This tea is yet another amazing find for me of a tea offering truly exceptional value. After being seriously impressed with Ahmad Tea's Kalami Assam, I decided to check out this tea, an even larger-leaf black tea that was only very slightly higher in price.

The dry leaf is huge, among the largest I have seen of any black tea, although the leaves are mostly broken in two or more pieces. What looks like a whole-leaf tea is actually a broken-leaf tea with immense leaves. The dry leaf is pleasingly aromatic, with strong tones of dried fruit, a little lighter than a fruity Keemun. The leaf is very slow to infuse so I recommend a very long steeping time (5-8 minutes works well).

Brewed cup is much more aromatic than the dry leaf: predominately fruity and malty, with a complexity that includes tones of cocoa, raisins, and a slight burnt quality. Flavor is moderately bitter and somewhat tangy, but clean. There's a rather metallic aftertaste. One thing I like a lot about this tea is that it is much more bitter than it is astringent: one can steep it for a very long time and use a generous quantity of leaf, attaining a strongly bitter cup that still has relatively little astringency.

I do not find the commercial description accurate, this tea brewed a dark color and was rich and intense, although less so than the Assam. But this is perhaps due to how I brew it. If you are up for it, this would be an outstanding black tea to use for multiple infusions because its leaves are so slow to release their flavor.

Bottom line? This tea is really, really good, competing among some of the best black teas, yet with a very reasonable price point: I think it offers truly exceptional value.

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