Assam Reserve

This one courtesy of my fairy tea sister Rabs! Thank you sis!

I am off from work today, so I took this opportunity to brew a gigantic 16oz mug of a type of tea which I like to take with milk and sugar (I’ve decided bringing milk to work on a regular basis is just too much fuss when there are so many teas that are great sans milk to enjoy).

This is quite the delicious, bready, malty Assam!!! Do I dare say this tea reminds me of Thomas Sampson?! I used 2 teaspoons of tea – I think that if I use 3 and take this baby another minute I will have an excellent tea to go to when I am on the rebound!!!! I am now going to enjoy Thomas to the fullest extent, knowing that when he is gone, I will have this guy waiting in the wings.

Thanks Rabs!!! That’s what sisters are for ;) ★high five ★

Looks more like Assam Gold Rain (very tippy and pretty) than Thomas Sampson does, but smells more like Thomas in the dry leaf. Rabs mentioned potting soil, and I get that as well, though it’s drier and leafier than potting soil (which right out of the bag tends to be pretty moist). That was a good sign, as the yeasty smell of the ASR dry leaf was replicated in its taste and was a flavor I didn’t love.

The tea’s aroma is even more promising. It doesn’t have the yeasty (bakey?) flat note that the ASR had. I’m starting to wonder if I just got a bad batch of ASR. Maybe. In any case, the Assam Reserve has more depth to the aroma, and it has a sweetness. I’m not getting malt as I think of it, but there is a natural planty sugar to it. The liquor was lighter than I expected, a medium amber.

The taste is much smoother than the ASR, which had a sharpness to it that I didn’t find pleasing. It’s somewhat astringent, and it has that sweetness that I found in the aroma. It’s not sweet enough to be malty or biscuity as I think of those terms, but it does have that sort of sweetness you get when you’ve eaten a non-sweet baked product (like pretzel, cracker or plain bread) and let it sit on your tongue for a while so that it starts to break down into sugar in your mouth.

I’d like to try this next to Thomas Sampson. I know I like it better than the ASR by a lot, but I don’t have a gustatory memory of Thomas to compare it to.

Nutty nutty nutty. The smell and taste are both very nutty to me, though perhaps that is how I read the malt – either nutty or bake-y? There’s a little astringency on the back end that is close to too much but it is doable, just reminding me a tad of those funny tasting nuts that sometimes pop up when eating a bag of pecans. I added a little sugar and half & half a bit into my cup to see how it goes – it definitely stands up well to the additives and that nutty bitterness is smoothed out which is nice. This is a nice cup, though it doesn’t advance much over ‘typical Assam’ for me.

This is the final tea on my “Basic Tea Trilogy” tasting. I almost hyperventilated while smelling each tin of leaves. I kept going back and forth between Keemun and Assam. After recovering from my dizzy spell I decided that Keemun almost had a cocoa smell. Assam was more planting soil-esque.

When I was pouring this the smell was like “Oh hai! Remeberz me?” I know that I’ve had this tea as a base for at least one other tea – it was so recognizable. The one I know for sure is Golden Moon’s English Breakfast where it’s a mix of all three of my trio plus Darjeeling.

So in my trio we’ve got a fairy, a gnome, and I’ll call this a troll. Not a typical troll, but more like the one in Neil Gaiman’s Troll Bridge. It seems really earthy and with a bite. Only a smidgen of sweetness. This is the most distinct “mouth feel” that I’ve had – I can’t get the feeling of having a fine layer of earth coating the inside of my mouth. It’s nicer than what it sounds like. I know that I’ll be able to recognize this one from now on.

I’m on my second steep – it’s like a different tea. The bite is almost completely gone. I thought that this tea had given up too soon. But there’s still the pleasant taste of soil, but more smooth and sweet. NE

Overall I’m really glad that I bought these three teas to try and that I did them all in a row. However, doing all of them together one time was enough. I shall enjoy them each from now on occassionally, but I don’t think that I’ll reorder any of them once the tins are empty. Oy – I feel utterly black-tead-out for the day.

