Tea type
Black Tea
Ingredients
Ceylon Black Tea, Chinese Black Tea
Flavors
Astringent, Cocoa, Malt, Smoke, Fruity, Wood, Ash
Sold in
Loose Leaf
Caffeine
Not available
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Teatotaler
Average preparation
Boiling 3 min, 45 sec 11 oz / 315 ml

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113 Tasting Notes View all

From Andrews & Dunham Damn Fine Tea

You’re truly at your best when you drink the very best. Try our new Double Knit Blend and enjoy the rugged, stylish flavors you can only get from fully modern beverage engineering. Using our patented natural process, we’ve blended a tea that will keep you on top of your day: from your very first sip — bright as sunshine on a California highway — to your last mellow mouthful, satisfaction will be yours. You’ll feel it, and others will notice. Make it a Double Knit Day!

We like to soak this custom blend of Ceylon and Chinese teas in our favorite tub for four minutes. Invite some friends or just take it easy on your own — make sure the water’s boiling and the mood is light and this tea will take care of the rest.

About Andrews & Dunham Damn Fine Tea View company

Andrews & Dunham knows that nothing beats a perfect cup of tea, and a great tea needs no explanation. We love the romance of tea. We love that tea might just be the healthiest thing you’ll ever drink. But if the tea you’re drinking doesn’t taste fantastic, you’re missing out. Only a few teas meet our mysterious, rigorous standards and we’re proud to offer them to you. We’re always looking for that perfect cup, so you don’t have to.

113 Tasting Notes

3294 tasting notes

Little terri & I are staging a rebellion this morning, just thought you’d like to know. We spent the last 2 weeks (under Ms Theresa’s orders) drinking an endless number of sipdowns. Now admittedly, some of them were quite delicious, especially those coming from our awesome trade with NofarS. That project ended last friday, just in time for the Here’s Hoping TTB box to arrive, followed by the BBB box on Saturday.

According to Ms. Theresa, we have to sample ALL THE TEAS in the HHBox. We already sampled ALL THE TEAS in the BBB Box first (she thought we should do the HHBox first…control freak!). So Ms. Theresa is saying things like:
“You might never get a chance to sample these again! I thought you said we had to try ALL THE TEAS?”
“I might like one of these. I won’t know if we don’t sample it!”
BLAH BLAH BLAH…”
Ms. Theresa yells a lot! If you don’t know her, she is the critical office lady in my head, the residing adult in there too, & even though she is sometimes mean, she has mad skills as an office lady, designing my website, my wordpress, all the forms I use, paying bills, balancing the budget. She’s just not much fun.

So me & little terri are rebelling. We don’t want to drink ALL THE TEAS, we just want to drink OUR teas, because they are awesome! That’s why we are drinking this cup of tea. Shhhhhhh…don’t tell Ms. Theresa!

K S

Someone is going to get grounded.

tigress_al

Lol little Terri rebels a lot doesn’t she ;)

Terri HarpLady

All the time! She is a rebel without a clue! ;)

ifjuly

I totally know this feeling/urge. I’ll dutifully (and to be fair it is a lot of fun most of the time) sample a zillion things I know I NEED to get to ASAP for whatever reason (freshness, I need to know if I like something particular that’s on sale or about to go out of stock, etc.) and then I’ll be rebellious and naughty one morning and just be like “screw it, I’mma have a big ol’ mug of [tea that is in no danger of going stale anytime soon and really ought to be set aside for a while].” I hope you loved being a rebel, hee.

tea-sipper

Oh my gosh… trying all 98 teas in the HH teabox? That is way too much of a project. :D

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89
1186 tasting notes

Double Knit Blend for the second tea of the day! I’m at work now, so much warmer at least, but man oh man I don’t want to go outside today. Also driving 4 hours to go to the work Christmas party this afternoon…going to pack lots of blankets and tea for the ride in case something happens! Ah, I love this tea. I needed it yesterday, but I’m having it today. Rich, malty, a bit sweet, a bit smoky..perfect. One of my favorite straight black teas. See previous notes.

OMGsrsly

4 hours?! I hope it’s some special party and you win a great prize. :)

keychange

No kidding! this party had better make you fly!

mrs.stenhouse12

Haha well it’s the big work event of the year with the other offices, so it should be pretty good! Also going to visit the bf’s parents so it’s not entirely for the party haha :D

Bonnie

I just looked at your weather and our temps. are pretty close. Glad I I don’t have to work! Have fun at the party!!!

mrs.stenhouse12

Lucky you can stay inside all day and enjoy tea! And thank you, I’m hoping the party is fun, my first one at this workplace! :)

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92
652 tasting notes

1.5 tsp for 300mL water @00C, steeped 4 minutes, drunk bare.

