sophistre Send Message

You know, I had a hard time evaluating the vanilla teas from GM, and I’m having a hard time evaluating this one, too. On the one hand, I really do like the creamy warmth of actual vanilla. On the other, I am beginning to think that it’s difficult to represent it at a strength sufficient to contend with black tea whilst also avoiding the risk of an aftertaste that isn’t necessarily flattering.

That aside, I’m enjoying my cup. The aroma of the tea itself is heavenly. Harney’s description of the tea, while enchanting, is completely inaccurate for me — I didn’t ever spend any time in the winter baking sugar cookies with my grandmother, and if they’d known any of the three women I called variations of the name ‘granny’, they would probably kill themselves laughing at the very thought — but if I had, then perhaps it would’ve smelled like this. It’s a nice, musky, low vanilla scent, not the super-sweet vanilla of confectionary. Vanilla is one of those flavors that, when most natural, makes me think of…thick-petaled flowers with sweet, oily scents, sitting in pots half-hidden in shadow in a warm, dark room, in which the only lighting comes from a low-burning fireplace. It’s sweet and shadows, but warm shadows.

It isn’t completely overpowering, either. The aroma is stronger than the flavor, but only by a hair. I’m drinking this plain because I want to see what the tea does in my mouth, because of this aforementioned inclination for vanilla to leave an aftertaste…and, sure enough, it does have one — even high-quality vanilla-bean ice cream does, so that is by no means the fault of the tea — though it certainly wouldn’t prevent me from having another cup.

It’s good enough that I think my next go-around I’ll be sipping it with some sugar to see if that decreases the tang in the aftertaste. I expect that a tiny bit of sweetener will elevate this from being merely a warm-fuzzy cup of comforting tea to a real treat that borders on indulgence.

In an effort to reduce Adagio sample tins, inspired by Bethany, I decided to go ahead and start mixing stuff together. Today it was Assam Melody and Keemun Rhapsody, and the results are pretty good…one teaspoon of each for my 16oz. teacup. Raisiny-sweet without being too astringent, a smooth cup to start the day.

And yes, that’s Mr. T. Mr. TEA. …yeah, I know, it’s not that funny.

Yum.

I’ve actually had this one before now and not gotten around to logging it. It’s one of those teas I tend to reach for when I’m frazzled or overcaffeinated or exhausted or the weather is grey and awful and I want to hibernate — and I live in Boston, so this is often — and all of those states usually result in a total lack of interest to write coherently about what I’m drinking. This morning I eagerly took my tin of A&D’s Caravan down from the shelf thinking I’d like to try it, only to discover that the stupid Zojirushi was on 175. Foiled! What could I have at 175 that would…

A-ha.

And so, this tea. It’s a beautiful oolong. Samovar recommends 1-2 tablespoons for 16oz. of water, just shy of boiling. I deviate from this in about every single possible way. 2 tablespoons in 16oz sounds incredibly overpowering — I do two teaspoons in 16oz, and the resulting cup is never watery. One day, when I have a good yixing teapot to devote to this kind of thing and I want to super-saturate myself, I will try two tablespoons…but for now, two teaspoons seems to be more than enough.

I also can’t bring myself to use very hot water on the tea. I’ve thought about trying it several times just to see what would change, but these cups are rather pricey, and I know that I like this cup at 175, so I’ve been uninclined to chance it.

It brews up beautifully…that delicate yellow with the faintest edge of pale green that you get with a ti kuan yin or ali shan. Those are the oolong types that this reminds me of: buttery, a bit floral — gardenias are a good comparison, but this floral is less ‘waxy’ and not quite as cloying as gardenias can get — with quiet undertones of something oolong-nutty as well as a chlorophyl green-ness. What I like most about this tea is that the chlorophyl-ish taste — which they’re pinning as ‘clover’, and I can definitely see that — isn’t an astringent sharpness toward the end of the sip, the way that I’ve experienced with some other similar oolongs. The tail end of this sip seems to round itself off in my mouth, remaining buttery and full-bodied rather than thinning out to threads of super-green vegetal flavor…if that even makes any sense. The mouthfeel is substantial, very heavy and smooth.

Ahhh. So good. It will almost be a shame to obliterate the aftertaste of this tea with a cup of Caravan.

