Lochan Tea Limited

A sipdown! (M: 1, Y: 21) — Prompt: An unflavored black tea

2022 “vintage” and called Summer Wonder but I wrote a note about this tea here before, so I am keeping my sipdown note in same entry.

Western steeping. Probably I haven’t tried it gongfu.

Leafhopper thank you! A fine 1st flush tea with flavours that lean a bit more towards 2nd flush — autumn leaf pile, muscatel and warm spices today in my cup, followed with meadow and honey flavours. Smooth and silky as derk notices in their note. A great cup for afternoon.

Another tea from Leafhopper, thank you a lot. Also, it is actually 2022 “vintage” and called Summer Wonder, but I haven’t found that on Lochan Tea website at all, so I am adding a note here. Maybe it is wrongly labeled or something.

3 grams / 300 ml; western. 3 minutes steep.

I was craving a plain black tea today morning, but with some twist — being light, but flavourful and well that was delivered.

It isn’t extremely flavourful, but it is complex indeed. I do not get any beans like derk did, but there are lovely flavours for Indian black, listed below (in no order again): autumn leaf pile, creamy, floral, a little bit of grassy/hay like, meadows, muscatel and little bit of spices, honey as well.

That said, considering my senses weren’t ready for that, I think it is a nice list of flavours; and I wasn’t actually paying too much attention to my cup today morning.

Remaining 7 grams? well I am not sure. Gongfu — that will be one session worth. Maybe I will split it up and do one weaker eastern steeping and one another western steeping session. Because this tea deserves more than one steep.

This tea I have received from Leafhopper, however it was sitting in my box of oolongs for a little while. Thank you!

And as we have no vintage years here, which would be highly useful, as there is 2012 and 2013 version; I decided to make a new entry. But it seems it is actually very same tea, just different harvest!

What is uncommon as well, is that when I was searching for this tea, Lochan Tea website leads to TeaSwan webshop. As it is direct link; I assume it is just vendor for them, but it is interesting putting TeaSwan branding on the teas though.

Last thing I want to write down before my experience is that I really liked the name from very first time I saw it. Rolling Thunder sounds a little tropical, a little like upcoming monsoon season in India or something like that.

And now to my experience. I have used 90°C water and all 3 grams for my 125 ml gaiwan, which I haven’t been filling fully. I think that I could add 100 ml each steep.

I made a several steeps, in total I think it could be around 6-8. I wasn’t counting them properly as I was studying for finals (held on 6th February). Also steeping times were various, between 20-80 seconds.

At first it was very pleasant, mouth-covering oolong with notes of stonefruits, mostly apricots and peaches, very straightforward, but certainly not boring; with grassy-mineral aftertaste, with meadow-floral aromas. With following steeps it started to be more floral in my opinion, with autumn-leaf notes too, a little like a white tea notes.

Then I did a several a bit longer… around minute long steeps and while those steeps were tasty and enjoyable, it was over rapidly and last steep was just a hot water with hints of leafy flavour. Maybe I over-brewed it fast and thus the tea went boiled away quickly. Also, my hopes for this tea were a bit higher, but afterall it’s Indian oolong, a region not so famous for this tea type.

Another advent intermezzo.
And not sure if this is correct one (my pouch have 1SPL instead of CH), but who cares anyway? Thank you Leafhoper for sending tea my way. So many interesting ones, at least based on their names and visual.

I have decided for this one, because mostly Sourenee says nothing to me and I was craving plain black tea without much complexity as I am not able to pay attention to them anyway. Prepared western, 2 tsp, 300 ml mug.

Honestly it is very not complex and overall I feel I am missing something! I have very same experience as Leafhopper do, notes of raisins, malt, rye bread, a little tannic as well. It is mouthcoating, but it doesn’t last long and all the notes are somehow mixed together.

Not much memorable tea to be honest.

I decided to get a bunch of new first and second flush Darjeelings this year, even though I still have a few from years past. Maybe I should have waited, since I’ve heard that weather conditions during the second flush harvest weren’t that great. I steeped 4 g of leaf in a 355 ml mug at 195F for 4.5, 6, and 8 minutes.

The dry aroma is of raisins, figs, malt, autumn leaves, spices, and wood. The first steep has notes of raisin, fig, muscatel, rye bread, autumn leaves, chili, spices, honey, tannins, malt, and wood. It’s a little drying, though I may have used a bit too much leaf. The next steep emphasizes raisins, rye bread, autumn leaves, cream, malt, and wood, though the aftertaste is nice and fruity. It also, predictably, becomes more drying. The final steep adds caramel and grass, and is bready, malty, and tannic without much fruit.

