Harney & Sons

This was the second tea for the tea party/tasting today. As always, I am stunned by how rich and caramel-y this is – it actually SMELLS thick in the cup! It was delicious, as always!
A “favorite, absolutely can’t run out of this one” tea.

It is a gray and rainy day here in Eastern North Carolina, though not cold. Still – some comfort food was in order. We baked a loaf of fresh whole wheat bread (made from freshly ground wheat!) and set out jams, butter, and apple butter from the NC mountains. Ah yes! My Golden dear did not let me down! Two cups made the afternoon pass smoothly with the rich honeyed taste, light and delicate flavor, and caramel-y mouth feel. Ahhhhh…..

Delicious plain, as always!

This tea is FANTASTIC without milk or sugar! One of the few that I can drink that way and really enjoy it.

I must be growing up! I tried this one again today, and I really liked it. I was bothered the first two times by the fact that I smelled honey so strongly but didn’t taste honey. Maybe I am using less and less sugar, maybe I am appreciating the tea more, but I drank this today with no sugar at all and found it quite good. I had just had two cups of pu-erh, also without sugar, so maybe that helped. Before, I drank it on the heels of flavored, sweetened tea. The bottom line – my friend said it was one of her favorites EVER that I have given her (she takes everything with no sugar!) and I really enjoyed it.

This tea has me confused! I think I like it. I liked trying it. But it isn’t at all what I expected.

I was trying to find a substitute for A Southern Season’s Super China Black Zhen Quo which is as smooth and mellow as a Ceylon, rich and full-bodied without being strong. Golden Monkey comes from the same general area, the Fujian province of China, Wuyi mountain region. The appearance was very similar, but Zhen Quo has a lot of fuzzy golden buds, the fuzziest I have ever seen.

I expected Golden Monkey to be very similar in taste, but it is VERY different. I expected a honey taste from the other reviews I have seen, but I didn’t expect a strong clover honey aroma and taste without sweetness. That isn’t bad, just unexpected. The tea changes as its temperature changes as well.

If you smell the wet leaves, you will note the honey aroma, almost a caramel scent, and the barest hint of smoke. As the tea in the cup cools, you can taste the smoke, but only a little.

I will have to say this is a complex and interesting tea with a lot of personality, but not the smooth and soothing cup to cradle when I need to de-stress that I was expecting. My friend who tasted it with me liked it and felt that it grew more and more like the Zhen Quo in flavor as it cooled. It is worth a try. If you love oolongs, I think this is a black tea you would love.

I think when I make this one again I will use a slightly lower water temperature, as this tea seems too delicate for a full boil.

Catching up on some Dexter, watching some tea…

It’s a pretty awesome way to start a Sunday morning.

So, I’ve been looking forward to this H&S sample since I ordered it. I’ve only had one other Yunnan (Adagio’s Yunnan Jig), and this one is supposed to be “tippy” which in the tea world signifies “better than average.” Or at least, that’s what it sounds like.

Anyway, when I opened the packet, I was a little surprised at how broken the leaves were. Yunnan Jig’s leaves are long and wiry. These were a bit more chopped up. The smell coming from them was earthy-strong, with a bit of white pepper mixed in. Other than that, the dominant aroma was black tea. Hrm.

So I steeped this sucker up, and I was pretty surprised at how dark the tea is. It’s really dark. Darker than mahogany, but not the purple-black that pu-erh has. The infusion actually has a fairly pu-erh scent to it as well. Rich earth of pu-erh, mixed with a bit of smokiness. Maybe some pipe tobacco? It’s easy to see how the teas of Yunnan are linked to pu-erh (common origin and all that).

At peak hotness, this tea is pretty malty and strong. The dominant flavors are definitely smoke and peppery, mixed with a earthiness that’s pretty interesting. Very brisk, slightly astringent, but not that complex and interesting.

As the tea cools, a sweet element begins to build that’s somewhat like dried maple, but not nearly as strong and assertive as I would have liked. It’s a tantalizing whiff, but it never builds into anything substantial.

This tea is a tease. It should be so much better, but it’s really not. It’s just fairly average. Rishi’s Golden Yunnan (of the sample I’ve tried) is loads better, with caramelized, sweet potato notes, and it’s around the same price. I like Adagio’s Yunnan Jig a lot better as well.

So yeah, a fairly serviceable tea, but it’s not going to have sparks shooting out of your eyes or anything like that.