Copper-mahogany liquor. Creamy, smoky (very subtle smoke, like Keemun) black tea with no bitterness. Heavy body. Caffeine punch. Seriously dependable tea. One of my favourite blends, ever. Hats off, as usual, to Damn Fine.

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92
4843 tasting notes

Oh goodness, this is good.

Rich and slightly smoky, malty, smooth, slightly astringent, and really just good. Yeah, this is just what I needed to kick start my day.

I was going to take a moment or two to write a full-length review, but I think I shall do that on another day. For now, I’m just going to sit back and enjoy this before I need to get busy with running errands and such.

Hesper June

Ooo! this sounds delightful!
As a knitter, I love the name too.
Sounds like a good tea to be a companion to a knitting project:)

TeaEqualsBliss

You got it already!!! WOWZA! Squee!

LiberTEAS

Yes, one thing I LOVE about Damn Fine Tea is that they are FAST with shipping. I always get my order from them within three or four days, max. Shipping time isn’t always important to me, but when it comes to teas from Damn Fine Tea, I always want to get the teas ASAP … because I love their packaging. The tins are awesome, and they almost always have some sort of funny, weird “extra” to go with it. Like with this tea they had a nerd comb, the kind that every nerd and geek had in their front pocket back in high school. LOL

TeaEqualsBliss

HAHA! that cracks me up! :) Nerd Comb!

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79
1598 tasting notes

It’s slightly smokey and sweet and just a touch astringent, and it’s just what I want this morning.

I might need to make a coffee before I jump to my next cup of tea though because I’m sleepy and I need a jolt. I stayed up too late watching Hannah and it was an awful movie that I had high hopes for. It was just weird.

I also just finished reading Neil Gaiman’s new book, and I absolutely loved this quote: “I liked myths. They weren’t adult stories and they weren’t children’s stories. They were better than that. They just were. Adult stories never made sense, and they were so slow to start. They made me feel like there were secrets, Masonic, mythic secrets, to adulthood. Why didn’t adults want to read about Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies?” It’s basically what I felt about his book.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Stephanie

Oh yay! I’m going to see Neil Gaiman in Nashville tomorrow and will be getting a copy his new book and waiting in line to have him sign it. I can’t wait! :D he is one of my favorite authors!

TeaLady441

That’s awesome! I hope you have a good time. I follow him on twitter and I think it’d be amazing to meet him. :)

Fuzzy_Peachkin

My friend is always trying to get me to read Neil Gaiman. That quote just might get me to!

mpierce87

I completely know what you mean about Hannah. I saw it awhile back and I still feel disappointed every time I think about it.

TeaLady441

I hope you enjoy it if you try it! I think it has a bit of a different tone than his other works, but then I’ve only read this, Coralline, and American Gods.

And mrawlins – so disappointed! There were sone nuts that were ok, but most of it was a wreck. We couldn’t stop watching though!

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86
15257 tasting notes

man another winner from Terriharplady I’m so terribly torn because after trying out these three from A&D i really want to order the tiger assam but holy crap that’s 4.4oz. That being said it appears to be free shipping today, even for the 25$ priority shipping to canada…so that would be a serious win if i do it.

This tea? Also a great one, though if i had to pick only won, the tiger assam would win first since it’s such a great smooth blend. This one has that same smoothness but there’s an added splash of bitterness in the cup that goes well with the tea but makes it just a little less delicious than the other. So glad i got the chance to try these since the 4.4oz is for sure a barrier when you’ve never had even a try. :)

Anyanka

Just go for it, I got the three pack like a crazy tea hoarder. :)

Sil

haha if i do it, it’ll likely just be the one since i find 4oz a lot to go through because i have so many tea varieties in my cupboard.

Terri HarpLady

LOL, I got the three pack, plus the 4th tea. There’s just no sense of self-control in my life! I’m glad you enjoyed it, I thought you would, & I agree, the Tiger Assam is the most awesome! :D

TeaLady441

:P Glad to hear the Tiger Assam is the best because that’s the one I gambled on and bought. Also, I like the pretty tin.

Sil

The 4th tea is a giant no for me given its a dreaded bergamot tea

Anyanka

Finally, a fellow bergamot hater! Ptooey.

