Vietnamese black Identification
This is a bit tricky, but I found this really lovely black tea in a plastic bag, in an Asian supermarket, like you do, only marked ‘Trà den’, black tea. Subsequent visits have not produced subsequent bags, so I’ve held on to the last little bit, hoping to find the source. Any ideas? It’s quite coarse, with large folded up leaves among twigs, average-sized irregularly-shrivelled leaves, and what appear to be tiny cream- to yellow-colored flowers. The tea has a corresponding distinct floral note, almost citric. It could possibly be jasmine, though I don’t think so. It’s a well-balanced black, and all together the flavor is similar to that blend used for Thai iced tea.
http://imgur.com/BaqLcu8
Thanks in advance for any pointers!
It’s rare to find a decent black tea at an Asian supermarket at all. They are usually not so good. The only thing I can suggest is if you can find someone there who speaks English ask them about the tea. They may eventually get another batch in. Asian supermarket brands are rarely sold online so you are probably out of luck there. You would be able to find other brands of Vietnamese tea online however, try something different.
I found several blends on teasana.vn by searching trà đen over there (“trà đen” literally just means “black tea”), one of which may match yours, however (predictably) the site has now gone down for me with server errors. Hopefully it’ll be back soon so you can check it out.
http://www.teasan.vn/catalogsearch/result/?q=tr%C3%A0+%C4%91en
Most likely is “schwarzer tee mit getrockneten osmanthus-blüten” or Black Tea with dried osmanthus blossoms. What the brand of it is, I have no idea, but I believe (based on the look of the leaf quality) you can find better versions somewhere online :-)
Thanks for the input, everyone! Based on a google image search, it looks like a tea with osmanthus flowers is the spitting image of the sample—it appears also to be more of a Chinese style (guì huā chá) than a Vietnamese, which may explain the vague labelling. Now I can find the good stuff! Woot!
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