It’s time for me to start on one of the teas that I’ve been looking forward to the most in my What Cha Haul – the Georgian teas! I’ve been eyeing the teas from Renegade Tea but the shipping cost has been a pretty big deterrent. So when I realised that I could try two teas from Georgia, I decided to add it to the What Cha basket.

According to the product page on What Cha, this tea is made by “Davit Tenieshvili [who] resurrected a small abandoned 80 year old tea garden and built a custom wooden tea processing unit.”

Let’s dive in!

First Impressions

The dry leaves are extremely dark, almost black (instead of the reds I’ve come to expect) and twisted. It has a deep, spicy fragrance that smells familiar somehow, and also bodes well for the tea.

Tasting Notes

First steep: The first steep produced amber tea liquor with spicy and woody notes, and something that almost feels like…sourness? I’m not really getting malty or sweet, which is what I expect from a black tea. I’ve played around with this tea for about three tea sessions, and I’ve found that even if you’re steeping the tea gongfu-style, you need to steep it for several minutes.

Second steep: The tea liquor here is slightly lighter but the “sourness” is definitely stronger and I’m getting a slightly stronger woody note. There’s still a bit of a spicy note and I’m reminded of the Santomi Black Tea from Hiraoka-en (though that black tea was sweeter).

Third steep: The tea liquor is an even lighter amber colour now, even though I have increased the steeping time. I had this third steep with some garlic bread and it was interesting to know that the sour note seems to be cancelled by it. This would mean that this is a tea that can be drunk with slightly buttery and savoury foods.

Spent leaves: The spent leaves a bit redder than the dry leaves, but they are still very thin and wiry – This was a surprise because I had half expected them to open up due to the long steeping times.

Overall Thoughts

While this was an interesting tea, I’m not sure if it’ll become a staple in my tea cupboard. I’ve been playing around with steeping temperatures and times for plain tea, but I can’t seem to conjure up the sweetness that I think would help give this tea depth. I’ll have to try this with milk and sugar and see if that helps.

But in general, I would recommend slightly more leaves and longer steeping times for this tea. The flavours were best in the first steep, but I will probably do about two steeps per session for this, making this a tea that I will drink when I don’t want to overdose on caffeine from multiple infusions.