Australia Arakai Summer Black Tea

January 2021 harvest

Aromatic and warm floral-woody-sweet-fruity-bready fragrance with a mouthfeel that is juicy and viscous. The taste is clean, bright and warm, buoyant plummy-sweet with all the nuances of the aroma. Lingering aftertaste that eventually gives way to some gentle tang and mouth-watering. Calming, warming and nourishing.

This tea is seamless in its expression and opens up easily with a range of brewing times and temperatures, at least when prepared western-style. Beginner-friendly, especially for those who aren’t bothered with steeping the leaf more than once. I do think it tastes best brewed in a glass vessel which lets the sparkling sweetness shine.

I can’t help but smile every time I drink it :)

Sipdown.

Fruity, smooth, malty, little sweet. Vanilla? I’m not sure, I had to make-shift a Keurig cup to get my hot water. Different water than at home too.
If I could get it to taste like this all the time – I’d order more.

Like a cross between a taiwanese black and a mellow georgian black, but maltier and woodier. With a sweet after taste. This is definitely a good one. I’m currently exploring hongcha from different terroirs and processing – a total of about 40 different hongcha over the next few months – and I definitely want to try the spring flush from this estate now.

I brewed this western style, 2.5g for 2.5 minutes in 300ml of water just off the boil. Will try it gongfu next, as per recommendations from the estate.

Woodsy and mildly earthy malt with a hint of sweetness. The tea develops a very slight cinnamon note in the finish. Smooth and pleasant.

This was my sample in my last what-cha order.

I did 2 min at just under boiling water. It had a pleasant spicy flavor with a bit of tannic brightness. The tannic bit wasn’t unplanted but coated the inside of my mouth and made the taste lingers bit. There’s also a woody almost meaty note in the background. I ended up steeping this a few more times without any bitterness. I think the 2nd steep was even spicer, but the subsequent ones less so than the 1st. I might try brewing it for longer next time.

Pics:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BIQax7yjj3O/?taken-by=gooseberryspoon

The Summer Arakai black tea is fantastic. It’s like a mildly malty Taiwanese black tea. It has the sweet, fruity, and slightly acidic character of a Taiwanese black tea with a slightly more robust, smooth, malty edge. Very enjoyable.

Got a free 10 gram sample of this on my last tea order (What-cha FTW),
And was quite excited as I’ve only ever had greens from Australia so thought this would be quite interesting.
After brewing the 1st infusion for about 30-45 seconds it had an incredibly sweet, malty, yeast flavour that reminded me a lot of the drink Horlicks.

After a couple more infusions it got a bit less malty and developed a slightly bitter cinnamon molasses taste that I found more enjoyable.
The brew itself has a very zesty orange colour, and the smell is like a very sweet molasses. the leaves were a little more broken than I expected but I got about 5-6 infusions out of just 5 grams of them which I was quite happy with.

While I usually prefer more refreshing black teas this was still quite a nice brew,
And would recommend to any one that enjoys very strong, sweet, malty teas.