Vietnam 'Wild Boar' Black Tea

My morning cuppa. Another of my 2017 teas that I’m working through, in a still-sealed 10g package. I usually brew 3.5g to 500ml but dropped it to 3.3g to try to more evenly split the leaf into three 500ml western brew servings. Steeped for three minutes in 205F water.

The brewed tea has that lovely coppery reddish-brown color of a nice black tea. The aroma coming from my cup as I wait for it to cool enough to drink is giving me notes of cocoa, wet wood, roasted nuts, cinnamon, and honey.

The flavor is very breakfast tea malty/bready, with that orange citrus/smoky savory note I often get from Chinese black teas. I’m picking up a little of the wood, nuts, and a dark bittersweet cocoa toward the end of the sip, but the sweeter notes that were coming out on the nose aren’t present in the brewed cup. There is a bit of astrigency after the sip, but overall it’s surprisingly smooth for how strong and robust the tea is coming off.

An ideal breakfast tea; it has a hardiness to it, but is still smooth enough to drink unadorned (which is how I like to drink my breakfast teas).

I’ve never had a tea from Vietnam so I thought this would be fun to try. Black tea is my favorite and I found this one to be enjoyable, although you do have to watch you me steep time as it can get a little astringent if you oversteep. That being said my favorite steep was the last when the tea
Mellowed out. Not one that stands up to milk, a little brisk tasting. It’s nice. Although nothing particularly stood out about it to me.

[Spring 2018 harvest]

I found derk’s review of this tea match my experience very accurately, so I will be fairly brief. This tea is nice and all, but it didn’t really strike me as exceptional in any way and didn’t fully grab my attention. I think of it more as a tea to drink while doing other stuff than one to focus on.

Dry leaves have a scent of old furniture initially with some notes of moss, forest floor, and dry conifer needles in a preheated vessel. After the rinse, the aroma is more malty on the other hand. The taste is malty, woody, and creamy; and evolves into a prolonged sweet and spicy aftertaste. Body is medium to full, with a sticky, tingly mouthfeel and decent astringency.

Rejoice! First day of the rainy season! Let there be oil-slicked roads and accidents, landslides, lakes on 101 that span 3 lanes and potholes lurking underneath that eat cars for breakfast. Wash away the stench of months of… nevermind. It’s gray and wet, the air is clean once again, I am happy.

Wild Boar. April 2018 harvest. Gone western. 2.5g (2tsp), 8oz, 205F, 3 steeps at 3/5/11m.

The dry leaf is fragrant with dark fruit notes such as prune, blueberry, blackberry and cherry. There is a rose floral note that sits just beneath the dark fruits and an undertone of cedar and malt.

After the first steep, the wet leaf smells like prune, blackberry and a faint menthol. These also show up in the the liquor aroma with additions of cedar, amber and another incense. The first thing I notice about the liquor is not the tastes but the body. It is s full, robust and brisk with an interesting tingly, astringent mouthfeel I’ve never experienced before, pleasurable and reminiscent of a Ceylon but not quite. It’s lightly bitter, tart and mineral.

Once I get used to what’s going on in my mouth, I can focus on the tastes which are almost like a Darjeeling. I pick up on berry, cypress?, autumn leaf, salt, cherry, raisin, rye and faint malt, walnut, rose and incense. There’s a gentle menthol cooling quality to this tea that opens my sinuses. I can breathe clearly again. A moderate to strong, delayed returning sweetness appears. In the second steep, I can also pick up some butter and an odd impression of creaminess in the body. That becomes more prominent in the third steep. The aftertaste is pleasant and tart with some salivation.

Wild Boar is an interesting, unique tea. It offers a kind of simplistic quality upfront, but once I take the time to appreciate it, the scents and tastes really open up with some complexity – something that makes me want to try this brewed in a gaiwan. It has a great body and robustness that makes this a nice breakfast/morning tea. It’s not mind-blowing but for the price, this kind of quality is hard to beat.

eastkyteaguy’s endorsement of gongfu-ing this tea gave me the encouragement to give it a try with the last of my sample. I enjoyed the different experience I got from gongfu vs western here, but I think I actually prefer western after all in this case. It’s hard to tell if I can be fair to this tea, however — as I mentioned in the previous review, the leaf was pretty well broken up, lots of very small pieces, and as I feared, I think there was a good bit of harshness contributed simply by that fact. It was the end of my sample, too, with inevitably even smaller bits. It could be that a sample with more intact leaf would have fared better.

