AMBA Estate Hand-Rolled Tippy Golden Orange Pekoe Black Tea (Organic) from The Steeping Room

AMBA Estate Hand-Rolled Tippy Golden Orange Pekoe Black Tea (Organic)

Tea type
Black Tea
Ingredients
Not available
Flavors
Astringent, Berry, Bitter, Brown Sugar, Chocolate, Fruity, Malt, Malty, Metallic, Oats, Orange, Tannin, Tea, Tobacco, Toffee, Wood, Woody
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Loose Leaf
Caffeine
Not available
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by derk
Average preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 30 sec 3 g 10 oz / 300 ml

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2 Tasting Notes View all

  • “Berry-malty aroma with a touch of cocoa butter. Taste is malty, tabac and astringent, sweetness like brown coconut sugar, berry and orange undertone, some bitterness on the back end. With a...” Read full tasting note
    65
  • “Long-standing tea prejudices are hard to grow out of…like associating “Orange Pekoe” with Lipton restaurant grade floor sweepings. However, you put a “tippy” in front of that and things start to...” Read full tasting note

From The Steeping Room

Complex, smooth, and lingering with the most enticing notes of maple syrup and citrus, this is simply a must try if you enjoy black teas from Sri Lanka. There is an interesting thickness to the tea with a lingering astringency – all in a beautiful balance. This is a tea that is best enjoyed plain – no milk needed.

This AMBA estate TGOP (note: TGOP means Tippy Golden Orange Pekoe and indicates a full leaf with some tips) is a one bud, one leaf hand-plucked tea that is rolled by hand. This is unheard of for the vast majority of black tea from Sri Lanka (the original home of Lipton’s tea). The quality of this tea is obvious from the visual appearance of the leaf through to the cup.

AMBA Estate, at about 1000 meters elevation in the Uva Mountains of Sri Lanka, is a very unique tea making operation. The Estate is a re-claimed and regenerated abandoned tea farm that has been organically certified since 2009. Many of the plants, both small and large leaf varieties, are old and grown from seed. The plants are fertilized by a herd of rescued cows and are otherwise free from pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

AMBA is community run, not plantation based like most other tea enterprises in Sri Lanka. Their core mission is to create economic opportunity for the people in their community and as such they offer 10% revenue sharing to their staff in addition to their regular wage. Additionally, they support their staff (and the Estate’s neighbors) in developing their own businesses from their handicrafts or locally grown and made comestibles.

2022 Harvest

About The Steeping Room View company

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2 Tasting Notes

65
1607 tasting notes

Berry-malty aroma with a touch of cocoa butter. Taste is malty, tabac and astringent, sweetness like brown coconut sugar, berry and orange undertone, some bitterness on the back end. With a second steep, the cup becomes coppery, tannic and bitter such that I want to drink it down quickly.

Halfway down this morning’s cup, I added a drizzle of hazelnut milk. This completely overwhelmed the tea. The hazelnut milk tastes like papery nut skins and smells strange. Oh well. Just not a milk tea person but thought I’d try!

When cold-brewed, the flavor is upfront more glassy coppery-woody “tea” with a thick oat-toffee kind of taste as an afterthought.

I’ve had a previous year’s harvest of this tea from another company and enjoyed it quite a bit more. Weather changes and so do tastes. While this tea is good quality and has a character of its own that stands out from basic plantation leaf, Sri Lankan teas aren’t high on my list.

Flavors: Astringent, Berry, Bitter, Brown Sugar, Chocolate, Fruity, Malt, Malty, Metallic, Oats, Orange, Tannin, Tea, Tobacco, Toffee, Wood, Woody

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 30 sec 3 g 10 OZ / 300 ML
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2976 tasting notes

Long-standing tea prejudices are hard to grow out of…like associating “Orange Pekoe” with Lipton restaurant grade floor sweepings. However, you put a “tippy” in front of that and things start to get interesting, and with a “hand-rolled” in front of that, we’re talking downright elegance. No cheap fannings here—the leaves were rangy and long as half my pinky. With a conventional southern Missouri farmhouse steep, these leaves yield a smooth, fruity cuppa with no sharp acidic edges.

The Steeping Room’s advert mentions maple and citrus…it was a little more plummy to me. It resteeped well a second time.

Thanks to derk for this little excursion to Sri Lanka!
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