This is a nice daily drinker Darjeeling that I probably won’t remember a couple months from now. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it doesn’t pop with lush fruit and florals like some really good SF teas.

Some Darjeelings seem to last for years, but others definitely don’t. This is what must have happened to this second flush from 2020. I steeped around 3 g of leaf in 355 ml of 195F water for 5, 7, and 9 minutes.

The dry aroma is of faint cocoa, muscatel, and grass. The first steep has notes of muscatel, cocoa, caramel, wood, honey, citrus, orange blossom, grass, and paper, along with some astringency. The flavours are a little muted, though still detectable. The next steep adds autumn leaves, bread, and malt. The final steep is bready and malty, with tannins, autumn leaves, and hints of muscatel.

This is a nice tea that has faded with the years. I’m not giving it a rating at this point. I also could have done shorter steeps to cut out some of the astringency.

2020 harvest

I find more of a papery taste upfront while the second flush characteristics come out right behind it with smooth, indulgent notes of honey, citrus, cocoa, muscatel, malt and rosewood. The citrusy, orange blossom note rises slightly. Earthy, dill undercurrent.

There are some great flavors here within the smooth mouthfeel. It’s like a ribbon of flavor, like a lot of Darjeeling teas, without a lot of structure. Easy to drink.

Thanks for sharing Leafhopper :)

From Leafhopper, thank you :)

Dry leaf aroma has very faint notes of hay, orange blossom and myrrh. The aroma of the brewed tea is a mix or orange blossom-malt-chocolate-autumn leaf. The taste has a very floral tea rose lean upfront, followed by smooth autumn leaf-malt a very shy muscatel. Leaves a lasting, drying astringency and malty-orange blossom creaminess after the swallow.

As it is, good middle of the road tea. The flavors are pleasant but muffled. Need more leaf to find this tea’s sweet spot.

I received this tea as a sample in my 2019 Lochan order. As I don’t drink Assam often, it’s been sitting in my drawer, but I broke it out today in an effort to give myself some much-needed energy. I steeped 4 g of tea in a 355 ml mug at 195F for 4, 6, and 8 minutes.

The dry aroma is of autumn leaves and malt. The first steep is all about the malt, with notes of tannins, autumn leaf pile, a touch of bready sweetness, and wood. There’s a slight astringency, but not as much as in some Assams I’ve had. The malt, baked bread, and tannins become more prominent in the next two steeps.

This is a no-nonsense Assam that gets the job done. However, Lochan carries Assams, notably their Harmutty Golden Lion, that are more to my taste.

Since the weather is warming up this week, I’m moving back to some lighter teas. I prepared this first flush Darjeeling 1g:100mL with 85C water, steeped western. When I came back to the glass 5 minutes later to strain, confusion set it in because the aroma instantly reminded me of something I love: canned French style green beans. The taste is much the same, green beans mixed with squash blossom and dry grass, an undertone of yellow peony, a light note of Indian green chillies, and impressions of cream, almond and autumn leaf.

As soon as the sip, the liquor is luxuriously smooth and silky, glassy, clean. I really can’t get over the mouthfeel of this tea! It makes me think that a lot of the Dammann Frères advent black teas I tried this season might have had a Darjeeling base. The tea disappears like silk on the swallow, leaving the mouth comfortably slick and with a gentle salty-mineral mouthwatering finish. So good! I’ll have to try it with the higher temp water of Leafhopper’s note next time, which will most likely be later today!

I can see the similarities between this tea and another first flush Darjeeling I finished last month but this is so much more light and playful, gentle. It feels nourishing. A tea I could see myself craving in the hot days of October preceding our very short autumn. Thank you, Leafhopper :)

This tea is very clean, smooth, full-bodied, finishing only a touch astringent. Cocoa, malt and touches of caramel and autumn leaf push this toward being a rich brew but a brilliant tangy, fruity quality lightens it considerably. The two types of flavor balance each other almost perfectly. The fruitiness is complex and difficult to parse: red grapes, muscatel, red wine, pomegranate, raspberry, peach-orchard fruit. Those notes carry through into the aftertaste with additions of rose, incense and those green Indian chillies (mirch?).

Thank you Leafhopper for sharing :) It is aptly named, isn’t it?

A friend gave me a sample of this tea that she had received at some sort of tea expo earlier this year. The flavor is pleasantly mild with very little bitterness or acidity. I would drink this as a breakfast tea for sure.

I love the flowery, over-the-top names given to some Darjeelings (like Moonlight, Enigma, and Summer Punch), especially when the teas deserve them. I’ve enjoyed Lochan’s offerings from Jungpana in the past, so I have high expectations going into this tea. I steeped 4 g of leaf in a 355 ml mug at 195F for 5 and 8 minutes.

