Name: Organic Blue Mountain Nilgiri
Brand: The Tea Spot
Type: Black Tea
Form: Loose Leaf
Cost: 2.4 ounce tin, $14.99 (quantity discounts available)
Review: The dark dry leaves of this organic Nilgiri have a lovely scent of cocoa and spice, which deepen into a sweeter, brown-sugar-and-tobacco nose after the tea is infused into a gorgeous, medium amber liquor.
This is one of the smoothest teas I have ever tried. There is almost no astringency on the palate, and no one note dominates. The tea does remain fairly sweet, again with hints of tobacco and brown sugar, along with some slight fruit at the finish.
In sampling this tea, I tried increasing steep times and using more leaf, but found that neither had any impact on its smooth, gentle flavor. This would be a tough tea to ruin.
Of course, all this smoothness begs the question: Is this tea in any way remarkable? My own preference is for stronger, more aggressive flavors. At the same time, this tea is obviously fresh and, despite it not being “my style”, it is also quite tasty. It would make an excellent tea to pair with food.
(In one of my samplings I paired it with a spicy hot link: It not only went well with the sausage, but also held its own as far as taste is concerned).
This tea may be smooth, but it hardly wimpy.
Recommendation: This is an extremely smooth and well-balanced tea that would pair well with food and likely suit black tea drinkers who object to astringency or super-strong flavors. Those who do like stronger black tea might find this tea not aggressive or complex enough, though.
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I love tobacco noses on tea. (Is that the right way to say it?)
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