DavidsTea’s Zomba Pearls

Zomba Pearls by DavidsTea
White Tea / Straight
$19.98 for 50g

First Impressions

I’m a sucker for rolled teas because I always find them that much more impressive than other teas – I think it has a lot to do with the fact that there’s a lot more care and consideration put into the teas during the processing of the leaves. Zomba Pearls is one of those teas that didn’t hesitate to impress me. I ordered Zomba Pearls online from the DavidsTea website (the tea, at the time of writing, is part of their current sale!). Zomba Pearls comes in a sealed, resealable foil pouch that has a seafoam green label that has the information regarding the tea on one side.

Zomba Pearls comes in large, almost oval-shaped pearls – no round pearls here! The dry leaf has a light vegetal and grassy notes to it. The leaf detail is lovely, and the pearls are tightly wound together. I noticed that there was a beautiful variation in the colour of the leaves that I could see, raging from green to brown to almost black.

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Zomba Pearls in hot water for 4 to 7 minutes, according to the product label. As per the product page, that would be 90°C (195°F) for 3 to 5 minutes – a bit inconsistent. I opted to use the white tea temperature setting on my Breville IQ Kettle (85°C/185°F) for 4 minutes, and I used 4 pearls in a 600ml teapot.

First Taste

Zomba Pearls steeps to a light golden yellow colour. There’s a warm vegetal aroma from the cup. I found that Zomba Pearls has a light sweetness to it, there’s a buttery/creamy quality to both the texture and flavour of the tea. I didn’t find the flavour to be too grassy, despite smelling that it the dry leaf. Zomba Pearls has a pleasant, smooth mouthfeel to it and the lack of bitterness or astringency makes for a pleasant cup of tea.

A Second Cup?

I resteeped Zomba Pearls a total of seven times (eight steeps total with the same leaves). I opted to keep using the white tea temperature setting on my variable temperature kettle, and I added an additional 30 seconds for each subsequent steep. I found that the flavours deepened for the first three resteeps from the initial steep and got a bit more floral with each steep, and then the tea began to slowly lose flavour after that. There was still a considerable amount of creamy flavour by the last steep, so I do think that I could have just continued.

My Overall Impression

I loved DavidsTea’s Zomba Pearls. I was just really impressed with this tea from my first impression of the dry leaf, to the flavour of the first cup, and all those many cups after that. While this tea may be on the pricier side (and you can get it on sale right now!), I found that there’s that much more value in the leaves that you can find with the additional steepings of the same leaves to just get all of that flavour out of there. I only used 4 pearls and got eight steeps out of those pearls, so it steeps pretty darn well and tastes good too!

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