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“This tea reminds me a little of chocolate malt balls eaten in a tack room of well dressed leather, as these aspects are present in both the scent and the flavour. Present in the taste as well,...” Read full tasting note
2013 Autumn Xinyang black tea
Xinyang, The Shihe River port, the Shihe River Harbor Township Horse Farm.
Village Authorization: seven do not envy the old tea tea, tea in South Mountain.
Company description not available.
This tea reminds me a little of chocolate malt balls eaten in a tack room of well dressed leather, as these aspects are present in both the scent and the flavour. Present in the taste as well, are honey, spice, and a vitamin c type aspect that remains hidden when brewed at low temperatures but comes out if you brew at higher ones. The listing of this tea lists it as a green black tea, which is probably meant to bring attention to this tea as the most famous teas sold from this region are green teas, but is also fitting because this tea has aspects of black, white and green teas.
The dry leaf smells of chocolate malt with a hint of rye and is quite pretty with lots of furry golden tips.
I like this tea best when brewed western style at the lower end of the green tea temperature scale around 170 or less for about three minutes. What you end up with is a green tinged copper coloured tea that has a slightly powdery texture in the mouth. It has the chocolate malt ball honey taste discussed above with a faint leather spice note and a deeper cocoa bitter note underneath it. It is a fairly light bodied tea with mild caffeine levels. I can usually get away with drinking this one at night. If brewed at to high a temperature it gets the vitamin c note that white teas get when they are close to exhaustion in gonfu brewing. This tea really needs to be brewed at lower temperatures to bring out the chocolate and deeper flavour notes. I can usually get 3-4 steeps out of this tea when brewed this way. This is a nice mild and sweet black tea with interesting flavour notes.
This tea is available from a few aliexpress retailors and came packaged in a metal coated bag inside a red printed box. The only thing in English on it was the address and village authorization listed in the description above. I bought it from this retailor:
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/208334
They have several brands of black and green teas from Henan, China
This is the one I bought as they have several grades.
“chocolate malt balls eaten in a tack room of well dressed leather”
Tea people are so odd. We are probably the only people (other than horse people) to whom this description would appeal. :)
so true!
Couldn’t have said it better, Nicole!
Yum! This sounds like something I need to try :-)