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Ceylon Tea (Photo source: The English Tea Store)
Ceylon tea is still something of an unknown (or perhaps lesser known these days) quantity for me, but that’s gradually starting to change as more samples start to trickle in. I sampled a few from another merchant a while back that were good but not great. Most recently I took the English Tea Store’s Organic Ceylon out for a spin and I liked that one better.
Which brings me to the Tea Store’s Lovers Leap, which is also a Ceylon tea. Which are primarily black teas from the island nation formerly known as Ceylon and now known as Sri Lanka. This one is grown in the Nuwara Eliya district there, which is located at about four thousand feet above sea level. As coincidence would have it I ran across an article from the Chinese press recently about this very same region. According to the article it’s one of the most important tea production centers in the country and is sometimes referred to as Little England, a reference to its colonial roots.
My first reaction upon steeping a batch of this tea was disappointment. The Tea Store’s blurb refers to it as “a high grown lighter flowery flavor tea, very good after dinner” and I found it to be very light indeed, much too light for my tastes. Realizing that the leaf was a little larger than many of the black teas I’ve been drinking lately I decided I’d try using a little more of it and things improved considerably.
Well, now that’s more like it, I thought to myself, as I came up with a much darker brew and a flavor to match. I’ve been drinking a lot of bold and heavy Assam tea lately and prior to that one of my everyday teas was a very strong black variety from Yunnan. I’m not typically a fan of the more delicate black teas. While this one is a little lighter than what I’m used to the revamped formula made for a great batch and I’m sure I won’t have any problems working my way through the sample pack.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Ceylon Black Tea (Photo source: The English Tea Store)
Most of us have probably heard the term terra incognita, but perhaps you’ve never thought much about where it comes from. As the story goes, once upon a time the phrase was inscribed upon those areas of maps that were an unknown. Nowadays, of course, these areas don’t take up as much space as they once did, in those days of yore before you could ship a package halfway around the globe overnight.
On my own personal map of the tea world, it’s Ceylon that still has a hint of terra incognita to it. That’s the name still given to the tea grown in what was once called Ceylon and is now known as Sri Lanka and which is a small island nation off the coast of India. While I certainly don’t claim to be an expert on the teas of India, China, or Japan, I have to say that I’m quite a bit more familiar with them than I am with the Ceylon varieties.
Which are almost all black teas, mind you, with anything that’s not being the rare exception to the rule. I’ve tried a few Ceylon teas over the years and can remember one or two that were quite exceptional, and yet I still have this faint and almost subconscious bias against this sort of tea. I think it’s because I tend to equate it – rightly or not – with certain tea giants who mostly seem to make tea that’s not all that exceptional.
So I shouldn’t be all that surprised when I find myself pleasantly…surprised by a fine tasting Ceylon tea, but I usually am. I might have tasted a Ceylon or two that tops this particular one but I’d rank it right up there and certainly wouldn’t object to drinking it on a regular basis.
One of the qualities I’ve always associated with Ceylon tea (again, rightly or not) is briskness, or the quality that tends to make your mouth want to pucker. It’s a quality I don’t like in tea. Fortunately this one had little or none of that, but rather had the fullness of flavor that I associate with my favorite black teas – like those from Yunnan, in China, or Assam, in India. And while I might never find a Ceylon that tops my favorite Assam varieties, the ones like this at least make the search a little more pleasant.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.
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The China Tea Book – it doesn’t take a village, just an engine hoist! (stock images)
I’ve run across a few tea books in my time and, while it’s only a rather modest 212 pages in all, Luo Jialin’s The China Tea Book takes the cake when it comes to sheer bulk. I don’t think I’ve ever run across a heftier volume on tea, and it would certainly qualify as coffee table book. But under the circumstances the term hardly seems appropriate – not that tea table book really has a ring to it either. But I digress.
In addition to being one of the biggest books on tea that I’ve encountered, I’d also have to rank The China Tea Book as one of the most visually impressive. It combines a rather sparse and minimal design with an embarrassment of riches as regards the outstanding photography, historical drawings and whatnot.
Luo Jialin is a Chinese scholar and a tea-making master who holds a certification from the Taiwan Luyu Tea Culture Institute. He breaks the book down into two major sections – Tea and Tea Culture. The first of these devotes a chapter each to green tea, oolong, black and pu-erh. All of which are produced in China and of course we’re treated to sections on such classics as Dragon Well, Wuyi Rock Tea, Dian Hong and Keemun as well as lesser known (at least to me) varieties like Mount Meng Sweet Dew and Frozen-Summit Oolong.
