Little Red

First I have to say that I am rather miffed that W2T doesn’t sell this one, because man is it good! I could see it becoming a daily drinker for me for sure, but alas, no dice. These pretty little leaves are made from the Cai Cha varietal, which is pretty popular in Wuyi, used to make Jin Jun Mei, Lapsang Souchong, and Tan Yang Gongfu, so it gets around. The aroma of the dry tea is nom…om nom nom. Strong notes of chocolate, and you know, the info sheet wasn’t lying when it said cumin, and that is pretty awesome. There is also a creamy undertone and a slightly tangy dried fruit note as well.

Brewing it up, the aroma of the tea is immensely rich, heavy notes of chocolate and molasses with notes of saffron and malt. The aroma and taste remind me of a cake I make on occasion using chocolate, saffron, cumin, and lots of molasses…this cake is stupidly rich, especially when you count the saffron vanilla glaze. Seriously the similarity between this tea and my cake concoction are uncanny, I never need to go on the hunt for cheap saffron again if I just keep drinking this tea. You can get many steeps out of these tea, it has decent longevity.

Amazing bitter dark, dark chocolate aroma. Taste does NOT taste like chocolate whatsoever, really, despite the aroma, :(. It has strong malt base, color is not as dark as I would have expected from the smell. Definite earthy bitterness (almost musty in the same way very dark chocolate starts to taste like musty dirt), but it doesn’t really increase across steeps and is very manageable, the taste was kind of similar in profile to mild/moderate strength coffee in a lot of ways in my opinion. Didn’t really get much cumin or cinnamon until the fifth steep (started catching a tingle of cinnamon or something on the tongue at that point). Held up a lot better to resteeping than the other two I tried so far.

I think what I’m starting to learn from this month’s White2Tea club is I don’t really like black/red tea very much, heh.