Sample Sipdown! (25)
So this was a random sample that I had left over from a long past Teabox order. It’s a green tea from Nilgiri, which is interesting. The dry leaf also looks quite unusual – it’s a mixture of rather small, straight leaves and little baby oolong-like pellets.
Woof, even at a 2-minute steep, this tea is verging on bitterness and is quite strong. It reminds me of a cross between a Darjeeling black tea and a Chinese green tea. There are definitely some similarities to gunpowder green tea as well.
It has the interesting floral and muscatel notes of a Darjeeling, along with the diva attitude toward steeping time. And the strong and somewhat smoky mineral notes are a dead ringer for gunpowder green. But at the end of the sip, there’s that soft and fuzzy apricot finish that I so often find with Chinese green teas, especially the robust ones like Chun Mei.
It’s definitely an unusual one, and I’m happy to have tried it. But generally I prefer more mellow green teas, so it’s not something I would purchase.
Flavors: Apricot, Astringent, Autumn Leaf Pile, Bitter, Floral, Mineral, Muscatel, Roasted, Smoke, Stonefruit
