Laos Orange Pekoe Black Tea

Leafhopper said this black tea from Laos was riddled with tannins so I made a breakfast of huevos rancheros to prime my belly before loading up on what sounded like an ass-kicker of a tea. This and the Laos Somneauk green tea from What-Cha are my first known experiences with Lao tea apart from leaf processed in the sheng puerh style.

I more closely followed What-Cha’s suggested parameters than Leafhopper did with their brew. Two flat teaspoons came out to 3g, so I did my usual 1g:100mL for black teas prepared western style. Brewed with water off the boil.

The dry leaf smells rich with a prune-cherry-tobacco midtone, bottomed out by caramel and orange and topped with chocolate and orchid. The aroma is chocolatey both in sense of cacao nibs and cocoa-vanilla along with cedar and a hint of orange blossom. The sip is pretty dang tannic but not overwhelming. It’s a bold, stout tea that tastes like cedar, oak, fruity tobacco, twigs, spent barley malt from brewing, blackberries, light honey and a kind of powdery-floral cranberry. The mild aftertaste presents with crispy, buttery blackberry-filled croissant, citrus and prune. A second steep tastes more like your basic black ‘tea.’

If I hadn’t known this was from Laos, I’d guess it from Vietnam or Africa but it does seem to have characteristics of black teas from China, however varied they are. It’s not smooth enough to call to mind Taiwanese tea. Overall, I think this would be a fine daily drinker for people who like a sturdy, strong black. It offers some decent, refined flavors to pull it out of the basic breakfast category and the aroma has that chocolatey comfort. For me, I like my black teas kinder to my constitution since I often drink them on an empty stomach.

I do have a fair amount since this was a 50g Mystery Tea. If anybody would like to try a black tea from Laos, let me know!

Derk bought a set of three mystery teas in the order we split from What-Cha on Black Friday, and this was one of them. I’ve never had a tea from Laos before, although the offerings from One River Tea have been tempting me. Thanks, Derk, for letting me take a sample before sending it along. I steeped around 4 g of leaf in a 355 ml mug at 203F for 3, 5, and 7 minutes.

Dry, the tea smells like citrus, hay, chocolate, and malt. Oof! The first steep is strong. I get tannins, tannins, and more tannins, plus malt, wood, faint orange blossom, honey, baked bread, and hay. It’s drying in the mouth and I feel like I’ve swallowed pencil lead. The fancy citrus and chocolate notes are absent in subsequent steeps, but neither does the tea deliver such a kick in the face. I also get a mineral note and maybe a hint of prune.

To me, this is an average breakfast-type tea with nothing special to indicate its terroir. Maybe Derk, who has a more sophisticated palate, will find more to love about this tea.