Nepal Black (Organic)

Fine downy young leaves. I can feel the little hairs prickle the back of my throat as I swallow.

This was a light cup of tea, but then again, I suspect I under leafed my cup. Still, smooth and nectary sweet. Bit delicate for a black tea, really.

Otherwise, this is not too memorable.

Yum, this is tasty!

After my first cup, I had thought of all these things I wanted to write about in my tasting note, about the floral-y fragrance mixed with a dark, malty taste… but mostly, I forgot all of it as I drank my second and third infusions. But it is delicious, and I am sad that my sample from Courtney only contained enough for one taste of this.

So, yum.

I am thoroughly enjoying this tea.

I went to the store to buy some Orange Pekoe (which is quite nice itself, btw) and was offered this one. I got the OP but then after giving it some thought I went back a couple weeks later for a tin of this one.

The first thing you notice is that this is obviously hand-rolled – the leaves are very long and twisty.

The aroma of the leaves is very pleasant, a bit malty and floral like a really nice breakfast tea.

The colour of the infusion is a deep orange but not too dark.

The flavour is reminiscent of Black Needles (Yunnan red/black) in its honey/sweetness but then also like a really nice breakfast blend (Ceylon/Assam).

Very, very accessible and hard to say anything not nice about it. :)

This tea even cost less than I expected because it’s so light that the tin could only hold about 86g – the girl at the store even had trouble shutting the lid (I cringed at the sound of her crushing the tea leaves, not to mention the fact that she spilled a bunch when she was filling the tin.. tsk tsk tsk.. :P )

Notes on preparation: I’ve been doing all of my black tea lately in kind of a “modified gong fu” style – I use extra leaves, and first do a quick infusion off the boil (up to two minutes), then later a second infusion at boiling, leaving the leaves in indefinitely (or at least 5 minutes).

Having this one naked. I didn’t usually drink my black teas with nothing in them. I always added milk to them but now that I am drinking better tea I seem to be doing this more often. I made this tea about 1.5 hours ago but it is so hot here I just couldn’t drink it. Now that it has sat I didn’t even now if I would like it but it is great. It isn’t bitter like some blacks can be after sitting for awhile. The thing I really want to say about it is that it has a really nice “tea” flavour to it. I am really glad I picked this one up yesterday in the store and look forward to getting more. I decided on “only” 50g to try this one and it filled the whole bag. The girl even had problems getting the bag closed. 100g would likely take up more than one tin.

I am just having a bit of this now…

My local DAVIDs was out of this the last few times I was in, but had some today, and I finally bought some. The leaves are fairly big and light, and my 16g nearly filled the small pouch. Brewed, the leaves were on par with the oolong I had yesterday which was a little greener than this. The dry smell of this smells like your basic black, a little malty and sweet. Compared to the Wild Black Yunnan, it smells a little different. At first I thought the WBY was sweeter, but upon a second dry smell just now, the WBY smells earthier…possibly grassier.

The liquor was a nice medium golden mahogany shade. Brewed, it is very pleasing to look at and smell. I’m not sure if this is sweeter or not than the WBY as it’s been a while since I tried it straight. There is a sort of drying taste on my tongue, with a slight astringency. I’m not picking up any smoke that I know of.

I’m not sure whether I like this one better or not. I tasted without sweetener and milk, but I can’t seem to have a dark tea without that. Both teas are quite nice, especially as straight teas.

I’ve been dreaming about this tea for two days. I couldn’t find it. I knew I had it somewhere, but it was hiding from me… but then today, I happened to find it.

This tea is so good. I am going to treat myself soon to 100g of this one. How could you not like this one. It’s so smooth! And just what I needed today.

I like the big tea leaves in this one. Not anything like an oolong but in comparison to my English Breakfast.

The taste I’m preferring over David’s Organic Breakfast. It doesn’t have that background syrup taste. Of course I wouldn’t have any milk, so I’ll have to pick some up and try this with a bit of milk and sugar and see how it stands up. Pretty good black though :)

Another tea I got from DavidsTea the other day that I had rather high hopes for. While it didn’t completely crash and burn like the other one I tried tonight, it didn’t quite reach what I was expecting.

I didn’t really get any of the honey notes like the description mentions, just earthy/woody, maybe a bit of fruityness (which was strange and I may have imagined it).
I kinda wish I had read the reviews on here so I knew better what I might be getting into, and kinda glad I didn’t since I likely would’ve never bought this if I had. Mainly because I think my tastebuds are just not cut out for Darjeelings and those teas similar to them. I just don’t care for that kinda of musky/woody/earthy sort of taste. Though where I didn’t care at all for the first (and so far only) Darjeeling I’ve had, this tea is just unsimilar enough to a Darjeeling that I find myself finishing my cup and pondering another (or trying a resteep), but similar enough that it could be considered vaguely comparable. Even possibly as an easy introduction step to actual Darjeelings.

It has no astringency or bitterness that I could detect, but then I steeped it for 30 sec less than the minimum recommended temp, and at a slightly cooler temp. (Though I’m not sure how a few degrees really would have made a difference.)

I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t reorder this one, but if I drink enough, the taste may grow on me. But I can at least see myself finishing what I have. Which makes me happy that it wasn’t a complete bust or I’d’ve been really irritated. (I also got cajoled into buying an ounce of this instead of a half ounce. _ I need a backbone. Lol!)

Edit – Second steep – Same Temp-ish/ 4:30 min – Much like the first but toned down on the woody bite. Stiil a pleasant black tea. Not bad. /Ups the rating just a smidge for that./ Lol.

The dried leaves are quite pretty with long twisted wires of brown grey
and almost a camel colour. They smell like a slightly lemony raisin. Imagine my surprise that when first brewed the tea tastes and smells of chips and vinegar. It has malt tones and potato tones. I also smell lemon, a hint of rosemary and a hint of that spicy tone of some yunnans. It doesn’t taste vinegary just to be clear. It brews to a nice orangey brown. It is smooth with little to no astringency with a hint of artichoke, and bitter floral tone.

After the first steep the tea retains its malt with hints of potato, but is much sweeter (indistinct but slight reference to honey). There are hints of cocoa. It is smoother, and feels tannic at the front of the mouth but buttery over the rest. The tea has fading bitter vegetative note and citrus notes.

By the 4th steep indistint sweet flavour dominates, others fade but there are still aspects of malt, honey, cocoa, and a slight floral note with a slightly fading buttery mouth feel.

It retains a honey flavour, with hint of cocoa into a 7th steep, though by the end of this series it tastes more like dilute honey water.

The spent leaves are large and entire and smell of malt and chocolate.

This tea requires longer steeping than my indian teas of usually 4-5 minutes.

Considering my first impression of this tea it was quite fitting that I began drinking this tea on Good Friday. It certainly has an interesting variety of flavours and the leaves hold value for their money as they hold up to many steepings. I’m not sure that this would be an everyday tea for me but I would like to try some other Nepalese teas.

This was delightful this morning! Rich and a little spicy, but sweet and smooth.