Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: What-Cha Tea
Tea Description:
An incredible black tea made entirely of young buds, the smoothest black tea we have tried with a refined malty taste and no bitterness or astringency.
We are proud to source all our Nepal teas direct from Greenland Organic Farm, who are very much at the forefront of a burgeoning Nepali tea industry dedicated to producing high quality artisanal teas. Greenland Organic Farm are completely pesticide and chemical free farm dedicated to producing tea in an ethical and fair manner. Greenland Organic Farm is located in East Nepal in the shadows of Mt. Kancghenjunga at an altitude of 3,000m.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Oh my goodness, these Golden Tips from Nepal are so lovely!
The dry leaf is visually stunning. The coloration of the leaves vary from a chocolate brown to a golden brown. The tips are golden (as the name implies!) It’s very fragrant, smelling of fruit and flower with notes of earth. The brewed liquid smells much like the dry leaf.
I steeped this tea in my Breville One-Touch using 500 ml of freshly filtered water and 2 bamboo scoops of tea. I steeped it at 205°F for 2 1/2 minutes and … the tea tastes simply amazing!
Honey! Malt! Cacao! Caramel! Sweet notes of fruit! Hints of flower!
The mouthfeel is pleasant. Thick and smooth, it feels a little bit like thinned honey as the tea glides over the palate. And it tastes like honey too. This tea is rich and full-flavored.
The malty notes marry beautifully with the caramel-y undertone to create a rich, satisfying sweetness. The notes of cacao are bittersweet. As I continue to sip, I start to pick up on warm notes of spice. This is a cozy tasting tea and as the weather has finally begun to cool the warmth from this tea is certainly welcome. It’s a cozy, comforting cup of tea to enjoy.
Many of the Nepalese black teas that I’ve tasted are more reminiscent of Darjeeling but not so with this one. This doesn’t have that crisp, lightness of a Darjeeling, instead, this is richer, reminiscent perhaps of a Golden Yunnan or a Fujian Black.
This tea is also good for two infusions, so be sure to re-steep those leaves and get all the flavor you can out of them! The second infusion is just as delightful as the first!
This is not a tea that I would reach for on the mornings when I need to get up and go. Instead, this is the tea I’d want to reach for on the mornings when I can curl up under a fluffy blanket and just relax a little. The kind of tea that you want to linger over for a while because it tastes so good that you don’t want the cup to end!
It is as I said at the start: this is oh-so-lovely!
