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Two flavors I never would have thought about combining – how is it going to come out? Two different kinds of tea, too. Brave, those souls at Golden Moon. I like both vanilla and mint, but in sampling this tea I realize that I think of mint as a high, cool note and vanilla as a low, warm note. I keep getting thrown off all the way through – the smell as I open it up, the smell as it’s steeping, and the flavors as I drink it. It’s like I’m listening to a bass and a soprano at the same time, and wondering where the tenor is!

It’s weird, I like all the flavors in this, and it’s probably just me but I think it would take some getting used to if I were to drink this on a regular basis. Not quite sure what to rate this yet, so I’ll throw it somewhere in the middle.

A stalwart aroma greets me upon opening the packet – deep and toasty, and umpteen times more interesting than a regular old English Breakfast. The dry leaf is small and dark, and after three and a half minutes I’ve got a little pot of clear dark brown tea. Now I’ve got some fruity and sweet notes in the aroma, and my mouth is starting to water!

This tea isn’t shy – it’s got lots of strong flavor, and I keep thinking it tastes like Lipton (in a good way) on steroids. Now this is what EB is supposed to taste like. There is pepper, and fruit, and wood, not too much but just enough astringency – nice job! Buzz buzz buzz…pretty good caffeine content in it too, I’d guess.

I’m approaching this one just a bit skeptically, as it isn’t labelled as anything other than a generic “green tea”. With so many varieties out there, that seems to be selling it a little bit short. The aroma of the dry leaf is fine, fresh but not very nuanced.

I set it up for two minutes at 190, and got a nice green color out of the liquor, just a bit cloudy. The aroma was understated, as was the flavor. There are hints at vegetal, a little astringency, perhaps a couple other notes but they’re so far in the background that it hardly seems like I should count them. Nothing offensive about it, but I’m not finding a compelling reason to keep drinking this one when there are so many other excellent green teas out there.

Very nice aroma on opening the packet: Darjeeling moments, but also a deeper woody sweetness and some floral notes too. Mmmm!

After four minutes it’s a medium-dark brown, and smells good. I’ve got some maltiness, that sweet wood thing going on and just a bit of spiciness. The taste continues in this vein – it’s not enamel-scrapingly strong, which is good, and manages to put forward an incense-like tone that I find very pleasant and not surprisingly reminiscent of Nepal. I’m not putting sugar and milk in this one, but I bet it would make a superlative chai with that and some spices.

As it cools the honey and wood flavors heighten their profile, and there’s just enough astringency for it to be a good afternoon choice for my taste. I’d definitely be interested in getting more of this and playing around with different permutations of steeping and blending.

Yay, back home and back to sampling real teas!

I pulled this one out to start with something that has the potential to show how a gentle white tea can be married up with a flavor that could easily overpower it. I opened up the packet and got a strong whiff of licorice/anise, which though I’m not crazy about it, I do like it enough to find appealing. Also a little worried though, because I know how strong licorice can get (for some reason I got addicted to the really salty licorice they have in Sweden on a trip there last year, and kept popping the little lozenges all day).

I think they’ve done a good job of balancing the flavors here. I taste the white tea, and I taste the licorice, and they are amicably shaking hands. Neither is shoving the other out of the way to grab the spotlight. The licorice does a better job of leaving an aftertaste, but it’s not overpowering at all, just a light and lingering sweetness. Nice one.

Tried it at 3 minutes and got the slightest hint of vegetal flavors, and just a bit of roastiness in the aroma. Kept the bag in there and at 5 minutes there was a little more astringency but remarkably just as little real flavor as before. I went all the way to 7 minutes in an effort to wring a shred of character out of this tea – an unheard of effort on my part with regards to a green tea. Sadly, it was all for nought.

Farewell English Garden teas!

Well, if nothing else this week away from my regular posse of tea-homeys has made me more aware of how much I like teas which are bold and in your face with flavor. None of the English Garden varieties I’ve tried this week have been terrible, but they’ve really been wallflowers in terms of personality. Perhaps this company is trying to cater to the lowest common denominator tastes of the hotel trade – that’s how their website and packaging makes it look. Unfortunately, by trying hard not to offend anyone they’ve ended up being more than a wee bit unexciting. Take this Lemon Tea for example – they say it’s “bursting with a fresh and zesty citrus tang”, but all I’m getting is some lemon essence combined with an unremarkable black tea.

One more to try at tomorrow’s breakfast, and then it’s back home to a tea cupboard full of old friends and new.

Not one of my favorites so far from the variety of English Garden teas I’ve been sampling. The telltale muscatel is there, but there’s a strange redolence of “burned” in the flavor. Not like Lapsang Souchong smokiness, which I really like, but like something went wrong in the processing of this tea. I might have to try this one again this week to see if perhaps it was just a bad bag.

I’m not very familiar with Assam teas, so I’m not sure how exemplary this would have been of the variety. The company’s description says it’s malty, and I’d agree that there is a hint of that in the flavor that particularly comes out with the addition of a little milk and sugar. I also got a bit of a peppery scent/flavor at first, before I added anything. Overall fairly weakly flavored and not a very exciting tea, but it does remind me that I need to try some more Assams soon – starting with the TeaFrog Banaspaty Organic, which I have waiting for me back home.

I know that bergamot flavor originates with a citrus fruit, but for me Earl Grey has always been more about a “perfume” scent rather than a citrus scent. In this tea though the citrus characteristics of Earl Grey really come to the fore – the perfume aspect is definitely there, but I’m really tasting a citrus fruit. If you asked me which one, I’d be hard pressed to do so, but would just describe the tartness and freshness which are hallmarks of this type of fruit. I’ll give this one marks for making me think of Earl Grey in a fresh way!