Sil

lol yeah no. bergamot is just. wrong. I think the only tea with bergamot in it that i like is upton’s earl grey creme i think it was? because to me it’s just a lemon custard flavoured tea. lol

Terri HarpLady

Bergamot is very iffy for me. For a long time I hated every bergamot blend, but there are a few I’ve tried lately that have actually been pleasant! Smith’s is probably the best one I’ve ever had, & A&D’s is good too. I think most companies use cheap/phony flavorings, rather than real bergamot oil. Mostly I avoid them, but I’ve been on a bergamot sampling thing for a few weeks, mainly to add some novelty to Tony’s life, as he LOVES earl grey, & also to inform myself of his preferences for future presents, LOL. He LOVES the one from Smith, he even asked me last weekend, “Did you bring that awesome Earl with you?” Now I have a few that I like, although I still prefer straight Black.

Sil

well i know you sent me a couple so i WILL be trying them :) maybe i’ll find some unexpected enjoyment from a couple of them

Anyanka

DON’T DO IT! TURN BACK NOW!

Sil

Lol. I’m fairly confident you won’t lose me to the berg side :)

Terri HarpLady

Did I? I can’t remember. I know I sent some of the Dr Who blends for Kittenna that have earl grey in them: Tardis, River Song, & Farewell Ponds. I was thinking I spared you, LOL!

Sil

well it smelled like you did lol but i think they’re all a little cross smelly at the moment from travelling. :)

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513 tasting notes

Why don’t you pull up a chair (unless you’re already on one in which case you can skip this step) and I’ll tell you a little story.

Once upon a time I joined steepster, after being introduced to David’s tea and falling in love with not only the tea, but with everything it implied: a sense of peace, the act of preparing it, the almost spiritual experience of tasting it, the anticipation, everything. And then I read reviews and saw that people were swapping and I wanted to be a part of the craze!
Not to worry, said dexter3657, I’m your girl! So she very kindly packages up a million teas to send to me. In the meantime, I placed an order with Dellaterra, and sat back and waited for my teas to start rolling in.

Got a package in the mail, and instantly messaged dex.
Me: Omg! thanks! Just got the tea! I’m on my office floor, in fact, surrounded by all this lovely tea!
Dex: …?
Me: yeah! best feeling ever!
Dex: Um, keychange? your package is saying it’s still in Manitoba. It isn’t supposed to reach you for like another few days at least.
Me: Horse hockey! It’s right here in my office! It’s in…lots of little zipped bags…that are sealed.
Dex: nope
Me: …?
Dex: My packages are different sizes and all that sort of thing. Are you sure it isn’t something else?
And then it dawned on me. Of course this was my sampler from Dellaterra! whoops!
So there’s a good little blind story for you guys.

So five thousand years later, I got around to having a friend help me make labels for all my samples, and this was the first one I wanted to try. I’d read some really good reviews for it by other black tea lovers, so I had this with breakfast this morning. Dex was very generous with the sample, so I can enjoy a few more cups of this also!

The dry leaf smells a lot like black tea. I couldn’t glean too much more than that, because you know how it is with swaps and such—although I don’t think I was picking up on any other smells, it wasn’t the same as sticking my nose into a tin or anything like that. But I also love the smell of black tea so that wasn’t a problem. I brewed it up and let it steep for four minutes.

And wouldn’t you believe—it’s almost a dead ringer (in my opinion) for Queen Catherine! If I concentrate really hard, I think this blend has a touch more astringency, and a slightly (very very slightly) drier mouth feel, but that could all just be in my imagination. I’m getting the slight smoke from what I’m assuming is keemun, and I wonder if there’s some assam in here to explain the slight malt/dryness. Either way, I gulped this right down because anything that tastes like the queen is mighty fine by me. I’m delighted to have more of this to sip at, but thankfully won’t have to make the A and D purchase (which I hear has insane shipping to Canada), because I don’t need two queens: only one LOL.

Thank you so much, dex, for sharing this with me. You were the first person on steepster to so generously send a bunch of tea my way, and I’m sorry it took me so long to get around to sampling them! You’re awesome.

caile

That is so great!

Lala

Awesome story!

keychange

Thanks guys! all thanks to dex haha.

Abby Noelle

This is a great story! Can’t wait to join a Traveling Tea Box one day!

keychange

Abby, I imagine you’ll really enjoy it.

Dexter

:)) No worries, tea packages go out with no expectations, no strings attached. Once it’s left my house it’s YOUR tea. Drink it, hoard it, pass it on to others (play with it on the office floor.. ;) ) As long as you are happy, I’m happy. :))

keychange

And happy I am! I’d love my office floor a lot more often if there were piles of tea all over it anyday!! :)

Kamyria

lmao!! Awesome story keychange!!

keychange

LOL glad you liked it!

