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Steepsterites, I have been neglecting you. What with kittens and a hilarious new computer game that I have, I just haven’t been around to do more than skim the recent posts page (I hardly ever bother with the dashboard except for notices these days), I just haven’t been paying attention to actually bringing something back to the group. Posting. This, I shall hereby remedy.

Also, mostly I’ve been drinking oldies-and-well-knownies in the effort to free up some tins so I can open more of my Shang order.

This one, however, is from the Basket. On mornings when we’re both not going to work (ah holiday!) we have a budding new habit of me making a large pot of something and sharing. Since one of us is more narrow minded (to be taken with all the symptoms of friendly teasing) when it comes to tea I typically let him choose something. Typically, he says ‘something black’, and I know him well enough to know that by ‘something black’ he means exactly that. Not ‘something black with bizarre flavouring’. I have of yet still been unable to glean a definition of ‘bizarre flavouring’. I think it depends on the time of day because at other times, he doesn’t turn down something flavoured.

I actually demoted my black currant from the Standard Panel because he liked the blackberry flavoured one much better and I had no strong preference over one or the other so long as something was berry flavoured.

But I digress.

This cup was the tea of the morning today. As I mentioned, it came out of the basket, and based on Jillian’s earlier review saying she got it out of the TTB, I can for once determine that it came to me via Pamela Dax Dean and her Great Big Box of Tea.

The aroma is not very strong or forceful, but it’s very pleasant. It’s quite honeyed and sweet, and malty but not super-malty. It’s quiet and reserved. Like a queen, it bears itself with dignity.

It’s very light in flavour, very unlike other Assams and apparently this has to do with the flush. Standard Assams being second flush and this being first. It’s extemely delicate and flighty, but the flavour profile that one associates with Assams is still there. Malty, slightly astringent and with a funny sort of cardboard-y flavour (which I do not mean in a bad way. That’s just what it reminded the person who used it first of, and I find I agree. Probably because that note is such a very grey colour to me). It’s all there. It’s just somewhat muted.

This is not really a tea that says, “come and look at me, I’m magnificent!”
It’s more a tea that says, “come and look at my potential, see what I can become when you pick my second flush!”

A demo of teas. You get the right idea but not all the features.

And yet, I quite like it. Possibly because I tend not to be too impressed with Assams to begin with. They’re so easy to wreck, so finicky compared to my preferred Chinese blacks. I think I like this, because it’s a different Assam.