Double Knit Blend

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :)

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.

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.

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.

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.