The Simple Leaf

I cleaned up my apartment today so that the cleaning lady could vacuum, and as a reward I made myself a cup of Dawn. It’s a lot richer than I remember, which is a good thing. I think part of the change can be attributed to the fact that I didn’t use boiling water in the past, and this tea thrives on boiling water. For anyone who hasn’t tried Dawn yet, it is truly amazing. It’s like unsweetened hot cocoa…there’s even this almost powdery/thick mouthfeel, like you’re drinking a rich suspension of chocolate and cocoa and tea. The second steep is wonderful as well. Simple Leaf, you rock. Congratulations, you get my first 100.

ETA: A slightly longer steep (closer to 4 or 4:30) really makes this seem like a decadent, rich cup of unsweetened hot cocoa.

I’ve been craving this all day, even after yesterday’s numerous steepings. Why is this so good? Something else I noticed today: I think I can taste apricot in this, along with some sort of apricot-fuzziness-prickly feeling on my tongue when I drink this tea. I actually like it. It reminds me of when I was a kid, sucking down apricot after apricot from the tree in the backyard, and that prickly furry feeling you get when the skin of the apricot hits your tongue. I’m not sure how else to describe it. Anyway, infusions 1 and 2 are apricots and chocolates, and 3 and 4 and 5 are chocolate covered caramels. Not bad. Upping the rating because damn, this is an awesome tea.

Bought a sample of this on takgoti’s recommendation. First of all, wow. The dry leaves are incredibly long and dark. These are the biggest black tea leaves I have ever seen (although admittedly, I have not seen very much). The leaves smell so strongly of chocolate, caramel, and coconut that I can hardly believe these are not flavored. In fact, they smell very similar to the coconutty-Chocolate Cream Truffles tea by Portsmouth that I had a few days ago.

So, I’m scooping in a teaspoon into my Zarafina. The leaves are long and twisty, so it’s hard to tell if I really have a full teaspoon of tea in there. Oh well. Setting the Zarafina to Black and Strong for the first run.

The smell of the liquor is more like honey than chocolate, to me, but maybe I just didn’t rinse my cup out enough. I just downed this cup in less than a minute because it was so good. I’m not quite at the level yet where I can pick out all the different flavors in a tea. I tastes honey and roasted yams (?). Or maybe honey roasted yams. Hard to say. It was good though. Really, really good.

Second cup: While pouring this into a cup, I could strongly smell chocolate. And now that I’m sipping, I can definitely taste it as well. Oh, heaven. Here we go. Definitely getting coconut and chocolate, similar to the tea I mentioned earlier, and maybe a little caramel. Now that I’m looking at the liquor, it seems quite a bit darker than the first cup. Adding a tiny bit of sweetener.

Sorry, got sidetracked. Found my kitty unapologetically eating my dinner. >:o

Ah, caramel, there you are! On cup three, added a little more sweetener. Okay, this honestly tastes like a chocolate-caramel candy bar. I am so glad I tried this. I was an awesome introduction to non-flavored black teas.

Editing to add that I let the 4th resteep cool down, and it was even more chocolate-caramelly, and a bit sweeter as well.

Another one from the “drink it up” pile. I didn’t go to bed til almost 2am and was up at 7, so I wanted something strong. I wish I had looked at the description of this before I picked it up. It’s a light Darjeeling, erring more on the floral and fruity side. Not what I’m in the mood for. This cup is more bitter than I expected it would be, and I’m not a Darjeeling fan anyway.

Once again, I wish I could taste the honey in this tea. It appears that very few people can.

Another tea from my “drink it up” pile. I wish I could taste the honey in this more. It always tastes like plain old roasted oolong to me, with some very light floral and honey notes.

Lovely, lovely Carolyn sent me some of this to try and I can see right off the bat why she likes it. It is a really delicious tea. The aroma is heavy and rich. The flavor profile evokes things that would make most dessert lovers drool – cocoa, caramel, honey.

It is smooth, and the flavors blend seamlessly. It is a tea that benefitted for me from sticking to the tip of the tongue and the back of the mouth, where the sweeter flavors came out to play. Sucking in air over it intensified the sweetness, but inhaling through my nose with a closed mouth evoked a kind of honeyed perfume taste that was extremely pleasant.

Dawn is a decadent tea, and yet it doesn’t leave you with a weighty feeling. Some teas are so luxurious that I feel like I should be in a food coma afterwards [tea coma?]. This certainly has that heavy, silky feeling in the mouth that I love, but something about the finish doesn’t feel heavy. The aftertaste is nice and light.

When I first saw the name of this tea, I didn’t really “get” it. I mean, it was a pretty name and all, but it seemed abstract to me. Now, I completely get it. From the dark leaves to the light amber liquid, to the heavy flavors lifting into airy sweetness. I don’t think I’ve ever had a tea that was a metaphor before [though the fact that I can find one in this may partially be because I have a tendency to overanalyze things]. However, it makes complete sense to me, as someone who has already seen more than a few sunrises in her quarter of a century already.

It reminds me distinctly of one of my last days before winter break at UVA, when a bunch of us trekked up a big hill to the nearby-ish observatory around midnight. We had no real agenda other than spending some time with each other before the semester ended and we all went to our respective corners of the country. Boys tackling one another and girls huddling in the chill. Climbing trees and drinking beer out of a pony-necked bottle. Telling stories and laughing, and waiting for the sun to rise together. We grew quieter as morning approached and eventually settled down in a section where the trees cleared enough to see part of the campus. All you could here was us breathing, and our breath streaked the air around us. The darkness began to lighten as the sun started to warm the horizon as the blushing, yellowed, amber tones bled across the sky. The almost heavy feeling in the atmosphere that seemed to settle in as the typical waking hour approached started to lift, and within a span of time that seemed to pass far too quickly we’d witnessed a natural phenomenon. It’s an act that’s occurred more times than I can count, practiced and perfected over the eons, but I hope that it never gets old.

