Having not liked this tea as much as the Ceciliyan Estate and Golden Kenya I bought with it from Upton, I put it aside while I drank those two. Now that they’re almost gone, I’ve come back to Tea Bank, and I’m getting some different flavors from it.
This tea now reminds me an awful lot of a Chinese black tea. It’s hard to characterize exactly what this means, but if you’ve had any Chinese black teas, you’ll know how different from Assams and Ceylons they tend to be. Tea Bank seems to be halfway between Ceylon and China. It also has a smokiness that I never noticed before. It has a more interesting flavor than I was getting from this tea when I first bought it, but it still isn’t as rounded and yummy as my mainstay black teas.