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Now this was a weird one! This was the last tea I drank before I got sick in September, and prior to trying it, I had never previously tried black tea powder. I expected it to basically be prepared like matcha, and I was right. To me, it kind of came off somewhere between a Yunnan black tea and either a ripe pu’erh or a Liu Bao.

I prepared this tea by dumping approximately three grams of loose tea powder in an eight ounce mug and then adding a little 212 F water. After mixing the water and tea powder into a paste, I filled the mug with 212 F water and stirred briskly with a spoon. That’s it.

Prior to preparation, the tea powder gave off aromas of dust, earth, wood, old paper, smoke, and grass. After preparation, the aroma profile of the tea liquor did not seem different from that of the tea powder. In the mouth, I detected notes of earth, mushroom, forest floor, dust, grass, lemon rind, wood, cocoa, old paper, leather, smoke, and cream that were balanced by hints of ash, raisin, caramel, nutmeg, roasted walnut, brown sugar, coffee, roasted chestnut, betel nut, and cinnamon. The tea liquor was very gritty and bitter in the mouth and possessed a pronounced astringency. The aftertaste was odd, reminding me greatly of either a ripe pu’erh or a Liu Bao from Guangxi.

Honestly, I still have no clue how I feel about this tea. It was strange and not something I would be in any rush to try again, but at the same time, it was not exactly unpleasant. I kind of hated it at first, but the more of it I drank, the more I warmed up to it. If you can get past the gritty texture, the bitterness and astringency of the tea liquor, and the odd combination of aromas and flavors, this is actually something of a fun little offering with more depth and complexity than one should reasonably expect.