Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Ceylon’

I think that one of the best things that ever happened to Earl Grey tea was meeting the vanilla bean.  It must have been movie magic.  I can see it now…

INT: A Parisian Salon.

Various teas and flavorings lounge about, chatting, discussing worldly matters and current gossip.  VANILLA sits in the corner, alone, draped across a chaise longue.   She is long, lean and highly sweetly scented.

The camera pans to the door where EARL GREY, a dark, swarthy yet citrus scented tea enters.  He scans the room until his eyes fall on VANILLA.  He beelines to her, drops to one knee, grabs her hand, and looks deeply into her eyes while kissing her hand.

EARL GREY (huskily): ‘Allo.  I find myself inexplicibly drawn to you.  I feel we could make amazing brews together.

VANILLA: (swoons)

Music swells.

….and scene.  Only problem is that just like movie magic, there are frequent copycats that just don’t have the verve and je ne sais qua of the original.  I’ve had varied luck with the different Earl Grey de la Cremes out there on the market.

Luckily, Distinctly Tea has got a pretty good version of this classic couple.  The black tea base of ceylon and assam is sturdy and the flavoring agents blend beautifuly.  The vanilla is creamy, and the bergamot avoids the trap of tasting like perfume.  Highly scented, highly flavorful.  Lovely tea.  I reccomend it.

Yum.

You can purchase the Earl Grey de la Crème directly from the Distinctly Tea website.

Keemun, Assam, Ceylon, and Darjeeling teas each have their own personalities: grainy, stout, brisk, and wine-y. Thus, you’d expect a blending of these personalities to be the tea equivalent of a cheerful and intellectual morning conversation.

What you get, however, is the tea equivalent of morning senior-citizen buzz at the Branson hotel breakfast buffet—the kind you tune out because there’s really nothing worth eavesdropping on.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s good tea. It’s distinguished senior-citizen buzz. But to my highly uneducated palate, the blend tones down the character of the individual ingredients…the “brisk and complex” flavor and “subtle floral overtones” just aren’t there.

Prepped according to package directions and left a full four minutes, the tea is a nice, clear copper color.  Golden Moon ensures that the leaves are quality enough to take a second steep, no problems there.  A little milk with the second cup may have kicked up the Assam mojo a little bit, but still … just  murmuring white-haired tourists in embroidered autumn-leaf sweatshirts.

Golden Moon’s sample packs are nice (vacu-packed foil sleeves), but tiny (you’ll be lucky to squeeze two dry leaf-cups out of one). Perhaps if I had had a full tin to stick my nose in and experiment with, I could have gotten some real gossip out of the grannies.

You can purchase the English Breakfast directly from the Golden Moon Tea website.

When I was contacted and asked to try the Celestial Seasonings Fast Lane Black Tea, I readily agreed. Celestial Seasonings was the very first company to respond to our inquiries when we started IAATL, and sent our very first batch of teas for review, something for which I will be forever grateful. Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea is also the tea that started it all for me, back those ummhurummph years ago, when I was but a wee child of 5 or 6.

Apparently, Fast Lane Tea was, a number of years ago, a tea that Celestial Seasonings discontinued. Since then, the legend goes, fans of this tea have petitioned sufficiently to have it return, albeit for a short period of time! This tea is ONLY available online (at http://www.fastlanetea.com or from Celestial Seasonings Tea Shop in Boulder (see the website for details).

Now, to the tea. This tea is a caffeine packed punch in the gut. With a black tea base from Indonesia, we get cinnamon, eleuthero (a variety of ginseng), licorice, nutmeg, and an EXTRA shot of caffeine! This is the very first time that I have see caffeine actually listed as an ingredient!

The smell is spicy/sweet. I can detect the cinnamon and licorice for sure, not so much on the ginseng or nutmeg however. Brewed up, you get what you would expect, a dark liquor, and almost Christmas Spice-like scent to the tea.

It tastes pretty much what you would expect – not particularly strong, a very middle of the road, spicy with sweet notes of the licorice. It is not an amazing, blow me away Darjeeling/Assam/Ceylon single estate loose leaf tea flavour with complexity, but it is also not a bitter, pour it on the neighbors weeds to get rid of them tea. Pleasant and non-offensive, a little passive for my personal tastes, but certainly of higher quality than you would expect from a bagged store shelf tea!

As for kick? Well I wrote this review in 5 minutes at 3:00am, after drinking the tea at 3pm – what do you think? Seriously tho – I can sense that it does have more caffeine than I am used to in a black tea, but I don’t get the frenetic mind warp and massive crash that I get from a triple espresso either – this would be a great tea to study with – students take note!

Bottom line – while it is not a “don’t miss this tea” it is well blended and will appeal to a wide range of people – keep it in the cupboard for when you need a boost.

You can purchase the Fast Lane Black Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.

I’ve never had a plain Assam before. The closest I’ve come is the Irish Breakfast by Twinings which is a blend of Ceylon and Assam. I’m always fascinated by the string of letters found in the names of many teas, but I really have no clue what they were supposed to mean for me. I did a bit of research and apparently STGFOP stands for “Special Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe.” Since that still doesn’t tell you much, I continued to peruse the internet looking for more information and from what I have read the letters refer to the leaf size. With STGFOP being the second largest leaf behind the FTGFOP designation.

I expected the dry leaves to be plain black leaves, but there is a fair amount of golden hay colored leaves as well. The scent of the dry tea is earthy and malty. While steeping, the aroma takes on a heavier malty aspect which I love. The brewed tea is a medium-brown in color.

I tried the tea plain at first and was surprised to find a very robust cup with little astringency. The additions of milk and sugar were handled nicely and encouraged the malty aspect of the tea to shine. As the tea cools, a slightly sweet honey flavor creeps in for a pleasant surprise.

This is a great example of what a plain black tea should taste like. Smooth and bold with a bit of sweetness thrown in.

You can purchase the Rani STGFOP 1st Flush 2010 Assam directly from the Lochan Tea website.

For Sinharaja we use rich, dark loose leaf tea leaves that are nourished by fertile rain forest streams in the hills of Ceylon. …from the Golden Moon website.

This dark loose leaf tea has become my favorite tea. I drink it morning, noon and night. What makes it different from all the other teas that I have had the privilege of tasting? Sinharaja tastes like tea. The way tea should taste, not with a bunch of other flavors crowding out the tea taste. It is not bitter nor is it mouth puckering. According to the Golden Moon, you cannot over brew this tea. I have not personally tested this because when I make a pot of this tea, it is gone in a matter of minutes.

Brewing directions from the Golden Moon:
Brew 1 tsp of leaves per cup in boiling water 3-5 minutes. I brew this tea for 3 minutes. This tea stands up well to milk and sugar.

If you are looking for a good basic black tea, Sinharaja may be the answer.

You can purchase the Sinharaja directly from the Golden Moon Tea website.