I’m reviewing this tea for Mike at It’s All About the Leaf (http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/). It’s a great website with some truly excellent reviews of teas and tea-related products, so you guys should go check it out if you get the chance. :)
The tea is fairly unremarkable in terms of appearance and scent – it doesn’t smell stale and the leaves are fairly whole so it seemed to have been handled well from that standpoint.
The flavour is fairly standard for a green tea. It’s on the lighter side of the spectrum and it has some vegetal hints, but I think I can also pick out the traditional Darjeeling muscatel flavours, these are much more muted from what they’d be in their black tea form. It also lacks a Darjeeling black tea’s astringency and I noticed a sweetness creep into the tea as it cooled.
The resteep is lighter and greener-tasting, without the faint muscatel notes. So nothing fantastic or special.
India has historically been known only for its black teas and it’s only relatively recently that they’ve diversified. The accumulated centuries of knowledge about growing green teas in China and Japan can’t be learned in a night but these guys have given it a good effort.
