Well, I made the hard decision to reset my Nether on Ramble, this was a very hard decision but one I am glad I made! See when I switched my world from the Xbox 360 to the Xbone, all my existing Nether portals got messed up and no longer lined up, so most my Nether builds were kind of moot, and as I am sure you can guess this frustrated me. My only real complaint about doing this (other than rebuilding things, but that is no big problem, most my Nether builds were kinda old and needed redoing, except the Nether hub) with one of the recent updates you can’t get water in the Nether anymore. It used to be you could use melted iceblocks to bring water to the Nether, meaning my Nether villa had a bathroom and fountains, now not so much. I understand doing it in survival, but I wish in creative I could still get water in the Nether…so many building potentials! Especially for map makers, some of the old maps came up with really clever ways of using water in the Nether, and I will miss that.
Today I am looking at Liquid Proust’s Rummy Pu, a fancy Golden Needle Shou aged in a rum barrel and debuted at the Midwest Tea Festival, where I procured it. Before I get into huge depth on tasting, I want to give a little me backstory, I LOVE rum. In fact I love the taste of most alcohol, thanks to a quirk in my metabolism it took a lot to get me drunk and I never stayed drunk for long, in fact I was only a tiny bit hungover once and never made myself sick off of the stuff, well that was when I was younger. When I was 21 my gallbladder failed and pretty much ever since then my guts have been made of fail in one way or another, and anytime I try to drink I would curl up in a tiny ball of agony, so no more booze for me! I never really liked being tipsy, but man did I love the taste, especially of rum, so having things that taste like rum make me happy. One of the reasons I eat a lot of rum balls come Christmas…and speaking of rum balls this tea smells uncannily like them. It has a bit of a loamy earthy Shou quality, but really the showing point is a rich rum, chocolate, graham crackers, and a tiny distant spice. In short, it smells really amazing!
Gaiwan time for the golden needles, and for the first time in I can’t even remember how long, I drank the rinse. Usually I never drink the rinse on a Shou, but this one smelled so tantalizing that I had to. The leaves smell sweet, like rum and molasses, with chocolate and earthy wet loam. The rum is super strong and very sweet, and it still reminds me of rum balls. The aroma of the tea is equally rummy and sweet, with strong notes of chocolate and graham crackers, wet wood and forest floor. It smells like what I imagine a wet rum barrel would smell like on a hot day.
The first several steeps are super rummy and sweet, and yes they taste like rum balls! Smooth and sweet with a gentle distant spice (allspice reminiscent) with rich chocolate notes and sweet graham crackers. There is an earthiness to the tea as well, like clean wet soil after rain in a deep forest, lush and loamy. I was expecting this tea to lull me into sleep, as many thick Shous tend to do, but nope this one had me lost in nostalgia and wide awake. Oops.
The middle steeps took on a surprising creaminess and fruity tone, now this tea no longer tastes like rum balls but tastes like rum raisin ice cream. The sweet rum and raisin mixed with rich vanilla and cream is pretty decadent, thickly sweet and with a solid mouthfeel, I don’t even care that I was up til five in the morning drinking this stuff. Though hilariously the taste at the beginning reminding me Christmas rum balls, now the taste reminds me of rich bowls of ice cream on a summer day…clearly this tea has range.
Not wanting the tea to ever end, I took to grandpa-ish style steeping the final steeps, going for at times 20 minute long steeps as I drank around the leaves. As one imagines the liquid gets a bit chilled at this point, and usually I LOATHE cold Shou, but it was delightfully sweet and creamy, the rum notes still strong. By this point there are none of the familiar earthy notes of Shou (which is what I dislike about cold Shou, those notes are wonderful warm but a big nope when cold) just creamy vanilla and chocolate, rum, and a gentle spice that lingers. I got nine steeps out of this tea before it quit, and enjoyed every one of them…even Ben who is not a fan of any alcohol (he won’t even eat my famous rum balls) and who only moderately likes Shou loved this stuff, he fussed at me for only getting one bag and he wants to turn some into a Masala Chai! I really do regret only getting one bag, this tea is wonderful and I will mourn it when it is gone.
For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/05/liquid-proust-teas-rummy-pu-tea-review.html
Rum ball tea sounds super yummy!