This is a sample from Soccermom. Thank you so much for sending these. Wow is this amazingly like cinnamon candies. Makes me really want to go find some cinnamon hearts (I couldn’t find any this valentine’s day). I really enjoy this drink, it is right on in the cinnamon flavor. I’m not tasting much tea in this, there is so much good flavored cinnamon, so I don’t mind, but not tasting much tea. I can’t wait to compare this to the Black Hot Cinnamon. Thanks again Soccermom for the chance to try this tea. Definitely tastes like it says it should, but not sure it’s one I would drink too often.

While it was extremely tempting to have another cup of Marco Polo today, I decided to go for this one today. This is another tea that JacquelineM sent me. :)

The scent of the dry leaves kind of reminds me of Teavana’s Cacao Mint Black – without the mint, of course. It must be because they both have chocolate and hazelnut. So that would make sense, right? :P

Brewed, you get more of a black tea scent than with the dry leaves, but the chocolate and hazelnut scents are still very much there.

Mmmm, this is another delicious tea! It’s so smooth! You get the nutty and the chocolatey, though neither flavor is too heavy or overpowering, and then a lingering sweetness on the tongue. Yum!

I don’t feel quite the urge to own this, as I did with Marco Polo yesterday, but this is a very yummy tea, and I’m really glad I tried it! I will definitely have to try this with milk and sugar before my sample is gone, because I bet that would be amazing too!!

Thanks yet again, JacquelineM! :)

Since Jacqueline loved this one iced so very much, I decided I just had to try it exactly the same way she made it. I made it last night. I couldn’t wait to try it, so before refrigerating it I poured a little over ice. It was good, but got better when it had cooled on its own on the counter. Before bed, I put it in the fridge.

WOW! I wondered why Jacqueline wanted to know how to keep it from getting cloudy. A little cloudiness never bothered me, and my mother always used to add a pinch of baking soda to her tea pitcher if it clouded a bit, but I have never seen anything like this before. This isn’t cloudy, this is…well, it looks like a whole lot of milk added to some tea!

It tastes good, though, and I read somewhere that it used to be considered a sign that your tea was high quality if it clouded and was desirable. Wll, this must be the best!

Somehow, powerful whiffs of this tea kept hitting me in church this morning. I found it quite puzzling, as I didn’t see anyone with a travel mug nearby. I wondered if perhaps there is some men’s cologne with bergamot in it? Anyway, it made me crave a cup! This is the best Earl Grey ever!! It is so much more refined than any other I have tried. Next, I want to try it iced. JacquelineM recommends it that way!

I was so ready for tea today! While running some errands I called home and requested a pot of this so it would be waiting for me when I got there. Just smelling it as my youngest carried the pot to the patio made me growl – yes, I growled, which really disturbed the kids but I really wanted that pot of tea and it was smelling SO GOOD! This was exquisite, as it always is. Is it the Ceylon Silver Tips that make it so special? If so, I need to try them by themselves, too!

This is my favorite Earl hands down so far. We paired it with a Panera Double Fudge brownie that had been cut into strips so we could share and some strawberries we had sliced and lightly sugared. The tea was perfect just as it was – no additions at all. Ahhhhh. Feeling so blessed…

Oh joy! Just smelling the leaves of this beautiful Earl was delightful, and then things just got better as I poured it and sipped! The tea base is very high quality and the bergamot is just right. It was very well liked at tea party today, and my guest remarked that it was sooo much better than the bags and sachets of Earl Grey from another company that she usually buys. Indeed, it doesn’t even compare.

A lovely light pick me up before starting the yard work! First cup with no additions, second with a tiny bit of sugar.

I am drinking the loose leaf version of this one with the lovely Ceylon Silver Tips winking at me from the cup, and loving it this morning. I wasn’t sure what I wanted – my usual teas were not calling my name and I had already been up a long time. I picked this one and it did not disappoint! This is GOOD TEA with bergamot added, and not too much bergamot. I am drinking it without additions, but my next cup will be experimental – I plan to try it as a London Fog!

Had a cup of this again yesterday. Made me go “Ahhhhh.”

I can see why Harney and Sons says that people who try this never go back to regular Earl Grey! I was not a big Earl Grey fan, and when this one came with my tea chest I expected the “Supreme” to mean that they had added a lot of extra bergamot. Not so! They put all the Supreme into the leaves themselves! This is a beautiful base of black tea, oolong tea, and silver tips. I believe Mike Harney’s book said they order Formosa Oolong especially for the base of this tea. The bergamot is a lovely addition, but not overwhelming and only enhances this tea. It isn’t there to cover up the use of inferior leaves, as is often the case with flavored teas. This one will definitely be kept in stock in my cupboard.

