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Golden Moon sample No. 4 of 31, randomly selected. Patience isn’t my strong suit and every drop I have of it goes to my small kids, so it shouldn’t be surprising that I do things like pick the next random sample even if I may not drink it right away, just so I know what it’s going to be. I was lucky tonight, I picked back to back whites — so I can get away with trying another one before I go to bed. (I hope.)

I’m guessing the same white tea is the base for this as was for the Persian Melon. Looks the same in any case — I won’t repeat the visual description here. These do have that anise/fennel smell of licorice, but it is far more mellow and earthy than I’d thought it would be. I’m finding that in flavored teas, the smell of the dry mixture is often much more intense and concentrated than the smell of the steeped tea, which I suppose makes total sense. I am visualizing a textbook style diagram showing little bubbles of aroma-containing particles wafting upward as the tea evaporates and having more and more space coming between them the farther away from the liquid they go. Here, I’m wondering how much flavor there will be in the steeped tea since the licorice fragrance in the dry leaves doesn’t seem strong enough to sustain infusion, but then, licorice is a pretty strong flavor and I should give GM the benefit of the doubt for knowing what they’re doing.

Color-wise, the liquor is very similar to the Persian Melon as well, pale golden yellow. The licorice component of the steeped tea’s aroma is mild and mellow.

Taste-wise, it is as well. It’s definitely licorice, but soft, smooth, gentle. Which is great, because if it were stronger it could get scary and become Tazo Cinnamon Spice minus the cinnamon. Where in the Persion Melon the white tea seemed to add a fermented note, here it lends more of a earthy note. Together with the anise, the earthy note brings to mind tarragon. And now all of a sudden I’m thinking of Samuel Beckett. I wish that hadn’t happened right before bed. I enjoy thinking about Samuel Beckett, so now I’ll probably want to stay up and read.

But back to this tea. As a licorice tea, this is v. nice, but do I want/need licorice tea? It’s not my favorite flavor, I never crave it. I enjoy it if I’m in the mood and it’s presented to me but I wouldn’t ordinarily seek it out. I think that sums up how I feel about this tea. Unlikely to crave it, unlikely to seek it out, but if it was presented to me most likely I’d drink it and enjoy it.

Unfortunately there isn’t tea-on-demand capability, where you can open your magic beam me up Scotty fax machine and pull out just the right amount of leaves so that you don’t have to order a #*^!load of something you’ll want only once in a while. If I had one of those, I could see requesting small samples of this from time to time.

So who is going to invent that, please?