Since I’m staying home from work today, I have been occupying myself with polishing off some sample pouches. I finished this one early this morning. I found it to be a nice, solid Assam.
I prepared this tea in the Western style. I steeped around 3-4 grams of loose tea in approximately 8 ounces of 203 F water for 4 minutes. I did not attempt any additional infusions.
Prior to infusion, the dry leaf material emitted pronounced aromas of malt, brown toast, roasted nuts, cocoa, wood, and leather. After infusion, I began to pick up on scents of butter, molasses, caramel, honey, raisin, and fig. In the mouth, the tea came at me head on with powerful flavors of wood, caramel, cocoa, roasted chestnut, hickory, black walnut, leather, brown toast, molasses, malt, honey, and butter before giving way to subtler impressions of cream, fig, and raisin. The finish saw the butter and malt swell while notes of caramel, molasses, honey, cream, wood, leather, and roasted nuts remained.
This was a traditional Assam with a powerful maltiness, a full body, pronounced astringency, and hints of bitterness lurking around the fringes. It was a tea that was put together well, but with the exception of the subtle fruit notes, there was not much setting it apart from many other teas of this type. I will concede, however, that it did its job as a breakfast tea with aplomb. All in all, this one should definitely appeal to fans of orthodox Assams, but if you are not huge on them, it probably won’t do much for you.
Flavors: Astringent, Brown Toast, Butter, Caramel, Chestnut, Cocoa, Cream, Fig, Honey, Leather, Malt, Molasses, Raisins, Roasted Nuts, Walnut, Wood
