Assam1860

Hi Peeps! I haven’t written a tasting note in months. Tea friends have been asking if I’m OK. Summer was so humid. I kind of got out of the habit and I have been battling health issues.

On to tea – I told the wife I was tired of soda pop (whatever you call it in your locale) so she bought a glass container with a spigot. It holds about a gallon and a half and sets in the fridge. Then I realized all she had for iced tea was Luzianne and Lipton. Neither of those would do. I dug deep in my stash and came up with Assam 1860 and Ahmad Primetime. Decided to start with Assam 1860.

The color is a beautiful dark cherry mahogany. Has a good clean smell. I never add anything to my iced tea and this certainly needs no help. I made it strong because that’s how I like it. It is brisk without being bitter. The taste is malty and leafy. I noticed the jug emptied pretty quick. This makes a solid iced tea.

I received a box of this tea for review. It contains 25 nylon sachets/bags. Each is individually sealed in a protective envelop and contain 2.25 g of CTC. I probably have already lost 1/2 of you by mentioning bag and CTC in the same sentence. I personally use a lot of bagged tea and find if you are selective there are some jewels to be found. They do sell it in loose form though it is CTC. That is normal for nearly all tea originating in India.

Dry this has a pleasant malty aroma that only intensifies when steeped. The brew color is a truly beautiful cherry mahogany. I steeped for 2 1/2 minutes and the first sip was intensely eye opening brisk – just like a good breakfast tea should be IMHO. After the initial shock, I got the malt notes along with woody, fruity, and slightly sweet. Just as is it is pretty good.

For fun I added a little Splenda. This civilizes the savage bite, if you are in to that. I will admit it gave the malt and other notes a little more room to display what they had to offer.

Next, I did something for science I never try. I added a splash of milk. Brilliant! While it destroys the beautiful color, it totally surprised me otherwise. To me, milk normally muddies up the cup making all the notes indistinguishable from one another. Here, while it added nothing really new, it did marry all the flavors together while they remained separate notes. I don’t know if that even makes sense. What I know is at this point the cup became empty very fast.

Final analysis – I really enjoyed this and look forward to drinking more of it. In fact, I am going to try it iced in a few moments.