Pretty sure my Xbox 360 is dying, it plays games I have stored on ye old hard drive, but it will not read disks, which is unbelievably annoying. I was in the mood to play Bayonetta, which is probably one of my favorite games (even if playing it makes my hands cry) but nope, no Umbra Witch action for me. To make up for it I watched all the cutscenes for Bayonetta 2, and I can safely say I want Wii U, ok not really, but I want to play that game because AWESOME. It was a good day of painting and watching cutscenes.
Today it is time to take a journey to India thanks to Golden Tips Tea, specifically to the Arya Tea Estate and its Arya Ruby Darjeeling Black Tea Second Flush. This tea estate was set up in 1885 and its specialty teas are all named after jewels, this one being ruby, which is lovely, the gemstone collector in me is happy. The aroma of this tea starts off delicate with sweet notes of raisins and distant flowers, but it builds into loam, dry wood, and spicebush with a bit of roasted peanut and malt at the finish. It is not a very powerful aroma, but it is nice, the woody notes compliment the raisins.
Into my funky steeping vessel it goes, and in the photo it looks like the teafrogs are shunning the steeping vessel, silly things probably want me to use a real teapot. The aroma of the wet leaves is sweet, woody, and warm. Like a blend of honey, loam, wet wood, pepper, and a touch of raisins at the finish. The liquid does not really smell sweet, it is more like fresh broken stems of oak wood, a touch of leaf loam, and a bit of pepper at the finish.
I found the taste to be both warm and soothing, like late autumn sunlight in the late afternoon, the way everything turns a little golden. Granted these kinds of days are only enjoyable to me when not blisteringly hot, the same can be said about tea, not burning one’s mouth while having the tea be at the perfect temperature is a skill. Enough flowery descriptions about how the tea makes me feel, what matters is how it actually tastes. It starts with loam, raisins, and wood, then moves to a tiny bit of pepper and finished with woodiness. This honestly one of the most ‘tea’ tasting teas I have run into, that sounds really strange but this tea tastes like tea, if you were to ask me to picture the taste of a second flush Darjeeling black tea in my mind, it would probably be this. This is the epitome of an everyday kinda tea for me, good for sipping while lounging on a porch.
For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2015/02/golden-tips-tea-arya-ruby-darjeeling.html
