A Southern Season

Gotta love this one!

This is a great black tea when you want a complex and interesting cup. I would liken it to Golden Monkey, but I really like this one much better. There is a very strong honey aroma and flavor, but a little more natural sweetness than Golden Monkey with none of the astringency. The dry leaves are deep black but there is an abundance of the fluffiest and fuzziest golden tips I have even seen. You can brew this tea at least twice and still have a great cup of tea.

Another sipdown! I guess I should log this elsewhere as a mashup but the teas are from two different companies so here it stays.

We had very little of this left and my daughter was helping me polish off some older teas. There wasn’t enough for a whole pot so she added a couple of teaspoons of Lapsang Souchong by Dammann Freres. How could that ever go wrong. I walked by the pot and the scent teased my nostrils and I growled uncontrollably. Good golly, that was some good tea. And here I thought I wasn’t going to have any Lapsang until cool weather comes back…

I have been having this for breakfast in order to speed the sipdown of this rather elderly batch of tea. I don’t want to use it for iced tea with all that assam in it. But wowie, today it is so very fruity! This only has a tiny bit of edge to it and I can drink it without milk or sugar pretty easily. It is a good price and I don’t need anything stronger in the mornings.

How embarrassing. I cleaned my closet yesterday and found four ounces of this tea. I am sure I bought it for my daughter for Christmas…2013. It must have slipped behind some things in my hiding spot for gifts because I know I didn’t buy any this past year.

So, having not had it in a while, we served it at tea time yesterday with Apple Pecan Crisps and homemade vanilla ice cream. When we sipped, everyone agreed that this is what we think of when we think of TEA. You know, classic, all purpose, bracing morning beverage.

It has a lot of flavor, great body, and just a touch of dryness. It is just mild enough for me to drink plain but takes milk and sugar very well. It is a little fruity and bright, with good malt notes. It would also make an excellent iced tea, I think. Since it is already over a year old (my bad) I think I will try that to get it used up before it gets too stale.

It seems like ages since I had this one. It is a beautiful sunny day and warm for this time of year, but this morning was very cold and I had to be out and about. All I could think of as I ran my errands was, “Get home, make tea, have some smoked cheddar.” So I did!

This is a milder Irish Breakfast tea. Assays can be too harsh for me, but this one was just right even when I was new to hot tea. It possibly wouldn’t satisfy a lover of good, strong, Irish breakfast blends, but people have liked it when I serve it here and it was a favorite of youngest daughter for a long time.

It is a little malty, a little fruity, not too harsh, and I can drink it as easily plain as with milk and sugar.

It felt a little chilly this morning when hubby and I went out to pick up a few things for a home improvement project. When I came home I saw that it is actually in the low sixties, but hey. Everything is relative.

The cool temp made me want a plain black tea with my breakfast when we got home. I picked this one mostly because I don’t want it to get old and stale and I haven’t had it in a long time.

It was a great tea to choose because it is doing everything I wanted it to do. I can drink this one plain because it is such a mild Irish Breakfast. It does still taste with milk and sugar if you want to add it. It probably wouldn’t satisfy someone who likes a nice, strong Assam to kick them in the tuckus in the mornings, but it is a great strength for me.

This was our third tea party tea today. This Irish Breakfast is milder than most, but is also our favorite. Like most brekkies, it takes milk and sugar very well – indeed, it is blended with just that in mind!

When I read about the toasted cheese and tea at the end of I Was A Rat, I had to smile! And I also had to celebrate that warm feeling and happy smile with a toasted cheese sandwich (perfect, by the way, from my new Breville Smart Grill and Griddle hubby encouraged me to get!) and a pot of good tea. I knew the old cobbler and his wife wouldn’t have had a foofy French tea, so I chose this milder-than-most Irish breakfast that we like so well! Very nice! Milk and sugar, of course!

Snowy morning, fire blazing, and tea waiting! The starter tea for today is Irish Breakfast. This is the youngest daughter’s favorite, next to Golden Monkey by Harney and Sons. She has tried other IB teas but finds them a bit too strong. With milk and sugar, this one is just right. Round and a little bit fruity, without the “bite” than some IB’s have. A lovely tea, this one is a little milder than the one by Harney and Sons, my all-time favorite tea company.

Another Wednesday tea party tea! This is the best Irish Breakfast I have had anywhere, hands down. The leaves are large and there is so much gold. This isn’t as bitter as some Irish Breakfast teas can be, and there is no smoke like you would find in an English Breakfast. Wonderful with additions, but still drinkable without. Still, I like my breakfast teas WITH, thank you very much! :)

Second pot of the day is youngest DD’s favorite! A very nice tea, and my favorite Irish Breakfast so far.

A great tea! I think I like this one better than Harney and Sons. And best of all, Southern Season is having an inventory clearance sale right now and I think this one was about half price! Too good to pass up. I have to keep this one stocked as my youngest daughter drinks it every day. Don’t worry – the caffeine won’t stunt her growth. She is already my height and her tea drinking sister is 6 inches taller than I am! By the way, tea is full of flouride, and my two tea drinkers have never had a cavity, my two non-tea drinkers have, unfortunately.

