Nepalese Afternoon Tea

I put this in with some River Shannon for cold brewed iced tea. It made it extra special and delicious. It added a very sweet, honeyed note. Excellent.

A swap tea from jennlea – thanks!

I guess I’m losing my mind. I can’t taste any real floral or honey notes here. This tea is just screaming Darjeeling to me. It has a much lighter muscat flavor, but it’s there, and it’s drying out my tongue. Blergh.

EDIT: Maybe I spoke too soon; I’m getting a strong honey aftertaste the more I drink.

This is interesting, but not for me I think. I can smell the sandalwood, and there is an oddly sweet honey aftertaste, but it’s still too bitter in the mouth – too much like a Darjeeling – for me. Milk helps a little, but it still tastes kind of weak and bitter to me at the same time.

If I wanted a smooth honey-like black tea, I’d go for either GM’s Honey Pear or Life in Teacup’s Yunnan Golden Buds over this.

1.6g leaf
4oz boiling water
1st infusion: 3 minutes
2nd infusion: 5 minutes, noticeably weaker

Very nice aroma on opening the packet: Darjeeling moments, but also a deeper woody sweetness and some floral notes too. Mmmm!

After four minutes it’s a medium-dark brown, and smells good. I’ve got some maltiness, that sweet wood thing going on and just a bit of spiciness. The taste continues in this vein – it’s not enamel-scrapingly strong, which is good, and manages to put forward an incense-like tone that I find very pleasant and not surprisingly reminiscent of Nepal. I’m not putting sugar and milk in this one, but I bet it would make a superlative chai with that and some spices.

As it cools the honey and wood flavors heighten their profile, and there’s just enough astringency for it to be a good afternoon choice for my taste. I’d definitely be interested in getting more of this and playing around with different permutations of steeping and blending.

Still have some of my sample pack left, so trying to finish it off. Cut open the pouch and inhaled the delicate aroma of the tea. The dried leaves definitely smell like black tea, with a slightly floral note and sandalwood.

Infused hot, four minutes, no additives. The brewed tea smells like sandalwood, however, I am not picking up any more aromatics. The flavor is mostly a black tea with a slightly woodsy note, the aftertaste is sweet. I cannot actually identify any floral or specifically honey note, just a slight sweetness at the end.

Overall, the tea was pretty good, definitely better while it was hotter. Note, as it cools, the woodsy taste starts to disappear, it is taken over by the sweetness and (finally) a hint of the floral.

Had a little false start with this one. Went to sip from my cup and apparently I didn’t rinse it out well enough because I could still smell vanilla. So I poured it into a fresh-from-the-dishwasher cup (strawberry teacups from my MIL! YAY!) and we were vanilla-less from then on.

First of, the dry leaf? Lovely. So so pretty. Small but squiggly with love little bits of gold. So cute. And they smell sweet – I’d probably go with Lotus because it reminds me of the smell I got at Chusonji and I know they are big on having lotuses planted around the temple site. Plus, my other options based on the description were honey or sandalwood and neither quite fit.

Once brewed though, the tea smells more like a mild version of one of the husband’s single malts. Spicy but sweet. I’m going to go with sandalwood with a hint of honey on that, but the spice isn’t as incense-y as I typically think of sandalwood. So maybe I should just go with faint single malt with light honey.

Sipping, it is nice. There’s a large flavor that is just ‘tea’ to me but it has notes. There’s a little spice (more pepper than sandalwood to me as I can feel it make a little prickle on the tip of my tongue) but it is sweet, too. Not overwhelmingly so. Just enough to keep this from making me think of chai. There’s a dry, slightly astringent hit right at the end of the swallow that hits the back of my tongue and reminds me of some rougher Darjeelings and it seems to oddly bring the taste full circle from the spicy tickle at the beginning of the sip (and at the tip of my tongue).

I think with the spice and astringency and only hint of sweet, this tea just isn’t for me. But it’s got some good notes and an interesting flavor so I can see people that prefer bolder or spicy teas enjoying this one than I did. It’s surprisingly dark and broody tasting for such a light-colored and light-bodied tea.

Pretty good stuff. The smell is wonderful. This tea is bold, nice for the midday boost. I taste the honey on the front end then the sandalwood takes over and lingers long after the sip.

the scent of the dry leaves is VERY inviting, its sweet and floral with a hint of malty-ness. the tea smells less floral that the dry leaves. the tea is am amazing amber color. the flavor is nice, and peppery. i really like that peppery taste! the end flavor is a malty honey taste that rounds this tea out nicely. i added 1/2 of my normal sugar toit because the pepperyness is prefect for me. this is very good with a bit of cadbury milk chocolate :)

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #12:
This was the first black tea I saw this morning, therefore making it my morning tea, despite the fact that it’s an afternoon tea. I’m glad that I did though, because MAN does this tea pack a punch. For once I was actually paying attention to steeping times, but even then it brewed up really really dark reddish, like a deep maroon. Very attractive. I’m afraid I didn’t really pay much attention to the leaves, but I recall them being lighter in color, so I wasn’t really expecting something quite so dark.

As I said, or at least implied, this tea has a lot of personality. It basically smacks you upside the head and goes I AM TEA DRINK ME NAO (OR ELSE). The taste is mildly astringent compounded by an underlying spiciness, but not as much as I get from your average darjeeling, and there’s definitely something else there. Floral notes perhaps? Definitely not honey. Or perhaps I only THINK it’s not honey because I don’t like honey but I do like this! That’s right, let’s turn this review into a meditation on human psychology.

Or not.

Suffice to say that this tea impressed me quite a bit this morning – a good way to start a Monday, even if I did drink it at the wrong time of day.

Edit: Whooooo tasting note number 50! I celebrate by having some tea!

Another sample from Golden Moon – I quite enjoyed the unique experience of trying this tea. Very aromatic woodsy smell upon opening the bag, which opens up with the honey-ish flavor after steeping. This does remind me of a darjeeling but I like it better than darjeeling, i think due to the presence of the “woody” element which made it a bit sturdier of a flavor, if you catch my drift. When it comes to black tea I usually gravitate towards those from China, especially Pu-erhs which are among my favorite. I could see myself enjoying this Nepalese tea on a regular basis.