Now that I’ve finished the two puers that recently came into my hands, let’s go back to the Satemwa Tea Estate teas that I bought from the Rare Tea Company. This is one that I was super excited about, since fellow tea bloggers like Northern Teaist and It’s More Than Tea wrote very glowing posts about it.

The Rare Tea Company’s description of the tea:

“Rather than being made from the leaves of the tea bush, this incredibly rare tea is made from the velvety stem of finely plucked spring shoots. These antlers wonderfully express the unique terroir of this extraordinary tea garden. Only a few kilos can be produced each year.”

Some of my IRL tea friends are cynical people and pointed out that the stem of the tea is normally the lowest grade but they also (spoiler!) really enjoyed this tea so there’s that.

First Impressions

This tea is all stems. It’s dark and bare (really no leaves whatsover) but it smells sweet and floral. It’s a rich scent that you don’t expect from the leaves.

Tasting Notes

Although there was only 20g of tea for this, I decided to YOLO the tea and brewed it gongfu-style, except for the last brew, which was cold-brew and hence used a more Western water to leaf ratio.

First Round: The tea liquor was a slightly dark yellow and smelled of spring. That may be because I’ve been cooped up but I’m standing by “it smells of spring”. In terms of taste, I got sweet, fruity, and floral notes. To be honest, I kept expecting something like kukicha and this was totally different and an extremely pleasant surprise. As for the aftertaste, the tea lingered quite pleasantly in the mouth.

Second round: I gave this to my mother because sharing is caring and she proclaimed that though the tea smelled rather “raw and grassy”, she really liked the 甘甜 (gan tian/sweet) taste of the tea.

Third round: The tea liquor in this round was slightly darker. It’s still sweet and fruity, but there’s a lightness here that made me think of the leafy ripe puer, also by the Satemwa Tea estate. Is it because of the terroir or is it because the tea is coming to the end of its brewing life? The only way to find out is to drink more.

Fourth Round: This round is quite embarrassing for me but good for the tea. I thought that the tea might need a minute to steep, even with very little water used (about a teacup’s worth, or just covering the leaves) and so I left the tea, accidentally picked up my embroidery… and left it there for five minutes. The tea liquor was a very dark amber by then. To the tea’s extreme credit, I couldn’t actually tell it was oversteeped. There was a tinge of dryness, but it wasn’t overly bitter or astringent. I found that the fruity notes were gone here but instead, I found some woody/floral notes.

Cold Brew: I found the cold brew interesting because for some reason, the sweet and grassy notes reminded me of the cold brew for the raw puer. Although in this case, it wasn’t as sweet as the raw puer – I think I eeked out as much flavour from the leaves as possible! This was refreshing!

Conclusion

This was a delicious tea. It packs a punch in terms of flavours and makes for a very enjoyable tea drinking session. While the jury’s still out if I’ll buy it again (tempting but the price makes the cost per gram of leaf rather high), I’m probably going to reserve this tea for myself or tea sessions with friends who I know will appreciate this.

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