When reading the section on Tea Culture, remind yourself that China is the place where this concept was born. The author starts with a chapter on somewhat esoteric principles such as Time, Space, Teaware and Ambiance, before moving on to a look at Ancient Chinese Tea Culture. After that it’s a chapter on Tea and Zen and then one on Dissemination, which takes a look at the Japanese tea ceremony and the Ancient Tea Route.
While this was a highly impressive work overall I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to someone who’s looking for a broad overview on tea or a first tea book. Given that this volume is limited to China, there’s obviously a lot that’s not going to be covered. But if you’re looking for a great volume on the place where tea and tea culture first came to be, you probably can’t do much better. Plus you can buy it at Sears, of all places.
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As I noted recently in a tea review at my own site, the final few months of 2012 were quite a bonanza to a black tea-loving fellow such as yours truly. A pile of samples came flooding in (okay, just a slight exaggeration), and some of them were quite good, thank you very much. Among these were a number of quite nice Assam varieties – always a big favorite with me.
Borengajuli Estate Tea (Photo source: The English Tea Store)
I rarely let an opportunity pass to discuss Assam tea, in general, but I’ll be brief. The Assam region in India is one of the world’s largest tea-growing regions and turn out almost exclusively black tea. From the point of a black tea connoisseur, a lot of this output is perhaps not quite what you’d call top-shelf stuff – and that’s putting it mildly. On the other hand, some of the best black tea I’ve ever had the pleasure to sample has come from Assam.
One of the last Assam teas I reviewed was also from The English Tea Store. I was quite fond of their Organic Assam TGFOP, which I covered here not so long ago. But as good as that one was I’d have to say that their Borengajuli Estate is on an entirely different level.
Lesser varieties of Assam – and there are many – are marked by a distinct lack of flavor and usually tend toward astringency (that quality that makes your mouth want to pucker) and especially bitterness. None of which turned up in this particular variety.
While you can’t always tell if a tea is going to be good simply by smelling the dry leaves, sometimes you can and this was one of those times. As soon as I opened the package the strong aroma of the leaves jumped out at me, and I knew this would be a good tea-drinking experience. Steeping the tea and drinking it didn’t do anything to change my mind on this point. The rich full-bodied flavor was everything the aroma promised and then some. As is so often the case when I review tea, I found that there was a flavor note here that I couldn’t put my finger, no matter how hard I try. But the bottom line is that this is a great black tea and I’m happy to have had a chance to sample it.
For some additional perspective on this tea, refer to this archived review by our Esteemed Editor.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Assam TGFOP (Photo source: The English Tea Store)
In my recent review of the English Tea Store’s Golden Heaven Yunnan, a Chinese black tea, I may have spoken a bit rashly. After many years of enthusiastically banging the drum for Assam tea, I made the comment that “I’m starting to wonder if I don’t like Yunnan better.” Which wasn’t exactly a definitive statement, mind you, but at this point I think I’ll go with the position that I really like both types of tea, as opposed to committing to the daunting task of picking one favorite.
Now it’s time for my standard caution whenever Assam tea is the topic of discussion. This region of India is one of the world’s top tea producers and almost all of what they turn out there is black tea. You could also make the argument that a lot of the Assam black tea is not particularly exceptional. So if you’re going to rush out and buy some Assam tea, it’s not a bad idea for the buyer to beware. End of standard caution.
But there’s plenty of good Assam tea to be had, and when it’s good, it’s very good indeed. Most of the better quality stuff from Assam tends to be single-estate tea, meaning that it comes from one particular garden, as opposed to those products that are blended from teas from a variety of sources. It’s not clear from their product description which category the English Tea Store’s Organic Assam TGFOP falls into but I suspect that it’s probably a single-estate tea.
I wouldn’t rank this tea at the absolute top of the heap for Assam teas, but that’s a rather lofty pinnacle indeed, and this one is not very far off the mark. I actually came back a few days after finishing this review and modified this paragraph as I found that this tea started out good and grew on me even more the more I drank it.
This is a very smooth and flavorful Assam, with none of the bitterness or astringency that spoils some of the lesser ones. I drink black tea without anything added and so it’s not hard at all to pick up on these unpleasant qualities, but fortunately in this case there were none. Whether you like milk, sugar and whatnot or don’t, I’m sure that you’ll find that this one’s definitely worth your time.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Keemun Panda (Photo source: The English Tea Store)
If pressed to choose my least favorite type of tea, I’d probably have to go with Lapsang Souchong. For those who may never have heard of it, it’s a Chinese type of black tea whose leaves are cured/flavored by exposing them to the smoke of a pine wood fire – or at least “real” Lapsang Souchong is made this way. Which is all well and good if you like that sort of thing, and I’m not averse to a little smoke in food, but when it comes to tea I have never acquired a taste for it.
