The Library (formerly Leatherbound)

Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge Saturday, November 13th: National Hug a Musician Day – Dead Can Dance

Sipdown! This tea is musty, bittersweet, and earthy in way that does feel like an old library, but it also has lots of sweet grain and nut notes. Its profile and creative vision remind me of that time I was an anthropology undergrad student, reading lots and lots of books and articles late into the evening (and early in the morning) on agrarian societies, reciprocity, liminality, snub-nosed monkeys, funerary practices, and the like. Dead Can Dance was not the only music to get my through my school work but it’s definitely the one I most associate with the smell of musty books, grains, old bones, and pottery fragments…

Here. Have a book. “Fortune Presents Gifts Not According to the Book”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOunrC2QQa8

Taken with milk.

The packaging mentioned Guinness-like flavors so this seemed like a good choice for St Patrick’s Day. The dry tea smells kind of like boozy raisins to me. There’s an alcohol-ish (the drinking kind, not the cleaning kind, but I can’t really pinpoint what kind specifically) scent I get from several of the darker cocoa-y type flavor August teas. Maybe it’s something in their flavorings or maybe it’s my allergy-addled brain (yay, springtime) not knowing what I’m smelling, I don’t know. The brewed tea smells like dried cherries and spices. I taste a bitterness that sort of reminds me of the bitterness of coffee but the flavor isn’t anything like coffee. There’s some dried fruit flavor. I guess I could maybe see how if you stretched your imagination you could get pumpernickel but the dry smell was probably closer to pumpernickel than the flavor. Nothing reminds me much of stout beer like Guinness. It’s not a bad tea, I just don’t really taste the flavors listed on the package.

Sipped this down yesterday. I noticed all the flavors listed on the bag. Buttered pumpernickel, molasses and Guinness. I overleafed a bit to sip down the bag and it gave a slightly sharp edge to the flavors that I would taste some of the time, but not all. I added some creamer, but I think I liked it better without. I still can’t tell if I really liked it or only tolerated it with the hopes I’d grow to like it. This isn’t a repurchase for me.
Also, strange that I finally finished this sample, but hadn’t made any tasting notes for it any of the other times I had it!

Sipdown.

It says something about the way this year has gone that I haven’t reviewed this tea yet. For the most part it’s a boozy chocolate tea with caraway and spice. I’m usually not a fan of chocolate in tea, but this was deep and rich and really good. The mix of chocolate, scotch and the combined spices was well blended. I’d usually add this back to my wishlist, but after dealing with August Uncommon’s customer service (or complete lack there of) I think I’ll look for a chocolate tea elsewhere.

I ordered this tea because that is both vegan and has a non-vegan name, gives me a thrill. (I go crazy for blood oranges.) Plus, I was curious about a tea that combined cocoa and caraway. Would it taste like rye bread? The answer is no. It tastes like rich chocolate with a slight leathery smell. Like sitting in a library of leatherbound volumes and drinking a delicious cup of hot cocoa. Top marks for a delicious and creative blend!

I finished my sample of this so I know I’ve had it before, but I haven’t yet logged it here. It’s so deep and chocolaty, the best cup I’ve had the last couple of weeks. I haven’t felt inspired to share on recent cups here since they’ve been pretty mediocre, but this was worthy of a note.

Recently picked up some more just in time for our temps to be hovering around freezing.

Oh how I have missed this. It just seems so warm and comforting and perfect for when you’d rather remain curled up at home instead of outside braving the cold.

My morning cuppa today!

I pulled this one in a rush this morning because I saw “caraway” on the label and that sounded up my alley today – but I totally forgot that it’s a chocolate blend, and I’m not particularly in a chocolate mood today. However, it’s still making for a really pleasant cup today despite that; it’s smooth and full bodied with pleasant and complex notes of smoked chocolate, malt, sweet potato, caraway, and a bit of brandied fruit. Many of those notes are particularly coming from the black tea base, and I really love how much the base contributes to the flavour and compliments the additions.

For a chocolate blend, this is a sophisticated and elegant cup – I love those boozier undertones with everything else. Nothing is “too much” or “too little” and I’m enjoying it as something reflective and calm this morning.

t’s everything I’ve been looking for in a black tea that boasts of chocolate notes. They’re usually boring or otherwise uninspiring. But, Leatherbound is something else. It’s dark and has prominent molasses notes, but the chocolate rounds everything out. It’s smooth and creamy and I absolutely adore it.

This has been my morning brew for the past several days and it serves that purpose well in terms of what I look for — full flavor, decent body, dark, robust, high caffeine but not so much that I get the zoomies.

The aroma of the dry leaf is overpoweringly boozy, like a chocolate liqueur mixed with amaretto. It reminds me a lot of Silencio’s aroma. The leaf itself is very chopped. It’s uniform in size with the cocoa husks.

Steeped up, the boozy aroma is still strong and it transfers lightly into the mouth as a much more pleasant undercurrent of amaretto. The sip is thin but it really thickens up in the back of the mouth with an impression of creaminess from the Assam black tea base. I have a hard time figuring out if the cocoa husks and/or flavoring are the main culprits for the cocoa flavor or if it’s part of the base tea but it’s present mid-mouth along with dense maltiness and the citrusy and rye-reminiscent high note of the caraway seeds that weaves its way around.

I wouldn’t say the tea is sweet; if it is, I feel like the natural flavoring is responsible for the impression of liqueur-like sweetness that’s present in the aroma. The overall vibe is more malty-savory-brisk but creamy. There also seems to be a bit of spiciness but not in the heating way. Unlike other reviewers, I found this tea to possess no bitterness and only a little astringency.

Overall, I’m happy with Leatherbound as a morning brew but I still prefer teas without flavoring added and probably won’t purchase again. I think it would make a great gift, though!

[Western, 3.5g, 212F, 10oz, 4 and ? min both stacked in a 20oz thermos]