Georgian hongcha from 2017. Picked this up in Minsk, Belarus. Not much detail known beyond that. I tend to look up teahouses and vendors when I travel and I found a pretty nice place in Minsk that did gong fu cha and had a pretty solid selection of teas.
The vendor was rather reluctant to sell me this as he had “much better teas” and told me that while the leaf material itself was solid, it was not hand processed. Had to explain how I’ve had some other really good Georgian teas (via whatcha) and I was curious to compare them.
Brewed this up western style, 2.5g in 300ml for 3minutes. As I sat down with a cup of this I got preoccupied and my first sip had me a bit confused as to what I was drinking. Very soft and smooth, almost creamy in the mouth. Rather monodimensional and not as interesting as say the Phoenix Georgian hongcha from what-cha, but a pretty nice and easy cup with no astringency at all.
I have another georgian tea on hand that I haven’t tried yet, via thetea.pl’s tea club. Will be interesting to see if that also fits the pattern of really smooth and easy drinkers.
Preparation
Comments
@Rasseru interesting! I wonder how much of that is the terroir and how much is the processing. I have a georgian green from the same vendor as well, so will be interesting to see if it has the same trait.
Yeah i find smoothness in every georgian tea (from whatcha ofc)
@Rasseru interesting! I wonder how much of that is the terroir and how much is the processing. I have a georgian green from the same vendor as well, so will be interesting to see if it has the same trait.
yeah, no idea! I have only tried the blacks and liked every one of them – as I am not much of a fan of malty tea, they didnt seem to possess this characteristic as much as chinese black/reds