I never really love Assam teas. Not sure why I bought this one; I guess I am always hoping to be surprised. The dry leaves are beautiful, showing off a nice clean-looking and fine picking, with abundant golden tips interspersed throughout an attractive sea of black leaves. Not a dusty black like some teas, but a healthy, almost shiny, black. I think Mighty Leaf is great at picking teas, based on my sampling of some of their other teas, so I trust this is a decent example of a good Assam tea.
The tea gives a dark liquor, and a nice honey sweetness, and pretty much has a standard “black tea” flavor profile. Reminds me of a typical commercial black iced tea type flavor, but I am drinking it hot. But pretty much like buying an unsweetened bottle of Lipton or Gold Peak black iced tea or something like that.
Where this tea, and pretty much every other Assam I have ever tried, loses me, is at the end of the sip when the aftertaste emerges – Makes me feel like I’m sucking ashes out of a cigarette ashtray all of a sudden. Not a fan of that flavor. It isn’t so much the bitterness which bothers me, and there is some present, but just the “ashtray” sensation which seems to taint Assam teas in general.
Weird, because I love Yunnan black teas, and I understand they share a lineage with the Assam black teas grown in India. Not sure why it is so difficult to like them for me, then.
And as the tea cools somewhat below the temperature range in which I usually do most of my tea drinking, the ashtray taste fades away, almost dwindling to nonexistence. Which makes this tea much friendlier and more gulpable in this cooler range.