This is a tough one to review. With a name like “Banana Rama”, it’s tough to get into tasting this without smelling and tasting bananas everywhere.
The dry leaves just…smell like dried bananas to me!
I hit the tea with boiling water.The wet leaves are completely out there, so different than the dry leaves. I get this minty, strong, mineral aroma, typical of assam-style tea.
But when I take a sip of the 1st steep, there’s none of that. It’s a pretty sweet, smooth tea, which tastes…like dried bananas. But! It’s also surprisingly juicy, with a hint of acidity in the back, which makes the finish more like fermented bananas.
The 2nd steep is, again, smooth and juicy. I get some fragrant wood out of it. Like the tree bark of a pine tree.
The 3rd steep shines with a beautiful dark amber colour. The acidity really kicks in (something which I’ve started to notice always happens around the 3rd steep, with a lot of Renegades tea), which reminds me of Nordic forest berries, shining through the foresty woody aromas.
The tea goes on for 2-3 steeps more, before becoming a bit acrid.