Golden Tips Tea Co Pvt Ltd

Very nice aroma, bold and fruity kinda flowery.

The first steep 3min as directed, Nice slightly bold body, slight fruity note like a peach followed by a smooth malty creamyness and a lingering astringency on the very end.

Second steep I just upped to 4min, Not quite as bold in the body but the taste is excellent! Fruity notes like plums instead of peach this time with a more intense malty creamyness and the astringency is only half as good as it was before but still lingers in a nice way.

The third steep again I just added one minute up to 5min, Still quite nice and tasty but very bold at all, friuty notes of plum still almost and a kind of raisin like note with smooth malty notes, not so creamy now and hardly any astringency at all.

I did a 4th steep but it came up too weak but still had a nice slight malty note.

Overall this one is Pretty good, the first steep delivered on the bold body and the second steep on the taste with a pleasant third steep also, it does lack a little in the body to me I don’t think I’d care for it with milk(like I enjoy most assams) unless it were made extra strong But at the same time it is a bit too tasty for milk and I don’t think it needs milk because that would weaken the taste of this tea itself, it’s good enough on it’s own.

Sunny morning cup
My breath carries spring across
My senses smiling.

Bright gold liquor. Fruity scent. The taste is also very bright. Floral, light, fruity. A little neutral astringency at the end, but the flavor carries on the breath.

I love chai. That’s why I am using it to try to soothe my holiday blues. It, plus bacon and pancakes for dinner later, and watching Netflix and doing absolutely none of the things I should be (cleaning, resume editing, interview prepping, couch to 5k week 1 day 2), have been smoothing the day out a bit. Every little bit counts.

I agree with the other reviewer in saying that assam is really great for chai. All of my assams I have tried have been impossible to drink without milk, but with milk were really solid because the flavor was able to stand up to it really well. And the flavor here doesn’t drown out because of spices, honey, or the milk.

400th tasting note :)

I am plowing through my sample stash at an amazing rate. Mostly because I’ve realized that I get a ton of tea with this subscription, and it is mostly stuff that I think is ok but not amazing. Which is good – it is a learning process, figuring out tea tastes. And preferences do change over time. But it also means that I use Christmas to rehome my nearly-full samples with friends who are unlikely to purchase tea themselves, who love the exact flavors I dislike.

It is still an insane goal…but I am actually wondering if I can clear out the sample box by the time I hit my 1 yr steepster anniversary, January 5. It is probably not doable but I am home a lot now while I wait for my certification to come in, and am dog sitting over the holidays. It would be very exciting if I could.

This tea was surprising in how intensely floral it was. It wasn’t like drinking perfume though because there was a sweetness to it as well that was interesting. Still not a favorite, like many in this subscription, but props to this one for being more unique than many of the others.

Last Darjeeling from Marz. So this one has the least flavor of all of them. xD It smells a bit malty, but the taste is just a very subtle wood flavor. I mean, I could drink this if I had to since it’s not really strong like the others…but I even like the malty-ish one better. :P
Anyway, that was exciting. xD Still don’t really understand darjeelings…I just feel like all I took from it was that it’s mostly wood flavor usually with something added. xD
But I dunno. Maybe I will come back to darjeeling tea in a few months.
Thanks for the samples, Marz! That was fun :P

Okay, so the dry leaf aroma of this one actually smelled malty. So I got a little more excited.
But when I began drinking it, there was no malt at all. D:
It just tasted like wood and grapes. I feel like most of these darjeelings taste like wood to me. But not just plain wood. Wood plus something else. xD
Ehh I liked the last better!
Thanks for the sample, Marz!

This darjeeling is even more weird than the last! XD
While it is pretty woody still, at the end of each sip there’s like a malty flavor going on. Didn’t think darjeelings were supposed to be malty, but then again…I barely understand them. xD This one is better though. So far in my exploration of darjeeling, this one is the best. But still, doesn’t really feel like my kind of tea…
Thanks for the sample, Marz!

A sip of warm tea:
Mouth full of flavor and yet-
Dryness on my tongue.

I meant to steep this for 3, but ended up around 5 minutes (again, work). The liquor is a medium gold and it doesn’t taste over-steeped. There is definitely a dry astringency, but I don’t think that is a negative. I struggle to describe the taste, but it is bright and pleasant.

