Today’s teas come from Gina, one of my friends in Indonesia! She sent these two teas from 七 Story [1] via another friend and I decided to drink them while I’m in quarantine (because my novel experiences are currently all book and tea related).

There was only enough for one tea session per blend, so I’m combining my review of the two teas into this post. Also, while I steeped each tea a couple of times, the tasting notes were pretty consistent throughout (albeit, getting weaker the more times I steeped the tea), so I will not have the normal lengthy descriptions for each tea.

Smoky Green Tea

I was intrigued and slightly scared at the thought of a smoky green tea. I’ve only heard of smoky black teas (i.e. Lapsang Souchong) and while I know some oolongs have smoky notes, this is a whole different thing.

The dry leaves were dark and rolled into small balls, and of course, smelled very smoky.

I steeped this three times and the taste of the tea was rather consistent. The smoky note (really very much like a lapsang) was the strongest note, and I got a hint of a vegetal note hiding somewhere in the tea. I’m not sure if smoking a green tea is better than a black tea, given how weak the green tea notes were, but the tea was interesting to drink.

If you’re drinking this and using a gaiwan, it’s worth noting that the tea leaves were completely unfurled by the second steep, so you don’t need to increase the steeping time for it (unless you’d like a stronger brew).

I also took a look at the spent leaves and interestingly, the leaves were really tiny!

Jakarta Thee 492 (Tea Blend No 22)

This one was pretty interesting! The packet had absolutely no description so I was a bit surprised when I opened it up. It looked like black tea with either lemongrass or pandan [2].

The tea steeps pretty quickly in my gaiwan. In terms of taste, the black tea notes were pretty clear and like other Indonesian black teas that I’ve tried (admittedly, I’ve not tried that many). The pandan notes were also pretty clear and I think I could get a hint of the lemongrass hiding behind. Sadly, I didn’t get much chrysanthemum from this.

Overall, I enjoyed these two teas! They aren’t the type of teas I would normally choose, but they are pleasant and an interesting change from the other teas that I normally drink.

Links/Notes

七 Story Website – It seems like they are also known as Koningsplein Tea. Or rather, both Koningsplein and 七 Story are managed by the same company?

[1] 七 is pronounced “qi” and looks like the letter ‘t’ so I’m guessing that’s why the name was chosen?

[2] I googled the tea and the description I found was “made from premium Indonesian black tea and combined with lemongrass, pandan, and baby chrysanthemum” (original: Terbuat dari teh merah indonesia premium dan dipadukan dengan Sereh, Pandan, dan bunga baby chrysant.), so I’m happy on two counts: 1) that one year of Indonesian I did in university is paying off and 2) I wasn’t too off when I was guessing about what was in this tea blend. (Source)