Comparing two Himalayan Tea Shop white teas from Nepal

tea described as "silver"

silver tips version

More teas from Nepal, trying out the last of those samples from the Himalayan Tea Shop.

As background, the business founder, Arpan Kambu, is a from a tea selling family there, a younger guy striking out on his own.  The upside is that this is unique form of relatively direct sales, buying tea from an industry insider in a lesser developed tea source country.  The downside is transparency; the details related to the teas and tea sourcing aren't clear, at least this early in the evolution of his business.

Of course most retail tea vendors don't give clear, explicit, complete details about tea sources, and anything less than that isn't as transparent as it would seem at a glance.  One of these teas could use more branding for description purposes, just for saying what it is, but the main point is the tea, so onto more on the those.

Review

One is a silver tip style tea (I'm not sure how descriptive that is as a category; a buds-only white tea), the other made of buds and small leaves, described only as a silver tea.  Typically silver tip teas are seen as a higher grade, harder to make, and more desirable, but the additional complexity of characteristics from including fine leaf matter can be a good thing.  We'll see.  I just read an interesting blog post claiming that both may not be a "true" white teas, from Tea For Me Please:


The Chinese definition of white tea stipulates that it must be grown in Fujian and made from the Da Bai variety of the tea plant. This definition was established at a time when China was the only producer of white tea. Now that we have white teas coming out of other regions like Ceylon and Darjeeling it becomes a bit of a gray area.


Either way, what's in a name, or in this case type-category.

Both teas are interesting, both quite different.  It makes you wonder how closely the sources are related.  Let's check on comparing appearance to another tea sold as a Shangrila White, reviewed in this post:

Shangrila White (reviewed awhile back)

Looks pretty similar, but who knows.  It could be from a producer listed on this site, but even if so that information is not very descriptive.  On to tasting.


The silver tip tea is earthier than teas made from only buds tend to be.  It's light and subtle, kind of how that always goes, with nice sweetness, but the range can often be light hay, sunflower seed, and maybe a touch of floral, and this is different than that.  Or actually that doesn't work so badly as a partial description to start, but there is more to it, so maybe the unconventional part is that complexity.  Something like a trace of smoke comes across, nothing like the smoky-smoke in lapsang souchong, or the much stronger effect in some sheng pu'er, just a trace, one that flashes past in the first part of a second in tasting.  After that other aspects fill out the range.  I'll need another infusion round to describe those further.


The silver tea (what I'll call the buds and leaves style one, for lack of a better name) is not completely unrelated in final effect as that first buds-only tea, also in that similar white tea range, a bit of hay, bordering on sunflower seed, with some floral.  But other aspects range that makes both teas complex is quite different.  Different how, that's the harder part.  The floral range could be different, and I'd not be able to pick that up, because it's a bit light and secondary in both.  One might wonder:  are these teas related, from the same producer?  Hard to say, but they aren't really unrelated in character, and the variation could be coming from the input of the leaves, using different material.  If it works out I'll do a follow-up post on more background from the provider.

The silver tea has a touch of complexity that comes across as savory.  That's an odd description, since it might mean a lot to someone that already knows what I mean, but not others.  It's not exactly like umami in Japanese green tea, but along that line.  In this case it's more like sundried tomato than seaweed, as a savory element resembles in those teas.

Of course umami is the name for an actual taste-receptor based taste aspect, not a flavor, which is instead picked up by the receptors in the nasal passages.  Umami is identified by the tongue, along with sweetness, bitterness, and sourness.  I can't be sure how my body--through various receptors-- is processing this aspect and effect in this case; but with more training and experience I probably could.  Based on having an unusual mouth feel maybe this is tongue related, an actual taste versus flavor.  I won't do more tangent here on tasting but I will mention a great lead for that, the "Taste What You're Missing" video by Barb Stuckey on Youtube.


So the silver tip is brighter, complex, with some earthiness in addition to that light, wispy hay and floral range.  The other silver tea feels completely different, with more depth of range, not so much brightness, and complexity that's not so simple to describe.  I went longer on the next infusion; that might help.

silver tea left, silver tips right

The silver needle tea picks up plenty more complexity.  Floral range elevates, and the feel thickens, that light earth range (hay, sunflower seed) is still present but it doesn't stand forward as much as the other aspects do.  This is a pretty interesting silver needle style tea; lots going on, nothing like those where you struggle to pick out finer, wispy aspects and have to settle for appreciating the feel of the tea.  Or brew it strong to get it to taste like anything, but even then some can still be a bit neutral when prepared that way.  Sometimes subtlety works out well, in can lead to interesting effects, but that's a different story.

