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Just when I’m about to give up on flavored teas, Golden Moon saves me from the funk I was falling swiftly into.

I really loved GM’s Jasmine, and found their vanilla to be pretty okay, so I was a bit excited to try this one. The dry leaves have an absolutely delicious smell. Someone mentioned cream soda, but I think it’s a bit better than that (since I’m not the greatest fan of cream soda). It’s juicy and floral and vanilla, very comforting and exciting. You can really smell both in the aroma, with the jasmine probably edging out the vanilla the teeniest bit. There’s also a lovely chocolate-type smell going on here.

I steeped this one up at boiling, but then as the leaves opened up, some looked a tad green, and I began to get worried that I had messed it up. Green and black blends are pretty tricky, temperature-wise. On the pour… the tea is a fairly dark color, a coppery-orange, and the smell coming off of it isn’t that strong. I’m getting more of a black tea smell, with whiffs of vanilla and jasmine.

The taste of this… I’m surprised how light it is! There’s sort of a mellow tea flavor, which I assume comes from the mixing of the black and green. It’s not the strongest, but it’s definitely adequate. At the front of the flavor, I’m definitely getting a bit more jasmine than vanilla, but then they tend to switch and mingle, until they’re just this one flavor that I can’t really describe. Other than vanilla jasmine!

Sometimes I’m actually getting a grape-like flavor, which is sort of strange. I don’t mean like a muscatel-wine flavor, like a Darjeeling, but sort of a grape soda flavor. It’s pretty pleasant, but sort of bizarre. I’m not getting any of the cocoa notes I smelled in the actual drink, which is fine by me.

Towards the bottom of the cup, the tea became a bit bitter on the initial sip, which wasn’t unpleasant, but is probably due to my temperature issues. I’m happy that it didn’t really negatively impact the tea until the very bottom, for sure.

Overall, another pleasant offering from Golden Moon! It didn’t knock my socks off (where did that expression even come from? Did someone’s socks actually get knocked off my something just that awesome?), but it was definitely an enjoyable cup, and on par with what I’ve come to expect with Golden Moon.