Simon Levelt

Ever since Lupicia stopped providing me with my Nuwara Eliya fix, I’ve been searching for a replacement. I got it into my head on a recent trip that I wasn’t leaving Europe without some Nuwara Eliya. I haven’t had this particular tea from Simon Levelt, but I have had other teas from there and they are good quality. Glad I snagged this one! It’s just what I’d been looking for. Bright, malty, citrus notes with a teeny bit of floral at the finish. Delightful.

Dry tea smells like dried fruits (raisins).
Taste is sweet, the raisins come back in the taste as well.
Similar to licorice.
Would recommend to people who just got into tea and like sweet.

As every year, very nice. Light, fresh, lively and happy tea. Flowery, vegetal, sweet, satisfying astringency.

For me the first ‘acceptable’ smoked tea, because I find many smoked Lapsang Souchong still ‘too much’. It has a definite tarry smoked smell which is, with a very much reduced intensity, still present as a flavour in the cup. I would not call it ‘subtly’ smokey but easy to handle for the ‘novice’ drinker of smoked teas.

This is a Darjeeling tea, and i’m not a huge fan of Darjeeling. And this is a heavy, bitter Darjeeling, which i’m even less fan of.

If you can appreciate these kind of very strong bitter teas, it might be for you. For me unfortunately, the bitterness blows the entire flavour of the tea away.

A tea from the Taiwanese Nantou county. The very long and dark leaves of this tea have a nice smell when dry, and even more nice when wet.

The tea itself is very smooth with a hint of sweetness. The flavour palette is extremely interesting and complex. It has a quite fruity taste with hints of wood and chocolate. The tea has close to no bitterness and very faint astringency. Very nice for an everyday tea and definitely recommended!

Oh my, this tea….

It starts with the long, partially golden, unbroken leaves. After brewing, the tea has a very nice, dark brown chestnut-like colour. It smells sweet, with a hint of honey. The scent is very interesting, as it does not reflect the taste of the tea 1 on 1.

The tea has a very recognisable flavour profile. It’s sweet and malty at the same time. The maltyness is followed by a wooden tone. It also has a fruity, grape-like flavour at the end of the sip. Despite steeping it for a normal to long period, it has no bitterness whatsoever. One of my favorite China black teas for daily use. Strongly reccommended!

The dry leaves have a very intoxicating sweet jasmine (floral) scent. Very nice. The leaves are also nice and small and unbroken. After steeping, the floral scent is transferred to the tea.

The tea smells and looks extreme pleasant. It also tastes very fresh and of course very jasmine-like, but not too overwhelming. This seems to be the ultimate jasmine tea, until….. you start to taste a very strange flavour after 2 to 3 seconds after sipping. It is comparable to a bitterness, but it tastes more chemical-like which then develops into a bitterness. It’s not easy to pinpoint what it is exactly, but it keeps hanging in the back of your mouth. This really is a shame for this otherwise really good tea.

This hint of chemical taste is gone with the second steep, but unfortunately; so is the pronounced jasmine flavour. Despite the setbacks, it’s still a tea you can pour for your guests if they like jasmine teas.

The leaves are very long and unbroken, which always appeals to me. After steeping, the teawater has an extremely light colour. The leaves themselves smell very fresh and grassy.

The tea itself has almost no recognisable scent. The tea itself is also extremely mild with a very soft grassy/bloomy tone to it. It has no bitterness and leaves a very pleasant “fresh” pallet of flavours in your mouth after drinking it.

I find Sencha green teas to be far too grassy. This one has the positive characteristics of the sencha, but without the overpowering grass-flavour. One of the best green teas i know. Be careful not to oversteep though, as the tea tends to get a bit bitter when steeped for too long.

The dry leaves already smell very fresh and grassy. After steeping, the leaves smell like fresh cut grass (as does the tea itself).

The tea has a pleasant and smooth taste, but the “fresh cut grass-flavour” is a little bit too dominant for me. After tasting, this flavour stays behind in your mouth for quite some time. It’s not unpleasant, but it is an acquired taste for sure. One I would recommend to lovers of extremely soft green teas without a pronounced flavour profile.

A very nice mix of mints. This one is not just peppermint- there’s a sweet mint in here as well (I think it is spearmint) which is nice and gives the flavour some complexity. There is a savoury herbal note present.

The jasmine aroma is nice, but this tea has a funny note to it that I don’t like, a bit like terpentine or paint. A bit strange.

Sweetness that reminds of me damp autumnal leaves on the ground.

I really didn’t know what to expect from this tea until after the leaves were warmed.

My familiarity with (good) Oolongs at this point is limited mainly to a very good Jade Tieguanyin that I have since run out of. Currently I am awaiting a shipment which includes various rock oolong samples, which wil give me something of a broader spectrum.

Having said that, I am pretty certain this tea is best described in its relation to Jade Tieguanyin. Both are oolongs pushing their boundaries towards the green side, the Jade Tieguanyin going so far that it evokes laments from people more familiar with the traditional roasted Tieguanyin, and the Pouchong going so far that it is said to lie between green and oolong tea.

The smell of the leaves is richly buttery and reminds me of all that I had forgotten about the Jade Tieguanyin. It remains consistent over multiple steepings. Unfortunately flavour and mouthfeel are both thin in comparison. Instead the Pouchong can invoke an array of green tea sentiments, like an aged sheng can where a shou can’t. For me that doesn’t really make up for advertising as a Jade Tieguanyin first.

Qi-wise I feel also slightly watered down and confused, and definitely more energized than calming.

All that being said, I think in its category this tea must be of a good quality, and the price is not too bad as well.

Warm: Hele lekkere zwarte thee! Helemaal niet bitter of wrang.

Warm: Even wennen aan de smaak. Na een paar slokken merk je het bloemige. Vrij lichte zwarte thee.

Warm: Lekkere kruidenmengeling om ’s avonds na de maaltijd te drinken. Frisse smaak, toch ook wat zoet. Lekkere nasmaak en goed voor de vertering.

Warm: Te bloemig voor mij. Tweede opgieting was lekkerder