On Ceylon, Darjeeling and Cinnamon|Teaview

Hello hello,

I haven’t posted many teaviews recently, but not because I haven’t been drinking any! If you’ll check out my 2016 Teas page you will see a small selection of teas, most of which I drink on a daily basis at work or at home. It would probably scare you (and myself) if I were to keep a tally of the number of cups per tea per day that I was drinking. I think that this is perhaps a step too far in the process of tea tracking.

Recently at work, a couple of colleagues who know that I like tea (but not that I actually blog about it) have been handing me various tea bags to try, which I gladly accepted.

Golden Darjeeling

I’ve not had the pleasure of adding Darjeeling to my tea tasting yet and so was happy to try this; my first dip in the Darjeeling ocean (sorry that was a terrible metaphor, but you get where I’m going with this I hope!). I was not disappointed. This brewed a nice transparent caramel colour after 4 minutes of steeping.

The taste was something special to me. I don’t think I’ve tasted any tea with such a crisp, sharp taste as this one. It was akin to biting a crunchy green apple, but a little less sour.

Is this what astringency is?

This tea also drank a little dry, like wine. I was quite  blown away by the complexity of the flavours from this tea, despite it being bagged. I’m quite excited to make a trip to a couple of the tea shops to see if I can find a loose version for the testing!

Leafy Rating: 5/5

Cinnamon Tea

The second tea which I tried was this black tea with cinnamon. Now, being a child of the Caribbean, it is virtually impossible not to like spices such as cinnamon and cloves which are such a familiar flavour to our cooking. This tea was a pleasant drink and surprisingly strong but it did go a little cloudy and I think that it would be too much to drink on a daily basis.

Have you ever tried Big Red gum? If you have, then you’ll like this tea. It was a great experience but I think that I’m more inclined to use my own cinnamon and clove mix to make a tea rather than to have this ‘pre-made’ version.

Leafy Rating: 3/5

Ceylon Tea

“See lon” or “Say lon” or “Chay lon”?

Comme ci, comme ça. However you say it. This was another tea that I had the fortune of trying for the first time last week. It was a fairly mild and sweet tea that I felt I needed to drink more than once to form a strong enough opinion on.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, it was perhaps that my palate wasn’t quite sure of what it was tasting. I’m going to give it a 3/5 for now but will review this once I have tried it again.

Leafy Rating : 3/5

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*Side note*

I had a look at the Whittard website to see what they had available of the Ceylon variety and I found the sweetest little profile on Ceylon, its taste profile , best food pairings and the best time in which to drink it.

I will be giving Ceylon and Darjeeling loose leaf a try very soon!

Image captured from Whittard’s Orange Pekoe page

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More tea stuff coming soon!

Jam xx

 

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