Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Assam’

I think that one of the best things that ever happened to Earl Grey tea was meeting the vanilla bean.  It must have been movie magic.  I can see it now…

INT: A Parisian Salon.

Various teas and flavorings lounge about, chatting, discussing worldly matters and current gossip.  VANILLA sits in the corner, alone, draped across a chaise longue.   She is long, lean and highly sweetly scented.

The camera pans to the door where EARL GREY, a dark, swarthy yet citrus scented tea enters.  He scans the room until his eyes fall on VANILLA.  He beelines to her, drops to one knee, grabs her hand, and looks deeply into her eyes while kissing her hand.

EARL GREY (huskily): ‘Allo.  I find myself inexplicibly drawn to you.  I feel we could make amazing brews together.

VANILLA: (swoons)

Music swells.

….and scene.  Only problem is that just like movie magic, there are frequent copycats that just don’t have the verve and je ne sais qua of the original.  I’ve had varied luck with the different Earl Grey de la Cremes out there on the market.

Luckily, Distinctly Tea has got a pretty good version of this classic couple.  The black tea base of ceylon and assam is sturdy and the flavoring agents blend beautifuly.  The vanilla is creamy, and the bergamot avoids the trap of tasting like perfume.  Highly scented, highly flavorful.  Lovely tea.  I reccomend it.

Yum.

You can purchase the Earl Grey de la Crème directly from the Distinctly Tea website.

The Darjeeling District of West Bengal, India has produced some of the most nuanced teas for well over 150 years.  Eighty-plus gardens in the district produce only 7% of India’s total tea. (Competing regions include Nilgiri and Assam.) The median flavor profile of Darjeeling teas has often been described as muscatel and light. Such a note earned these orange pekoes the designation, “The Champagne of Teas”.  Not sure I agree with the title, but it is apt enough in signifying their importance.

Tea Forté is a vendor with an unusual design for their teas. Instead of a normal net sachet for the illustrious leaves, they implement a…well…there’s no other way to describe it, really. It’s a fort, an actual “tea fort”. The netting is a tall pyramid, which is individually packaged. The” tea fort” string is green with a cute li’l leaf on the end.

I’ve only ever had one other tea from Tea Forté, and the delivery mechanism got a giggle out of me. What can I say? It was satisfyingly silly. For their Estate Darjeeling, they didn’t quite specify which estate it hailed from. (Note to future tea vendors: Always list the estate.) However, it smelled lovely – albeit missing the requisite spice in the fragrant finish.

Brewing instructions sort of echoed my thoughts on Darjeeling prep. They recommended a three-to-five-minute steep in water heated to 208F (basically boiling). Personally, I found that Darjeelings worked best with “under-a-boil” water and no more than a three-minute steep. That was the approach I used when test-driving this.

Since the leaf allocation of the “tea fort” looked to be about a tablespoon worth, I filled a transparent pint glass with about 12oz of hot water. To my surprise, the leaves expanded to take up the ENTIRE sachet. I started to think I underestimated the water needed.

Thankfully, the liquor brewed to the usual amber of Darjeelings past, if a little darker. This made me think that I was dealing with an autumn flush OP. The aroma could only be described as “cocoa-grape” – muscatel with a chocolaty underpinning.  The taste was boldly floral, slightly spicy, and very strong on the grapy give. I’d say it was even the most boldly muscatel of the Darjeelings I’ve tried in awhile, but part of that might also be due to the unexpected flowery profile.  Quite enjoyable.

You can purchase the Estate Darjeeling directly from the Tea Forte website.

The name “Green Matcha” may sound redundant, but Pure Matcha delineates it that way for a reason. Of their three products available, only the Green Matcha is traditional matcha. The other two are matchas made from a Darjeeling/Assam blend and rooibos, respectively. I recently had the pleasure of trying out their wares for the first time. While I could’ve gone for the traditional matcha first, I actually bee-lined for the oddities instead. Both were wonderful. Now, it was time for their flagship product.

Pure Matcha gets their namesake offering from the Nishio region of Aichi Prefecture, Japan. While not the largest city in Japan by any standard, it does have an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for holding the largest simultaneous tea ceremony ever. Nishio is also considered one of the primary growing regions for top-quality, ceremonial-grade matcha – along with Uji. Matcha is also produced in Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture, but I’ve found theirs to be mid-grade at best.

