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Thank you, Sil, for sending me this sample!!!

I really like this tea. It reminds me a bit of the only other Fortnum & Mason tea I’ve tried: Assam Superb. My father works for a London-based company, and he used to bring home tins of Assam Superb when he travelled to London for work. This tea seems like it may also have some Ceylon blended in (just checked, it does), but the Assam is still the most noticeable for me. This is a perfect tea for this morning. It’s assertive, yet smooth, and it reminds me of being at home. I usually am not a fan of Ceylon tea, but in this blend it lends (I believe it’s the Ceylon) a honey-sweetness to the cup.

I just received this tea in the mail. It’s the 2014 picking. I brewed it after lunch according to the American Tea Room’s instructions, which is twice as long as I would steep the 2012 Canton Tea Co. version of this tea. I’m not enjoying this anywhere near as well as I enjoyed the Canton version. It’s so much more vegetal, which maybe is partially because it is so fresh. But it doesn’t have the same sweet vanilla, floral, and apricot that made me love Canton’s offering. My other favorite tea from the Darjeeling region was also from 2012. I wonder if that is just coincidence or if that year had an unusually good harvest. I’ll try this again with a shorter steep and a cleaner palate and see how I feel about this then.

Ah. This tea is pretty great. It reminds me of one of maybe a WuYi oolong or maybe a high-quality Dong Ding. But what do I know? The thing that distinguishes this one is the mouthfeel. It is creamy, and I mean really creamy. It feels thick in your mouth, almost like heavy cream. Even when life is hard, I’m grateful to be able to take time to enjoy brewing and drinking tea.

I’m almost out of this one. Casey moved his stuff out yesterday, and he brought my teapots with him. I had accidentally sent them to his parent’s place. We used to share an Amazon account, and I guess I forgot to change the default shipping address.

I brewed this per the instructions, and it’s much better than I remember it. I think I will brew the second steeping like I would a more typical black, and see how that turns out. This is definitely among the very lightest in body of Chinese blacks that I have. I could have used something stronger this morning.

Oh well, off to go walk the Fritzy with my mother.

So, I’ve still been kinda down over the breakup. I still haven’t received my new water boiler or teapots in the mail…So, yeah, the only tea I’ve had in the past few days has been this stuff. I gave it a pretty poor rating, as it is pretty bland and has citric acid added as a “preservative” ( you are allowed to add stuff like this and it’s not technically considered a preservative even though I believe this is added for that purpose). But I’d still recommend this as it’s a pretty good drink to grab when your choices are limited.

Once I get my new teaware, I’m planning to try all of my love/romance themed samples just for irony’s sake.

If anyone has a good recommendation on TV series I might want to watch as my breakup therapy, please tell me your suggestions! I watched HIMYM to get over the last one. I have started Veronica Mars, and although I’m enjoying it, too many of the episodes I’ve seen so far seem to have the takeaway message that “you never really know anyone” or “you can’t trust anyone” and it’s hitting a little too close to home right now.

So, this morning, Casey, my boyfriend of 10 months (8 months of which we were cohabitating) decided to break up with me. We weren’t even fighting. I asked him how he was doing this morning and his answer was (to put it only slightly more succinctly than he did): “not good”. And then he packed a bag. Life is weird sometimes. It was literally only yesterday afternoon that I booked us tickets to visit my father in New York on Easter weekend. I was encouraging him to stay at home because the tickets are expensive, he has limited PTO at his new job, and the trip isn’t exactly a vacation. But he told me that he wanted to go because he wouldn’t be able to sleep without me. He referenced a night recently when I stayed up all night working in our living room and he told me that he missed me in our bed and that really wanted to be on couch next to me all night…And less than 24 hours later, he spoke the words that amounted to he never wants to sleep next to me again.

I’ve been through enough in my life to know that I am okay being alone…But I loved and trusted this person more than anyone else. I always knew that, emotionally speaking, he wasn’t getting as much out of the relationship. He had a very hard time opening up and putting his feelings into words, but I thought that pushing him would only make things worse, and that it would get easier for him with time…But now our time is up.

Tea was fine.

I received this in a swap from ashleyelizabeth. Thanks!

This was a really nice black tea. Casey thought it was excellent. I have more mixed feelings about it. I would have liked this more without the smoky note, or if it had a more robust body. I’m not sure if I would order a bigger quantity of this, but I’m glad I have more to try it again.

This is a sipdown this morning. I am bumping the rating up a bit. While this tea in unremarkable, it is still a solid Golden Monkey with nothing that I would consider a flaw. It’s smooth and easy to drink.

I broke my favorite 25 oz teapot yesterday, and its replacement isn’t coming until next week. :-( I have not been wanting to brew small quantities of tea in my bigger teapot, so I chose this one tonight because I love it and don’t mind drinking lots of it at a time. :-)

So, this is the tea I had with my meal at the Thai restaurant last night. I was eating a very rich red curry, so some of the subtleties of this tea were definitely lost on me. I was expecting not to like the pomegranate flavoring at all, but I was surprised at how pleasant it was. It reminded me a lot of currant, and it hadn’t occurred to me how similar pomegranate and currant smells (to me, at least) until last night. Anyhow, the disappointing factor in this was the base tea. I was just not liking it, and it had a weird taste in the back palate/aftertaste. I wouldn’t purchase this one again, but I remain open to trying another pomegranate tea from Harney & Sons with a different base…