Category: Review

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Arbor Tea’s Nepal Black

Nepal Black by Arbor Teas
Black Tea / Straight
$15.50USD for 2.5oz

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Arbor Teas has provided me with Nepal Black for the purposes of providing an honest review. I received this product at no charge to me and received no other compensation.

First Impressions

Nepal Black comes in the now-familiar environmentally friendly packaging that is compost ready. With a quick snip of the scissors across the top, the tea leaves spilled out because there was just so much of it! The leaves of Nepal Black are wiry – dark twisted leaves with golden yellow tips. The lighter parts of the leaves still have the visibly downy ‘feathery’ parts to the leaves.

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Nepal Black is an organic Nepalese black tea. The leaves are beautiful in this tea. The dry tea leaves of Nepal Black have a rich honey and brown sugar smell to it, the combination remind me a bit of molasses.

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Preparation

Arbor Teas recommends steeping Nepal Black in 212°F (1oo°C) water for 3-5 minutes. My initial steep of this organic black tea was for 3 minutes.

First Taste

Nepal Black’s initial step yields a lovely golden orange cup of tea. The aroma of this tea is strongly of honey and brown sugar – what a sweet combination. The taste of Nepal Black isn’t as sweet as the aroma led me to believe. It has a very strong flavour – reminds me a lot of breakfast teas in how strong it is (fans of English or Irish Breakfast teas will know what I’m talking about). It’s a full-bodied flavour that is matched with a touch of astringency that I often find with strong black teas. The honey and brown sugar flavours are present, albeit not as strong as the just overall strength of the black tea – it has a great mouthfeel to it and is just overall very strong. I think it could be tempered down with some cream or milk, if you were one of those people that like to doctor up your tea.

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A Second Cup?

I resteeped Nepal Black a few times (four resteeps in total), with an additional 30 seconds in steeping time for each subsequent steep. I found that the colour of this tea kept getting darker, becoming a beautiful amber colour as it steeped. The overall flavour of Nepal Black could be described in a word: robust. It’s very strong, the astringency did get stronger as I continued steeping it, although the brown sugar flavour was still holding its own by the last resteep.

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My Overall Impression

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I liked Arbor Teas’ Nepal Black. I think Nepal Black works really well as a strong, straight black tea. The astringency isn’t off-putting, and the strength behind this tea really packs a punch. I wish the sweetness that I could smell from the tea was stronger in this tea, as I felt it really could benefit from some added sweetness (honey or sugar would be great for this tea to help amplify the honey flavour). Overall, I really liked Nepal Black. It’s an overall good cup of tea, and I think it’d be good for someone who’s looking to replace or go beyond a basic breakfast tea. This organic black tea really packs a punch with the strength behind the tea, but it’s a bit bolder and more complex in flavour.

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DavidsTea’s Moonlight White

Moonlight White by DavidsTea
White and Pu-erh Tea / Straight
$24.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

This tea has me a bit confused. I initially purchased it because it was one of the new straight teas at DavidsTea and the salesperson at my local DavidsTea waxed poetic about it. When I bought it back in April, it was categorized as a white tea. At the time of writing this, it’s categorized as a pu-erh tea on the DavidsTea website. To be fair, the description of the tea has it as a “white pu’erh tea”. The combination of the two has me intrigued, and I nearly forgot that I had even bought this tea because it fell between a couple bags. (No jokes about how I have too much tea, please!) But for the tea enthusiasts out there, Yue Guang Bai is another name for Moonlight White (and another literal tea name translation) in case you wanted to source out other Moonlight White teas.

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Moonlight White is actually a really beautiful dry leaf. There’s the white, feathery down on the leaves, and then there’s the darker part of the leaf that provides such a stark contrast. It is a fairly airy tea, so you wind up with a fairly bulky bag because the tea leaves take up so much room. The dry leaf has what I would describe as a honeyed smell, it smells light and sweet to me.

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Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Moonlight White in near-boiling water for 4-7 minutes. The temperature range for this tea (as per their website) is 194-203°F (90-95°C). As my Breville IQ Kettle has a white tea setting (185°F/85°C), I opted to use that as I didn’t want to burn the leaves. My initial steep was for 4 minutes.

First Taste

Moonlight White steeps to a pale yellow initially. It has a lovely honeyed smell to it, it smells sweet to me with a touch of vegetation. There’s an overall smoothness to this tea, no bitterness or astringency to note. I found it had a pleasant mouthfeel and it goes down easy. My water that I use is fairly tasteless, I live in an area with soft water. I found that this tea had a bit of a mineral water flavour to it, which was surprising (given that I live in an area with soft water…). It isn’t off-putting, it was just surprising. I greatly enjoyed the honeyed taste to this white/pu-erh tea, and I don’t think it needs additional sweetener as it’s sweet enough.

