India Assam Hattialli 'Clonal Gold' Black Tea

Hey, all. After five days of laziness, I have returned with a new review. This was one of my more recent sipdowns, as I finished my 25g pouch of this tea late last week. Sadly, this ended up being a tea that I wish I enjoyed more than I did. Normally, I am a huge fan of Assam black teas, but this one I struggled with consistently.

I prepared this tea in the Western style. I steeped approximately 3 grams of loose tea leaves in 8 ounces of 203 F water for 5 minutes. I did not rinse the leaves prior to steeping nor did I attempt any additional infusions.

Prior to infusion, the dry tea leaves presented aromas of malt, sweet potato, baked bread, and caramel. After infusion, I detected new aromas of roasted almond, honey, cream, butter, and roasted potato that were underscored by subtler aromas of tomato and menthol. In the mouth, the tea liquor was thin and biting, presenting notes of malt, cream, butter, baked bread, sweet potato, roasted almond, roasted potato, lemon, leather, and roasted walnut that were balanced by subtler impressions of wood, tomato, grapefruit pith, pear, apple, plum, honey, menthol, molasses, caramel, orange zest, red grape, and watermelon rind. Each sip finished in an oily, malty, nutty, and leathery fashion before a swell of bitterness and astringency arose after each swallow.

Honestly, I am still not entirely sure how I feel about this tea. It was complex and presented some unique aromas and flavors, but I also did not find the texture and body of the tea liquor to be all that appealing and found the way it expressed itself to be a bit rough, inconsistent, and unfocused overall. I have no clue where the folks at What-Cha picked up on raspberry jam notes, because I found nothing of the sort in this tea. It struck me as being an astringent, tart, bitter, oily, leathery, nutty, malty tea with some pleasant starchy, vegetal, and sweetly fruity notes scattered throughout. I was hoping for more of either a grassy, vegetal presence or some sort of minty or otherwise herbal presence, since I lately tend to notice such characteristics in teas produced from the clonal Panetola 126 cultivar, but I found such notes to be a bit lacking in this tea. Even when I backed off on the water temperature and reduced the steep time in some of my other brewing attempts, the results were very similar to what I described in the paragraph above. Overall, this was not a bad tea, but it was not quite to my liking. I tend to prefer smoother, creamier, maltier Assam black teas, so this tea did not quite hit the spot for me. Perhaps I’m being a bit hard on it or expected too much, but to me, this was just a pretty good offering. I would not rush to try it again.