Steep Information:
Amount: 2 tsp
Additives: none
Water: 2 zarafina cups
Tool: Zarafina Black-Loose-Medium
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: cinnamon imperials
Steeped Tea Smell: sweet cinnamon bark
Flavor: syrupy sweet cinnamon candy, hints of woody bark
Body: Full
Aftertaste: warm sweet cinnamon, less bark
Liquor: translucent but dark reddish-brown

Gift from SoccerMom (YEA) in order to help me see which is the most similar to cinnamon imperials as part of my quest to take over the world…or something similar

I have had the bagged H&S black cinnamon spice at one or two restaurants before, but this was before Steepster and my desire to try all the teas and find which I like best (IMO you can’t find the best because everyone has different tastes).

The tea is very thick syrup, as if you had made cinnamon imperials into a liquid. Delicious! Though I must say the Green Hot Cinnamon is a lighter, more tea like version, it’s not as thick and not as sweet. I think each has their place.

Strangely I couldn’t find the black tea!

Post-Steep Additives: none, though i bet this would stand up to milk well. Whatever you do, do NOT add sugar as you would become diabetic on the spot.

images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/03/harney-and-sons-loose-leaf-black-tea_13.html

Steep Information:
Amount: 2 tsp
Additives: none
Water: 2 zarafina cups, filtered
Tool: Zarafina Green-Loose-Medium
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: cinnamon imperials candy
Steeped Tea Smell: sweet cinnamon, sweet sugary cinnamon, a slight bit lighter than the leaf smell
Flavor: cinnamon, sweet, sweet cinnamon candy, where is the green tea?
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: cinnamon bark-woody
Liquor: very clear light yellow-green

Gift from SoccerMom (YEA) in order to help me see which is the most similar to cinnamon imperials as part of my quest to take over the world…or something similar

I have had the bagged H&S black cinnamon spice at one or two restaurants before, but this was before Steepster and my desire to try all the teas and find which I like best (IMO you can’t find the best because everyone has different tastes).

Anyway the tea was delicious, I love it dearly, deliciously sweet even without sweetener.

Post-Steep Additives: none

Resteep: (2 zarafina cups green-medium-strong) weak, cinnamon but weak, sadness.

images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/03/harney-and-sons-loose-leaf-green-tea.html

Hail, St. Patrick; we who are about to destroy ourselves on an early pubcrawl in hideously bad weather to celebrate your name…salute you.

Yeah, doesn’t quite have the ring of the original, but it captures the foreboding feeling I have listening to freezing cold rain splattering against my window, while I eyeball the clock and am forced to confront the fact that, yes, in four hours, I am going out. Hoh-boy.

Something…reassuring…was in order, here. Why not try Florence, finally? I have fond memories of that city. Eight months or so out of the year, my mother and stepfather live in a tiny villa on the side of a mountain overlooking the Mediterranean on what is known as the Cilentan Coast, in the Province of Salerno, within the Comune di Sapri, and a bunch of other divisions I can’t be bothered to remember sorting out. It’s nice. Peaceful. There are goats and hairpin turns winding through mountainside towns of a variety that you do not get in the United States, because if you had them here, there would be incidents resulting in cars on rooftops every other Thursday. Somehow that does not seem to happen there, regardless of the fact that every other person you glimpse behind a wheel appears to be one thousand years old and half-blind.

Anyway, I digress. Off to Florence I go, when the goats no longer hold my interest. Hop a train, and bam: buona sera, Ponte Vecchio!

For those of you interested, the very best way to see Florence is not, in fact, to get a hotel room, but to rent one of any number of widely available private apartments just off of the very same Palazzo della Signoria mentioned in the description of this tea. There are a ton of them, and they are available, in the off-season, on what passes for the cheap when you’re talking euros (which means not so cheap anymore, alas).

Anyway, I cannot for the life of me recall having had hazelnut hot chocolate in Florence, but there IS a little chocolate and pastries cafe on one of the corners of the Palazzo called Rivoire that…

…mmm….Rivoire…

…wait, what?

Anyway, enough about Italy. This tea is escapist enough to be worthy of the moniker even if the flavors it so expertly captures are not flavors I immediately associate with that city. I prefer this tea hands down to the plain chocolate blend from them that I’ve also sampled…something in the hazelnut really gives the tea depth, and without it the nose would not be nearly as special. It has the balance I’m coming to expect from a flavored H&S tea, and all in all I’m pretty pleased with having selected it to restore my resolve to march out into the worst weather ever in search of a perfectly-poured Guinness.