Darjeeling

I was contacted by Whittard of Chelsea and was asked if they could send me some teas to try and review. I usually say no to these types of requests, but I was absolutely delighted to accept some teas from this venerable tea merchant! On Saturday I got a “Knock! Knock! Knock! Delivery from the UK!” at my door — it was the tea! Thrilling! I tore open the package to find three beautiful full-sized loose teas.

I’m one of the few Darjeeling fans here on Steepster. I adore the muscatel flavor — so I was happy to see this tea in the package, and chose it as the first tea to try. I decided to take it with a little sugar “like the Germans.”

It’s delightful. Divine muscatel and a delicate but rich tea flavor. It’s a lighter tea — so perfect for the steamy day — but very flavorful. I drank it at work and had to pause for a moment to let the flavor wash over me. The wineyspicy muscatel, distinctive and delicious, was just so good. The sugar made it round and sweet without any of the astringency I usually find in a Darjeeling, but I took my second steep sans additions and there it was — a little piquant pucker. Love.

I was able to enjoy three steeps, the last one drank cool, which makes me think this would be a great fancy iced tea for a party (the color is a gorgeous amber – I could just picture it in a clear glass pitcher).

What a perfect introduction to Whittard of Chelsea — I am so, so pleased to meet you!

Huh, I thought I had posted about this…

I’ve definitely had it before.

Anyway, as many of you may already know, I don’t actually care much for Darjeeling. I find it too finicky to brew and too prickly and grassy in flavour. I honestly don’t understand all the Darj. hype. I can only imagine that once upon a time somebody somewhere did some excellent marketing.

So when I was given 100g of this along with 100g of EG (sigh), it was accepted with as sincere a smile as I could muster and a secret thought that it would be exclusively for the husband, as he doesn’t dislike it as much as I do.

For the sake of thoroughness and openmindedness and what have you, I did try a cup of it though. This is the one I thought I had posted about, but apparently hadn’t. I wouldn’t say I particularly enjoyed it, but it wasn’t totally offensive either. I think I would say it was probably worth around 70-75 points, and drinkable. The things that I dislike about Darjeeling weren’t standing out so much.

This may be a question of leaf quality. The bag has no information on it at all regarding origin, so I assume we’re talking about a blend of several estates. This also makes me suspect that it’s a somewhat lower leaf quality than the FFs Darj-lovers happily shell out small fortunes for every year. The bag doesn’t even have any information regarding leaf grading on it.

So hot, it turned out surprisingly drinkable.

On a whim I tried putting some in the fridge for a cold brew last night and I have tasted the result this morning. It’s quite weak in flavour with a smidge of that prickly grassyness that I associate with Darj and don’t much care for. However, in a cold brew it doesn’t seem to bother me as much, probably because the flavour of the tea itself is so very, very delicate.

I wouldn’t say it was like drinking a glass of cold brewed tea really. It doesn’t really taste like something that is easily identified as tea unless you know about it. It’s more like drinking a glass of cold water with just a little bit of flavouring to it to make it interesting to drink. Not very different from how you can make a jug of ice water more intersting and refreshing to drink by tossing in a slice of lemon.

i have a great idea! let’s drink lots of tea and then go to the gym and pee every 10 min.
thanks traveling tea box!

(it’s a nice enough darjeeling really. i like it!)

Another from Momo’s teaboxB! thanks everyone! The Lochan Darjeeling I drank the other day really spoiled me with the most delicious Darjeeling I’ve tried. This one isn’t quite as good, but I like it! It has the “Darjeeling” flavor but it also seems a bit watery if that makes sense. The Lochan had a lovely full Darjeeling flavor. If I had tried this one first, I might have liked it better. Also, there seems to be more Darjeelings in the teabox than other plain black teas. But I will fix that! haha.

Tea #5 from HHTTB2

According to my friends, I may be insanely picky about my Darjeelings (PFFFT who am I kidding I absolutely am), but even without that kicking in, these leaves don’t look nearly as nice as what I’m used to. There’s also no information on their website regarding origin, so I’m guessing that this is a blend of several estates.

All that said, this turned out okay.

I used my typical Darjeeling parameters (below) and was greeted with a really delicate cup that wasn’t particularly Darjeeling-y. It has that lovely, kind of grapey-fruity, subtley earthy smell, delicately floral smell that I love, but the taste wound up being too much floral with a touch of earthiness and a metallic twang. This would actually be a good Darjeeling for people who don’t like Darjeelings, because the flavor is so light.

While this isn’t my favorite Darjeeling I am going to rate it higher than most on this specific tea. I don’t think it’s that bad. It’s not overly memorable but it’s tasty. It’s a nice standard Darjeeling to have in your stash to share with anyone anytime of day! It’s slightly crusty and slightly misty with a bit of satisfying astringency. A fair Darjeeling!

Hellooooooooooooooo baby. I don’t know what it is, but this is totally hitting the spot today. I totally didn’t time how long this steeped for, but yeah. It’s light and lovely.

This tea pairs especially well with hoovering an entire bag of bbq popchips and bingewatching Archer before going to work. Yeah, perfect.

I really have to be in the right mood for darjeeling, especially a poor quality teabag one like this. I’m not often in the right mood for this tea, but I’ve had it at work a bit, and that’s ok. I can’t really complain, because it’s teabag darjeeling and it’s not meant to be top of the range. So by that score it’s not at all bad. Just don’t expect a MightyLeaf taste or anything like that

Someone at work very kindly brought some of this back from their trip to London. It’s…okay. A little bit drying, some muscatel flavor going on, but overall too tannic for me.

I made this after breakfast so I could just sit and enjoy. I realized while I was sipping that this tea reminds me of muscadines. More to the point, it reminds me of the large bronze muscadines my grandpa grows on this farm. It is the earthy note combined with the muscatel one that does it. My grandparents also grew zinnias for a while, so the floral note in this tea combined with the other notes really took me back to the days when my grandpa would hand my sisters and I buckets and tell us to, “head on out to the vine.” I loved picking fruit on his farm because he’d tell us stories or let us talk his ears off about all the things that little girls find important. My parents would come out and help us move step stools so we could get the fruit at the top of the vines. Then, when our buckets were full, we’d take them into my grandma, and she’d turn them into muscadine jelly. Now that I’m grown and make jelly of my own I appreciate all of the work she did so much more. While she and my mom were working in a steamy hot kitchen my grandpa and dad would take my sisters and I swimming at the creek, so we’d come home to lots of jars of pretty jelly lined up on the table. It seemed magical to me, and I guess in a way it was.

Happy memories. Lovely tea. Not a bad start to a Sunday.

Here is the Wikipedia page for muscadines if you haven’t heard of them before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscadine