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Black Tea
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Edit tea info Last updated by Eric
Average preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 15 sec

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62 Tasting Notes View all

From Andrews & Dunham Damn Fine Tea

Grown high in the mountains of Nepal this tea wears faded dungarees and three days of stubble. It loves to talk about the world at elevation while knocking back pints of pale ale. It has no degree — it doesn’t need one. There is nothing it needs to know that can’t be learned from Whitman and Kipling. While the fire dies, after the others have gone home, it tells of its youth: “After the rains ended the air was intoxicating. The views, always dizzying, became more so. I would sit on a favorite rock for hours in the mornings, watching as the mists below receded and gave way to the startling colors of spring. Now, as I search for words to describe the sensation of those days, only one thing compares: falling in love.”

About Andrews & Dunham Damn Fine Tea View company

Andrews & Dunham knows that nothing beats a perfect cup of tea, and a great tea needs no explanation. We love the romance of tea. We love that tea might just be the healthiest thing you’ll ever drink. But if the tea you’re drinking doesn’t taste fantastic, you’re missing out. Only a few teas meet our mysterious, rigorous standards and we’re proud to offer them to you. We’re always looking for that perfect cup, so you don’t have to.

62 Tasting Notes

78
545 tasting notes

The husband requested (black tea, I described a few to him, he picked one) this last night before dinner before he went to work on night shift. I drank the 2nd steep with Tupulo honey after dinner. OMG good! Wonderful, wonderful combo. The distinctive taste of the Tupulo honey married perfectly with the floral complexity of the Napal. I could not sip it fast enough. I will be doing this again.

2nd steep. Pinch of fresh leaf.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 5 min, 30 sec
JacquelineM

I love tupelo honey! I’m out at the moment and picked up some clover honey, and it’s so different! I think I’d like to get into a whole side obsession with learning about and tasting different types of honey :)

AmazonV

want some mind explosion of all the tea choices; tp://www.beefolks.com/ and yes they all taste different and complement different teas – current favorite for chai is killer bee

I ♥ NewYorkCiTEA

I’d never had Tupelo honey before this. I was surprised by how different and good it was!

OMG those Bee Folks honeys sound AWESOME! Am I reading correctly that there is no shipping charge (it is in the price)?

AmazonV

@Chrine I have never ordered online I meander down and harass them in person so I am not sure, but they are both very social and nice people and would respond to an email seeking clarification for sure

AmazonV

aha!
APO (Military) ADDRESSES – Priority Shipping US$0.00
Pickup – MD Sheep and Wool, May 1-2 US$0.00
Pickup – Mt. Airy, MD US$0.00
USPS Express Mail Hold For Pickup US$17.05
USPS Express Mail US$17.05
USPS Priority Mail US$5.00
USPS Parcel Post US$4.90
(one one jar)

I ♥ NewYorkCiTEA

lol Thanks for finding that.

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61
1629 tasting notes

Delicious tea for breakfast today. :) I love the color and texture of the leaves. All shades of brown and curly. It is sweet, and I added sugar to it. :) Yum!

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 1 min, 0 sec

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72
6768 tasting notes

Nice cup this morning…check out my previous notes….

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53
1112 tasting notes

Another Traveling Tea Box tea!

I think it tastes like beer-tea! Sorta like some darjeelings taste like wine tea…this tastes like beer tea. Slighty lemony beer tea. It’s not exactly unpleasant, but let’s just say I’m glad it was just enough for tonight’s after dinner pot of tea.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec
PeteG

At first I too felt that it was just enough. I was not pleased with the purchase and I resigned the tea to the deep dark crevice of the back of my cupboard. Some time past and I thought it would be advantageous for me to give this tea another chance. I brought this tea with me to Haiti…why? Not sure, but I am glad that I did. Have you ever met someone and not hit it off? To only meet up once again and thoroughly enjoy their company…well, this tea is a true friend. It is patient and waits for the right time for enjoyment. Give it another chance when time permits and the sun is shining through the cold window pane…take a sip, then another, you will become friends I am sure.

Ricky

Haha, I’m with you Pete. I stuffed this towards the back of my cupboard, errr, cardboard box.

JacquelineM

PeteG – me ‘n this tea are just two ships that passed in the night – I only had 2 teaspoons to try :) But Jackee Muntz and Thomas Sampson are trying to get to my house through the snow and I hope they will become good friends of mine! I have terrible imaginings that they are going to be boxing in my tea cabinet and cause a ruckus! Maybe I should put them next to the rooibos! I am also worried about how Florence and Marco Polo are going to react when these two hunks of men arrive in the cabinet! They are very refined creatures and I hope they don’t get all snobby and make them feel unwelcome!

