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This is perhaps the best Nilgiri tea I have had. It is very aromatic and tasty with a buttery mouthfeel and a pungent and protracted aftertaste.

The strong dry leaf smell has notes of jasmine, courgette flowers, compost, burdock, and camphor. The last one persists during the session and is complemented by meaty, vegetal, and herbaceous aromas.

The taste is savoury, floral and bitter, while the aftertaste is more spicy and sweet. There are flavours of butter, vegetables such as rapini and courgette, and various spices.

The crisp sencha has a nice bitterness without it ever getting overwhelming. Its mouthfeel is very smooth and soft and its aroma is sweet and floral with notes of rice and seaweed. The taste is grassy, vegetal and milky. One specific flavour I noticed is also kohlrabi.

I haven’t had much Gyokuro in recent years. I prepared this one in my first session with it with the following parameters:
50ml/40°C/2.5min
80ml/40°C/1.5min
110ml/50°C/30s
130ml/55°C/1.5min
160ml/55°C/5min

It was also a bit of a test session, since later in the week I organized a tea party with a focus on Japanese teas, and this is one of the teas that I brewed up there. The above preparation was a bit too heavy early on tbh, but the tea holds up well to these high leaf/water ratios.

As one would expect, it gives a thick liquor with a super long aftertaste. The first infusion is an umami feast – very brothy with a sweet finish. The second one is much more balanced with a very oily texture and additional bitter and grassy flavours. Later steeps are then progressively more vegetal and bitter with much less umami.

This is only a second tea of this type that I have tried as far as I can remember. I would like to see more of Japanese oolongs on the market though.

The aroma of dry leaves is sweet and toasty with notes of nectar and grass. During the session, it is much more floral with hints of orchid and burdock among other associations.

It is a full bodied tea with a thick creamy mouthfeel. The taste is a little bit like a green Taiwanese oolong. It is sweet, vegetal and mineral with a little bit of bitterness, lending to a long and sweet aftertaste. There are strong marine and grassy flavours, as well as those of custard, kale, lemon balm, lime zest.

A nice white tea that has quite a rustic character with a strong dry grass/hay presence to it. I like its smooth colloidal mouthfeel in particular.

The taste is sweet and vegetal with mild bitterness and flavours of gardenia, burdock, peanuts, and tree bark.

This tea is now sold out unfortunately, but if it comes back in stock, I would highly recommend it. With the inflated prices of Oriental Beauty in recent years, it is hard to come around such a great example at this price.

The tea has a lot of depth and complexity and is more robust than some of the Taiwanese high grades. The dry leaf aroma is super sweet with notes of flowers, nectar, beeswax, and maple syrup. Wet leaves then smell very perfumy. There are notes of petrichor, soap, rose, and forest floor.

The taste is generally very sweet. Floral and woody notes dominate, with fruity ones in close succession. There is, however, also a sort of mineral, savoury undercurrent, as well as mild bitterness, which helps to keep it a thoroughly engaging session. Some specific flavours I noticed include peach, charcoal, and sugarcane. The aftertaste is very long, a bit drying and refreshing.

The tea has a medium body and a pretty soft mouthfeel, it is not super thick, but very pleasant to drink.

Quite a subtle black tea that is not as robust as most examples of the category on the market. Its aromas are very floral with rose being the primary association for me. The taste is bitter and has a woody astringency as well as coffee-like sourness. There are notes of sap, peanuts, earth at first. Later, more of a “Japanese” character comes forward. The taste has more umami and hints of shellfish and wheat, as well as molasses and allspice in the aftertaste.

I really like many Jing Gu teas and this one is one of my favourite ones among them. It also shows how well teas from this region can age, I am really happy with its progression in my home storage.

The tea has quite a vegetal and savoury character with plenty of bitterness, but its taste profile is really hard to describe. What I can say with certainty is that it makes me want to drink more. The aroma has a sage note. The taste notes include dry earth, bread, sunflower seeds, cocoa beans, parsnips, almonds and also a strong fennel one that persists into the aftertaste. The tea is thick, oily and a bit spicy.

The more times I drink this tea, the more I recognize how amazing it is. Some pu-erh teas can have a very complex flair when very young that recedes over the years and perhaps never comes back. This one, even though it changes noticeably, remains interesting and tasty with every passing year, at least so far.

Even the aroma is surprisingly complex for a 5 year old tea. It is sweet with notes of coffee, dried cranberries, and pumpkin. The taste is herbaceous and grainy at first, with a bread flavour present. Second steep is quite sweet with mild citrusy note as well as malt and pine flavours. The third one brings more woody bitterness of tree bark, but also honey and cloves flavours.