This was the worst example of Golden Monkey that I've tried, and the worst example of any golden Chinese black tea. I thought it quite awful and I poured it out without drinking much of it.

The dry leaf is beautiful, and has a very intense aroma of cooked fruit, like raspberry jam. The leaf has a slight dusty quality that comes off in the cup when brewed.

Upon brewing, produces a fairly clear, light brown cup. The aroma and flavor of the cup though is peculiar. It reminds me a lot of GABA oolong, with the peculiar fruitiness that I don't normally encounter in other teas. The flavor is also a bit weird, muted, and there are some off aromas. Surprisingly high astringency. Flavor is very low in bitterness, but is quite sour, which I found offputting.

There's a complete absense of malty or bready qualities, which I normally associate with this style of tea. I find it very odd that the company claims this tea to be "rich and malty". I've been sampling Assams and a handful of Yunnan teas for months, and they all taste malty to me, and I can't notice this aromatic quality in this tea at all.

The Meaning of Tea claims that this tea comes from Yunnan province, but it didn't taste like any Yunnan teas I've tried previously. It tasted a little bit more like teas from Fujian, which is where Golden Monkey teas are usually produced. But it was still just bad.

I really did not enjoy this one, and I poured it out after drinking less than half the cup.

Thank you Kelsey for the sample! This was interesting to try, even if I didn't like it.

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