A medium-bodied tea with nutty and chocolatey aromas, I can see this being likely to please people who enjoy hot chocolate.

The dry leaf has a strong smell of sweet nutty candy, like marzipan, pistacio, milk chocolat, or hazelnut creme. It reminds me of those Mozartkugeln, the German candies with layers of hazelnut creme and marzipan and chocolate coating. Definitely the sweetest-smelling and most interesting smelling tea I've had yet from Vietnam, standing out quite a bit.

The brewed cup has a very interesting smell, it's toasty, and spicy...a little dirty smelling. The cup tastes a lot like chocolate, and the sweet nutty notes from the dry leaf come out in the aroma of the cup as I sip it...but the flavor is not at all sweet. It's an intriguing effect, nutty and bitter chocolate notes. There's a moderate astringency that I notice on my tongue towards the end of each sip

Resteeps well. The second cup retains a similar chocolatey character and is perhaps a bit smoother and sweeter even. I steeped 3 minutes, using a teaspoon of leaf, then 8 minutes for the second cup.

This was interesting for me to try, and quite different from other black teas I've sampled from Vietnam. It's tied for my favorite tea from Vietnam with the Nam Lanh Estate black tea from Arbor Teas; that's a very different tea but I can't say which one I liked better. Interestingly, although this tea is supposedly harvested from ancient trees, it didn't at all resemble teas from Ancient trees that I've sampled from Yunnan province.

Lastly, the price on this is great!

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