Kenilworth Estate OP has long been one of my favorites, and its very reasonable price makes it my first recommendation to anyone who wants to try a good black tea.
To me, this is the dictionary definition of black tea. It’s slightly molassessy and very smooth. It’s also got that “brisk” flavor that Lipton likes to talk about. This briskness is a very nice thing, and relatively few black teas have it. So if you have drank Lipton Hot Tea and liked parts of the flavor but wished it was a bit richer and didn’t burn your throat from the astringency or taste like dirt with lemon juice when it got under your tongue… you should try this tea.
The things I don’t like about this tea are that the brew is a little bit thin, and a hint of the “spent leaves” flavor was coming out after just 4 minutes. Playing around with the timing can probably come close to getting rid of these problems, though – I recall preferring a 3 min steep and a little bit more leaves last time I had this.
I hadn’t had this for several months, so I’d been really looking forward to getting it in my latest Upton order. Since Kenilworth is such a large producer of tea with apparently few varieties, I think that a fair portion of the reviews for other Kenilworth OPs are reviews for this exact tea.
