A wonderful, nuanced black tea with a mild flavor, and complex aroma, also creating nice sensations on the palate.

Dry leaf has a mild but very pleasing aroma suggestive of sweet dried fruit, but fresher and lighter smelling.

Upon brewing, this produces a very dark brown cup with a mellow aroma, yet exquisite flavor.

The aroma is subtle and very pleasing: I agree with the description that claims hints of caramel and cocoa, and spiciness...there's a very faint hint of caraway and wintergreen as well. Upon drinking the whole cup, tones suggestive of banana, cinnamon, and nut come out. I find this tea's aroma tricky to describe: it's very complex and nuanced.

The flavor is very pleasing, naturally sweet with a slight bitterness and noticeable savory (umami) quality. It's the sensations on the palate though that I think really make this tea...it has a moderately astringent body, giving it a sort of dry feeling, but this fades into leaving a tingling sensation on the tongue.

Has a much more cooling quality than usual for Chinese teas.

I really liked this one.

I was able to brew a second cup off the same set of leaves, but it required a long steeping and was less flavorful than the first...this tea didn't do quite as well with multiple steepings as some high-grade Chinese black teas do.

That said I still thought this tea was top notch.

It is not cheap, but I thought the price was reasonable for a tea of this quality. I found the pricing a bit odd; the 50g size is a better deal than the sample or 25g size but the 75g size isn't any cheaper, and 5 grams for a sample seems a little on the small size--I like 15 gram or so samples and I sometimes even think of 25 grams as a sample.

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Comments:

E. Alex Gerster wrote: on August 9th, 2013

Excellent review. Your high rating got me interested in this tea, as it is from a tea growing area I know almost nothing about. I had to Google it, and came across a tea page I thought you might like to read: http://www.mahamosa.com/teabar/en/black-tea/chinese-and-taiwanese/panyang-golden-needles.html
I don't know anything about the company, but liked the information on

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