Ricky

I think they have to be on opposite sides of the cabinet. Far away from each other. Jackee and Thomas will rip Florence and Marco Polo into shreds,

JacquelineM

Ricky – that’s a great idea!!!! I will put lots of no nonsense Upton solid citizen teas between them to keep the peace. I may have to build a little tea villa for Marco Polo and Florence!

I ♥ NewYorkCiTEA

With a garden. I’m sure Florence would like a garden. Flowers perhaps.

Ricky

Oh those poor citizens =(

Don’t forget a river, Thomas and Jackiee can’t swim, don’t worry!

takgoti

Next time I try this, I shall need to watch for essence of beer.

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61
911 tasting notes

My logic in picking this tea is this: as soon as I got home from work, I fell asleep. While napping, I was dreamt about tea. Andrews and Dunham tea. Not this tea, though. Jackee Muntz. I woke up fully and decided to get some tea. I was going to get some Jackee, but this tea was sitting on the counter and therefore much easier to find than Jackee. So I made some.

It was only when I went to log it that I realized I had never had it before. I’m not sure how I could have let those lovely leaves escape me for so long. Seriously, I love the leaves on this. The brown, gold and copper little squiggles. So pretty.

It smells like a cocoa-infested Darjeeling. It’s got the bright smell of a Darjeeling – the one that makes my mouth water but that can also come across as bitterness – but running under it there is another smell of fuzzy warmth. It’s quite lovely.

Taste-wise, it’s not quite as comforting as it’s smell but it is nice. There’s a hop-y taste that makes me think of beer but it’s not strong enough to turn me off (sorry, not a beer fan). It’s got an overall dark, fuzzy taste to it with highlights of an almost green rawness (related to the hops flavor, I think). Normally that rawness doesn’t work for me but here it mostly does, probably because of the other feelings/flavors this has going on. The edges are smooth with none of the sharpness that can come up in these types of teas but as it cools a menthol-esque bitterness starts to show up in my mouth after a sip and the fuzziness decreases a bit.

I’m not totally in love with this tea, but I do like it. I’ll probably try a lower temp next time to see what that does to the raw highlights and if that keeps the bitterness away once it starts to cool. If I can decrease these two things just a bit, my rating will go up.

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec
Ricky

I thought out of Series #1 they had the prettiest leaves, the taste / smell not so much. I think out of all three this would be my least favorite.

Auggy

I’d have to say I agree. Series 2 has pretty much stolen my heart though.

Ricky

Keemun and Assam sound a lot better than Darjeeling & Ceylon. Dragonwell was my favorite from Series #1. The Jasmine Green in Series #3 looks great =D

takgoti

I mainly remember this being sweet when I had it. I wasn’t really paying attention, and I don’t remember what I did, but I remember it being pretty smooth and mainly sweet with that kind of cocoa note. So…really, this isn’t helpful at all.

Auggy

@takgoti – you are a tease. I’m going to try a lower temp first to see what that does, but if you remember what you did to get more sweet cocoa note, please share!

Ricky

Rummages through the cupboard for a box of Hersey’s cocoa

1 teaspoon Nepal, 1/2 teaspoon cocoa powder (add less / more depending upon your preference) = Recipe for Nepal with a hint of cocoa =]

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87
243 tasting notes

Backlogging from yesterday.

Lots of tea this weekend. Including my final brew on this tea (and another to come) from Ricky. Brewed hot, 3 minutes, no additives. The aroma on this is black tea. It is not strong, it is a subtle smell, yet relaxing and familiar. This is what a good black tea should smell like. The taste is the same, gentle and familiar, exactly how a black tea should taste. The tea is smooth and delightfully plain, there is no astringency, there is a faint suggestion of vanilla flavor. This would be fantastic with milk and sugar, though it does not need it. Overall, this was very good.

As a final note, I drank a lot of tea this weekend, unfortunately about five of them are NOT already in the database of Steepster, and since I am uber busy and even more lazy, it will be a few more days before I can get them in. Sorry.

Preparation
3 min, 0 sec
Ricky

Glad you like it, cause this is definitely my least favorite out of Series #1

Cinoi

Really? Why is it your least favorite?

Ricky

Darjeeling. Yack.

Yunnan Dragonwell Ceylon Nepal (Favorite to least favorite) I need to try series 2 and 3 eventually.

