Ancient Gold

Wow, I can’t believe that I’m the first one logging this one!

I think this tea just cemented Samovar in my mind as one of those must-order-from companies. I’m serious.

The dry leaves are beautiful and long, accented by gold tips. It’s very pretty, and looks pretty luxurious. And the smell… earthy and deep and delicious. I could stick my nose in the little container and sniff all day, and I’d be the happiest girl.

So I steeped this one up, and boy, does it brew dark. Pu-erh dark. In fact, a lot of things about this one remind me of a pu-erh, but in a wonderful, wonderful way. Almost like pu-erh and black tea made babies and out came Ancient Gold.

I had my nose stuck in the infusion almost as much as the dry leaves. It still smells deep and dark but now I’m smelling a raisin-sweet component and I’m salivating. SERIOUSLY. Salivating.

So I take the first sip, and my first thought is, “WHAT?” Another sip. “WHAT.” Again. This one is a surprise, a shocker, in a lot of ways, and so deep and complex… and WONDERFUL. My mind is all ajumble. And I keep pausing to sip this some more, because I just can’t get enough right now…

The front of the flavor is all earth. Rich, dark soil earth. Sort of like a pu-erh earth. Good, clean earth. Mmmm. Which extremely quickly gives way to malty robustness. But this is nothing like any malt I’ve ever tasted before. Normally I associate malt-type flavors with rough, rugged edges. This is almost elegant in its smoothness. Like I just plucked a street urchin off a back alley and pampered him up and presented him to the aristocracy. And it’s three years later and I can still pick him out in the crowd, but I’m SHOCKED at how different he is. Ridiculously smooth. Unlike anything I’ve ever tasted before, in my life, pretty much.

Then there’s the slow sweetness that begins to creep up, and it’s a wonderful, deep sweetness. Like molasses or raisins. More than likely raisins. It’s not really sugary, but sweet in a very dark, multi-faceted way. Not that it’s murky, but it’s a low note. Not even a cello. A bass note.

At points there’s hints of an almost peppery-Yunnan-like taste. At other points, I’m getting an almost lapsang-like smokiness. I keep concentrating with each sip, because I’m just so darned FLABBERGASTED as to how this is all going on in a cup of tea.

The weirdest thing is that I feel like I’m even tasting things with my tonsils in this tea. Yes, with my tonsils. I cannot even begin to describe this, but towards the back of my throat I’m picking out these notes of saltiness and it’s altogether bizarre. A good salty, like salted caramel (not the caramel, but that type of sweet playing with salt). And now I’m keeping my mouth open like a fish and inhaling and exhaling, trying to feel out those notes, but since I’m pretty sure I have no tastebuds on my tonsils, I doubt I’m going to be able to make anything out.

Did I mention that it’s not astringent in the least?

As the cup is cooling down, the sweetness is becoming a bit more pronounced but still very, very deep and dark. This is the tea equivalent to dark chocolate, my favorite type of chocolate.

I can’t tell you how pleasurable and sensual this tea is. I don’t want my cup to end. So savory and rich and bottomless.

Go drink it. Nowwwwww. Now. Seriously. Oh. My. Now.

Noooo my cup is finished! This is fricking best Yunnan I’ve had. I wasn’t particularly fond of the Breakfast blend, but this one is amazing! Sorry, tiger (Andrews & Dunham), but you have to make some room for this tea. I’m going to make this short and sweet as I have to run. When I finally purchase a tin of this I’ll make a slightly more detailed note. Chocolate? Yes! I mean Yunnan generally has a cocoa note to it. Malty, yes. Delicious? Definitely! Would I repurchase, nods nods. Pricey, moderate. I mean it’s basically in Mariage Freres’s price range. $17 for 3.5oz $7 for 1.5oz. For more information about this wonderful tea read the other wonderfully descriptive tasting notes by other Steepsterites, Steepsteretes, did we come to a consensus?

This is one seriously strong cup of tea.

The color to which it brews is a brazen reddish-bronze. Sitting on my desk in a clear glass mug, looking down into the bottom from the top, I can almost not even see through the tea…and my cup is sitting on a white napkin on top of a blonde desk.

