Golden Yunnan

I went to the grocery store to buy some oatmeal. Next to it I saw grits. I haven’t had grits in years (my wife can’t stand them). On closer inspection it is an instant variety pack. One of the flavors is country bacon. So… yeah, that box came home with me. Trying to decide what tea to have with it, I grabbed this Golden Yunnan. On its own it is really good with a slight smokiness and that wonderful rich and smooth Yunnan flavor. As Terri remarked recently, I can drink Yunnan on an empty stomach. Now I know I can also drink it with bacon grits. Oh my lands, bacon and Yunnan! I am in love. The tea takes on a deeper leathery tone that sort of reminded me of some of the pu’erh I enjoy. I am thinking next time I am just going to pour the tea over the bacon grits instead of water and cut out the middle man. I love bacon. I love Yunnan. I love bacon. I love Yunnan. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

This is actually my second time drinking this, but apparently either I didn’t post here or Steepster ate it. Who knows.
So I was having a bad-ish day. Work was alrightish. Nothing major except I couldn’t find my work lanyard, which was really vaguely upsetting. All stuff I could replace kinda except for one of the pins that was a ’you’ve been here 5 years’ and I’m not sure if they’d give me another one if I said I lost it.
Got home, grouched about and got myself into a worse mood (especially when I realized I hadn’t stopped at the store for the pot roast I was going to make for dinner so now I don’t know what to make) so I decided to make tea. Grabbed this one since I wasn’t in the mood to try something I’d never had before, but didn’t feel like something flavored. This was in my ‘finish off/don’t reorder’ and I remember it was good so this went into the cup.
It’s not like how I remember it. Or else I’m in such a foul mood that it’s skewing my memory. This is alot fruitier than I remember. Almost reminds me of a Darjeeling, which is irritating to me since I rather detest Darjeeling. It’s kinda plummy/grapey with a bit of malty-ness in there. And something smoky at the edge. But it wasn’t the rich malty tea that I think I need(ed) to get me down off the ceiling. /sigh/
Now I’m on the fence about whether to keep this to drink down, or toss it into my stash sale post since I didn’t care for this cup at all. /grumbles more/

Tea & Cards TTB
I purposely overleafed this tea because Marzipan reviewed it as bland. I think it helped because I got quite a bit of flavor out of the tea. It’s very malty. Pretty tasty. No complaints. Sort of blanking on how to describe this one.

On another note I bought a cupboard/cabinet at an estate sale today just for my tea! It’s already organized and it makes me way more happy than a cupboard should.

This was one of my surprise samples from K S and it was also a BIG surprise tea! Our first tea during our tea time was Bailin Gongfu, and how can anything compete with that? But this did, oh yes, it did!

We were having Raspberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake and my daughter had cut very generous slices, so we were still eating when it was time to serve the second tea. Usually the first tea is specifically chosen to pair with the food. But this tea was AMAZING with it. I was expecting the usual delicious but predictable yammy flavor of golden Yunnan, but lifted the cup and got this wonderful smokey aroma. On tasting, there was no resemblance to Lapsang but the smoke made this tea hearty and…just plain wonderful.

This was a wow-ee, zow-ee, nice surprise! Yes, yes, yes!

From Tea & Cards TTB

This tea must have suffered from being in the TTB. I was excited to see it and it was the first one I tried, but it tasted like absolutely nothing. I dumped it out and found solace in some Bailin. I’m not rating it because I don’t think this was a true representation of the tea.

Sipdown! (now only 2 teas older than 6 months in my cupboard, and one to get through this month heh). I’ve enjoyed this tea from RiverTea. It’s malty and smooth and a decent average, every day sort of tea. It’s not going to rock your socks but its a nice enough cup when you want something that is unobtrusive and reliable. :)

Ok, I’m bumping up my rating on this one a few points (from 70 to 75) for a very good reason: this tea appears to be impossible to fuck up.

A few days ago when I first tried it, I thought it tasted pretty bland, and figured that the problem was I steeped it for too short a time. However, precisely because of its blah nature, it seemed like it would be the perfect morning tea when I couldn’t figure out what else to have.

So I made it again this morning, and made sure to add a little extra leaf to the mix to see if that would spice things up. I also told myself that I would steep it for a full 5 minutes instead of 3.

Then I prepared my breakfast… and completely forgot the tea was steeping. When I looked up at the clock, not 5 minutes had elapsed, but 8 or 9. So I both overleafed and oversteeped this thing!

I was trepidatious when I put the first cup to my lips after I finished my breakfast. I was expecting a cloying, bitter mess.

Nope. Perfectly smooth, non-astringent (well, maybe slightly astringent, but only 1 on a scale of 1-10), and still really unassuming.

This is the perfect baby-steps tea for someone who is new to black tea in general. And thusly, I will probably slot it into my regular rotation as I expand more and more into drinking black tea. I have a nice 2nd-flush Darjeeling I plan to whip out tomorrow, but this is pretty good in the meantime.

Thank you Sil for including this tea in the BBBBox!
This is a tasty tea, with a richness to it that I really enjoyed while putting together breakfast.
1 T + 8oz X 3/5min.
Both the steep & the resteep were very satisfying, & have that Yunnan mouth thickness, & I can drink them on an empty stomach without getting sick. Yay!

oh now, THIS is tasty tea! rich, deep, dark, beautiful. simply astounding straight up hot, and a decadent treat with added milk and sugar! kept me going all morning, too, three steeps’ worth, and i had it both ways, baby.