I bring this up in my review of the English Tea Store’s Keemun Panda because most of the Keemun I’ve sampled thus far has a bit of smokiness to it, although it tends to be much less pronounced than you’ll find with Lapsang Souchong. I tend to run screaming when it comes to smokiness in tea nowadays, but if it’s faint enough, then I’m okay with it, and there are actually some Keemuns I’ve liked quite a bit.
Having said all that, I’ll say that this was a very fine example of the breed, but there was just a bit too much smoke there for me to add it to my list of everyday choices. According to the English Tea Store’s description, “a properly produced Keemun, such as Panda, is one of the finest teas in the world with a complex aromatic and penetrating character often compared to burgundy wines.” They also note that “the bright, reddish brew delivers a winey, fruity flavor with depth and complexity.” I’m not quite sure what “winey” means and I didn’t personally catch onto the fruitiness, but I won’t argue with the bit about the depth and complexity.
As for the assertion that this tea “takes milk well,” I’m not and never have been a milk and sugar fan, but with a tea such as this particular one I can see how such a mixture might actually work. My other point, and it’s one that I frequently make with black teas, is a caution not to oversteep. The description calls for two to five minutes in water that’s been brought to a rolling boil. My standard steep time for any black tea is two minutes and this one might do quite nicely with longer times but I’d caution readers to start short and work up to the longer times that can sometimes bring out undesirable flavors in any tea.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Nine Bend Black Dragon Tea (Photo source: The English Tea Store)
You could probably spend a lifetime studying the topic of Chinese tea, if you were so inclined, and still not get to the bottom of it. All of the major types of tea are grown there and the sheer number of varieties that fall into those categories are enough to put a strain on your brain cells. Just keeping track of the various names of Chinese teas and their English translations can be a daunting task in itself.
Whether it be in Chinese or English many of the names of these teas are quite colorful. I can’t put a finger on why I like the name of Nine Bend Black Dragon so much. It just has a nice ring to it. Nine Bend Black Dragon is apparently named for the Nine Bend River located in the Wuyi Mountain region in the north of China’s Fujian province. Not surprisingly, this is a region that’s well known for its Wuyi Oolong as well as various other varieties of tea.
I personally have never found much to like about Wuyi Oolong, but Nine Bend Black Dragon is a another cup of tea entirely. While I like a nice delicate green tea now and then for me they tend to serve more as palate cleansers to be consumed in between the black teas that I’m such a fan of. Assam is one of my favorite black teas but I’ve been drinking a lot of Chinese black tea lately, such as Yunnan and Keemun, and Nine Bend Black Dragon fits in with this group quite nicely.
One of the first things that stands out here are the leaves themselves, longish and needle-like and mostly black, with a little bit of a sheen and just a smattering of yellow tips. The Tea Store’s description mentions “deep burgundy depth and delightful oaky notes.” I’m not sure what the former is and I can agree with the latter pretty much, but I also noticed a pronounced note of something resembling cocoa.
A nice one for fans of full-flavored black tea. More here.
See also:
Review: The English Tea Store’s Nine Bend Black Dragon Tea
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Golden Heaven Yunnan China Black Tea (Photo source: The English Tea Store)
I consider myself to be a rather avid fan of Assam tea, a black variety that hails from the Assam region of India. Although I’m always careful to note that Assam teas are definitely not all created equal and some of them are rather yucky, to be quite honest. But I’m such a fan of this tea that on two separate occasions I’ve devoted an entire month at my own tea site to considering its many and varied charms.
Which doesn’t seem a very logical way to open a review of a black tea from the Yunnan region of China. But I wanted to establish that I like Assam so much for the simple reason that I’m starting to wonder if I don’t like Yunnan better. For a while now I’ve been drinking Yunnan tea from a merchant who shall remain nameless. I turn to this one whenever the supply of tea samples from various merchants starts to run dry because it’s of a decent quality and I can run down to the local Whole Foods and buy some, rather than having to go through mail order.
While it’s a rather decent Yunnan, as I say, the English Tea Store’s Golden Heaven Yunnan is a cut above that and is one of those Yunnan teas that might just put me over the top in my homegrown Assam/Yunnan competition.
I have to cringe at the Tea Store’s description of this one, however, specifically the opening part that claims that it’s a “a delicious tea that’s outstanding with milk.” While it may indeed be just that and while I’ve learned not to berate anyone for spoiling an outstanding tea with milk, I’d encourage anyone who thinks that black tea actually needs milk to give this one a try on its own before reaching for the pitcher.
I’ve had the good fortune to try a few decent Yunnan teas over the years and this one holds its own with any of them. It’s got the very full and highly robust black tea flavor that’s common to the breed and some notes of something like spice in the finish. Probably the best indicator of how highly I thought of it is that out of the wealth of tea samples I’ve received in recent weeks it was one of the first to go.
