Madagascar Vanilla

Holy Vanilla! This tea is so potent, and smells like you just stuck your nose into a vanilla bean. The smell alone, makes me want to taste the tea immediately! (i am a vanilla fiend!). Sadly, I was kind of disappointed with this tea, it was vanilla-y on the nose, while the tea was hot, but the vanilla seemed to go away and dissolve as the tea cooled off. The taste of the tea was a mild black tea, not anything to write home about, but I was sipping on it at night after an exam, so the tea helped me relax, but I think i wouldn’t drink the tea if I wanted a boost in the morning/afternoon. The tea reminded me of how vanilla as a flavor is a bit subdued and kind of on the mellow side,which is exactly how this tea strikes me. I would have liked the vanilla to be more present in the tea flavor, and maybe a stronger black tea too.

Golden Moon random sample No. 18 of 31. With the way my luck is going I will draw Kashmiri Chai dead last. ;-)

Dry leaves have a creamy vanilla scent, similar to the creaminess of the Vanilla Mint. An ice creamy sort of vanilla. It’s not as rich, deep or powerful a fragrance out of the box as I recall the Mariage Freres Black Orchid, which is a pretty high standard to live up to. I can see little pieces of vanilla bean among the dark brown leaves.

The aroma is quite nice. I do smell a somewhat alcoholic note, which I suppose could be rum and a sweet underlying black tea smell along with the vanilla which continues to be an ice creamy/cream soda-y vanilla fragrance. I notice there’s a reference to tropical flowers and I am reminded that some tropical flowers do have a vanilla-like fragrance. I think some orchids do. In any case, if this was meant to refer to other tropical floral scents I’m getting a goose egg, though there is vanilla in spades.

Flavor wise, this is a decent vanilla black, but not spectacular. Far better than the Numi decaf, not as good as the Mariage Freres Black Orchid, possibly not even as good as the Jade Teapot Starry Night, even considering the missing stars and all.

It would not be my go-to vanilla, but I’d be happy to accept it were things I like better not available.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #25
whoops, WAY oversteeped this. Got distracted looking through google scholar search results and 15 minutes later…oh yeah, tea! (I get very single-minded)

The result is a black tea that smells and tastes very faintly of vanilla. The leaves smelled of creamy vanilla, so it’s kind of weird to go from that to this. It’s a shame because I think the quality of the vanilla here is quite nice, so I wouldn’t mind if it were just a bit more assertive.

It’s interesting to compare this with the vanilla mint, although at this point, all I have to go on is a vague memory and whatever my tasting note says. In any case, the vanilla and mint were so nicely balanced and worked with the black and green teas really well. What’s going on here is that the vanilla seems to be trying to balance itself with another flavor that is…not there.

As I get nearer to the bottom of my second cup, the vanilla seems to become more prominent. And the tea gets sweeter too, which makes me wonder if I’m not getting residual white chocolate from last night’s vanilla berry truffle.

Of course, this could all be the result of oversteeping and all of my problems will disappear with the next steeping which I will (hopefully) pay attention to. But for now, I give this an “eh,” which is like a “meh” but slightly more positive.

Madagascar vanilla smells like a very creamy,milky vanilla. I was impressed at how dark the liquor brewed up after only three minutes. The vanilla flavor reminds me of the creme base in Teavana’s Earl grey creme. I enjoy Earl grey creme and find this enjoyable, just not extraordinary. It is almost as if the vanilla is an after thought. It is not a main player in this mélange. I would expect more flavor from the name. Oh, well. On to the next one.

Eh, not my favourite tea, but far from the worst. I made a double batch of this for brunch today since DH doesn’t like heavily flavoured teas…he actually likes the Red Rose, PG Tips, Twinnings variety of English tea. I thought I had my packet of Darjeeling from DAVIDs left, but turns out I have already had that, and the packet was Tung Ting Vietnam instead. So I looked at this and Golden Fleece instead. I opted for this because I thought the intricacies of the Golden Fleece might be lost on him, and I wanted it all for myself, but also because I thought he might be ok with the Madagascar Vanilla instead. In retrospect, I think I probably would have preferred the Golden Fleece today, but oh well, more for me later.

This just feels a bit weak. Maybe it was my brewing. That said, it is not very astringent, and that is a nice thing. Thanks to indigobloom for sending this to me to try. I don’t know that I’ve ever have heard of it any other way.

Loose tea smells nice. Very teaish :) And rumish.
Nice dark brownish color and a still very black teaish smell. Bit of rum and gentle vanilla too.

Tastes very ummm plain black plus some scents to it. Isn’t very full and smooth. Wouldn’t say bad. It’s really drinkable if you want a non sweet dark tea. But it has no wow effect. Nothing really special about it. Kinda like buying plain black/indian teabag tea in the grocery shop.
I’ll rate it just as average…

When I bought a tin of this tea at The Fresh Market, I had forgotten that I had tried a sample once before. My initial reaction to it was that it was a bit strong for my liking since I don’t add milk or sugar, but it was good.

But today was tea party day! It used to be Wednesday afternoons but we have switched to Monday lunches for the past six months or so. Today I served chicken salad sandwiches. I tried to copycat the Honey Nut chicken salad from Sprouts. I used oven roasted chicken breast with poultry seasoning, shallot salt, garlic salt, pepper, mayo, a hint of mustard, honey, Craisins sliced in half, sliced almonds chopped medium fine, and chopped pecans. Dessert was a Chocolate Marscapone Tart that youngest made. This tea….HIT THE SPOT. The tart was rich and chocolate-y and I expect not many teas could have stood with it, but this tea did it with no problem. The flavor was dark and rich and cut right through the tart and asserted itself in the best way.

This tea is an excellent example of what Escoffier discovered, regarding how scent impacts our sense of taste. He served all of his food piping hot because he knew his diners would smell the food. Since smell comprises most of our actual ability to taste, voilà! Hot, this tea smells delicious, and subsequently tastes accordingly — vanilla without the artificial flavoring, though I found no tropical notes. Take away the heat, however, and you are left with a thin vanilla taste that requires sweetening. Kind of like when you see a guy who you thought was attractive — until he takes off his shirt and you aren’t squinting at him anymore because he is less than 20 feet away.

(Not that this happened recently to me or anything. Nope. Although, there was a Scottish bagpiper tonight in the park, and it was the best part of my day.)

This tasted like I was eating sugar cookies with my tea. I enjoyed the vanilla flavor and the black tea base was good as well. I would recommend trying this. I haven’t tried many vanilla teas before (just Twinning and Adagio) but I thought this was worlds above those two.

Sipdown! (122) I’m on a roll with trying new things and with sipdowns today so I’m going to try and do some more of both. I made a pot of this and split it with mom, as usual with anything I have in a three-cup quantity. Luckily the samples of Golden Moon’s blacks are less of a one-cup thing and more of a “try a cup and then try another and another.”

The taste isn’t bad, it’s just not as good as I’d expect from this company. It kind of reminds me of a marshmallow flavor more than a true vanilla, and it’s weak and thin-tasting. It might be better overleafed, but I’m out of leaf so I can’t do that. Oh, well. If you want a taste like this I’d go with one of Della Terra’s marshmallow blends instead.

ETA: With milk added the marshmallow taste is even more intense. It’s like I melted down a few into a cup of hot water. Not impressed with this.