Guilty with a Capital G

Sometime this past summer I received a strange email from a man with a foreign-sounding name. He claimed to be associated with an Indian tea company, Golden Tips Teas. Apparently my blog, and my post about the tea extravaganza at the Indian tea grocery in Greenville, SC, brought me up on his radar, and they sent me an offer. They would send me some tea samples for free, in the mail. All they needed was my mailing address.

Now that I consider it, that blog post can't have possibly elicited his email. I visited Greenville in mid-September, and this email exchange occurred at least a couple of months ago -- long ago enough that I'd forgotten about it.

I did send him a mailing address -- not my own street address, but the address for the church, to be safe. Because we live in a scary world. And promptly the next day I received another email stating that he could not process my free tea offer until I had sent him my phone number also. Hmm. I asked Adam if he thought this was probably an email scam (even though the man did provide a link to the tea company's site, but that means nothing. Anyone can provide a link.), and Adam said it was probably a scam. So I didn't write him back. I put the emails into my spam folder.

And ... I reported it to Google Mail too. Because I want to be a good citizen. And I then forgot the whole thing.

Until today.

Adam came into the house carrying a cool package. From India:

 The box is wrapped in muslin (ha! I mistyped 'muslim' first! Freudian slip!) cloth. Is that cool or WHAT?
And the edges are all hand stitched. Guys ... I needed a seam ripper to open my mail!

 And it had multiple wax seals, with writing in the wax!!!! Squeeee!

 I was trying not to hyperventilate. It's not quite as fabulous as Mr. Darcy knocking at your door. But it's close.

 And a nifty postage label from India too :)

 Inside the box? Yes, a fabulous assortment of beautiful Indian teas. Bestillmyheart.

 How did they know I adore Darjeeling and Assam?

 Each label looks like this. This is serious tea. They tell you which estate it's grown on, when it was picked, that it is the first tips in the spring season. Oh. My. Word.

And I feel insanely, massively, overwhelmingly guilty. I know, I know ... it was perfectly normal to suspect them of something sinister when they wanted my phone number (I guess). But still -- look at how kind they were to me, when I was only suspicious of them? It is rather humbling. The tea names are elegant and beautiful on the tongue. I did make a pot from one of the little black packets:  "Giddapahar Muscatel" from the Darjeeling region, the Giddapahar estate, picked on June 8th of this year, the second flush of the summer season. It is beautiful in color and luscious in taste.

If you're a tea lover, and you don't mind buying online, please do support this wonderful, kind company that treated me better than I treated them. May this blog post be a small apology for any damage I may have done to them with my complaint to Google. I have tried to find the email exchange in my Gmail, and cannot find anything. I wish I could rectify my mistake. I have no idea how to contact Gmail and tell them, "No! I was wrong! These are not bad guys!"

Thank you, Golden Tips Tea Company! You are wonderful!