See also:
Review ― Golden Heaven Yunnan from The English Tea Store
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
This is the second of the two Taiwan oolongs I recently sampled via English Tea Store. The first tea, Formosa Oolong Estate, which I reviewed on October 16, was a darker, more roasted type of oolong. Spring Pouchong is from the other end of the spectrum; namely, a greenish, flowery oolong. And while I enjoyed the Formosa Oolong, this tea much more closely suits my taste.
Spring Pouchong – green tea or oolong? (Photo source: article author)
Curiously, ETS lists this as a green tea, not as an oolong. In their catalogue they describe the tea as being “allowed to oxidize for a limited amount of time.” Inasmuch as oolong teas are oxidized and green teas are not, I’d have to quibble with their classification. In the spirit of tea and harmony, however, let’s agree to call this a “green oolong” – in other words, a lightly oxidized (or, if you prefer, fermented) oolong. Which is essentially what the term pouchong, or the currently more popular baozhong, refers to.
Having cleared that up, let’s get down to specifics. In a word, this tea is delightful. It’s almost like sipping a cup of springtime. Light, fresh, and floral – just the way I like my oolongs.
The aroma of springtime is evident in the dry leaf when I open the package, and the floral scent becomes more pronounced when hot water meets leaves in the pot. Using the same “modified-modified gong-fu style” method described in the previous post, I steeped this tea in my little blue ducky clay pot and combined each infusion into a larger teapot after sampling it individually.
The first three infusions were smooth and delicate and rich with springtime blossoms, a treat for both nose and palate. Followed by the next three – a little lighter but still evident. Unlike higher-end specialty pouchongs, this tea started to fade after the fifth steeping; there’s just not enough character left to really do a sixth. Still, five infusions isn’t bad.
This is not one of those highly nuanced pouchongs with layers of taste and aroma. It’s a straightforwardly delightful oolong that delivers the flowery essence of a fresh spring meadow. And most mornings that’s exactly what I want in my cup.
For anyone who’s looking for an excellent example of a floral “green” pouchong at a good price I’d recommend this tea without reservation. It’s a delightfully perfect cup to start off the day.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I usually prefer to start my day with an oolong tea. Yes, I know that lots of tea drinkers need the “kick” of a strong black tea in the morning. But I like to ease into the day with a gentler cup.
Waiting for the water to boil. (Photo source: article author)
Generally my tastes run to the lighter end of the oolong spectrum, to the greenish, less fermented, floral type of oolong referred to as pouchong or baozhong. Every so often, though, I find myself – through either choice or chance – with a pot of a darker, more roasted variety of oolong. Like this Formosa Oolong Estate Tea.
Now there are lots of types of oolongs from Taiwan, the island originally named Formosa by Portuguese explorers. (Formosa means “beautiful” in Portuguese.) And you can correctly call them all Formosa oolongs. The more or less generic term “Formosa oolong” on its own, however, is generally understood to describe a medium-fermented oolong comprising brownish broken leaves and stems, and a taste profile that is peachy or nutty or both.
When I prepare oolongs for general drinking, I use a procedure I refer to as “modified gong-fu style,” where I combine serial steepings into a larger teapot. A fellow tea lover who also enjoys this method laughingly calls it “oolong blasphemy.” On those occasions when I’m sampling a tea for the first time – that is, when I want to understand its flavor profile – I modify the process yet again by pouring a small amount from each steep into a cup for individual tasting before adding the rest to my sharing teapot.
As I did with this oolong. And discerned a somewhat unpleasant sharpness in the first steeping, kind of like nuts with the bitter skin still on them. I’m not talking about the initial brief “rinse,” which serves more to open the leaves to infusion rather than as any kind of washing, but to the first full steep after that. And it’s not just this oolong; I find that with darker oolongs in general I have to discard the first infusion. It’s just too harsh to my taste. The second infusion, however, was quite smoothed out, as were the following steeps.
Although the aroma when water first meets leaf is an extraordinary blend of charcoal and chocolate, the taste is more in the realm of roasted nuts. It has a dryness about it, neither sharp like walnuts nor sweet like pecans. Maybe filberts? It finishes with a subtle root-vegetable flavor. Sweet potatoes?
As I said, although I drink dark oolongs occasionally, they’re really not my favourites. Which is not to say that I won’t enjoy a pot every now and then, or that other tea drinkers won’t appreciate its qualities. What I do think its flavor profile is absolutely perfect for is my Hot and Sour Sesame Noodles recipe. In fact I think I’ll mix up a batch with it tonight!
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