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81
1353 tasting notes

You guys! There’s a new Development after the set back earlier. It’s a completely unexpected and rather scary Development, and we’ve had to email some grown-ups for guidance on the issue. I’m still not going to tell you what it is, because I don’t want to jinx anything, but I’ll tell you what it isn’t. It’s not a bad thing and we’re not spawning (which imo would be a bad thing)

Auggy shared this one with me. I’m always interested in a blend from these guys, but rarely buy it myself. It’s not shipping fees or other geographical restrictions holding me back here. It’s the fact that their tins are usually an awful lot of tea. This is a really stupid reason, actually, and I will tell you why. It’s about 100g to a tin if I recall correctly. Sometimes 200g. I have shopped at places regularly for years where I had to get at least 100g because that was just the way that particular shop worked for it to be worth it for them to ship it. So what’s the difference between taking a chance on 100g from Shop A or taking a chance on 100g from Shop B? I don’t know. You tell me. I told you it was a stupid reason.

There’s something else in it too, though. The couple of times I have shopped there, I’ve had to do it by email order and paypal the money directly, because their order form couldn’t deal with my address or my card, I forget which. It was rather a hassle. I don’t know of these things have been changed or fixed in the meantime, though. They might have. It’s been years. All it takes is going there to check which I don’t ever seem to get around to doing. Yeah, stupid reason. Told you so.

Luckily for me, I have an Auggy who generously shares a sample with me because she knows I like this stuff.

The dry leaf smells like… tea leaves. I’m suddenly finding myself in a peculiar situation where I’m sniffing it and I can easily discern all these notes. I just seem to have lost the ability to associate them with anything. Any other day I could have easily hammered out a description, but right now I’m suddenly uncertain about everything my nose is telling me. I’ve lost all my words! This does not bode well for this post as a whole, but I’ll do my best.

There’s something in here that smells a bit spicy and maybe tobacco-y, I think. Perhaps some kind of low grown Ceylon? Ooh, I like those. I hope it is. What else? I’m thinking something high grown as well. I want to say Darjeeling, because for some reason my brain really wants to detect some of that, even though my nose keeps telling it that it can’t find the slightest whiff of any such thing. There’s something grainy and sligthly smoky though, which makes me think of Keemun. Or perhaps Assam? With a sort of malty kind of note?

I’m so confused!

It’s not going any better for me when it comes to the flavour. It’s a very good cup of tea, and it tastes like… tea. I still think there’s some Ceylon in here, low or possibly middle grown. My brain is finally coming around to the lack of Darj-y notes, and I remain uncertain about whether I think it’s Assam-y or Keemun-y or perhaps a bit of both.

I give up. It’s a very good cup, I just can’t describe it.

Terri HarpLady

All I can say is, it’s damn fine tea! ;)

Sil

yes…yes it is!

Michelle Butler Hallett

I LOVE this blend.

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95
286 tasting notes

My first tea of the day, and on my second steep. It is sunny, but a little chilly, and I knew this tea would warm me up. Sweet and a bit smoky. This has tea has heft and body, but smooth. I’m taking my time with this second cup, ‘cos I’m procrastinating on the yard work I have to do.

Michelle Butler Hallett

Such a good blend.

scribbles

I’ve been neglecting the double knit, but I’m sure I’ll have anxiety attacks if it’s not in my cupboard. I’ve got enough for 2 cups…hoarding situation….!!!

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88
985 tasting notes

Tea of the morning……

This just gets better with each sip. Ahhhh.

When I saw that A & D was having a sale this month, it was time for me to take the plunge and buy some since they had a black blend available. I was quite enamored with their Damn Fine Holiday Blend a few years ago when Batrachoid was so generous in sending me a sample. Another reviewer mentioned that it was heavily Keemun….and that put me over the edge. I do love the look of their packaging, and it was just time. There has not been a new tea in this house for a while (with the limit on the amount I can drink, plus a near life-time supply of tea on the premises, purchases are few and far between.)

This blend is kind of reminiscent of Harney’s Palm Court or Eight at the Fort. I do think it is a little more Keemuny than either of those two (which is perhaps why I am loving it so….) There is definitely something to give it a decent amount of mouthfeel. And there is a brightness, too. (Perhaps Darjeeling?) Slight smoke, maltiness, a hint of cocoa, the ever so slightest hint of a bitterness that rounds it out very nicely (yes, that sounds off, but man, does it make for a great cuppa.) The tin looks and works just like a small paint can. While the packaging is incredibly fun-looking, and I am sure it will keep the tea very fresh, it can be a pain to open easily. It takes several pries to get the prize. However, I would totally buy more. I am hooked.

Usual teapot method.

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec
I ♥ NewYorkCiTEA

I keep a small flat head screwdriver in my tea cabinet for the sole purpose of opening A&D tins lol.

SimplyJenW

I usually use the end of my perfect teaspoon!

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