Superfine Keemun Mao Feng Black Tea

The wet leaf of this has an amazing scent, and the brewed tea liquor tastes high and sweet with a caramel note, and a lovely malty taste and smell. It’s a mild tasting black tea, but has a lot of flavour in there – with hints of roast sweet potato, malt and honey. I’ll enjoy this as a nice, sweet, easy-drinking afternoon tea.

I used about 5g in a small gaiwan, using near-boiling water for 30-60s.

I haven’t been keeping up with writing tea notes with work and life and planning our upcoming Scotland trip, but I figured today I should get back into it and also review a new tea that I got a sample of quite a while ago from the lovely people at Teavivre. Many thanks for this sample!I

I brewed up this keemun for about 3 mins with 195 degree water. I usually prefer keemuns in the afternoon, but this one sounded right this morning to me! The steeped smell is bright and fresh, to me some red fruits, a hint of astringency (the good kind of astringency) and some malty cocoa notes.

As for the flavor, this is a rich, delicious tea. It’s rich, but the body is still pretty medium, so it goes down very smooth. The main notes are a lovely red wine flavor with a bready flavor and some more red fruits. There is also a mild cocoa note, slightly creamy with almost a mild buttery flavor.

Overall, I am very much enjoying this. With all the flavored teas I’ve been having lately, and gasp coffee (PSL season, ugh), this is a wonderful change and reminds me that pure teas still reign supreme and never fail to impress me. Thanks again to Angel and the Teavivre team for this lovely sample! Happy I have a few more packets of this :)

So I realize that it has been since June that I have done a tea review….what is wrong with me? Well….life. Let’s see my son Zebedee was born on June and work has been absolutely nuts. One day I’m in at 5:30 am the next it’s 9 or another time. Rarely is there a week where I’m not working 6 days straight and with DJ gigs sometimes is 16 hour days. It’s a challenging time right now in our house. Today I’m celebrating. It’s my birthday. I must have tea! Pulled this one out of the tea cabinet. I love a good Keemun. I opened up the sample and breathed it in! Leathery…malty…the qualities that are awesome about Keemun. It’s a good straight black definitely a good one to have on for number 36.

Brewed this one at work with high high expectations because of its smell.

This just turns out to be an average keemun and the leaf is a bit smaller than others I have seen (which doesn’t equate to taste always)

note I went from Wild Crafted Dianhong by Whispering Pines to this within a matter of an hour so just imagine the the unfair comparison :p

My kitchen is filled with all sorts of warming aromas this morning – smoky sausage, hot buttered biscuits, and spiced potatoes redolent with cinnamon, curry, and garlic. And this tea, which smells of chocolate and tastes bold and rich. A perfect tea for the morning.

I had written a note for this the last time I tasted it, but my browser decided to update itself and so I lost it. I don’t remember the specifics, but I do know that I’ve enjoyed this tea both times I’ve had it. When the time comes that I decide to place an order with Teavivre, I’ll be adding some of this to my bag.

This was a gift from Plunkybug and I’m so glad she sent some for me to try. Thank you so much for sharing!

Backlog

A free sample for Angel at Teavivre. Thank you

The dry leaf smelt mainly of hay with an undertone of floral scent. It looked lovely: a lot of little twisty black leaves. The liquor was a dark brown with an aroma of grain and a hint of malt. The tea itself was silky in the mouth with a light, fruity taste reminiscent of raisins, plums and honey. It’s a great afternoon tea with no bitterness or astringency. All it really needed was jam and scones to accompany it, and my afternoon would have been complete.

This was just ok. Earthy, a bit astringent. It wasn’t as remarkable as the last few I’ve tried, sort of a plain old black I don’t really care for.

Backlog from a few days ago.

I got this as a free sample from Angel a few weeks ago – Teavivre is so generous and I really appreciate them for it!

Now, I have a confession to make: I’ve never tried Keemun before this tea. The impression that I got was that it was a really “grainy” tasting tea, and that left me a bit trepidatious. A lot of my teas end up tasting really alkaline, like pretzels, for some reason, even when I use filtered water (I think I may need to seriously descale my kettle). So having a tea that was going to deliberately taste like that left me wary.

I needn’t have worried: although I did get a tiny touch of that pretzel/alkaline note at the back, the strongest notes I got from this tea (steeped at 90C for 3-4 mins, 1 tsp/8 oz) was a sweet note very similar to spiced plums.

Surprising!

I ended up brewing this again the next day, and I experimented by using 100C water instead of 90C water. That was not the best idea – the flavour is much nicer and more complex at the lower temperature.

The lovely Angel sent this one my way so that i could try it out. I was excited by this one, since i have really enjoyed teavivre’s keemuns in the past and because i am running low on keemuns in my cupboard. this isn’t my favoutite keemun fro teavivre though it’s a really nice cup. It just doesn’t have those slightly almost smokey notes in it that i really enjoy from teavivre’s other keemuns. Ithis one has a smooth body with a tiny bit of malt, a little honey and just some nice tea. While this doesn’t scream keemun to me..it IS a nice tea and it could have a place in my cupboard as just a tea i drink heh

This is the first tea I tried out of the generous bunch of samples sent to me by Angel of Teavivre.

I don’t know WHY, given that I’ve only tried a few in my lifetime, but when I see the word “Keemun” I always get a little nervous, because I expect them to be smoky. I don’t really do smoky teas, I don’t really dig them.

I was SO pleasantly surprised when I tried this! I absolutely LOVED it!!

Wow. It was such a rich, bright, flavourful cup of tea. A bit of malt, and honey and raisin notes, and not even 1% smoke!

It’s not at all what I expected. It was such an enjoyable cup that I will absolutely order some in the future. Thanks so much Angel, for allowing me to try something I otherwise would have balked at!