The sundried tomato element is nice when prepared stronger, sweet, complex, well-integrated with the rest of the range.  That aspect could be interpreted in different ways, maybe as similar to the jack-o-lantern type of pumpkin (pumpkin types here are different, more like people tend to think of squash, although pumpkin is a squash, per my understanding).  The hint of smoke is still only present in the initial taste, flashing across your palate in part of a second, then it's gone.  That's quite different from the smoke effect in some sheng pu'er, which remains, maybe more on the aftertaste than actual taste, or at least both.


The other white (silver) is also a lot more intense, kind of a given, since it is brewed stronger.  With some white teas aspects can stay vague and subtle even as intensity ramps up; they mostly just thicken, and go from light hay to heavier hay.  There's nothing vague or subtle about this tea.  Floral is also elevated, a similar range floral, which I'm not able to tie to a particular flower, or really even to express much range.  It's sweet and rich but light, the kind of scent one might pick up in a wildflower meadow, I guess.  A bit of earthiness and mineral range fills in a context, most pronounced as a subdued mineral base (like rocks--again I'll struggle with saying which rocks).  The main difference in the teas is that stronger floral replacing all of the savory range in the other tea, and there being more mineral range.

There's a touch of earthiness in the buds and leaves version that could either be interpreted as interesting, positive complexity or as not being quite as clean in effect as the other tea.  It seems a subjective call if it's positive or not, but to me it's clearly pleasant and enjoyable.  It's a bit vague to describe easily, related to that stronger mineral range, but towards a woodiness, even though those are really different flavors scope (underlying earth and mineral ranges seem to somehow tie together, to express some related continuity, in this example).  I think if this silver tip tea was more subtle, if there was less to it, I'd really like this buds and leaves version better, but as it is both offer plenty of complexity, and both are positive and interesting in character.

Another round of tasting could draw out a few more adjectives, and it might be clearer what I mean by these descriptions.  I'm off to a swimming class soon so I'll need to rush this (my son's; I can swim just fine, although I'd stand out on a swim team for having bad form).  I'll make a couple more comments about transition on a light infusion and close this.

they swim; he's part of that splashing at the back

That savory element picks up in the silver tip tea.  What I mean might not be clear; it's a light, sweet, subtle, balanced white tea, with very clean flavors, nothing like a broth made from sundried tomatoes.  I emphasize that element because it's unusual, and gives the tea a great positive complexity.  Floral stands out the most, beyond that a light earthiness that could be hay or light wood, then below that the sundried tomato range.  It's moving more to a light cooked sweet potato range in this infusion, transitioning, still not much like similar sweet-potato and yam taste range in Chinese black teas, but a little similar.

The buds and fine leaves tea is still plenty complex, still showing floral and light earth range too, with more mineral aspects grounding all that.  To me it's clean in effect, and well balanced, and works really well.  It's not as "bright" in effect as the buds only version, but the extra range is nice in a different way.  That trace of mineral depth reminds me a little of drinking an aged (storage-abused?) white tea from a shop in NYC, a tea well darkened by poor large-jar storage conditions and aging.  Of course it's only a hint of that range, a faint tie-in, and I actually don't mind the way that other vastly inferior tea comes across.

"silver," buds and leaves version

I never reviewed that tea, so I'll say a little more about it here, since it makes for an interesting tangent.  A friend commented that adding a review in a review makes for something like a Russian doll effect, related to doing that in a Laos tea review, talking about making masala chai.  If it were clearer what that white tea was I might have reviewed it; a tea from the New Kam Man shop in Chinatown, labeled only as white tea, as far as I recall.  It included some buds and well-broken leaves.  It was probably from China, but who knows.

The main question related to that tea, beyond type, is how long it had been in that jar to darken as it had, and how many times that jar had been opened, details I would never have learned even if I'd asked.  It was interesting for how the white tea scope flavors had evolved, although of course I didn't know the starting point, what it had been like fresh, so there was some guesswork to that part.  The short version:  mineral tones ramped up, a lot.  The tea tasted a lot like a limestone / flint range, much as I could identify that.  It wasn't really "good," in the ordinary sense, but it was interesting, and complex, and not bad, so in a limited sense all that is good.

silver tips versions; relatively large buds

To summarize about these two teas:  they're nice.  They are not exactly like any other white teas I've tried, even different in character from other Nepal whites, to the extent I remember those.  They work well with my preference for not being nearly as subtle as lots of white teas I've tried from lots of places.  I guess that could be seen as a flaw related to other preference, for someone looking for subtlety, specific aspects range, and balance of factors other than flavors in white teas.


