Just before 2021 ended, I saw this post on Instagram from Hachimanjyu (more about the farm here) on a new tea that they were bringing out:

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A post shared by 八万寿茶園 (@hachimanjyu_tea)

Basically, they had a lot of tea flowers blooming this year, so they decided to blend them and make a limited edition flower black tea! I’ve never tried a tea like this before so I made sure to get my hands on this.

The packet itself is pretty tiny – 6g in one packet! This is good for roughly two tea sessions, since the recommended brewing guidelines is to use 3g of tea for 200ml of hot water and to steep for 2.5 minutes.

First Impressions

As you can see, the tea flowers were dried and then generously mixed into the tea leaves. There was a very distinct floral smell and I was very excited to see what kind of tea liquor I’d get from these leaves.

Tasting Notes

Despite a two and a half minute steep, the tea looked and tasted lighter than expected. We get a very strong floral note, of course, and the tea itself is very sweet. It’s kind of hard to describe the floral note; I once thought of jasmine, but it’s not quite that either. I suppose this is basically how the tea flower tastes like.

The second and third steep were still really floral, though the intense sweetness of the first steep wore off by the third steep. Still, it was a really pleasant tea to drink. I found the tea to be pretty consistent in look and taste for the first two steeps and was lighter at the third steep. The fourth steep is pretty much tasteless, so I think three steeps is the maximum for this tea.

Here’s a look at the spent leaves! The flowers are more or less intact, though you can see some petals have fallen off.

Overall, this tea is really delicious and I’m so glad I bought it! It’s very interesting to see how the tea flower tastes like and of course, it’s no surprise that it blends well with black tea. By the way, the next tea I’m reviewing is also a Japanese black tea – so stay tuned for that one, I’m really loving it!