365 Days of Tea - Day 12: Yunnan Organic Black Tea.

So its been so warm here in Maine, I might start brewing everything as ice tea. There was a thunder storm warning, but it barely rained or anything. You know, veggie eggrolls are amazing.

Yunnan Organic Black Tea.

(Sample packaging.)

This is the package the tea came in, its pretty stuffed, good colors on it, too. Oh and it's resealable! Wooohoooo!  My only two real complaints are; although the tag on the other side contains the name of the tea, when opening the tea, the hole the tag is tied to becomes unusable so therefore the packaging no longer as a name on it (Which can just be taped back on or something), and that since the package is so stuffed but small its hard to scoop a teaspoon out of it.

There isn't anything in this tea minus the tea itself. Yunnan tea is a Chinese black tea from various parts of the Yunnan province. They've been cultivation this tea since dawn of TIME 206BCE - 220CE. So a pretty long time, I'd suspect that it should be nothing less than fantastic then. It can also be commonly known as Dianhong tea.Which is totally easier to say right? I really like the mix of black and orange coloring here.

It should actually be a bit darker than this, I under brewed it the second time around. I will explain this in the taste section of the rating. It usually brews as a more dark, golden color. I'd almost call it auburn. Try to ignore the massive chinchilla cage in the background. 

Smell - if you've already had English black tea before, you'd be surprised how very different this smells. Its sort of like a deep, char-roasted green tea, with a very faint hint of jasmine. The jasmine-like scent is very faint but it tickles the base of your nose towards the end. Its very pleasant.

Taste - It carries a very rich, roasted favor. I could see mixing this with a little soy milk and tiny bit of honey, or rock sugar. What's really nice is; the jasmine scent actually carries over onto the favor. Towards the end of your sip, the deep earthiness fades into a slightly sweet jasmine-like favor. Now, I always have an entire cup or two of my tea, the first time I brewed it, I did so as the instructions told me to, but it tasted a little bitter. So I thought I might have made a mistake or overbrewed, but this wasn't true. So I used new leaves and under brewed it to compare, and it still carried a very slight bitter favor. Although the slight bitterness isn't really bad, it's just unexpected.

Overall - At first I didn't know what to expect; I honestly never experience Yunnan tea before, but I' have heard about it. I have to say that it was a good first experience both with Tea At Sea and Yunnan tea. If you're looking for a more flowery, tame, black tea, I'd recommend this. It would translate really well into an ice tea as well.

(3 out of 5 tea leaves.)

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