Tasting: Mana Organics Assam Tea

Today's tasting is with a robust organic Assam from Mana Organics. It's a certified organic tippy golden flowery orange pekoe Assam black tea, to be exact.This basically means there are lots of buds included among the tea leaves.

Mana is enabling tea farmers to be self sufficient and organic. This Assam is from the Chota Tingrai Tea Estate, a family owned estate established in 1943. It is an organic 2nd flush tea. To learn more about Mana's organic farming practices check out my interview with Mana co-founder Avantika Jalan. Here are a few details on the company directly from Mana:

At Chota Tingrai Tea Estate, Mana Organics works directly with tea workers and management to oversee more than 100 hectares of certified organic tea land. We make all our compost and bio-controls on site. Additionally, Mana Organics invests a portion of our profits in projects that we operate with our worker communities. We are providing extra teachers for the estate schools, and a waste collection system in the worker villages.

The dry leaves are super sweet and floral. The sweet aroma is full of dates and honey. I'm getting a nuttiness as well. It smells like a selection of delicious snacks! It reminds me of a perfect afternoon respite with a selection of toast, honey, cheeses and nuts. The snacks are on a table topped with a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Actually, this Assam would pair perfectly with those snacks. Are you as hungry as I am now? Sorry, on to the tea...

The steeped liquor smells like honey spread on toasted bread. It tastes slightly spicy along with honey, malt, and toast. I want to take a bite of that tasty toast (guess I really am hungry)! There is a slight astringency with a touch of dryness and it works well with this brisk tea. Overall it's a smooth, bold cup that has a pleasing flavor. I have a generous bag of this tea and I've been drinking it every morning. It's a great way to jumpstart the day.

The infused leaves smell sweet and malty, reminiscent of dates and sweet potatoes. I can smell the 'golden blossom honey' we used to put in our tea growing up. This tea is sweet and flavorful and doesn't need any milk or sweetener added. As I mentioned, it is a nice morning tea.

I'm curious to learn more about the company and their organic sustainable farming efforts. An interview is in the works, so stay tuned. Thank you to Mana Organics for this sample.

Review: Turvani Assam Golden Tips

I recently opened a box with smart looking samples from Turvani, a new tea company that focuses on enjoying the experience of preparing and sipping a cup of tea. To learn a little more about Turvani, check out my interview with founder Samir Balwani here. I was immediately drawn in by the minimalist design on the packaging. The clean lines and bold logo draws attention to the company, but also piques interest in the tea that lies inside the package.

I was given three samples and decided to try their Assam Golden Tips first. I've had a few different Assams lately and thought I'd give this one a try to see how it stacks up. The dry leaves are super sweet, and I could detect honey with a hint of malt. A little bit of sweet dried fruit as well, and something rich and gooey, like molasses. The leaves have pretty golden tips vying for attention, but they were well outnumbered by the darker leaves.

After a steep, the fragrance was malty and velvety, retaining that honey note. The infused tea is very soft, smooth, and comforting. It has a mellow streak from the honey but a stronger malty flavor that gives it some power. This isn't a bad thing, it has a nice bit of punch which makes it perfect for a morning or early afternoon cup. It's slightly woodsy, and when I close my eyes the flavor takes me to sitting in a forest in early autumn while wrapped in a warm fleecy blanket, eating toast topped with honey. I told you it was comforting!

This is a nice basic morning tea that delivers flavor and energy. It would also be a solid, basic iced tea. With the sweet flavors I wouldn't want to add sweetener, but I can see that adding a little bit would enhance the dried fruit and molasses notes even more. Since it's an Assam a little bit of milk could also be added, but that's something you'll have to try for yourself. I'm not a fan of milk in my tea. Don't tell any of my British friends!

Thank you to Turvani for the sample. I look forward to trying the other two!

Review: East Indian Tea & A Little More History

Today's review is the East Indian Tea from Oliver Pluff & Co. Before I gave it a taste, I asked owner Kyle Brown a little more about this tea, and he told me the East Indian tea is grown in Assam from tea gardens containing plants combined from wild-growing tea trees discovered by the British, and the finer Chinese tea tree varieties that they brought over. This is of course a tea that was imported into the American colonies. I enjoyed this little snippet from the package:

When the ship Britannia arrived in Charles Town in November, 1774 with seven chests of East Indian tea, Charles Town tea merchants were “induced” to destroy their own tea by breaking open the chests and dumping them overboard into the Cooper River, an event now known as the Charleston Tea Party.

The Charleston Tea Party was a protest of that infamous British tea tax, perhaps not the most famous protest, but still an important one for the record books. I read a little more about tea drinking in Charleston, and it turns out most of the tea brought into the city was smuggled in so the colonists could avoid the taxes. This smuggled tea was of course illegal. I found an interesting snipped about tea smuggling from my new favorite book A Social History of Tea, quoting a famous tea name I'm sure you will recognize:

In his Observations on the Tea & Window Act and on the Tea Trade, 1784, Richard Twining commented that "The smuggler has become so formidable a rival [to the East India Copmpany] that, upon the most moderate computation, they shared the Tea-trade equally between them; and according to some calculations, the smuggler had two thirds of it."

I could go on about tea smuggling but I'll save it for another post. Time to discuss the East Indian tea!
The dry leaves smell quite sweet with a malty, dry aroma of dried wheat. I also get a little bit of dried apricot. The combination gives me a sunny, bright feeling of relaxing in a meadow of late summer grass.

The wet leaves are again sweet and malty, with a bit of barley, honey. and roasted sweet potatoes.  

The infusion is quite bold, with a slight astringency. It is a little dry, but mellow, malty, and smooth. There is a lingering gentle malty flavor with a bit of astringency. The tea has an unexpected lightness to it.

I was surprised at the roundness of this tea. It is well balanced and smooth. It has a good amount of strength, as Assam does, but I was expecting it to be more astringent and punchy. It's a very pleasing tea, and I've had it almost every morning this week. It strong enough for sleepy-eyed mornings, but has a nice mellow finish that tames my anxious thoughts about the day ahead.  This is a good everyday drinking tea, and I of course love the history behind it.

Thank you to Oliver Pluff & Co for providing this tea for review!