I’m continuing my tasting journey through Renegade Tea Farm with another tea from them! I realised that most of the teas I’ve not tried are black teas, so I decided to give their Renegade Black a try.

This is what they had to say about the tea on their website:

“Renegade Black is a representative of the classical Georgian black tea – smooth, a bit sweet and fruity, accompanied with just enough tannins at the end. It has enough character to show you the essence of black teas, but it doesn’t overwhelm you with intensity. We have fallen in love with the Georgian black teas. We hope you will too!”

First impressions

The leaves smelled so nice, very rich and malty and it reminds me of a Chinese black tea (for better or for worse, when I think of good black teas that don’t need milk or sugar, I tend to think of Chinese teas like the Yinghong No.9 and Keemun Black Tea). The tea leaves are mostly black with some ‘gold’ in between. I was really excited to drink this tea after this!

Tasting Notes

I’m quite used to getting multiple steeps out of my tea and while you can steep this tea multiple times, I felt like the first steep was the best. It was very sweet and tasted like a well-rounded tea (nothing felt lacking and all the flavours worked together). I also found it very smooth with no astringency.

But from the second steep onwards, the tea gets much weaker. In my first session with the tea, I felt something like mild sourness (or maybe it was a lack of sweetness) in the tea. In my second session with the tea, I didn’t get any “sour” notes (which is really a weird word to use because it’s not sour! But it feels a bit like that) but the tea tasted noticeably lighter.

There was a slightly smoky note that started appearing in the later steeps, but without the sweetness from the first steep, it wasn’t as impressive. I managed to push these leaves to 4 steeps in both tea sessions.

The spent leaves looked like chocolate. The leaves didn’t fully unfurl but I could tell they were pretty small.

Overall Thoughts

This was a very pleasant tea. I don’t think I ever got the fruity note they mentioned, but I found it to be smooth and sweet. If I get to drink this again, I may make it a cold-brew or just keep to one steep. The first cup was definitely the best.