The description is correct about this being super duper malty. Like most assams, I took a sip of it plain and then added a dash of milk. It wasn’t bitter, I just prefer this type of black tea that way usually. The maltiness still came through, and it was pretty good.

Muscat is a grape…
Pay attention to the tea!
It’s human error.

This tea is much darker than the last. This may be due to an oops on my part of loading up on tea and then not realizing how little water I’d heated up. So, the liquor is a dark mahogany. The scent is a little musky with a muskatel finish. (Yay knowing what a muscat is! Thank you delicious Japanese gummies!)

My first few sips are washing away the delicious brownie bite I just had, so they are dominated by TEA flavor. There is an astringency that I attribute to my terrible steeping. I can taste a bit of the grape, but it doesn’t have the sour/sweet I was hoping for.

(And…the rest of my post was lost due to not paying attention to closing out screens. I steeped this twice more. The second steep was alright. It had more of the muscat I was looking for-especially on the breath. The third steep was nigh undrinkable.)

This is really, really good. Very naturally sweet and juicy tasting. This makes me happy – it is clear to me that I prefer teas that are either very nutty and warm, or very sweet and fruity, with no astringency.

This is really good, but really hard to describe. It has a little natural sweetness, no bitterness if brewed properly (I brew pretty much all blacks at 200 to avoid this), and a bit of fruitiness. The rest is earthy in a way I don’t think I am very talented at describing, but I quite like it.

This is very fruity and tasty. I have to be careful not to oversteep, because it will get bitter if I do, but when I do it right it is a very nice cup.

As the name entails, the dry leaf has pretty gold mixed throughout. Being an assam, it brews up with that familiar heavy, leafy scent. It has a very pretty blood orange color. It’s a strong assam. Some astringency and some bitter, nutty flavor. I do like the full-bodied-ness of it. Don’t think I’d buy this, but I’m gonna fool around with the rest of my sample and see if I can get a more pleasant brew out of it. Might be a decent base for you sugar lovers.

Hm, I didn’t think it was very bold myself, but for my relationship with green tea, this was a good thing. The vegetal element to it was very mild and pleasant, and the flavor reached some sweet notes. It was a refreshingly light green, I would drink it again if offered to me.

This one was kind of strange. It was very dry. I usually take astringency to mean both a dryness and a bitterness…but this was just dry without the bitter. Drinkable for me, better than if it were bitter, but still not my favorite.

This was another unremarkable but good tea. I like the Golden Tips subscription, but part of what it is teaching me is that I am not as fond of most blacks as I am of oolongs. But trying them en masse like this does mean there are many that are solid, tasty enough, but I am unable to describe any further. This one is a bit grapey (as the muscatel title would imply), but not particularly sweet on its own and the fruity flavor isn’t intense enough for me to love it.

I have a backstock of about 30 Golden Tips sample bags. It’s ok though – I put them in a give-away box that I pull from whenever I have a friend who wants to try loose tea, and I often bulk up Christmas/Birthday presents with these. My friends all understand my addiction, and are happy to take tea off my hands because the tea I am giving away is never bad…just not as amazing as other teas in my stash. :)

This is pretty tasty. Not bitter, at least not for me, and was very sweet and fruity. I’d even go so far as to claim it tastes a bit melon-y. I am not good at tasting many individual “notes” for tea (or anything else), which is why many of my tasting notes are super short. But this one, I am venturing out a bit.

This is definitely both fruity and flowery, but neither are particularly overpowering. I am glad to say I really enjoy this one – I was getting worried because I was on a “meh” streak with my Golden Tips samples. I could see this one being amazingly refreshing as an iced tea, not just as a hot.

This was alright – unremarkable to me, actually. It was a bit astringent, and when there is astringency, I have a difficult time tasting anything else. Other people would probably enjoy this though. I just can’t taste past a little bitterness.

Coffee lovers will love this one. It is bold and malty, and even sort of looks like coffee as it brews. It is a bit strong for me without milk, but almond milk gives it a perfect wake-me-up without being too bitter or intense.

Oh wow. Opening the sample packet, and I’m blown away by how beautiful the dry leaves smell. Rich and cocoa and sweet and delicious. That’s how it smelled.

The tea wasn’t as sweet as it smelled, but once I added a teeny tiny bit of sugar, it turned out pretty dang good.

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