’ve gotten way behind on posting my tasting notes due to my upcoming midterms, and this is the first time that I’ve been able to catch up on my backlogged stuff. I had this earlier today, and it was just as delightful as usual. See my other notes fro more details.

I don’t have time for a full review, but this tea was just as good as I remember it. See my previous notes.

I’ve been drinking black teas all week, so I decided to take a bit of a break today. After a week of strong, bold flavors, the more subdued fruits of this Oolong are kind of nice. For more details, see one of my other notes.

Just finishing off the packet from yesterday. See my previous note.

I finally realized how amazing this tea is, after accidentally letting it steep for 15 minutes. Even after all that time, the tea wasn’t astringent, it wasn’t bitter, and the taste still actually held a bit of sweetness! There is no way in Hell I’ll ever go back to bording old tea bags!

Regardless, this tea is also interesting because of how balanced the flavor is. The primary flavor is caramel, but it’s not as sickeningly sweet as caramel is when you eat it alone. The sweetness from the caramel does not overshadow the other flavors, and acts as I nice contrast. I am certainly going to buy more of this when my sample runs out.

I really, REALLY needed some caffeine, and this is the darkest tea I have. I actrually forgot about it for a few minutes, so I’m not sure how long I steeped it, but the results were fantastic. The color of the tea is a very deep red, bordering on black. The aroma was very strong, but it was hard to pin a specific scent to it. The tast of the frist cup was much better than I remember despite how strong it was. It’s a very nice black tea, but there really isn’t anything special about the taste.

This was a very different experience for me as the only other puerhs I’ve had were all Sheng. Regardless, I went into this with a mostly open mind, and the results were pretty great. After properly washing it out a bit, I did the first true infusion, which resulted in literally black tea. The aroma was earthy, very earthy, but not in a bad way. The taste was actually much better than I expected, without a hint of the “muddy pond” taste that some lower-quality shu apparently has. It is interesting how it is a bit sweet this quickly, and it is certainly above-average. That being said, I am a bit ambivalent about the taste. Sure, it’s got a few things I like, but it’s not something that I would go out of my way to have again.

This tea is a great example of why Darjeelings are called the Champagne of tea. A strong fruity aroma and dark brown color are different from all other types of black tea I’ve ever had, that the flavor is really in a class all of it’s own. The flavor of the first infusion was a nice balance of fruity sweetness and something akin to mesquite, which is very different from my Chinese blacks. There is a bit of an aftertaste of mesquite and hints of fruit that lingers on the top of the mouth, which seems to be fairly standard for my other Darjeeling tea.