For a tea to mimic such a simple, beautiful thing that is strongly tied into the memories of so many people is pretty powerful, and I can see why this would be a true delight to wake up with. So I must say thank you to Carolyn, and make sure that I order some more of this. And soon.

Another Bethany tea. I remember picking this one for my wishlist for her, because I have never had tea from the Nilgiri region before. I have no clue what to expect, but I’m expecting something akin to Ceylon, since that’s relatively close.

It’s got a nice golden colour and a very grassy aroma, almost like a newly mowed lawn. A spicier than that, though. Underneath it I’m picking up a sweet note, almost caramel-like, and all in all, it’s reminding me more of Darjeeling than it does of Ceylon. Or both maybe. Like a middle thing between Darjeeling and Ceylon. I’m not really sure, I change my mind every time I sniff it.

It’s very vegetal in flavour and very sweet in an almost sour-like way. Like citrus-fruit, without actually having even a hint of a citrus flavour. It tastes kind of green the same way that a Darjeeling can taste green and it definitely doesn’t remind me of Ceylon in flavour at all. It’s almost like… like it’s not quite ripe yet.

I’m not sure it’s something I would seek out as a type all that eagerly again, but it’s definitely drinkable.

The tea has a lovely apricot and nutty fragrance. The tea itself has a sharp taste that means that I oversteeped it I suspect. It’s been a crazy, unpleasant morning and my tea-brewing skills have clearly suffered. I will probably have to rebrew it and revisit. So I’ll wait to rate it until I do so.

Update: I rebrewed it with fresh leaves. It is no longer sharp. It has a taste I associate with Darjeeling, which is not a surprise since it comes from Darjeeling. I am beginning to realize that I don’t care for Darjeeling teas. This is quite sad since they are so well-regarded it makes me feel like some boorish lumpenproletariat destined to dislike this “champagne of teas”. Well, I’m sure I’ll get over it.

This tea has large, beautiful, multi-colored leaves that brew into a golden liquor with a sweet fragrance with hints of incense. The tea is from Darjeeling and I detect in it that same Darjeeling floral fragrance. The taste encourages a kind a lazy sensuality as it spreads its floral complexities across my taste buds. It is surprisingly light in taste for an oolong. As it cools a bit, the incense begins to come out in the taste as well as the aroma.

Another single-sourced tea from The Simple Leaf, this one brews into a fragrant floral and musky liquor without much bitterness. It is really an excellent assam tea. I can’t really identify the notes, but it combines into a wonderful taste. It is supposedly malty, which is why I bought it. I’d hoped to learn what a malty taste was. But I can’t really find the malt well enough to educate my palate. Either way, it is a stellar morning tea.

Beautiful long dark green leaves give off a smoky fragrance when dry. Steeped it has an even stronger smoky smell which also dominates the taste. There is a very slight bitter edge. Overall, this isn’t really my sort of tea.

Plowing through this insane stash that I’ve built up in the non-winter months. I have several 1 oz. sample packages from The Simple Leaf; Honeybee, another oolong, is the one that I’ve returned to more than once, while the others have been neglected. Tankha is very, very sweet for an oolong – not roasty or syrupy at all, but light and with a slight floral taste. I prefer my oolongs savory and roasty, so this wouldn’t be an everyday tea, but I’ll definitely revisit it from time to time.

I felt like something simple and dark this morning and this came to hand. I really love the smell of this tea with its multi-layered floral and other notes. The taste is just a good ordinary black tea.

The dry leaves smell a bit like a keemun but not as strong as some I’ve smelled. There is another grassy barely there floral tinge to the leaves as well. Once brewed the tea loses that heavy strange keemun fragrance and I smell floral notes amid a sea of malty goodness with barely there notes of resin. It is one of the better tea fragrances I’ve experienced. The wet leaves unfold into whole green and brown leaves that are slightly more ovoid shaped than other wet tea leaves I’ve seen and the liquor is reddish brown. It is a much lighter tea than many I’ve had lately. The taste is sharp and bright with the slightest hint of floral but all the other notes disappear. Still, it is a nice tea.

I confess, I’m always a bit leery of oolongs. I’ve had so much bad luck with them that I approach them much as I do pu-erhs, with a “Chin up! Be brave!” admonition. But I remembered I liked this tea from The Simple Leaf (and I love the company), so I thought I would try it this afternoon. Hopefully it will help quell my hunger pangs until I can get home and eat something healthy.

The fragrance is honey sweet and the liquor looks like honey as well. The taste has floral notes, honey, and a slight sharpness that I can see would veer into bitterness with a longer, hotter steep. It’s nice.

The leaves are large, wiry, and quite dark for an oolong. The dry leaves have a slight leather fragrance along with their sweet tea smell. It brews up into a honey-gold liquor with the fragrance of honey. The honey taste is subdued in the tea itself Overall this is a very mild tea. I may try steeping it longer next time.

This is my favorite breakfast tea. I’ve had it most mornings. The taste has a lovely chocolate note that wakes as it soothes. It is also difficult to oversteep it. I don’t think I’ve had a single bitter morning when Dawn was in my cup.

It’s a brand new day, which is a great excuse to drink Dawn, my favorite tea.