The dry aroma is of muscatel, pastry, chocolate, flowers, and grass. The first steep has notes of heavy muscatel, dates, raisins, pastries, butter, chocolate, rose, spring flowers, spices, wood, straw, earth, tannins, and grass. The chocolate aftertaste is pronounced. The second steep is less exciting, with autumn leaf pile, malt, muscatel, tannins, wood, straw, and earth.

This is a lovely second flush Darjeeling that is indeed a summer delight. I was advised to get 100 grams, and I’m glad I listened.

This tea is from my massive Darjeeling haul this summer. I don’t remember ever having a Singbulli second flush, as I think this estate is better known for its first flushes. I steeped around 4 g of leaf in a 355 ml mug at 195F for 5 and 8 minutes.

The dry aroma of these fluffy, generously gold-scattered leaves is of muscatel, autumn leaf pile, and hay. The first steep has notes of sticky muscatel, malt, orange, honey, flowers, autumn leaf pile, wood, hay, and tannins. It’s both gorgeously sweet and grounded by the astringency, which I think makes it a nice weekend morning tea. The second steep is lighter on the muscatel and heavier on the tannins, and adds notes of earth, grass, and minerals.

While this tea didn’t blow me away, it’s a nice second flush Darjeeling that had enough heft to wake me up. I might try steeping it a bit cooler to emphasize those muscatel and orange flavours.

I just received a bunch of 2020 first and second flush Darjeelings from Lochan Tea, and, impatient as I am, I’ve already cut open one of the bags, even though I have some 2019 first flush on the go. Let me say that their foil vacuum-sealed bags are great for keeping tea fresh, but also sadly prevent me from trying all the teas at once, which I would totally do if I had enough empty tins. I steeped around 4 g in a 355 ml mug at 195F for 5 and 8 minutes.

I forgot how nice fresh Darjeeling is. The dry aroma of these fluffy, still slightly springy leaves is of flowers, autumn leaves, muscatel, chili, and stonefruit. The first steep has notes of herbs, chili, grass, honey, flowers, autumn leaves, muscatel, cream, and wood, with some stonefruit (apricot?) coming in on the aftertaste. This first flush is more savoury than sweet and has some pleasant astringency in the mouth. I wish Eastkyteaguy had access to this tea because there are flavours I can’t pin down that he’d probably get. The second steep has more wood and tannins, but still has the muscatel, spicy, grassy, and floral profile of the first steep.

This is an excellent way to begin my exploration of Lochan’s 2020 offerings. It reminds me a bit of the Guranse Spring Hand-Rolled Floral Black Tea from What-Cha I reviewed a few months ago. I gave the 2019 version of the Giddapahar Spring Wonder an 84. To my mind, the 2020 harvest is substantially better. There could be a number of reasons for this, including the AV2 cultivar, the possibility that I used more leaves, and the tea’s freshness. Regardless, I’m delighted I have 50 grams and look forward to trying the other teas I purchased.

Since I have a fraught relationship with teapots at the moment (a newly purchased and expensive one cracked and I can’t replace it), I’m steeping Western style for a while. (My little porcelain teapot is in fine working order; I’m just bitter that my dream teapot isn’t.) It’s annoying how few teas I own that can be steeped Western, and most of them are Darjeelings. Western kind of seems like a waste for nicer teas anyway.

I steeped 4 g of leaf in a 355 ml mug at 195F for 5 and 7 minutes.

The dry aroma is of sweet muscatel, orange blossoms, chocolate, and green plants. The first steep has notes of heady muscatel, plums, stonefruit, orange blossoms, sap, faint cocoa, and tannins. Maybe five minutes was too long for this tea, as it’s a bit drying. Those tannins and the sweet muscatel fight with each other in the aftertaste. Honey and apricot become apparent as the tea cools. I made the second steep at 190F to try and reduce the tannin punch, with limited success. The fruitiness is still very much there, but so is the assertive black tea backbone of tannins, minerality, malt, and wood.

This is an excellent Darjeeling that would have been even better if the tannins had been toned down. I’ll keep changing the brewing parameters to see if it will help, but for now, it’s an 87.

Thanks to Lochan Tea for including this sample in my order. I had previously tasted an autumn flush from this producer and thought it was quirky and quite good, so was eager to try their interpretation of a second flush. I steeped 4 g of leaf in a 355 ml mug at 195F for 5 and 8 minutes.

