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Part of the Teabox all the Darjeelings sample.
This is a white tea, so if you don’t enjoy white teas, move along, move along home (I wonder who will get the reference…).
If you, like me, enjoy white teas, then this tea is definitely not for you. You will be disappointed.
The leaves of this tea are very light olive green, with a lot of white interspersed. They look impressive – large, whole leaves, that look to have been meticulously picked.
Teabox recommends that you brew this at 85-90C. I tried it at 70C at first (standard white tea setting, because I wasn’t paying attention to the package), and brewed it for about 7 minutes, because it looked like the tea needed more time in the water. I have a feeling that I could have left it there for an hour at that temperature and I’d still would have gotten the same result: very lightly tinted warm water. No taste worth mentioning. Fail.
Next try was as Teabox directed – 90C, for 5 minutes. I got some flavor!!! I wish that I hadn’t!!!!
Take a cucumber. Squeeze out all of its juice into a glass. Fill the glass with water – and there you have it. This is what this tea tastes like. Very diluted cucumber juice.
Now I love white tea, and I love cucumber-y white tea, but this is the first time ever that I’ve tasted a white tea that actually tasted like thinned out cucumber juice, and didn’t just have subtle hints of cucumber. It wasn’t pleasant, and to the sink went the cup.
I hate giving up on a tea without giving it a fair chance, so I chucked it into my Takaya pitcher, and stuck it in the fridge overnight, to cold brew. After tasting it in the morning I was not impressed. Added some lemon and mint leaves, and left it to settle for a while longer in the fridge. If it’s not good by tomorrow, then I’m chucking it out and writing this tea off as a failure. For now, I DO NOT RECOMMEND!