Zarafina

So when my mom got the Zarafina Tea Maker Suite for me as a gift, it came with this tea. (I don’t use my Zara very much, I prefer just using small teapots, gaiwans, and teany little cups…) At first, it looked strangely familiar, but I wasn’t sure why. Then I realized that the packaging is very similar to the Adagio Teas canisters. Even the message: “Clearly better – Look inside – Lid specially coated – Light will not damage tea leaves” is identical. I tried looking around the web to see if Zarafina just made a deal to repackage Adagio’s own “Golden Monkey” tea with their own name on the canister, but I couldn’t find anything about it. Or maybe, this is a lower grade of Golden Monkey Adagio sells? I’d love to get ahold of Adagio’s version to do a side-by-side.
Does anyone know anything about this? A tea mystery indeed…

This tea is O.K. I just had some for the first time in a long while to refresh my mind. The aroma of the wet leaves has echoes of an Oriental Beauty, which got me really pumped up for a sip! Unfortunately, the tea itself tasted much more generic than the aroma suggested. It’s not a bad tea, it’s just that the tin claims it is considered “king of Chinese black teas”. This may be true for a higher quality tea of similar preparation and origin, but this particular brand doesn’t set off any fireworks for me. In terms of mass produced commercially available Chinese black teas, I’d take some of Rishi’s Keemun over this any day. I can’t really complain, it came free with the tea maker (which was a gift so it was free free). But I guess I just expect more when a tea claims to be king!

This tea came with Zarafina’s tea maker (which I recommend). As it is a black tea, I would expect it to be a bit stronger. Nevertheless, it does have a unique taste that is worth trying. I would call it bitter in a good way.

This is still a pretty good white, but now that I’ve been able to taste some more white teas, I’m downgrading this one.

Very good!