I pulled this sample from the T&C TTB before I sent it off, and now I’m glad that I did. Lately, I’ve been drinking a lot of the same teas, so I haven’t been motivated to write tasting notes. I thought I’d be a tad more adventurous today, so I steeped up this darjeeling. I’m still on a quest to figure out the different types of straight black teas, so I had to snatch this sample out of the box to try.
The packet says “muscatel and cut wood.” I’m definitely getting a woodsy taste out of this one, but I’m not entirely sure what muscatel is even supposed to taste like. So perhaps it is in there and I’m just not tasting it? To me, it has the malty flavor of a black tea with wood notes in there. Others have also mentioned something about lemon that I’m not picking up on either. I do have enough leaves for another round, so I will keep these facts in mind and see if I pick up on any of that next time around.
I did quite enjoy this tea, though. It wasn’t bitter and only had a slight hint of astringency. If this is representative of darjeelings in general, that is definitely a direction I want to be exploring!
I’m trying to figure out muscatel, too. It’s a grape flavour, but because I’ve never actually had muscatel grapes, I’m not sure how to separate that flavour from just “grape”.
I’m hoping if I drink enough muscatel teas I’ll figure it out.