Nepal Black Tea

I wanted to try a black tea for the $1 tea promotion and the sales girls recommended this upon hearing how disappointed I was with the Orange Pekoe. Let me tell you THIS is what black tea should taste like!

Steeped, it turns a lovely, deep orange colour with a robust flavour to match! Deep and sweet, with hints of honey and malt, this tea is lovely, lovely, lovely. Have I mentioned that it’s lovely? No need for milk or sugar, although I am sure this tea would stand up to them just fine, but I’m having it straight. Mmmm, Orange Pekoe could learn a thing or two from this tea…

Oh, and I totally left the bag in waaaay longer than it was supposed to be, but no bitterness. Nothing. Nada. Just smooth, dreamy tea.

This tea is smooooooth. I wasn’t sure what to expect of this tea, but having it now, it’s amazing how smooth it really is. It’s delicious. It’s not too strong or bitter. I’m surprised by this one for sure.

I’m going to enjoy this one.

The dried leaves are quite pretty with long twisted wires of brown grey
and almost a camel colour. They smell like a slightly lemony raisin. Imagine my surprise that when first brewed the tea tastes and smells of chips and vinegar. It has malt tones and potato tones. I also smell lemon, a hint of rosemary and a hint of that spicy tone of some yunnans. It doesn’t taste vinegary just to be clear. It brews to a nice orangey brown. It is smooth with little to no astringency with a hint of artichoke, and bitter floral tone.

After the first steep the tea retains its malt with hints of potato, but is much sweeter (indistinct but slight reference to honey). There are hints of cocoa. It is smoother, and feels tannic at the front of the mouth but buttery over the rest. The tea has fading bitter vegetative note and citrus notes.

By the 4th steep indistint sweet flavour dominates, others fade but there are still aspects of malt, honey, cocoa, and a slight floral note with a slightly fading buttery mouth feel.

It retains a honey flavour, with hint of cocoa into a 7th steep, though by the end of this series it tastes more like dilute honey water.

The spent leaves are large and entire and smell of malt and chocolate.

This tea requires longer steeping than my indian teas of usually 4-5 minutes.

Considering my first impression of this tea it was quite fitting that I began drinking this tea on Good Friday. It certainly has an interesting variety of flavours and the leaves hold value for their money as they hold up to many steepings. I’m not sure that this would be an everyday tea for me but I would like to try some other Nepalese teas.

I recently went in to Davids and bought 25g of all their straight black teas (except for the Darjeeling, they were out of that one). I’m trying to develop a taste for straight, unblended black teas, and I’m starting with this one! I’ve been reading quite a bit about it but remember that I don’t really know what I’m doing.

But I liked this one a lot! It seemed to be naturally sweet, with just a bit of smokiness. It’s full-bodied but at the same time light. At first I thought there was no astringency whatsoever but it comes out in a pleasant way in the finish.
Hmmm, which tea should I try next?

This was delightful this morning! Rich and a little spicy, but sweet and smooth.

Having this one naked. I didn’t usually drink my black teas with nothing in them. I always added milk to them but now that I am drinking better tea I seem to be doing this more often. I made this tea about 1.5 hours ago but it is so hot here I just couldn’t drink it. Now that it has sat I didn’t even now if I would like it but it is great. It isn’t bitter like some blacks can be after sitting for awhile. The thing I really want to say about it is that it has a really nice “tea” flavour to it. I am really glad I picked this one up yesterday in the store and look forward to getting more. I decided on “only” 50g to try this one and it filled the whole bag. The girl even had problems getting the bag closed. 100g would likely take up more than one tin.

The leaves are long, wiry and dark, with twists of gold like the picture (although they aren’t nearly so bright).

It smells nice, and brewed to a nice red. I got a faint hint of fruit in the taste, but mostly a Ceylon tea taste. Oaky, I guess, although I don’t really know what that means. Perhaps smoky in that it almost seems salty. Ceylon in the front, sort of savoury. Almost, /almost/ like fruit at the edge, or the beginning.

I realized when making this, that Davidstea puts the same steeping parameters on all its tea. Well, that explains a lot. I’ll be ignoring those from now on, I suppose.

Sample package label:
“BLACK TEA
There are good things brewing in the Highlands of Nepal. Like this hand-made black tea, from a family-owned tea garden named Jun Chiyabari.

Ingredients: Black tea from Nepal.
1.5 tsp. / 98*C 2084*F / 4-5 min.
PAREVE”

Technique:
6-oz water with total dissolved solids (TDS) of 20 ppm, heated to 212*F and allowed to cool to 208*F – verified with DAVIDsTEA digital thermometer
1.5 Tevanna teaspoons, without sweeteners, milk or cream.

Introduction: This is my first tasting of a black tea from Nepal. I requested this tea because I like to try different teas to challenge my palate and since it was one of the highest-rated unflavored black DAVIDsTEAs per Steepster. I did not know what to expect. But, due to the 86 point rating, I was expecting an enjoyable tea.

Clear amber hue.

4-min Infusion: This tea had a black tea / honey aroma. The initial taste was rich and smooth with the flavor of honey. However, it may not be quite as full-bodied as an excellent Assam and does not provide an initial full mouth feel as some exceptional unflavored black teas.

Re-steep:
5-min: Truly as good as the first cup – Excellent!

2nd Re-steep – 6-min: Nearly as good & still enjoyable! After three cups, there is a wonderful delicate natural sweetness that lingers long on the tongue. Well done!