This is one of the best Irish Breakfast teas I have tried. It is nice and strong as it should be, but not at all bitter or astringent. I don’t even add milk to this one, just a touch of sugar. This is sold as one of their daily teas and is very reasonably priced. A good bracing cup for morning or to lift a sleepy afternoon. Lots of gold sprinkled in these leaves.

This was the final tea of tea party. I love that this one can take all kinds of abuse and still taste fantastic. It also resteeps well. It has lovely notes of golden raisin and is pale in the cup but not pale in flavor.

I have forgotten it in the past and steeped for six minutes or more and it did not get bitter. Today it didn’t get abused because this was our first tea party day with Alexa, my Amazon Echo, timing the tea for us. How convenient to tell her to set the timer for me! She also played music for us and entertained us in general, and assists me in teaching music by looking things up, playing soundtracks, and finding songs for students.

SuperAnna and her hubby stopped by on their way home from their anniversary trip to Myrtle Beach. They were picking up their hedgehog, (my grand-hog?), and stayed to play board games.

Hubby doesn’t want black tea, son-in-law prefers it, SuperAnna likes green and white best. Usually we make lots of different teas, but this time I served the tea that does it all. Looks like a green, tastes like a oolong plus Darjeeling plus black plus green, smooth and sweet, it slides down and pleased almost everyone. And that is exactly what it did. It is a keeper. And a great resteeper. Bonus.

This is such a great tea. It almost doesn’t matter how long you steep it as it is very hard to make it bitter. It is black tea but looks so pale in the cup. It resteeps well, yet is so flavorful. It really surprises me every time when I see the color and then sip, at how strong the flavor is.

This is a black tea made in a place that is famous for excellent oolongs, and it shines like a star. I have had several Ruby 18 varieties, and they have been different, but this is one of my top two, and is available at a store only 110 minutes away. It reminds me a little of a great Formosa oolong, an Oriental Beauty.

This tea has lots of meaning for me. It was one of the first “fine” teas I ever bought, recommended from the fine tea wall at A Southern Season in Chapel Hill, NC. The first time I steeped it, I was sure I had done it all wrong. I had forgotten it and oversteeped, yet when I poured it the liquor was light orange. What happened to my black tea?

Instead of being astringent, it forgave me utterly and yielded a cup of raisin-y goodness. Steep after steep.

This was also the last tea I sent to Doulton, a much loved steepsterite who disappeared a long time ago. She was a delight, NAND I was thrilled that she loved this tea.

Today I made it because I am making my own breakfast for the first time in my recovery period, and I knew I might not multitask really well today. (I sneaked into the garden early and tried to hammer a brick clip up with a piece of 2×4 so I could hang some garden art and got caught by my daughter. I had to come in so she wouldn’t rat on me.)

I have absolutely no idea how long this steeped, but it is perfect. Thick, golden raisin taste drained from my cup rapidly. Thank goodness I made a whole pot.

I feel like I haven’t had this one in ages! This is the first Ruby tea from Taiwan I ever tried, and one of the first teas I loved sans additions, so I think of it as one of my “growing up as a tea drinker” teas. You can steep this for ten minutes and I don’t think it would get bitter. I once forgot a second steep for who knows how long, and it was still great.

This tea is pale when steeped, but so full of flavor. It resteeps beautifully. There is a light vegetal taste, but plenty of body. It is just excellent tea. Having said that, I do believe that the version from Shui tea is more even more flavorful, but since I don’t own that one yet, I still enjoy this one!

This was paired today at tea party with Fudge Pie and individual portions of Brie baked with brown sugar and strawberries in puff pastry. Extra strawberries, lightly sugared, were served on the side to top the pie.

I wanted to do a side by side comparison of the two Ruby teas. They are very different, but have some similarities. The aroma of Ruby #18 is very fruity. Steeped, it is a lighter cup than Black Ruby. This one is lighter in flavor notes as well compared to the deep dark fruity fig notes I got from Black Ruby. I don’t know about Black Ruby, but even if you forget to time your Ruby #18 it will not get bitter. I should know – I left a second steep accidentally once and decided to try it, and it was still wonderful. I read online that you can steep it for six minutes on the first steep, and it will not suffer any bitterness. Paul, I am sending some of this your way to get your opinion. You should have it by this afternoon. Just kidding! I don’t know if we can count on the USPS being as fast this time!

Oh my! I LOVE this tea! I think this is the first tea I ever had sans additions. You can not oversteep it – it just won’t get bitter! It is so soothing to my dry throat right now. It rebrews beautifully, which is a good thing because I have one more student to teach!

Ah, my pale gold treasure! This is the lightest black tea is have ever seen, and is delightful without milk and sugar. It can handle it if you want to add milk and sugar, but this tea has such lovely nuance that I take it plain! Just enjoyed it as a virtual tea party via Skype with my travelling tea friend.