Right off the bat, without using too many superlatives, I have to say the stuff looked gorgeous. Identifying high-quality matcha isn’t that difficult; the brighter – more vibrant – the green color, the better it is. This was the boldest, brightest, darkest green powder I’d yet come across. And the aroma – dear Buddha! – it was incredibly sweet and kelpy. Granted, I’ve read aromatic notes to that effect but never really ran into them myself until now. I even bought a new chashaku (bamboo matcha spoon) for the occasion.

Preparation for this seemed easy enough. I used my usual miso soup bowl, took 2 chashaku spoonfuls-worth of powder (usucha or “thin tea”-style), used a tiny bit of cold water to sift out the clumps, and heated some more water at about 160F. Next, I took my chasen (bamboo whisk) and stirred the heck out of the green concoction.

The result was a radiactive green, bubbly liquor with sweet, seaweed-like nose. This had frothed up wonderfully, another revealing trait for high-quality matcha. The flavor echoed the visual and aromatic excellence with an only-slightly vegetal (but not spinachy) cup that held onto its sweetness like green tea ice cream. The fluffy texture was also welcomed on the foretaste and all the way to the finish. Without exaggeration, probably the best matcha I’ve ever tried.

You can purchase the Green Matcha directly from the Pure Matcha website.

Keemun, Assam, Ceylon, and Darjeeling teas each have their own personalities: grainy, stout, brisk, and wine-y. Thus, you’d expect a blending of these personalities to be the tea equivalent of a cheerful and intellectual morning conversation.

What you get, however, is the tea equivalent of morning senior-citizen buzz at the Branson hotel breakfast buffet—the kind you tune out because there’s really nothing worth eavesdropping on.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s good tea. It’s distinguished senior-citizen buzz. But to my highly uneducated palate, the blend tones down the character of the individual ingredients…the “brisk and complex” flavor and “subtle floral overtones” just aren’t there.

Prepped according to package directions and left a full four minutes, the tea is a nice, clear copper color.  Golden Moon ensures that the leaves are quality enough to take a second steep, no problems there.  A little milk with the second cup may have kicked up the Assam mojo a little bit, but still … just  murmuring white-haired tourists in embroidered autumn-leaf sweatshirts.

Golden Moon’s sample packs are nice (vacu-packed foil sleeves), but tiny (you’ll be lucky to squeeze two dry leaf-cups out of one). Perhaps if I had had a full tin to stick my nose in and experiment with, I could have gotten some real gossip out of the grannies.

You can purchase the English Breakfast directly from the Golden Moon Tea website.

When I was contacted and asked to try the Celestial Seasonings Fast Lane Black Tea, I readily agreed. Celestial Seasonings was the very first company to respond to our inquiries when we started IAATL, and sent our very first batch of teas for review, something for which I will be forever grateful. Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea is also the tea that started it all for me, back those ummhurummph years ago, when I was but a wee child of 5 or 6.

Apparently, Fast Lane Tea was, a number of years ago, a tea that Celestial Seasonings discontinued. Since then, the legend goes, fans of this tea have petitioned sufficiently to have it return, albeit for a short period of time! This tea is ONLY available online (at http://www.fastlanetea.com or from Celestial Seasonings Tea Shop in Boulder (see the website for details).

Now, to the tea. This tea is a caffeine packed punch in the gut. With a black tea base from Indonesia, we get cinnamon, eleuthero (a variety of ginseng), licorice, nutmeg, and an EXTRA shot of caffeine! This is the very first time that I have see caffeine actually listed as an ingredient!

The smell is spicy/sweet. I can detect the cinnamon and licorice for sure, not so much on the ginseng or nutmeg however. Brewed up, you get what you would expect, a dark liquor, and almost Christmas Spice-like scent to the tea.

It tastes pretty much what you would expect – not particularly strong, a very middle of the road, spicy with sweet notes of the licorice. It is not an amazing, blow me away Darjeeling/Assam/Ceylon single estate loose leaf tea flavour with complexity, but it is also not a bitter, pour it on the neighbors weeds to get rid of them tea. Pleasant and non-offensive, a little passive for my personal tastes, but certainly of higher quality than you would expect from a bagged store shelf tea!

As for kick? Well I wrote this review in 5 minutes at 3:00am, after drinking the tea at 3pm – what do you think? Seriously tho – I can sense that it does have more caffeine than I am used to in a black tea, but I don’t get the frenetic mind warp and massive crash that I get from a triple espresso either – this would be a great tea to study with – students take note!

Bottom line – while it is not a “don’t miss this tea” it is well blended and will appeal to a wide range of people – keep it in the cupboard for when you need a boost.

You can purchase the Fast Lane Black Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.