Sabah Tea

An amazing aroma – full of pandan, very sweet. Tastes mellow and sweet with a hint of pandan, but the astringency takes away some of the enjoyment for me. Overall a very nice tea. Ground finely so you really can’t steep more than once, but it’s a very nice cup.

Like other Malaysian teas with which I’m familiar, this is not “loose leaf” in the sense that it has been ground. Nonetheless, the addition of pandan makes this tea very flavorful. I enjoy a thermos full of this tea at work. If you’ve never had pandan, it’s like a cross between coconut and caramel.

Brewed this at 2x strength = half the amount of water, then added heated milk to bring the ratio back to 1×. Much better than the last time I tried it. I think its best suited for either breakfast / afternoon tea with milk, rather than straight.

Really ‘meh’ tea, very light in taste. It smells better than it tastes actually.

Looks like a BOP grade with very fine round granular leaf bits.

I’m going to give an okay rating for now, as I think my ratio of water to milk was off (have a preferred ratio for breakfast teas) so it was more diluted than usual. Will give this another chance later.

Very greenish-black scent. Somehow it has the same greeness in it as sencha but it’s still definitely black. It might be due the main ingredient, which is a plant called Camellia Sinesis they grow there. The scent is also very fresh, surprisingly so even though this specimen has been opened for a long time ever since I got it from a friend who was traveling in Malaysia for a while ago. She also served yours truly some other tea she bought for herself, and that had a faint flavor reminding us about helium balloons. That was fun.

But back to this. As it steeps, the blackness comes more forward with both the color and the brewing scent. It remains fresh, I give it that, but it has matured quite much also. It could be described with the cautious use of the word ‘strong’. The wet leaves give away a malty aroma, very tangible rough-edged feeling. Since the leaf itself is very, very tiny and delicate that note is amusing in itself. It has very earthy tone in it, though not the way puerh has, but somehow more…moist.

The tea itself smells earthy and the color of the liquid is very rich dark brown. Way darker than the puerh I have, but with a similar red tint.

Sip.

Very earthy. One could almost taste the mud and tree barks. With a roasted hint. Tasty. Very plain black tea as it’s presented, but with a nice personality. It could use some small boost, perhaps, something that’ll give the palate something more to mull over rather than tasting it as a whole and then just letting it linger with its roasted aftertaste. But then again, those qualities can be reserved for other teas.

This is more than fine for what it’s meant to be.

And that is good tea.

I have had this tea a couple more times now and I find it to be a very “light” tasting black tea. The leaves of this tea are cut so fine I need a tea bag to brew it. I have also tried the prepackaged tea bags of this that someone gave me and found the tea to be too weak even with using 2 bags to one 8oz cup. The loose leaf is better but I use more leaves per cup than any other black tea I have. On the other hand I have purposely left the tea brewing for at least 10 mins and absolutely no bitterness whatsoever.

I was actually surprised to find this already on the site. I too got this from a friend who visited Malaysia; she toured the tea plantation there and brought a bunch of tea back. I was lucky enough to receive a bag of this. I am bad at describing black teas especially since I always sweeten black teas with a touch of honey and add almond milk, but I really enjoyed this cup! Weird thing I didn’t know was that dye is added to some teas! This tea advertises that no dye is added to it (and is pesticide free)! The dry leaves are cut (reminds me of some Irish breakfast or Kenya teas I’ve had.) All in all a great cup of basic black tea.