No time to worry about that! Onward and forward into uncharted territories!

Ignore the fallen! (/Harbinger)

*edit: Ha. Note to self: close-tags on steepster interpreted properly. Whoops.

Got this as part of an order from Harney that consisted strictly of a bunch of samples.

This wasn’t quite what I expected, but I think with some playing around it could easily become one of my favorite chai options.

It is not what I would consider typical chai, and I suppose Harney probably doesn’t consider it to be typical chai either. Rather, as someone else noted, it’s a flavored black — there are no bits and pieces of spice or dried fruit or additive here; the tea consists of little black-tea crumbles that remind me of grape nuts, if grape nuts were the color of black tea, and smaller. I was concerned that preparing this in the traditional way — in a pot on the stove, first in hot, sweetened water and then with milk, 1:1 — would ruin the tea, subsequently, and I wasn’t right, but I wasn’t entirely wrong. Despite not being populated with a slew of additional ingredients, the spice profile here seems to come through the milk just fine, and in a balanced, appealing way. In fact, my favorite thing about this tea so far is how balanced the spices actually are…far too often I’m finding chais that club you over the head with cardamom.

That said, I think the little pieces of black tea did not hold up well to being scorched by the hot water, as there’s a faint bitter-sourness to be had. Not enough to be unpleasant — this is still a good cup of tea — but enough to wave a little flag up at me that says ‘hey, jerk, that was a little bit too hot’.

The scent in the pot as the leaf sat in the hot water was not particularly strong. I think the solution to brewing this as a latte in a pot might be to increase the leaf but reduce heat and steep time for that concentrated flavor that holds up well against milk without turning bitter.

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

12:30pm: Resteeping Jackee. He is teasing me, taunting me from the underbrush with glimpses of caramel and confectionary, but smoky still. I am dogged in my pursuit of my elusive quarry. I will have him. I will record my every cup, and all resteeps.

1:00pm: Blast. Too much leaf. Delicious, and yet I feel I am falling father and father behind my prey. The scent was so close before. Damn it all!

1:45pm: I’ve read and reread the copious amount of notes from those who went before, and determined to decrease the steep time, and the leaf amount yet again…and now the trail is hot again.

2:45pm: I WILL FIND YOU, CARAMEL JACK

3pm: We strike out yet again.

3:30pm: And again…sudden impulse to alphabetize video game and cd collection ignored as irrelevant side-effect of caffeine consumption…

4pm: And again…

5pm: Is it 5? …I can hardly keep track of the time…the cups of tea…the tea that looks for a moment as though it will reveal itself to be caramel tea toward the last, but which goes on to breathe its last, only tantalizingly close to what I seek! I feel it shall drive me mad! This expedition is a failure, a failure! I also may have consumed too much caffeine in my pursuit of this ghost, this paper tiger…

6pm: I CAN SMELL HIS MOCKERY. There in my empty cup, let sit for a time…the sweet smell of caramel…sweeter than the tea that occupied the cup, and now I am sure that he TOYS WITH ME! Hands…have begun to shake…

7pm: So close…so close…I can’t give in now…ohhh, the lovely colors…

7:30pm: Tea… i
s

must…
find….
caramel…
fzzbrtth x.x

I haven’t found it. Yet.

You know what I mean. The caramel. That’s the buzz with this tea, isn’t it? The caramel flavor as the cup cools?

I haven’t gotten the caramel chew.

Yet.

The exasperating part of this is that I can sense how the flavors in the tea would become the caramel. All of the right qualities are there, right up to the salty-sour tickle at the sides of my tongue that seems sweet by turns. It’s there. But it’s hiding, resistant, clinging to the edge of the precipice that allows it to tout itself more as a smoky keemun than a caramel chew.

The good news, of course, is that the tea it continues to insist upon being is excellent. I think I prefer it over either of Adagio’s offerings sheerly by dint of the extremely smooth, silky, substantial mouthfeel that it gives as you sip. Adagio’s lacks the sweet-sour-salty feeling this one gives me, but it seems far more one-dimensional, too…and a little bit more brisk. Good, but not quite the fullness of flavor I get here.

