Premium Taiwanese Assam

Is this tea the same as what I’ve heard called ‘Sun Moon Lake’ black tea? I know it’s produced from a Taiwanese Assam-variety tea plant like this tea is.

The brewed liquor is a lovely dark reddish shade, almost like a garnet and the aroma is rather fruity. The flavour is something unique – has the robustness of Assam and there is a bit of malt though I would describe the dominant flavour of the tea to be something more like cocoa with a bit of bakey-ness followed by a sweet, slightly fruity (citrus maybe?) note. It has an extremely smooth feel in the mouth and I don’t feel the need to add milk to tone down it down like I do with most Indian Assams.

Butiki Teas has a real winner here – I completely understand why this is one of the top teas on the entire site.

I was very excited to try this tea, given all I’ve heard about it from my dear Steepster friends :). This tea is a total spider-leg tea! (dark, twisty, looooong leaves). It smells very tannic and brews up a burnt sienna color. The main impression I get upon the first sip is that this tea is different- I’ve never tasted another tea like it! Points for that :). The flavors that pop up are honey and raisins, with a hint of cinnamon against a malty backdrop. This is actually the first tea I’ve gotten raisin notes from. The flavors all shine quite clearly- is this a classic assam flavor profile? I’m not sure as I’ve only had a spiced masala assam.

Backlog from a few days ago:

Oh man, this is a very sad sipdown. I drank it to commemorate Butiki’s closing with the last of the swap I got from Ost a few months ago.

This has such rich fruity notes to it for me, like plum and prune. I really can’t wait to find another vendor who stocks this (once I sip down some more stuff in my cupboard).

Bye Bye, Butiki…. (sob)

This will seriously always be one of the best black teas I’ve ever tasted. I have been trying to save it but the other day I was really craving it so I splurged a bit.
Ughh it’s just so good.
Way better in real life than even in my memory!
Love this one!
I’m going to be heartbroken when I run out D:

Thank you Stacy for the sample of this!

This is my first “straight” tea from Butiki. I tend to gravitate towards their flavored teas because they really are the best flavored ones I’ve found. So I end up spending my whole tea budget on those. I asked Stacy to surprise me with an unflavored tea and she chose this one.

I should have written this right after drinking it in my sleepy stupor this morning. It helped me get out of bed but almost felt to good for half awake tea drinking.

It was strong without being astringent.

Oh and I was really good this time and didn’t under leaf! I used the whole sample. I feel stupidly proud of myself because I have a strong and stingy urge to save the precious. With my stash out of control I really shouldn’t be stingy. This was worth using the whole sample even if now I feel sad I can’t order any for a long time.

(Backlog from this morning)
I chose this as my first-day-at-work-after-maternity-leave tea and I’m really glad I did, because it was a great comfort, and it gave me something to focus on, rather than obsess about how stressed out I was. The day went by very quickly, and it was much easier than I had anticipated. Now I’m e-x-h-a-u-s-t-e-d and although my WP order came in today, I’ll skip on caffeine tonight because I need a LOT of rest.

Perfect breakfast tea! I’ve steeped this about 5 times already and it’s still going strong.

Thank you Cavocorax for being so kind and giving me some unflavored Butiki blacks in support of my new journey into straight teas. This one is quite good, malty and sweet with delicious notes of caramel. It reminds me slightly of Yezi’s Jin Pin, which is great since that is the tea that inspired this exploration. However, of the two, I think I prefer Jin Pin, but this is delicious in its own right as well.

In other news, got my haircut today, after quite some time and it feels like I lost 10 pounds :P. Alas, my happiness is being spoiled by the fact that my friends birthday is tonight (that is not what is ruining my mood since birthdays are happy times) which means I have to get dressed up and mission downtown to spend a few hrs with drunk people I don’t know only to have to subway back at midnight. All I really want to do is stay home in pajamas and drink tea but oh well. Also, the dressing up part is annoying given we are going to a pub which, at least in Montreal, meant jeans and tshirts were acceptable

This is one of the best black teas I’ve come across in my recent introduction to loose leaf teas, it’s bursting with flavor and so smooth I found myself at the bottom of my cup without knowing exactly how I got there! Whenever I see the word ‘premium’ in a product description I’m wary because more often than not it’s hyperbole, but not in this case. Excellent tea!

So It’s 6:30am and by reaching deep into my tea cupboard I realized I’ve made a big mistake…..

I’ve been on Steepster for a little over a year. It was this website that helped me find the teas I’ve used to expand my tastes “beyond the teabag”. I ordered PTA from Butiki fairly on in my tea explorations. Being that my tastebuds were used to Indian assams, this threw my palate for a loop. I remember thinking that the leaves were like SPIDER LEGS and how in blazes could you measure 2 teaspoons of this when every time you pushed the leaves into the spoon to get a measurement, some would POIIIIIING out of the spoon…. I think it was just all a bit too much for me. So the tea was relegated to the back of the cupboard. Until today….

There’s a depth to the dry leaf fragrance that is similar to a Fujian black, but once water goes into the cup, the malty assam note comes forward to meet my nose. Unlike most assams, the malt note doesn’t take center stage in this cup….this one is a true chorus of notes: It is fruity, with notes of deep plum, raisin and fig. There is cocoa and yam skin, which bring an earthiness to this tea that assams don’t usually present. Then there is a toasted malt note. This is lovely. I have to say that this is probably my favorite cup of tea for where my palate is these days. At a 3 minute steep there is a touch of astringency, which is the only reason I can say I’m not sitting here crying in my mug over not drinking this before Butiki closed it’s doors. Astringency, you just might be my friend today for that reason alone…..

I try to live life with no regrets…it’s a mantra of mine. SO, I will look at the small tea tin as being a quarter full of bouncy spider leggy leaves as opposed to being 3/4 empty. And in the meantime, I’ll ask anyone if they’ve found anything close to this tea anywhere else besides Butiki….because dang, it’s goooooooood.