I enjoy drinking brewed tea. In my day-to-day life I consume mostly not caffeinated (not de-caffeinated!) teas from tea bags but on weekends or when having friends over I like making real tea. I’m not a tea snob, I do not read about teas even as much as I read about perfumes so I have no idea if teas that I like are amouages or britney spearses of the field. And I do not really care as long as I like how they smell, how they taste and how they look.
I knew nothing about the brand when one of my friends brought a couple of Golden Moon Tea’s tins as a gift – one with White tea (with an unexpectedly for a white tea well-defined taste) and one with black tea and vanilla (they do not carry it any longer but this one is the closest to the one I tried before). If you were to apply L’Artisan’s Tea for Two lightly, wait for couple of hours and then add Diptyque’s Eau Duelle you would get something close to how Madagascar (black tea) smells.
For a while I could buy those teas from Williams Sonoma and several upscale grocery stores but then they disappeared. I switched to other brands but kept reminiscing about those teas… until I thought of looking for them online (I know it sounds strange now but it all happened long before the verb “to google” was added to official dictionaries). I found company’s website, ordered their Tea Taster’s Sampler, decided which I liked most and since then I buy those from time to time.
My current favorites (in addition to the two mentioned above) are Honey Pear (the smell of Jo Malone’s English Pear & Freesia from the bottle) and Rose (the same exercise with Tea for Two and then add Jo Malone’s Red Roses and start sniffing immediately before it turns soapy).
Golden Moon Tea offers a variety of teas, not only flavored as my favorites mentioned above, so if you’re curious check them out.
Do you have favorite teas?
As always, feel free to post a link to your blog’s post(s) related to the topic.
Image: my own
Undina's Looking Glass 
I love tea! I’m a coffee person if I had to choose, but I enjoy it all. My favorite tea as of late is a Croatian Forest Fruits tea- Podravka I think it is. Very tart berry, very Black Forest (I know, different country, but that’s what it reminds me of).
The Madagascar tea you mentioned would be something I’d love, I will have to pick some up. I love tea fragrances too. My favorite is Le Labo Patchouli- I see it as more of a tea scent than strictly patchouli. It’s black tea, smoke and spice.
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If I had to choose I would have probably chosen coffee as well since I drink real coffee at least once a day and could easily substitute my daily fruit/meant/etc. “teas” with just hot water. But luckily I do not have to choose so I can enjoy both.
Believe it or not, but I’m familiar with the Podravka brand. In my “previous life” (15-20 years ago) it was a popular brand of seasoning (as I suspect, back then consisting mostly of MSG). In my household it even became a generic name for any questionable herbs mix. If I see that tea at one of the ethnic food shops I’ll try it because I’m a little tired of my current not-caffeinated variety.
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These sound interesting – thanks for the heads up. Just now I have a hankering for Twinings Russian Caravan…I do adore tea! I recently got into green rooibos, which, when very good quality, is lovely and light.
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I don’t know if Peet’s Coffee & Tea has stores where you live but if they do try Russian Caravan from them. I like it. Probably not enough to order online and pay for shipping but if you can try and buy it in the coffee-shop it might be worth your time.
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I wish you’d translate this one and post it in your lj, so I could give a link to it to my Russian speaking acquaintances who enjoy both fragrances and tea a lot. Would you do that?
Have you seen my experience with pu-erh and dry strawberries? It’s unbelievable!
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I’ll try to do it this week.
I remember reading it but wouldn’t be able to write a report on the subject :) But you can give a link to it in LJ comment once I translate this post. Deal?
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Deal!
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