Impression: A rich and smooth unflavored black tea with the flavor of honey that will go the distance. No additives needed. DAVIDsTEA and the Jun Chiyabari Tea Garden should be proud! – Very Enjoyable!

Many thanks to DAVIDsTEA and Natalie for providing this very generous size free sample. It was very helpful when tasting a truly different unflavored black tea for the first time, especially if more than a tsp/6 oz. is needed.

Another foray for me into the world of non-flavoured black teas :)

This reminds me of orange pekoe oddly enough. It’s mild, both in scent and in taste. That’s not a bad thing at all, just unexpected. One day, I’m going to have to make myself a taste test bar of different black teas. Well, once I have more than 2 black teas in my cupboard. As of right now, I think I like my darjeeling a little bit better.

Does anyone have any suggestions for other straight black teas I should try? Or better yet, does anyone want to do a tea swap with me so I can try other black teas? I have tons of flavoured teas to share :)

I went to David’s for a bunch of fru-fru teas and decided that it was time to pick up a straight black to go with my Orange Pekoe. I smelled this one, decided I wanted it and bought 50g because I couldn’t justify spending $22 on tea that day.
I’ve already tried it and it was INSANELY sweet. I put in milk and honey and all I could taste was the honey. So I’m trying it this time with just a splash of milk.
The smell reminds me of the days of the honey latte when I worked at Starbucks. And those honey stir sticks. I don’t know if I like that or not. But mmmmm… This is one tasty tea! It’s rare that I can find a black tea that I don’t automatically want to pitch a crap-ton of sugar into, so this’ll be good for the waistline too. Bit of an interesting aftertaste (like a tinniness, but in a good way. The coldness, but not the metallics. Maybe? It’s been a while…). I’m going to try doing a second brew with this bag too, since I’ll be working late tonight.
Woo!

This tea is really “light” and it has a certain degree of fluidity in mouth.
This one really has really a honey-like feel into it.
There is also some woodsy notes.

But the taste is quite simple.
Nothing extraordinary in this one.
It’s just an expensive everage black tea.

Thumbs up : Sweet honey feel.
Thumbs down : The price, you’re better buying their Orange Pekoe.

I just fell in love again…Wild Black Yunnan being my first love, now meet Nepal Black from David’s tea. It’s a totally satisfying black tea like Wild Black Yunnan but has an added sweet honey after taste that increases as the tea cools and has no bitterness whatsoever. Overall, this tea is simple yet amazing. A definite keeper until no longer available (and I hope that won’t happen, ever).

First off, the leaves in this are amazing! They got HUGE when steeping. I usually don’t watch my teas steep but I just had to with this one. It also tasted great. It had a certain sweetness without adding anything in it. LOVE.

EDIT: 4th steep now and its loosing its flavour now. Thats pretty good for me though since I usually only re-steep once!

I found that I really liked this tea – it was a little close to a Darjeeling, but not too much.
I was looking for a nice mild black and I definitely found it in this one. Very mild but not watery, there is not one flavour that stands out strongly which is nice. It did steep up a little sweet as well. A great simple black for mellow afternoons, though I think this would be good any time of the day, really. I’ll be returning to get some of this for my tea shelves.

Yum. At a friends place and we pulled it out of the cupboard because I thought that tea would be a good idea. It’s fairly astringent, and we’ve both added sugar. I’d add milky stuff but they don’t have anything in the fridge.

Pending cost, this is a tea I’d buy.

This is next on my list to buy! I tried a cup on the weekend and it was lovely. It was suggested to me by the person working there, and I really enjoyed it. I had it without milk or sweetener, but because most straight teas I prefer that was and because she said that it already had a sweet, honey like taste. I could definitely taste the honey but it wasn’t overly sweet – I definitely wouldn’t add anything to this one through.

It was way too hot to drink at first so I took the bag out after a few minutes and did some shopping! By the time we went back to the car it was still very warm and I was able to taste it a bit more clearly. I am still looking to try some more straight black teas, but so far this one was my favorite.

Traveled 20 miles from the forest area where I live to the city to have this tea (and do other stuff) but this was my first stop to get some delicious black tea as I sit here at davids tea located in Victoria Im always tired and lethargic but this tea made the trip bareable delicious tea and energizing too

This was a fair cup with good color and aroma, but it was a bit weak for me as far as an Indian black goes. I tried steeping another cup longer, which got mildly stronger, but the stronger taste wasn’t a better taste.

I love simple black teas.
So I went to Davids to try some, and I came out of there with Nepal Black, and Davids Darjeeling.

I just have to say that Nepal black is amazingly smooth and rich with flavour.
If you love black teas, this will not let you down.
The taste is dark yet smooth, so I would say it is perfectly balanced.

Great in the morning, great overall.

Day 40 of my 101 days of DAVIDsTEA challenge.

Eyeballed 2.5 tsp in my two-cupper. First cup at around 4:15, left the leaves in steeping before having a second cup with milk.

This is a REALLY nice tea… Very earthy, and nice to have on its own. Also, tastes great oversteeped wtih a bit of milk. That being said, the resteep was VERY weak, which saddened me — it would have been nice to see the leaves go farther.

Still, this is the first straight black tea that I’ve ever really liked without doctoring it up with milk and/or some sort of sweetener. Definitely glad I picked this up on the Boxing Day sale!