Golden Tips Teas ... Thus Far

Here are some promised evaluations of the Golden Tips Tea Company teas I've sampled so far. (And no, I'm not paid to tout their product. Maybe I should be ....)

 The golden package above is a larger package, and I tried it this past weekend, not realizing it is a green tea. At first, when I'd opened the package and poured the water onto the leaves, I thought, "Oh no! I hate green tea. Ugh! Oh well." But I was more than pleasantly surprised! I hate green tea because it tastes GRASSY to me -- you know? The taste is straw-like, and the after-effect is unpleasant, rather like heartburn. But not this tea! It is very light, both in color and flavor, even after longer steeping, and it is very pleasant. I put a little sugar into it too. I'll enjoy green tea at last. Oh -- and the leaves in this package were enormous! Quite a few whole leaves -- a sign of good quality.

 Here's the Moonlight Darjeeling I mentioned in a previous post. Lovely, pleasant, slightly nutty and smooth as a Darjeeling should be (in my opinion). Also, did you know that the real Darjeeling district only produces 8 million kilograms of tea each year, but 40 million kilgrams of tea marketed as "Darjeeling" is sold worldwide each year? There's a lot of fake Darjeeling floating around in teapots, folks! Buy the real stuff.

 I opened this Exotic Assam for a change. It is a richer, fuller-bodied tea, and very nice. I enjoyed the complexity of flavor. Interestingly, even after longer steeping, the tea remained red, although dark. Good flavor.

 Here's the tea I enjoyed yesterday, with a photo of the leaves below. It reminds me of loose pipe tobacco, oddly enough :) This was a pleasant tea, not a deep Assam, but with lots of spicy, nutty flavor. I do think the loose tea is so beautiful. Does your tea look like this? I dare you ... cut upon a tea bag from your kitchen and compare it to this photo. What do you think?

As one friend mentioned to me recently, the tea bags are full of tea "fannings," or tea "dust." She thinks they sweep it off the factory floor because she can taste the dustiness in her tea. It's hard to find good-quality tea out there. All I can say is this; Golden Tips seems to me to offer really beautiful, authentic, delicious tea.