I haven't talked much about texture because the teas didn't seem particularly thick or thin to me, in the middle.  It would still be possible to comment on how they feel anyway, related to impact to different parts of the mouth, but I didn't go there. I typically prefer straightforward teas where so much is going on with flavors range that the feel aspects can be largely set aside as an interesting complimentary component, and these teas worked out like that.  For being no-name teas I found these both to be very impressive, on par with white teas from lots of other places and from different types of sources.  Per my preferences they were better than most white teas I've tried, maybe even as good as any others.

Comparison tasting golden tips teas from Nepal, Darjeeling, and Laos

I happened to have three similar buds-only or mostly-buds black teas from three different countries, different versions of golden tips, so I compared them.  Two of them including some fine leaf material, or buds developing into leaves--and one not--is an inconsistency, but then lots of variables could change the results, and they're not supposed to be completely identical.  The point is only to compare similar teas, to taste how final results stand in the cup.  I tried a vaguely related black tea from Sri Lanka not so long ago but didn't have any on hand; probably as well since three teas is enough, and stylistic variations beyond origin differences are already problematic enough.

It's unconventional to compare teas from three different suppliers, stemming from the marketing function blog reviews serve.  This blog was never supposed to be advertising, that function and discussing tea just happen to overlap.  That makes for a good placement to mention that all three of these teas were contributed by the suppliers for the purpose of review.

In general I only review teas I like, since those are most interesting, although in discussing that scope with suppliers I'm clear on reserving the right to publicly express what I really think about any of the teas.  I suppose if a tea were bad in a really interesting way that could work for a post, like reviewing a ridiculously smoky lapsang souchong recently, perhaps due to chemical treatment instead of smoking.  That tea wasn't provided by the supplier; I bought it.  Typically suppliers provide nicer teas for review, so the most frequent concern is describing when preferences don't match a style, more so than for teas being bad or mediocre.  On to it then.

Himalayan Tea Shop golden tips (Nepal tea)

Rohini (Darjeeling) golden tips

Kinnari Tea Laos golden tips (Golden Flame)

The teas, and background

I've already reviewed one of these, a Kinnari Tea Laos Golden Flame (golden tips).  It's good.  The point here is to compare that to two others, a Golden Tips from Rohini Estate, a Darjeeling, and from a private vendor reselling teas from Nepal, the Himalayan Tea Shop.  Maybe interesting similarities and differences will turn up, for example comparison of region related (terroir) aspects.  Of course terroir can also refer to other things, to the effect of the specific micro-climate (eg. amount of direct sun, effect of fog), or the minerals in that particular soil, or to effects from other plants growing nearby.  A more experienced reviewer could say more about trueness-to-type, matching a typical range, than I'm going to here.

The Nepal vendor I'd mentioned in this post reviewing a green tea (a decent green tea at that).  That vendor's name is Arpan Khambu, essentially someone with a family business background starting to sell teas internationally on his own, a very small-business model.  That's an interesting back-story, one that would be more familiar for a vendor based somewhere like the US, but those circumstances change sourcing quite a bit.  In the future his business practice may evolve to include more information about the grower, including details about growing conditions (organic claims, etc.), but due to just starting out as of yet the related information that's available is sparse.

Rohini is a major Darjeeling producer, or really a sub-set of Gopaldhara, so there is information about them and their teas on their website.  Not about this particular tea though, since it is likely not a main production version, and that producer sells teas primarily through distributors, with only the main types described there.

I was surprised that Kinnari Teas had developed materials describing the teas in great detail, just not down to grower's photos and Google's coordinates of the farms.  Here is some background on the teas they are working with that I didn't get around to mentioning last time:


All our tea plants are grown from seeds from ancient wild Lao tea trees. These unaltered tea plants are perfectly adapted to their environment, evolved to thrive in this particular microcosm without the need for human intervention. In our highly biodiverse tea gardens, the collaboration of different plants, animals, insects, minerals and microorganisms ensure healthy and rich soils, no pesticides or chemical fertilizers are required. The tea plants’ strong taproots provide them with all the water and nutrients they need, while anchoring the soil on the hillsides. Each garden is a biotope: their cultivation contributes to the protection of the environment in rural Laos.  

Growing tea from seed and artisanal hand-processing also results in less predictable and more complex aromatic characteristics within one single garden and throughout the seasonal harvests. Like with fine organic wine, each harvest and each batch is an adventure and a surprise.

