Meeka select said

Mystery tea

My inlaws brought me tea from India, but it didn’t have a label and they they weren’t 100% sure what type it was since the only thing that mattered was that I liked tea :)

However, the more I drink it the more mystified and curious I am as to what type of tea it is. The dry leaves look rolled and take up a fair amount of volume and are dark green in color. The steeped tea itself has the color of an oolong and the wet leaves are fairly intact and greenish but…the tea tastes smoky and I can’t tell if it’s a really strong green tea or an oolong. I know its not Lapsang Souchong as I know it was produced in India (most likely Nilgiri region) but I have never seen a green or oolong from South India or one that was smoked. Any ideas?

7 Replies
Jillian said

Do you happen to know what city it was bought from?

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Meeka select said

They bought it in Bangalore but I’m not sure of where the tea was grown. I was thinking the Nilgiri area since its the closest major tea producing area to Bangalore but its just a guess.

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Cofftea said

Could you post pics of the packaging, raw leaf, and steeped tea somewhere like flickr?

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Pithy said

If it’s green in color and an Indian tea, it’s more likely to be a first flush rather than a green tea. Don’t know of many first flushes that are smoked though.

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Sounds like an Indian green tea to me. They have a very smoky/vegetal flavor to them. I love the black teas we source from Nilgiri (in southern India), but when our contact there tried to sell me on green teas from the same region, I was NOT impressed. The smoky/vegetal flavor did not blend well with other flavors. Our contact sold me on a full carton of it, and I didn’t think I was ever going to figure out how to get rid of it. As I recall, I ended up throwing a bunch of it out.

Jillian said

I’ve found that tea leaves make excellent fertillizer for the garden – that’s been the fate of more than a few teas I found icky or that had gotten stale. :D

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The only green Indian tea that I ever had which tasted smoky was Shanti by the Simple Leaf. Did it look anything like this?

http://steepster.com/teas/the-simple-leaf/1023-shanti

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