Mountain Organic Indonesian Black Tea

OK, let’s be honest. The first thing I did after opening the envelope was put the sailboat together. Who doesn’t love a cool cork sailboat? It is now proudly displayed but not in a bottle because I lack the patience and attention span – squirrel. I love the packaging except once you cut the top you remove the tag with the tea name, so open one at a time.

I am not a big fan of assam type black as it is too hard on my stomach. Not being sure how this black will react I held the steep to 2 1/2 minutes. I had no ill affects – yeah. Prepared as I did I found this to be light-medium bodied. Malty, smooth, silky, and pleasant with a nicely fruity aftertaste. I enjoyed the cup and look forward to trying it again.

I’ve been drinking a bit of this since Christmas but never got around to reviewing it. This was part of my Black Friday hoard, I got one of each tea to try and ended up doubling up on this one as my cupboard doesn’t have many nice blacks. I thought it was worth the try anyway, I love the tins.

It has a beautiful red/brown colour once steeped with a thick malted scent. I am partial to a nice pot of Assam and by smell alone you can tell this would be a treat.

The is moderately malted with some honeyed sweetness and thick spicy elements. Also rather dry in after taste but not unbearably so. Though it is rich it’s also very smooth and easily drinkable. Also a little smoky in the after taste.

I really do like this one, glad I took the chance and got two tins worth. Assam is usually a morning or early afternoon style tea for me but this one I could drink throughout.

This tea is really really good! So many awesome things going on – first off, really attractive packaging. Mountain Organic Indonesian Black also smells fantastic while being steeped – the smell filled my entire kitchen!
The taste was like a journey, each resteep being different. The first steeping was malty, rich, smooth, cedar, sap, amber, honey, spicy and smokey. The resteeps got sweeter, smoother and creamy. Very nice tea. I hope I remember to buy a tin after I try their Oolong and I clear out my stash.

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/mountain-organic-indonesian-black-tea-tea-sea-oolong-owl-tea-review/
Pics of the Tea at Sea sail boat!

Thank you for the free samples, Tea At Sea! I also love the little paper/cork/toothpick sail boat that came with the samples. It’s sitting on my shelf right now. Usually I don’t love Indonesian black teas but after trying this one, I might have to decide that I can’t ever say I don’t like a tea… especially if it’s a black tea. The little bundles of black tea leaves have a reddish tint to them. Usually Indonesian teas are very light flavored and sometimes like charcoal, which doesn’t suit my bold and robust black tea tastes. But this one was a nice change from the usual today. Yes, it’s light, but the flavor that is there is nice. Slightly charcoal, but very sweet. I love the fragrance coming from the cup. My tastebuds might not be able to notice what I love about this one, but I do.. and that is saying something if this type of tea was previously one of my least favorites.
tea-at-sea.com

2/8/14 Sipdown. 3ish g/ 6ish oz/212F/6ish minutes. Good. This tea showed much better with a western brew then it did with the gongfu brewing I tried earlier. It’s a basic black tea – lighter then I expected, even after the steeping time got away from me. Not on par with their green tea.

Well. I seriously enjoyed this cup. Yum! Thank you Tea at Sea for the sample.
It’s very crisp, the way I’ve noticed high grown or first flush teas usually are. I see this level of quality more often in Darjeeling teas, so it was nice to see it applied to a different region.
At first, I tried it straight. It was quite nice. But I found I preferred it with a bit of milk. It seemed to bring out the mild malty note hanging way in the back. Almost like a “green” tobacco, the way it was paired with the apple note I noticed every now and then. I like it!

I received a free sample of this from Tea At Sea. Thank you for allowing me to try this tea.

This tea arrived at my door in very cute packaging. I received two samples and they were in small sample size packets with the company’s name and a tag attached to the package that described the tea and gave temperature guidelines for steeping.

The leaves were in great shape, little curly black leaves. This tea was a medium bodied tea with hints of fruit. The taste reminded me of some of the Ceylon teas I have had. Before I started drinking loose leaf teas I loved Lipton yellow label. Lipton yellow label was “normal” black tea to me. This tea has a very “normal” flavor, but very smooth. I liked this tea. It would be great iced, it would be good with lemon or ginger added to it, and it is also good straight.

The way I rate tea is based on my personal preference. It is based on if I am driven to drink or buy a given tea again. In this case I will definitely finish this sample and would purchase this tea again if I happened to be buying other teas from Tea at Sea.

Really smooth/silky. It’s got a nice and clean finish without overwhelming my palate, which is something black teas can do. Little to now astringency on this one. Pretty nice!

SCREAMING BECAUSE I JUST FINISHED MY LAST FINAL AND I WENT TO CHECK MY MAIL BECAUSE I WAS EXPECTING A PACKAGE FROM MY PARENTS AND THEN I FOUND ANOTHER PACKAGE TAPED TO MY OTHER PACKAGE AND MISSB GOT ME TEA AND I’M ALL WHAT WOW OKAY THEN AHHHH I’M LITERALLY SITTING IN MY ROOM SCREAMING BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW WHICH TEAS TO BRING BACK HOME FOR SPRING BREAK

http://instagram.com/p/lyDCaDDgDK/

But yes. THIS IS A GREAT OOLONG AND I LOVE IT SO MUCH and when I get money, I’m totally going to buy more tea from Tea at Sea because that tea company is GREAT.

This is a sipdown, but the count doesn’t even matter because I FREAKIN JUST GOT LIKE 15 NEW TEAS FROM BONNY LIKE NO THIS IS GREAT BUT AHHH TEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEEEEAAAAAAAA

MY ROOMMATEA ARE MAKING FUN OF ME BECAUSE I’M FREAKING OUT BECAUSE IT LOOKS LIKE EATEATEATEATEATEAT AHAHHAHA OH MY GOSH WHAT IS THIS WHAT IS MY LIFE.

Wow! This has some intense honey notes. There’s also some caramel, cocoa, wood, bread…and the aftertaste is almost fruity. Very interesting. Reminds me of some kind of mix between a Ceylon and a Yunnan. I’ve never had anything quite like it, but it’s really good.