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A Second Cup?

As Moonlight White is a straight tea, I was eager to steep the leaves a few times. I ended up steeping the same leaves for seven times. I found that the tea leaves held up well. The colour of the liquor became a deeper and deeper golden yellow as I went through the steeps (becoming the darkest for resteep 3). The flavour of this tea didn’t really change, although the honey and mineral notes did become stronger, but remained at the same flavour balance as the initial steep. I found that the leaves did really well, and it took to the seventh overall steep to really find the flavour lacking.

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My Overall Impression

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I loved DavidsTea’s Moonlight White. This tea is a curious combination for me – white and pu-erh. I found that the tea tasted great and the leaves held up incredibly well to resteeping. I think that tea is delicious and would probably pair well with some sweets or desserts. The one thing that I’m not completely in love with is the price tag. $25 for 50g is fairly steep and it makes me hesitant to really want to fall head-over-heels in love with this tea (because I just know that I’ll want a tin… or two). Overall, I think the tea is great and if you can afford this tasty tea, I would definitely recommend it. The nice thing is that the tea is of a good quality so it can be resteeped (better value!), and you don’t need a lot of the tea to steep a teapot (and then steep it again and again), so a little bit of this tea goes a long way. It’s definitely something that I really love, but don’t want to get into the habit of keeping in my tea stash because of the price. Hopefully there are cheaper Moonlight White alternatives out there, or else I’ll be getting into some trouble soon!

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JusTea’s Purple Leaf Tea

Purple Leaf Tea by JusTea
Purple Tea / Straight
$17.00 for 60g

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JusTea has provided me with Purple Leaf Tea for the purposes of providing an honest review. I received this product at no charge to me and received no other compensation.

First Impressions

I wrote a bit about JusTea in my last review of one of their purple teas (Purple Mint). Purple tea is a variety of the same type of plant that the other teas that we all know and love (e.g. white, green, black, oolong) all come from. JusTea has a whole page dedicated to exploring purple tea and talks about the science behind this variety of tea, so be sure to check out their page for more information.

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Purple Leaf Tea came to me in a sample bag, a bit different from the packaging that Purple Mint came to me in, although this one is nice too because I can see the tea leaves through the packaging and there were steeping instructions directly on the packaging. The tea leaves themselves are a bit wiry and they are quite dark. They have an almost dusty aubergine colour to them, almost a grey-purple or indigo in colour. There’s not a lot of smell to the dry leaves, there’s a very mild vegetal smell to them.

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Preparation

JusTea recommends steeping Purple Leaf Tea in 175°F (~80°C) water for 3 minutes. I followed the steeping instructions to a tea (tea puns!).

First Taste

Purple Leaf Tea steeps to a nice yellow and there’s not much of a smell coming up from the steeped tea. On first sip, I find that there’s a very mild vegetal taste to this tea and it also has a bit of a roasted flavour to it, almost like there’s a bit of a smokey quality to it – not to be confused with a lapsang souchong at all. The tea itself is savoury, there’s no sweetness that I can pick out from it. At the water temperature and the steeping time that I used (and what was recommended), there was zero astringency and bitterness to the tea. It reminds me of a very mild green tea with the mixed flavour profile of vegetables and smoke.

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JusTea recommends adding a bit of lemon juice to get some colour change action. If you read my review of JusTea’s Purple Mint, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of colour change in that tea after having added a squeeze of lemon juice. After adding the lemon juice, the tea went from that nice yellow to a nice bright pink. At first, when I only added a small amount of lemon juice, it was more of a lavender-pink, which had more purple tones. With more lemon juice, it got to the pink you see here:

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The lemon brightens up the flavour of the tea, and actually makes the vegetal flavours more pronounced. The sourness of the lemon is tempered nicely with the smokey flavours in this tea (which I do appreciate).

A Second Cup?

I resteeped Purple Leaf Tea twice. The flavour stays pretty consistent with the initial steep for the first resteep, but it begins to really lose flavour for the second resteep. I’d recommend only one more steep for this tea and I’m pleased to say that it continues to have the colour changing ability with each subsequent resteep.

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My Overall Impression

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I loved JusTea’s Purple Leaf Tea. This tea has a mild savoury flavour to it, that I think lends itself well to being a base for a tea – which is why JusTea has come up with a range of purple tea blends. By itself, the flavour isn’t overly strong, and it reminds me a lot of a green tea (and I do love my green teas). The colour changing aspect works great with this straight tea, so it’s a fun feature if you’re wanting to host a tea party with some friends or children. I’m not usually one for lemon in my tea, but I think it works well for this tea varietal because it helps bring out the vegetal flavours and the smokey flavours tempers down the sourness from the lemon juice.

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