India Nilgiri Winter Frost Black Tea

Dry leaves smell floral with honey and hay. Wet leaves smell sweet and slightly stringent, more like a traditional black tea.

This is a sweet and gentle brew, with flavors of honey and sugar cookie followed by floral grass and hazelnut. The aftertaste has faint hints of peach and apricot sweetness.

Summer Vacation! This is the last of my Indian tea stash. It’s been sitting in my cupboard for a while, so it is about time that I’m finally getting around to sampling it!

The dry leaf smells very similar to the India Assam Kanoka Hand-made Black, in that it has that peppery hay-like scent, though I also found this leaf to smell somewhat like dried pear. Brewed up, this tea had a very coppery-orange color, and the aroma off the cup smelled very fruity, very much like sweet mandarin oranges and mango.

This is another very smooth tea with no bitterness or astringency; the malt notes are on the lighter side, and the body is very fruity with a honey sweetness. I get a sort of mango-like tanginess left as an aftertaste on my tongue.

It’s a nice tea, and my only regret is that I’m drinking it at 11 p.m. when I know I have to work in the morning. So much for sleeping tonight.

I finished this one last night, which was a terrible decision. I had way too much tea yesterday and ended up not falling asleep until around 3:00 A.M. as a result. I didn’t get up this morning until somewhere around 10:00 A.M. I may have put myself through hell, but at least the teas I drank yesterday were good. This one was no exception, and for me, that’s saying something because I’m still not totally sold on Nilgiri teas.

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

Prior to infusion, the dry tea leaves emitted a fairly powerful bouquet that presented a blend of honey, flowers, grass, and fruit. After infusion, I detected pronounced scents of honey, violet, grass, rose, and mango. In the mouth, I detected honey and flowers up front. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what kind of floral impressions I was getting. At the time, I pegged it as a mixture of chrysanthemum, rose, tea flower, and violet. With the exception of the violet, I’m still not confident that my description would strike anyone else as being remotely accurate. Just beneath the honey and floral notes, I detected impressions of grass, straw, malt, herbs, mango, and nectarine underscored by a touch of smoke. The finish was sweet with a nice mix of floral, fruity, and honeyed tones.

This was an interesting and satisfying black tea. I was pretty much firing in all directions simultaneously when I attempted to log this, so I have no idea if my description of this tea even approaches adequacy, but I can confirm that it was a nice drinking experience. Again, I’m still not the hugest fan of Nilgiris, but I thought this one was quite good. I imagine that those who have more interest in teas of this type would get considerably more out of it than someone like me.

The description was pretty spot on. A lighter black tea. Good flavor. I enjoyed it.

Compared to the few Indian black teas I’ve sipped, this one was gentler and softer, with perhaps the slightest muscatel notes that I noticed only when I looking for them. What-Cha’s description of it as “a light crisp tea with honey notes” felt like an accurate summary. I did sense a fairly strong dose of caffeine, but I have no idea whether that’s actually the case. Other than that punchiness, this tea reminded me of the What-Cha Georgia black teas that I love so much.