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I had the wonkiest dream last night, it combined my current obsessions of Magic The Gathering and Ark: Survival Evolved with crazy apocalypse stuff most likely caused by my brushing up on the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event. It is always weird when the brain comes up with a crazy mish-mash of whatever you were thinking about before sleep and tries to make it into a story, most the time in the dream it makes perfect sense, but of course when you wake up it is so illogical and weird. And if anyone is curious about my Ark shenanigans for today, I’m planning on finding and taming a Carno, sure I could wait for an epic Rex or Spino, but the derpy arms and horns of the Carno kinda win so I need one to go hunting with my Pile ’o Dilos.

So, since it is Wednesday it is time to look at a tea from What-Cha, their India Bihar Doke Hand-Made ‘Rolling Thunder’ Oolong Tea is the lucky pick from my notes today. From the Doke Tea Garden in Bihar, the Lochan family once again is pushing the boundaries of tea in India, putting Bihar on the map as a tea region. The gentle curling leaves have a very sweet aroma, blending strong notes of plums, raisins and fresh grapes with a accompaniment of malt and dried tomato. The dried tomato note was a bit odd in concert with the other notes, but it is not an unpleasant oddness.

Into my steeping apparatus the leaves went for their nice little steeping session, I decided to go western style for this tea, because why not? I admit I primarily focus on gongfu so it is nice to switch things up a bit, keep me versatile. The aroma of the soggy steeped leaves is very fruity, blending tart slightly underripe plums, prunes, grapes, and raisins, the tartness is pretty fun, giving it a briskness. The liquid is very mild and sweet, blending grapes and prunes with a drizzling of honey, it has a richness to it that is not at all overpowering.

There is something about drinking tea from elegant or beautiful tea gear that makes it all the more wonderful, now I admit that my more recent collection of cups not all being pure white does skew the coloring of the tea a bit, but the beauty makes it worth it for me, and hopefully my dear readers don’t mind too much. The coloring matches the golden color of my cup perfectly, it looks like liquid sunlight. The mouthfeel is nice and smooth, pretty juicy with a bit of thickness, like warm fruit juice without the sticky. Tasting the tea, it is very sweet, mixing honey and plums with a gentle allspice note and a touch of raisins. Towards the end it gets a little dry and more heavily into the grape notes, reminding me a bit of spiced wine.

I did steep a second time, but a lot of the potency was lost, there is still mellow plum and grapes, but towards the end a note of dried tomato appears which was a bit surprising. The first steep really was quite enjoyable, the second steep was not at all bad, just diminished.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/01/what-cha-india-bihar-doke-hand-made.html