I took a long time to review this tea because it didn't impress me at first, but I thought it would be better in hot weather, and having saved a bit for the warmer weather, it's exactly like I thought: I like this more on a hot day.

This tasted (but not looked) the most like a Chinese green tea of any green tea that I've sampled from India, yet.

The dry leaf looks very strange and fragile: it's flat, thin, loosely-packed, and the leaves have irregular edges. Its fragrance is rather mysterious...it is initially like a Chinese green tea, almost hinting at smoke, something like a chun mee or a less smoky gunpowder tea, but there are a lot of other notes in there, vegetal and resinous notes.

When brewed, this tea is also a lot like a Chinese green tea, but slightly different. When I first tried brewing with water below boiling, around 180F as I usually do for teas whose leaf smells like this one did...the body came out thin relative to the strength of the aroma and flavor. There was a light astringency in the finish that I found very pleasant.

This tea is not at all picky about brewing temperature though. I experimented with, andd found preferred brewing with boiling water, it makes it thicker and more full-bodied, and brings out the vegetal notes. Surprisingly, this tea did not taste any more bitter or harsh when the water was boiling, the extra body even gave it a softer, rounder flavor. I also thought the resteep was more enjoyable when brewed with boiling water.

Overall, has a cooling quality; this is the type of tea I'd want to drink in the summer and in hot weather, and I don't think it's as well-suited to cold weather.

Pretty good, and certainly interesting, but I think I would still prefer the other teas from Udyan tea, or Chinese green teas, to this one, at least in a similar price range.

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