The other good news is that a) I’ve discovered the leaf holds up well to a single second steeping and b) getting close to, but not quite to, the caramel flavor so often touted, means that I’ve got plenty of reason to drink cup after delicious cup of this tea. I can hardly complain. Experiments…they will continue.

I bought this tea when it was featured as the Select. The first time I tried it, it was not at all what I was wanting, and I didn’t finish the cup — not the tea’s fault, mind you, but mine for having chosen something I was really, really not in the mood for. Today finds me sitting down to write and unable to get my brain to turn over like the engine I need it to be, and what I need is an elegant kick in the backside.

This is working for me today. It brews to a very pretty reddish-orange hue and it smells like sweet potato. The flavor is pure assam — malty black tea with a touch of sweet potato sweetness that reminds me post-sip of molasses, but very faint, meaning this would be a perfect pairing with some sugar in the raw and a touch of cream, though I’ll be drinking it with neither today — it’s smooth enough to get by without additives, despite the mild astringency. It has more astringency than I usually prefer, but not so much as I seem to remember it having had that first time…just more than I get from my current black tea staple, Adagio’s Golden Spring (re: none).

I feel as though I should be waiting for the cup to cool slightly before I post this tasting note, but I’m really enjoying the almost-too-hot burn in the belly. Maybe it’ll be enough to scorch away this head full of cottonballs I seem to be cursed with today.

Crappy weather, check.

Weekend inside, check.

Too much sugar consumed already in the form of homemade hot chocolate, check.

Time for some campfire tea (I think I saw someone else call it ‘lumberjack tea’ at some point — Robert, maybe? — and it made me snicker).

I definitely prefer the sweetness in this to the extremely acrid Samovar version, though I think the Samovar lapstang souchong is better with milk or creamer. Either way…this is the closest I can get to the scent of pine logs full of sweet sap burning in a woodstove in my 18th floor apartment.

(And you know…it actually goes pretty well with spending time revisiting Orzammar…okay, maybe that’s an overdose of nerd even for me.)

The cup of this that I am sipping right now is so good and so full of chocolate flavor that I would, if blindfolded, assume I was drinking hot chocolate. Not even exaggerating.

I went heavy on the blend since I’m nearing the end of the bag — 4 teaspoons in 1 cup of boiling water in a pot on the stove — and I threw in a small (read: very small — one ‘triangle’) piece of actual chocolate (Scharffen Berger 70% dark) once the water was hot enough, along with some turbinado sugar. I topped this with two cups of 2% milk and brought the whole mess back up to steaming-hot, then strained and poured. The result is phenomenal. I definitely like my hot chocolate…I’ve got gourmet and artisan tins of that on the shelf above my tea…but I don’t really care for how drowsy the sugar-bomb of it makes me. The fact that I was able to get pretty close to that kind of indulgence with this tea makes me pretty happy.

Also, on that note, I’m looking for dessert tea recommendations. It seems I’m more prone to getting a sweet tooth when the sky is grey and everything is cold, and since I live in Boston…well, you do the math. ;) Need some alternatives to actually pigging out on junk food!

I’m not really sure how good this particular darjeeling is as compares to other darjeelings, but it was basically exactly what I wanted right now, and it’s really hitting the spot.

So much of the nose of this tea reminds me of the Royal Garland I have from Samovar, despite the fact that I’ve been brewing the latter at 175. I probably would’ve made more mention of that in my Royal Garland note had I more experience with plain darjeeling tea, but there you go…always learning. They both seem to have the same ‘high’ notes, and the differences are largely in the foundation on which those notes rest; in Garland they’re obviously the buttery floral roundness of oolong; here in this cup, they’re less complex, black tea touched by a very subtle reminder of raisins, as with many black teas.

I fully expect that the sweet muscat-y fruity tang that’s foremost when very hot will mellow down to something less tangy and more bready as the cup cools, in just the same way as it did with the garland, but I actually picked this out of the cabinet feeling like I wanted some of that tangy grapeskin taste, so it may not survive quite long enough for the tea’s edges to round themselves off.

There’s a thickness to the tea mid-tongue that reminds that this is assuredly a black tea, and which melts at the end of the sip to whole-mouth shining sweetness.

…man. Nothing like a nosebleed to ruin a good zen moment with a cup of well-chosen tea. Argh. Springtime? You can stop by anytime now, for serious.