Looking forward to this one, since I’ve had such an interesting time tasting Samovar’s other blends featuring lapsang. The smell of the dry leaf immediately brings to mind jerky; it’s clearly on the beefy/salty end of the scale.
Once steeped up, it’s a little milder in aroma than the other Samovar lapsang blends, perhaps because it doesn’t contain any other elements to compete with the smokiness. The first sip is surprisingly mild – it’s smokey all right, but not sitting next to a campfire smokey. It’s not as savory as I would have expected, but still very tasty. I drank the first half straight up, then added cream and sugar to see where it went from there. With the additives it’s considerably quieter in personality – this is one I think I’d prefer on its own.