I bought this tea when it was featured as the Select. The first time I tried it, it was not at all what I was wanting, and I didn’t finish the cup — not the tea’s fault, mind you, but mine for having chosen something I was really, really not in the mood for. Today finds me sitting down to write and unable to get my brain to turn over like the engine I need it to be, and what I need is an elegant kick in the backside.

This is working for me today. It brews to a very pretty reddish-orange hue and it smells like sweet potato. The flavor is pure assam — malty black tea with a touch of sweet potato sweetness that reminds me post-sip of molasses, but very faint, meaning this would be a perfect pairing with some sugar in the raw and a touch of cream, though I’ll be drinking it with neither today — it’s smooth enough to get by without additives, despite the mild astringency. It has more astringency than I usually prefer, but not so much as I seem to remember it having had that first time…just more than I get from my current black tea staple, Adagio’s Golden Spring (re: none).

I feel as though I should be waiting for the cup to cool slightly before I post this tasting note, but I’m really enjoying the almost-too-hot burn in the belly. Maybe it’ll be enough to scorch away this head full of cottonballs I seem to be cursed with today.

This tea is brisk, malty, and biscuity. It does remind me a little of Mountain Malt. The health food store here carries Teas etc which is a plus. I asked them to carry more of their black teas. I loved their Golden Monkey and figured I would like this one. ( I also read JacquelineM’s review on this tea as we have alike tastes.) The tea is black with golden tips and smells very earthy. This is one of the best assam teas I have drank with one exception.

This is bold and smooth all at the same time. It’s very ‘clean’ for a bold black tea. It’s a Goodie, indeed! I can see why it won an award!

I like Teas Etc. rating system - zero to coffee. This one is a little more than halfway up their scale. Nice, dark and strong, but I made my first test cup at work - minus anything but tap water, in probably not the most clean/pristine mug in the world, minus my favorite “One Perfect Cup” measuring spoon, and in the microwave - so I don’t have anything very exact to say about it. Taking the rest of the sample home to a friendlier environment. I think I’ll like it.

Even from my limited experience, this seems like a very good assam. I only have one tea of the same type to compare it too and that is A&D’s Thomas Sampson.

This seems lighter bodied than TS. But the scent is very similar—malty and Guinness-like…a bit biscuity. The color is a deep, very reddish amber. The taste is all malt, slightly sweet and bready—but very astringent and drying in the mouth.

I like it, it’s very good to have with a heavy meal—but I’m not sure I would choose this over A&D’s assam, for some reason. Although, wouldn’t it be funny if they both came from the same estate?

This is a great tea, and definitely deserving of its World Tea Championship award. It’s smooth and full-bodied, with a nice hint of bitterness and a malty bite on the finish. I’m looking forward to giving this a few more steeps and really diving into the flavor.

This is the first Assam tea I’ve had. I really enjoyed it. It’s malty just like a Ceylon but I’d think I would now prefer an Assam tea over a Ceylon, although I still really enjoy Ceylon teas.
It was slightly astringent but I get that from every black tea I brew on the first steep. I really liked how mellow and malty and sweet (without adding anything to it) this tea was.

Good tea, nice astringentness at the end, good flavor.

Based on an ad I saw here on this forum and the fact that one of my all-time favorite assams was called Assam Special Reserve from teasource.com (which is no longer available apparently) I opted to order this up. This is actually my third time to use this tea, the first two I must not have been careful in my prep as I rushed off to work as I wasn’t that impressed. So to give it a more fair tasting this time, I measured up the qty of both leaf and water, then steeped carefully for 2 minutes at boiling. I added sweetener but kept the tea black (no dairy.)

The leaf in my purchased bag was mostly black leaf not as tippy as the picture suggests. Initial impressions of the flavor this time around is with moderate boldness, not sure how well it would work diluting with dairy. Flavor has an initial slight astringency that fades as a moderate maltiness appears and then grows stronger as it lingers on in the aftertaste. This was a bit of a surprise for me. I now have a much more favorable opinion of this tea this time. This is very good. I look forward to my next cup.

This Assam is more refined and easy going than its grizzly brethren while retaining a prototypical potency that comes through in a quite intelligent way.

While I do enjoy a healthy dose of barbarism in an Assam, sometimes a good game of chess is a better workout than splitting wood or powerlifting. I would know.