Lover's Leap

I have had this tea for a really long time, and now I remember why. I don’t care for it! It is light and lemony, but it just doesn’t float my boat. It isn’t exactly astringent or bitter, though I do only give it a four minute steep. I just greatly prefer other Ceylon teas to this one. I am not a huge fan of UVA Highlands either.

We really started our tea journey drinking a lot of Ceylons, but I find that I have gravitated more toward Chinese sources when I am drinking black tea. Ah well, I can give it away knowing I gave it a fair shake!

Another nice mild tea from Harney & Sons – light and a bit lemony. I think I will take 30 seconds/a minute off brewing time next pot because it was just a tad bitter.

By the time this arrived in the mail, I had forgotten what it was, and from the name thought it was bound to have flowers in it. I opened the package to a marvelous fragrance of pure tea, a little evocative of darjeeling but mostly a nice “golden raisin” scent (it’s easier to just call it muscatel but that’s what it smells like to me). This turned out to be a great light-bodied Ceylon, crisp and just a little sweet and everything I hoped it would be. Delicious iced, and also quite tasty hot, which is good because we’ve been having a mixture of very hot days and cool, overcast ones!

My experience with Ceylon (as with most non-Chinese teas) doesn’t go very far back—only a couple of years ago, when I started wondering why the iced tea served at a particular cafe tasted good compared to everyone else’s, did I even learn the name of this tea. There’s a lot more to explore, but this is one of the good ones I’ve encountered so far!

A poor man’s Darjeeling. This British legacy tea treasure has significantly more muscatel flavor than even the venerable (and expensive!) Jungpana Estate second flush Darjeeling that I drank yesterday evening, and it’s half the price!
As it steeped, the aroma was actually a little reminiscent of Jade Tieguanyin oolong. The taste was mildly floral and subtly sweet, with lemony notes and a forest hint of pine. This high grown Ceylon is quite like a fine first flush Darjeeling – Margaret’s Hope first flush, one of my favorites, pops to mind. There was just a pleasant bit of astringency. Although it’s light bodied, Lover’s Leap Estate Ceylon stood up beautifully to my vegetarian Hungarian chicken paprika and noodles, Italian green salad with extra garlic onion dressing, and dark chocolate eclair dessert of my Sunday supper.
This second review of Lover’s Leap confirmed my findings of the first – What a delightful, delicious Darjeeling double!

Last one from Harney & Sons! The leaves of this tea are somewhat small, but nowhere near as broken as the Assam I just tasted. Their color is a medium chocolate brown. Dry scent is mildly malty and sweet with a little bit of floral presence.

The steeped tea smells extremely floral in a jasmine sort of way. It’s a pleasant aroma, but not what I expected! Whoa, this is an interesting tea! I seems to be somewhat similar to Darjeeling, but without the astringency and tendency to go bitter. There’s a strong herb-like note that’s reminding me of rosemary. I can also taste that floral note from the aroma, but it’s quite soft and not at all overpowering. The base for these flavors is smooth and somewhat bready perhaps? Definitely a light-bodied tea with a lot of top notes. I like this one, even though it was totally unexpected. :) There’s a tiny bit of astringency that develops as I continue to sip.

Once again I am struck by the similarity of this Harney & Sons Lover’s Leap to darjeeling, to be more precise: first flush darjeeling. Because the dried leaves were so darjeelingy in appearance and scent, I followed my darjeeling steeping guidelines, rather than treating this Ceylon as a full-fledged black tea.

Upon infusion, the bright yellowish green liquor seems to be a vindication of the darjeeling approach, as do the torn swatches of infused green leaves!

This is a light tea, to be sure. I admit that the flavor and scent of the brewed tea itself is a bit less darjeelingy than is the scent of the dried leaves. Still, I believe that this tea could be accurately described as a Ceylon darjeelingica!

One of my new go-to teas at work, it appears. I am never able to predict what teas achieve that spot.

edit: Second steep is also quite nice! Mellow, not disappointing. Way to go, tea!

This tea is very light in color and has a slightly sour aroma. The flavor is lightly earthy, smooth, not very dry or bitter, perhaps even a little sweet. This tea is light enough to enjoy without milk or sugar and may even be overpowered by them.

Brisk, super brisk on first steep for 3min (I think next time I will start at 2min). Brassy liquor with lemony accents. Kinda reminds me of Irish Breakfast, this is one of the few teas I would want to drink with milk. On the second steeping I lost the lemony and picked up on some smokiness. Overall a nice afternoon tea that will wake you up and keep you going to 5:00.