This tea came from a TWG shop in Bangkok, weighed and bagged onsite out of the top 1/4 of a wholesale bucket. As such, it smelled and tasted (and should be!) really fresh, and is excellent in quality on both counts. The dry aroma is quite fruity, more in a berry-like way than citrus, but with the bergamot orange still detectable, and malty, indicating at least some of the blend probably is Assam.

Steeped, this tea turns dark quickly for having medium- to large-sized loose leaves, and seems to balance best in the 3–4-minute window. After about 5 minutes, the bitterness takes over. Within those tolerances, this tea rolls quite smoothly and friendly down the pipes, despite a bit more bitterness than most EGs I've tried. The bergamot stands out much more than in the aroma, yet still allows room for some berry-like, non-citrus fruitiness, and a continuing, Assam-like maltiness. My batch contained a lot of golden tips (but not quite as many as in TWG's website photo). Unsurprisingly, it delivered a stout caffeine kick, and is better suited as a morning tea than afternoon or bedtime.

Given my innate parsimony, perhaps I'm being too harsh by one notch on the "value rating" of this tea, especially since TWG advertises it as "produced in extremely limited quantity," and charges more online for it than its other EG varieties. It's a high-quality product and might well deserve the "premium" categorization. Still, I've found at least a couple equally good EGs for less.

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