The dry aroma is of apricots, muscatel, smoke, and malt. The first steep has heady top notes of apricot, muscatel, and orange zest, balanced by malt, baked bread, tannins, subtle smoke, and wood. The apricot note is quite distinctive and is something I haven’t seen in a second flush Darjeeling. There’s some astringency and the aftertaste is smoky and a bit metallic. The second steep still has lingering apricot notes, but also tannin, wood, minerals, roasted almond, and grass.

While these smoked teas will never be daily drinkers for me, I liked this second flush’s interesting balance of fruity and heavy flavours. The apricot was especially nice. However, if you’re not frugal (a.k.a. cheap) like me, you should forego the second steep.

I bought a bunch of second flush Darjeelings from this company a while ago, plus a couple first flushes. But by the time I could dig in to them, I got two back-to-back colds. Finally, my sinuses have more or less returned to normal and I can start reviewing tea again (yay!). I steeped about 4 g of this fluffy leaf in a 355 ml mug at 195F for 5 and 8 minutes, respectively.

The first steep is really green, with notes of orange blossom, other flowers, citrus, herbs (thyme?), roasted almonds, cream, green pepper, and grass. The body is thick and there’s little astringency. The second steep is more vegetal and herbaceous.

This is a nice, complex, greener first flush that deserves the attention I can finally give it. The flavours are well integrated, although I tend to prefer more fruity offerings (hence the focus on second flushes).

My cupboard cleanout continues. This is a second flush Assam from 2015. I steeped about 4 g of leaf Western style in a 355 ml mug at 200F for 3, 5, and 8 minutes.

This has all the usual suspects for Assam: malt, raisins, prunes, dark wood, and hay. Either due to its age or because it was a high-quality tea, the liquor is smooth and has little astringency, although it’s unmistakably an Assam.

This didn’t wow me, but it was good and has aged well. Solidly average.

Last Sunday, a power outage ate my elaborate review of this tea, so I’m going on my fuzzy recollections. Always, always save your work, even if it’s just a tea review!

I never know how to brew white teas from the Indian subcontinent, so I used brewing instructions from the Camellia Sinensis website. I steeped 6 g of tea in a 120 ml teapot at 175F for 30, 20, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus a couple long, uncounted steeps.

The dry leaves smelled like flowers, oats, and grass. The first couple steeps had notes of autumn leaf pile, apricot, hay, oats, wildflowers, and grass, with a hint of smoke. The second steep had hints of smoked salmon, which thankfully disappeared as the session progressed. Later steeps lost the fruit and tended toward grass, oats, hay, and linen. There was also quite a bit of astringency.

Today, I steeped my remaining 3 g Western using 355 ml of water at 175F for 3, 5, 8, and 10 minutes. I don’t think I used enough leaf, as the flavours were pretty muddled. I got flowers, oats, grass, and something fruity that I couldn’t have identified as apricot if not for the gongfu session. If I’d just drank it this way, my rating would be lower.

This was a solid white tea with some interesting flavours, some good and some not so much. I’m glad to have tried it, but not sad to say goodbye.

Maybe because of my recent Camellia Sinensis order or maybe because it’s winter, I’ve gotten back into Darjeelings. I plumbed the depths of my stash to find some teas from Lochan, which are unfortunately now two years old. (Why did I need so much tea again?) I steeped about 1.5 teaspoons of leaf in a 355 ml mug at 200F for 3.5 and 5 minutes.

This was an interesting one! Possibly because of the name, I got notes of autumn leaf pile, malt, muscatel, prunes, and hay. I also suspected that the tea was lightly smoked, which is highly unusual for a Darjeeling. This led me to Geoffrey Norman’s post on Steep Stories that states that gently smoking their teas is Niroula’s signature; incidentally, it also provides an interesting history of the tea garden. The second cup was less fruity but still good, and the smoke remained gentle and unobtrusive.

While this wouldn’t jump immediately to mind when I think of Darjeeling, I’m glad I added it to my already overblown tea stash and will have no trouble finishing it.

This is another one from the tea archives. I used to dismiss Assams as a combination of malt and paint thinner, but the ones from Lochan Tea made my opinion a bit more nuanced. I steeped about 4.5 g of leaf in a 355 ml mug at 195F for 2:30, 4:00, and 6:00 minutes.

While the dominant note is malt, the first steep also has notes of honey, raisin, wood, hay, pencil shavings, pleasant sourness, and pine sap. Although some astringency is present, it isn’t overwhelming, and the liquor is pretty smooth. The flavours decrease in complexity over subsequent steepings and if I allow the tea to cool.

While I don’t think Assam teas will ever be my first choice, this one is surprisingly smooth and complex while also waking me up. Not bad for a tea from 2015!