We’re continuing the Georgia tea reviews with my second Georgian tea from What Cha! I think this finishes up most of the What Cha haul (except for the mystery tea) and I’ll probably take a mini-break from opening new packets to focus on finishing the teas that are already open after this.

I was looking forward to this tea because I wanted to compare it with the Davit’s ‘Phoenix’ Black Tea that I tried last week!

First Impressions

Like the Davit black tea, the dry leaves here were thin and twisted. The colour of the leaves were very dark, almost black, and there was a spicy smell about them.

Tasting Notes

First steep: The tea liquor was a medium to darkish amber colour. It smelled malty and slightly spicy. In terms of taste, this was mainly woody with mild spicy and sweet notes. There was also a slight sourness, but only when the tea cooled down. At this point of time, I’m liking this a bit more than the Davit black tea because of the slight sweetness.

Note: If you forget about this tea for the first steep and leave it for several minutes, what happens is that the sour note doesn’t appear but you get a really rich and spicy tea. I think the moral of the story here is the steep the tea for much, much longer.

Second steep: I steep this for about two minutes and it produced a dark amber tea liquor. Interestingly, the slight sweetness from the first steep was gone and the tea was mostly sour and spicy.

This sour note didn’t appear in the second steep if the first steep was exceptionally long, and the tea liquor was rather pale. So it resembled the fourth steep (see below) if I used a more conventional short (1 min) to long steeping time past.

Third steep: The tea liquor is still fairly dark, but it’s less sour now with a more pronounced woody note.

Fourth steep: The tea liquor is a lot lighter and the sourness has completely disappeared. It’s woody and slightly sweet, but without the rich spiciness that marked the first steep.

Spent leaves: The spent leaves here have opened up (quite a bit more compared to the Davit black tea) and there’s a reddish tinge to the leaves.

Overall Thoughts

I’m really intrigued by the fact that both Georgian teas that I tried had spicy and sour notes. I wonder if this is due to terroir or if it’s more of the way I brewed them. The brewing directions on the box did suggest 95 degrees, which I used so, at the moment, I’m leaning towards terroir as the reason for these two rather distinctive notes.

Personally, I prefer this to the other Georgian tea due to that little bit of sweetness, but I’m definitely going to do a side by side tasting when I get the chance. If I do that, I’ll probably brew this Western-style (longer steeps, though less water than the normal Western style). I suspect that will suit the tea much better.

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