Honey Black Tea

My Green Terrace Tea samples arrived today and I was so excited to come home and try this out. It is really a nice cup of tea. It’s velvety smooth with a delicious honey sweetness and a nice bit of malt. There is also a little touch of dried fruit, like raisins, to give this just a little but more depth. Yum! Thank you to the wonderful people at Green Terrace Teas for sending this my way :)

This tea reminds me of honey oat bread. The sweetness is stronger than I was expecting, but in the most delightful way. There is a sweet, deep honey flavor without it being cloyingly sweet or artificial tasting. There is also a hint of oat and spice that give this tea a wonderful burst of flavor at the end of the sip. There were hints of other sweetness – raisin and stone fruits – but the honey note is the star.

This is a tea I’d love to serve at my next tea party. I can see this being a real crowd pleaser and adaptable to many palates. Although I did not add sugar to my cup I can see it holding sugar well. I think milk would cover up a lot of the flavors in this tea.

Thank you Green Terrace Teas for the chance to sample this tea!

I really like this one. Unfortunately for me, I just did a breathing treatment and it is covering up a lot of the wonderful subtle notes. Still really nice.

Had to laugh this morning. Got on Steepster and there were 67 spam entries. I noticed they were still being posted as I was viewing. So, I flagged the accounts and it wiped them. Immediately, one of the spammers signed right back up again with the same name and started over. Flagged them again. Hopefully they have given up for the day.

More pointless stories – Yesterday, we walked out the door as the late evening sun shone through under the clouds. The tree line lit up with yellows, golds, and orange. It was one of those WOW! moments. I thought awesome, I’ll take a picture. So I grabbed by phone. That’s when I realized that if a UFO landed in front of me and bigfoot ran out of the woods, I would have no proof because I don’t have a clue how to use this thing. I then couldn’t figure out how to get it back to phone mode. I am so last century.

Happy lazy summer Sunday everyone, it has definitely been one of those for me. I have spent the majority of my day sitting at my computer working on various things or watching Babylon 5 with Ben. It is one of those days where just being a lump was an option, and I was ok with that.

Today’s tea is another from Green Terrace Teas, Honey Black Tea, a naturally sweet black tea from Nantou, Taiwan. Well, I certainly like black teas that have sweet notes, so let us have a little bit of tea! The aroma of these long, curly, leaves is indeed quite sweet and very rich! There are notes of honey, beet root, roasted peanuts, tobacco, and a touch of roses. I am not sure I have ever sniffed a dry leaf that was so complex and had all the aromas work together in harmony.

Into the gaiwan the leaves go for a brief steeping. The aroma of the now wet leaves is a sweet and rich blend of roasted peanuts, yams, molasses, and a tiny touch of spice at the finish. The liquid is intensely sweet with notes of cocoa butter, caramel, yams, and a touch of sweet cream. It smells quite decadent.

First steeping, well, that is certainly delicious! The taste starts out somewhat mild with roasted peanuts and a touch of spicebush. This fades into an explosion of rich caramel and molasses sweetness, this sweetness lingers for quite a while as a tasty aftertaste. The mouthfeel is very smooth and velvety.

The aroma of the second steeping is so strong, there are intense notes of molasses, roasted peanuts, caramel, and raw honey. I like that I can smell my teacup from the other side of my desk, it makes waiting for it to cool enough to drink a pleasant experience. The taste is just as rich as the aroma, with strong notes of molasses, cocoa, and spicebush. The finish is honey sweet that leaves a nice lingering sweet aftertaste between sips.

For the third and final steep, the aroma is still pretty rich and sweet, with strong notes of yams and caramel, there is a mild finish of spicebush, giving the aroma warm quality. The taste, while not as intense as the previous steep, is still very sweet and rich. There are notes of cocoa, yams, and molasses. As before the aftertaste is one of honey that lingers. This tea is really quite fantastically sweet, it lives up to its name perfectly.

For photos and blog: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/07/green-terrace-teas-honey-black-tea-tea.html

Sipdown! (153)

I’m undecided on this one! It does have a lovely honey flavor, especially in the aftertaste. However, there’s a little bit of floral and it’s leaving me with a soapy taste today. Mm but that lovely creamy honey! Delicious.

I still need to order a round of samples from Green Terrace with my free-shipping-for-samples code, as I really want to try their Li Shan Black. Obviously, it’ll be a little while since I’m on hiatus, but the code says it doesn’t expire so hooray! I may order another sample pack of this tea too, so I can make my mind up about it. :P

General update!

First, I love this tea. I have been drinking it a lot this past week because I bought 100g of it…I think it was 100g. Anyway, I had a tin I wanted to put it in but there was too much tea because it was so fluffy. Today I finally drank it down so that it all fits into a tin. Yay!

I haven’t been writing reviews as much in the past month, largely because the site was so kerborken that either no one would see it (the last couple I wrote had no likes…sniff…) or because I was drinking the same old things. The site seems to have largely fixed itself so I’ll work on getting back into the habit. I’m also sad that the forum is so much slower than it used to be. But hey, chat is still hopping after about 10 am every day. So you should go there!

In other news, I have been working on a solution to storing my teas, and I think I’m there. You know I love tins, and I have a big shelf for all of the tinned teas that I have. But what to do with all of those little packages everywhere? Well, I repurposed one of those cube storage things from my daughter’s room – she is grown up and moved out and didn’t want it – and bought new fabric cubes this weekend and now I have six cubes of sorted teas. The only down side is that when I was moving the tea into the thingie, I realized that I have….so….much…tea. And yet I keep buying it. Oh well, more for you guys.