Trying to describe this one is going to be difficult. It’s a very savory tea, but slightly bitter. I’m not talking about the sort of bitterness that comes from oversteeped black, though I’ll readily admit that after my first sip I wondered if I hadn’t overdone the amount of tea steeped or the steep time (given this one says it can go up to 5 minutes, that seemed unlikely). It’s more like the bitterness you get when you try bittersweet chocolate or high-percentage cacao dark. That bitterness connects to a very notable taste of earth and soil and, in a development that reassures me that my impending confrontation with my fear of pu-erh may not be a total disaster, I like that earthiness. It isn’t a dry earth, it’s a moist and humid and black rich earth…and fortunately, it seems to want to do little more than play foundation for the raisiny sweetness responsible for the tea’s umami deliciousness. Rolling the tea over my tongue, I’m able to get different sensations toward the back and the sides of my tongue, flashes of sweetness or bake-y malt.

There is a slight pinch at the back of the throat that hasn’t decreased as the cup has cooled, and I’m again not sure if that’s my steeping or just the briskness of the cup itself, as this is my first time sitting down with this tea, but it doesn’t seem to want to go away. Not scratchy, not completely scratchy, but pinchy. Just a bit. It’s a very strange finish to have when the flavor profile of the cup is so completely dark and smooth.

I don’t think I would have this every day, but there are certainly mornings where I want a cup of tea that seems like it could dissolve a spoon. This one qualifies. In fact, the longer I sip it, the more I feel as though…

…you know, if tea were chocolate and not tea, then this tea would be the dark chocolate to the milk chocolate of the Golden Spring that I’ve made my staple go-to black tea. They both share the raisin-sugar mouth-watering umami deliciousness, but this tea is darker, bittersweet, earthy, full-bodied, stiff and smooth and the Golden Spring is lighter, brothy, full-bodied and made for downing in mass quantities.

Not sorry that I bought this at all. Looking forward to trying it with milk and sugar for sure…something I think the Golden Spring doesn’t quite hold up to as well as this could.

My Firefox crashed and I lost my notes. Blerg. Was just typing as I sipped so I really don’t know what all I wrote. Something along the lines of:

Stout, smooth, thick, sweet, malty with chocolate and fruit, would be perfect for a breakfast time tea. With that in mind, added a little milk and sugar to my cup (Samovar says it is good so let’s try it out).

Yeah, it’s goooooood. Just a hair smoother/softer/less tannic at the end. This would be a super morning tea to take to work. Rating going up for that. Mmm.

^6.2g/17oz

Had this one again last night. After sampling some other yunnans, most notably the Leafspa’s yunnan, this one is missing a peppery note. But it is bold w/no astringency….And definitely more flavor than Adagio’s Yunnan Gold and less malty than Adagio’s Golden Monkey… So I am still unsure about this one but I seem to drink it and I enjoy it…

This tea is definitely a shocker. As mentioned by other reviews, the initial outlook on this tea is that of your typical black or breakfast tea. The smell is similar to others, yet it does give off that earthy/sweet profile that makes this tea a true winner. The initial flavor profile is a bit like a breakfast blend but more earthy and pu-erh like. As it cools the sweetness and balanced flavors remind me of a more reserved version of Maiden’s Ecstasy pu-erh. Very interesting, a well rounded tea.

It’s hard to write a note here after reading teaplz’s entry, because I feel like there’s nothing left to say.

Upon opening the can and smelling it for the first time, I was honestly a little shocked at how similar it smelt to a “standard” kind of tea you’d expect from a bagged tea bought at a coffee shop or something. For some reason, it reminds me much of Samovar’s Breakfast Blend. I expected a much more earthy smell than what I was presented.

But, I didn’t know what to expect from the taste so I boiled some water and steeped it and gave it a try. At first, it was what I expected. Kind of disappointingly similar to Breakfast Blend. But as I continued drinking I started to notice the different flavours coming out. I definitely can tell this is a far more complex tea than what you expect initially. I definitely can see the resemblance to pu-erh, and that’s a good thing because I like pu-erhs.

I think I might have to come back and re-rate this down the road after I’ve tried more of this tea.

Smells earthy and raisin sweet. Tastes of cocoa and sage. Not as sweet as the fragrance suggests. Mildly astringent. Liquor the color of cherry wood.