Out of all my Butiki teas, this one surprised me the most. I threw it into my order as a bit of a wildcard mainly because Butiki were closing and I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with the knowledge that this was out there without ever being able to try it. And I’d already blown my tea budget far, far away with a ‘now or never’ sort of attitude to my Butiki ordering, so I thought what the heck. I never expected to love it as much as I do!
I work behind the bar in an Italian restaurant, and part of my job involves a barista sort-of element as I have to use the espresso machine to make the coffees any time a customer orders one. This means that I have free access to good-quality barista-style coffee on a regular basis, and although my heart belongs with tea, sometimes I need the caffeine or the coffee just smells really good and it tempts me to the dark side. The scent of this tea is like that – a dark finger of rich smoky coffee curling from the mug and beckoning you into its warm embrace. I spent the whole time it was steeping with my nose an inch away from the hot water, huffing in the fumes, which seems to be a common thing with me and Butiki teas.
When drank plain, the earthy puerh is most prominent in the initial sip, with the coffee being barely discernible and the smoky note lingering in the aftertaste quite strongly. Despite not getting much of the actual coffee flavouring, the thick mouthfeel and roasted quality of the tea reminded me of coffee strongly enough that I added sugar and a splash of cream, which I’ve only ever done with one other tea, also a coffee puerh. Adding the sugar brought out the cream note from the flavouring more, as well as the coffee, and after adding the cream the coffee note became even more pronounced that I almost felt like I was drinking a cup of coffee. The smokiness of the lapsang is pushed to the background this way, but comes through in the aftertaste and is the longest lasting of the flavours, so it really does feel like I’m drinking a cup of coffee and then having a drag on a cigarette (or how I imagine it would be, anyway). I can’t speak to the accuracy of the ‘cigarette’ having never smoked, but from reading other tasting notes it seems like it’s pretty accurate. I did rinse the tea before steeping, but it still has a slight fuzzy dryness to it which, although I’ve never smoked and don’t intend to, reminds me of how I imagine the mouth would feel after smoking a cigarette. I don’t mind it at all since it adds to the experience for me. The puerh itself is still present through all of this, and adds a really interesting earthy, leathery yet sort of sweet quality which gently reminds me that I am in fact drinking tea. Now some of this description doesn’t sound all that much like something you would want, but it truly is an amazing experience in tea form, and a lot more tasty than it sounds. Trust me!
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I really loved this tea too. Now that I can’t get it anymore I have started steeping 1.5tsp of David’s Coffee Puehr and .75tsp of their lapsang together and it feels like a pretty close reenactment of this tea.
Oh I will have to try that when this is gone! Thanks for the tip!!
I really loved this tea too. Now that I can’t get it anymore I have started steeping 1.5tsp of David’s Coffee Puehr and .75tsp of their lapsang together and it feels like a pretty close reenactment of this tea.
Oh I will have to try that when this is gone! Thanks for the tip!!