Cinoi

Oh, haha, I understand, if you don’t like it you don’t like it :) I bet the Yunnan is good, and the Dragonwell was decent, needed to oversteep it to get it where I like it though :)

Ricky

Did I forget to give you Yunnan!?!?!?

Cinoi

I would not say you forgot, but the next time we swap, and I have so many teavana teas, I would love some Yunnan. :)

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68
260 tasting notes

Most black tea I’ve tried has this really distinct flavor that I can’t seem to pick apart, so in my head I’ve just labeled it as “black tea flavor.” This tea has that. I took a sip and it was all, “O hai! I’m in ur cup, blackin ur tea.”

It doesn’t have any smokiness, but it doesn’t quite read as “smooth” to me. It’s somewhere in between the two, which would almost be unsettling if it wasn’t sweet. It’s a pleasant kind of sweet; I enjoy it. And it helps with the bitterness that greets you at the tail of the sip.

About halfway through the cup I started to notice that it was drying my mouth out a bit. Not a ton, but enough to be noticeable. Also, the cocoa started to really come through, especially when combined with that bitter taste at the end. It was much more noticeable when I was inhaling, and if I kept my mouth closed and breathed in through my nose I could taste it a bit, too.

The last little bit of what I had in my cup got rather cool, which confirmed my suspicion that this tea runs best for me when it’s between hot and lukewarm. Overall, a pleasant tea that doesn’t really stand out all that much. Might be good for a lazy afternoon spent perusing the newspaper.

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 3 min, 30 sec
Ricky

I notice darjeeling when I’m drinking this.

TeaEqualsBliss

I still haven’t tried anything from them…I sooooooo wanted to!

Ricky

TTB, I’ll put some in there for you =]

TeaEqualsBliss

Ooooo! Thx!

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78
1908 tasting notes

My A&D Series 1 and 2 teas have been kicking around in my cupboard for awhile, but I haven’t really touched them since I didn’t want to open a new tin while I had so many teas already on the go. It says something that LiberTeas got to try my tea before I did, lol!

Cool and unique-looking tins aside the dry tea itself is quite pretty to look at – black twists of leaves with a mixture of silver-white, golden, and light brown streaks. The steeped leaves turn a uniform light reddish-brown colour, which is very close to the colour of the liquor itself.

The tea has a lot of superficial similarities to a Darjeeling tea – not surprising I suppose since the Darjeeling region of India is near Nepal. However it isn’t as astringent and while there are some muscatel-wine notes initially, the tea fades into a flavour that strongly reminds me more of a light beer. The tea also gains a sweetness as it cools off, much in the same way an oolong does, interestingly enough.

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec

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83
4843 tasting notes

A huge thank you to Jillian for your generosity – thank you for sharing this tea with me!

After having tried a couple of other Damn Fine Teas from Andrews & Dunham, I really wanted to try some of their earlier offerings. Jillian was so kind to send me a few! Thank you!

My reaction to most teas from Nepal is “golden” because that is the best possible descriptive term I can find to describe the flavor of it. It seemingly sparkles on the tongue, it tastes so clear and crisp and sweet and golden

This tea is no exception. A sweet, golden taste – delightful on the palate. Smooth. A nice malty taste to it.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 0 sec

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97
154 tasting notes

WOW! This was my first experience with Damn Fine Tea and I am very pleasantly surprised. Admittedly I wasn’t sure what I was in for, as I am not too familiar with the descriptor of Nepal, but, I was expecting a plain, strong and generally normal black tea experience. That is not what this is at all.

Bottom line… this is an amazingly complex and BEAUTIFUL black tea. The tea is so very, very light with minimal tannins and the only bold, typical black tea flavors in the blend at all come at the very tail end of the flavor profile. The first flavors to hit your tongue are all honey and smooth sweetness and remind me of french pastries. Not the doughy part of the pastry but, the way that chocolate and vanilla can blend with caramels and hazelnuts to make a unique flavor that stands on it’s own. The initial impression is honey but, as the flavor develops it shifts from creme brule to hot chocolate and caramel. And even with all of it’s complexity it remains delicate and well balanced and fricken fantastic. Can you tell I’m in tea love?

At the end of each sip there is just a little bite to remind you that this is a black tea and not an oolong. This is seriously the lightest, sweetest most complex black tea that I can have with no additives and still be the happiest woman on the planet drinking it.

After the little tannin nip at the end the after taste fades into toasted caramel. sigh I wish they would put this out again so I can have more.

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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