Anyway, I did 3g/50ml/95 C. Flash rinse was a very pretty red amber, and when I tasted a bit of it, it was surprisingly strong for just a couple seconds’ contact with the leaves. I did 10 steeps in all – 10 seconds to start and adding 5-10 seconds following. Throughout, the dominant aroma and flavor was earthy, woodsy cedar. (Side note: I broke in a new tea tray with this session, and it still smells very strongly of cut wood, which only heightened the aromatic wood notes of this tea!) Pretty astringent, good bit of drying tannins, decent amount of bitterness. In the middle steeps I started to pick up some rosemary or maybe eucalyptus notes, and possibly something very faintly citrus. A bit of minerality in these middle infusions, too. Toward the end I started to get very small hints of cocoa powder and vanilla, but these were not accompanied by any sweetness at all, which was quite interesting. I realized a couple infusions in that I was getting pretty much no sweetness whatever, though I did get some decent sweet notes from this tea in western and cold brew.

What this tea taught me is that I prefer more sweetness of some kind in my black teas. I’ve enjoyed some savory greens that had little to no sweetness, but when it comes to black, I think I need more of that sweet/bitter balance.

Edit: On revisiting this I find the second steeping is much better than the first.

Has a good punch, well oxidised and quite tannin-y.

Yes, to this tea. It’s like a malty Assam married a Black Dragon pearl tea, and this is their child. It is one I would enjoy everyday. Just tasty, good balance of everything involved. Someone else said it didn’t have depth, and I don’t agree. If you like Assams, but don’t want astringency, this is your dream tea!

I think one thing that comes through when I review Vietnamese teas is that I tend to have a huge soft spot for them. To this point, I have been particularly impressed by the teas What-Cha sources, and this was yet another winner. Several other reviewers did not find this tea all that complex, but brewing this gongfu, I got quite a bit out of it.

Obviously, I gongfued this tea. After a very quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 203 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was chased by 14 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, I picked up aromas of malt, dark chocolate, prunes, and cedar coming form the dry tea leaves. After the rinse, I detected emerging aromas of roasted nuts, caramel, and dark wood. I couldn’t detect any new aromas on the first proper infusion. On the palate, the liquor was surprisingly strong, astringent, and tannic. I found notes of cedar, dark wood, dark chocolate, malt, caramel, roasted nuts, and prune underscored by vague hints of spice. Subsequent infusions brought out impressions of butter, cream, dates, brown toast, and fig. The roasted nut notes became clearer and started to separate a bit, reminding me of a combination of chestnut, beechnut, hickory, and black walnut. I also began to note subtler impressions of pine needles, eucalyptus, camphor, minerals, red apple, and tart cherry, while the spice notes began to grow stronger and resemble a combination of ginger, black pepper, and clove. The later infusions mostly offered notes of minerals, malt, brown toast, dark wood, and cream underscored by hints of roasted nuts, cooling herbs, gentle spices, and touch of fruitiness.

It’s no secret that I love malty, rich black teas and this was that sort of tea. I found that it displayed admirable longevity in a gongfu session and brewed up with much greater depth and complexity than expected. All in all, I thought this was an excellent black tea and would not hesitate to recommend it to fans of such teas.

2.5g for 2.5 minutes in 300ml of water just off the boil. Re-steeps well at 4 minutes.

This is a surprising tea. It’s a nice strong cup of tea but smooth and without any of the astringency I usually expect with a stronger hongcha. Thick mouthfeel almost like a bulang shou. Not the most complex but very satisfying for when you want a nice strong cup. Notes of cocoa dominate with an underlying sweetness that is somewhat obscurbed by the slight bitterness from the cocoa. Not getting much malt from this one unlike other reviews. I’ve been drinking this on and off for the last few weeks. It will never be a favourite as its a bit monodimensional but its something I think I’d like to have on hand for when I want a stronger hongcha.

I think this would make for a good option for those looking for a loose leaf alternative to bagged english breakfast teas. Will introduce this to family members who enjoy a splash of milk in their tea as I think it will hold up well to it.

First time with an unflavored tea (No fruit/flowers/sweetners added.)

Great notes of dark chocolate, malt, and Autumn leaves. A bit bitter, but that may just be my untrained palette. Felt thick on the mouth and throat, and definitely could have went longer than the 5 steepings I did.