Rohini First Flush by Masters Teas
Black Tea / Straight
$19.00 for 2oz
Masters Teas has provided me with Rohini First Flush for the purposes of writing an honest review.
First Impressions
When a tea company asks if you’re interested in trying the very first harvested tea of the year, the answer is yes. There’s some fantastic flavours that can come from harvests at different types of the year – it all depends on the amount of sunlight versus shade, water, altitude, fertilizer. Everything comes into play when you get into single origin teas.
Rohini First Flush was harvested this year – late February and processed in March 2020. This black tea is from Darjeeling, India and came to me in a sealed, resealable pouch that I’ve come to be familiar with when it comes to Masters Teas’s packaging. The tea itself doesn’t look like a typical black tea. There’s a myriad of different colours, lots of fuzzy leaves mixed in, and I honestly thought it was either a green or white tea just based purely on appearances.
There’s a really pleasant aroma to the leaves – it reminds me of a mix of floral and honeycrisp apples (which I love!). Rohini First Flush consists of only black tea leaves.
Preparation
Masters Teas recommends steeping Rohini First Flush in 212°F (100°C) water for 2 to 3 minutes. I opted to do an initial steep for 2½ minutes.
First Taste
Rohini First Flush steeps to a pale yellow for the initial steep. There’s a sweet floral note to it that’s quite inviting. I found that it was smooth, with just a slight bite at the tail end of each steep. The flavour is nice – the honeycrisp apple aroma translates well to a fruity flavour in the steeped tea, while the floral notes add a nice sweetness to the tea itself. It reminds me of a milder version of a breakfast tea, which I find traditionally has a robust, astringent flavour to it that really needs to be tempered down with some evaporated milk or sweetener at times. Rohini First Flush though doesn’t have nearly as strong of an astringency to it, or maltiness. It has a pleasantly smooth flavour that is only met with the slightest of astringent notes at the end of each sip.
A Second Cup?
I resteeped Rohini First Flush three times (four steeps total), adding an additional 30 seconds for each subsequent steep. The tea steeps to a more golden colour for the subsequent steeps and has a stronger apple/fruity flavour to it. Rohini First Flush remains a pleasant, smooth cup of tea.
My Overall Impression
I loved Masters Teas’s Rohini First Flush. For a black tea, it was a truly unique experience from leaf to steep with this first flush tea because of the nuances in the flavour and the behaviour of the tea itself. A pleasant experience and delicious to boot, since I do adore honeycrisp apples. This is definitely a black tea that you should enjoy straight up with no added cream and sugar – and be sure to resteep as it does well and you can get more flavour of the leaves.
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