Black Beauty

This is a lovely tea from Mandala that I’ve had for a little while but haven’t had the chance to post a review on. I was also having problems grabbing the larger photo for this so if anyone can get the one from their site feel free to replace it. :)

I decided to go with one long steep at 4 minutes although you can also do shorter steeps with this one. The tea is a lovely reddish brown. This is very impressive if you like sweeter, mellower teas. The predominate flavors are caramel and chocolate. The tea is medium bodied and has a lovely sweet finish with no astringency present.

A great one to sip on plain as it doesn’t need any additions. I don’t know which is my favorite black tea from Mandala, they’re all yummy!

Tea swap sample provided by @Amy Oh

This seemed like a nice, mellow, Qimen-like tea. Unfortunately my husband I drank through our 6 steeps too quickly for me to write enough notes. We’re not big Qimen fans, so I’ll refrain from rating this tea. (Not to say it’s bad, because it’s an enjoyable black tea. But I have a bias)

It also reminds me of Tao Tea Leaf’s Mei Zhan. Which keeps the same mellow Qimen theme going on.

100ml gaiwan, 5g, 6 steeps (rinse, 15s, 30s, 45s, 1m, 1m30, 2m)