Oaks Classic Summer Chinary Black Tea (2017)

This will probably be my final review of 2017. I doubt I will get the opportunity to post anything else tonight. The third of the Oaks Estate black teas I tried this year, I found this to be the most enjoyable of the three.

I prepared this tea in the Western style. I steeped about 3 grams of loose leaf material in approximately 8 ounces of 194 F water for 5 minutes. I did not attempt any additional infusions.

Prior to infusion, I found aromas of toast, wood, and malt. After infusion, I began to note scents of dandelion and amaryllis, as well as emerging aromas of grass, malt, herbs, and wood. On the palate, the liquor started off with fairly robust notes of hay, grass, wood, herbs, and dandelion, but soon notes of amaryllis, brown toast, cream, malt, golden raisin, fig, roasted almond, and blackberry arrived to provide some depth and balance. The finish was somewhat sweet and relatively smooth, providing lingering fruit, toast, and malt notes balanced by some mild astringency and hints of tannic character.

While the folks at Teabox seemed to perceive this as a consistently sweet tea, my preparation yielded a much more robust liquor with pronounced vegetal, herbal notes on the entry and much smoother, more complex notes on the back end. Though I was not a huge fan of the autumn flush Oaks black tea I tried a couple months back, I greatly enjoyed this second flush tea and would be willing to recommend it to fans of Darjeeling black teas.