In case you have not noticed, most of my recent infusions have been ones I am doing in a travel mug on my ridiculously long drive to work – which means my tea is infusing for way longer than necessary and being drank while the leaves are still submerged in the cup. As one of my first entries (on a Dragonwell – I think Teavana’s) explained, this is how I usually drank green tea, over-infused so as to get every ounce of tea flavor out of a single infusion. Today is no exception.
I really want to finish the Golden Moon sampler. I have but a few samples left – I chose this one because I really needed to relax today and this usually does the trick. The little tiny pearls are perfectly curled and rolled into little balls, none of them are broken or damaged, no torn or flailing leaves, very nice. The aroma off of the un-infused tea is jasmine and green tea, so far so good.
Added the sample pack to my travel mug, filled ¾ with hot water and the rest with cold water (I do this so that the tea is not brewing so hot because it is going to infuse for so long – this is not correct practice, I know this, but I do not want to scorch it up front and have a wasted cup of tea while on the road.) The pearls took about ten minutes to completely unfurl into long green leaves with a light honey colored liquor, the fragrance is strong Jasmine. The flavor initially is green with some Jasmine. After a bit longer on the infusion, the tea shifts in flavor to be less vegetal green and more Jasmine. By the end of the cup, it is mostly Jasmine, no real other flavor playing any role here.
Overall, I like this tea, you cannot have it every day, but that is true of most people and most Jasmine teas. The floral aroma and smell is just too powdery and overwhelming to enjoy every day. When I need to relax and have something special, I could definitely see me reaching for a cup of this, it was very good, but too strong for every day.