Interesting!  Someone with skeptical inclinations could reject that as less valid than an organic certification but it seems to really not be intended as standing in place of that, just a bit on context.  The part about genetic diversity of plants of course is a real thing, which leads to more questions about the differences between native types of plants grown through natural breeding versus use of clones (controlled breeding).  There's more on the general background related to this particular tea:

Southern China’s Yunnan Province is widely regarded as the cradle of tea, and famous in the west for its excellent black and puer teas. But plants don’t care about borders, and northern Laos’ geographical proximity to Yunnan can be felt in this exceptional tea from Phousan Mountain in Xiengkhouang Province, which echoes the renowned Chinese Dian Hongs...  Upon infusion, the tea releases rich aromatic compounds reminiscent of Yunnan blacks, but with a distinctive elegance.

That mention of Yunnan and Dian Hongs makes perfect sense.  These teas are not that far from versions I've been reviewing in the not so distant past (like this Farmerleaf autumn sun-dried Dian Hong).  

All of this about the Laos and Yunnan origins isn't to imply that Darjeeling and regions in Nepal are giving up a lot related to working with near-ideal high elevation growing conditions, or that great results couldn't be obtained from working with modern tea plant types or species evolved elsewhere.  It's really about the final results, and different good teas can be produced in different places, which is really the whole point of this tasting exercise.

Tasting

Initial color difference seems to relate to teas including only buds (the Kinnari tea) or fine tea leaves and buds.  That will likely shift flavor profiles a lot, and change the effect of brewing times.  But then it's not science, just a comparison tasting.


The Nepal version (Himalayan Tea Shop; I'll just refer to these by country designation) is nice, darker, sweet smelling as a dry tea, and complex (they all are, really).  The initial taste is in the cocoa range, a bit subtle, sort of malty, but in that softer sense of that flavors range.  Malt is sort of complex anyway, not so definitive, but cocoa and malt describe most of the initial range.  It is nice and clean across that range, with a bit of bright citrus helping the profile.

The Darjeeling version (Rohini, a plantation associated with Gopaldhara, owned by them) is nice too, in a similar range, again malt and cocoa, maybe malt with cocoa versus the other way around.  The mineral structure below that seems to stand out more but it's still quite soft, and definitely not astringent, not even significantly "structured" versus biting, if that makes sense.  It might be the earthiest of the three, pulling a little towards wood tone, maybe even a hint of mushroom, but not in a bad sense, that clean tasting woodiness some wild mushrooms have.

The Laos version (Golden Flame from Kinnari Tea) is more subtle at the same parameters, without addition of some fine leaf content that would allow it to brew out as quickly.  It's more cocoa in the range of chocolate instead, that sweetness extended into those types of richer tones, maybe with a little brighter citrus tone mixed in.  Being more subtle offsets comparison a little; it might make sense to adjust brewing process since it may brew out slower.  I'll go a second infusion at the same times and judge that.

left to right:  Kinnari Tea, Rohini, Nepal tea

On the second infusion the Nepal tea is really nice, that cocoa and malt balancing even better.  Citrus is also there, with some spice tones joining in, close enough to cinnamon.  The sweetness is good and the feel is nice. There is a citrus element, a very light ruby red grapefruit (as a taste only; there is no bite / edge as from even mild grapefruit, just that warm sweet range is there).

The Darjeeling is in a different range, woody, maybe towards cedar, again with cocoa as dominant and plenty of malt (so maybe cocoa even picked up a little).  It's still nice, just different, it trades out citrus and spice for wood tones.  There is a lighter trace of citrus too but a different citrus, more toward bergamot.  The flavors are nice and clean.  It had seemed that woodiness could drift into a less cleaner over-all flavors range but it didn't work out like that.  That hint of wild mushroom transitioned to clean wood tones.

The Laos tea does seem to brew slower, so I'll be tasting it as a milder tea without adjusting to add time.  The proportion could also relate; going just a little heavier would add to the infusion strength.  This tea will probably last longer too, being only buds, or it might transition less later since the other two will see the fine leaves give out while the buds take more time to do that (at a guess).  The flavors are nice, again malt and cocoa (common to all of these), with citrus, and a light woodiness that's not the same as in the Darjeeling version (the Rohini).  That tea is more in the range of cedar, and this is really something that may be more like hay, it just covers the same range.  The last review also mentioned raisin, and between the more dominant cocoa and citrus underlying aspects could be sorted out as fruit, that raisin, or as malt (sweet malt, as in malted milkballs; there's nothing dry or mineral intensive about this tea, the standard pairing with other types of black teas profiles).

The citrus aspect may be the strongest in the Nepal version, or maybe it's that the spice tone adds to that sort of aspect effect, with those two sort of defining a "top" range, of sorts.  It's interesting the way there are so many comparable elements in these three teas playing out slightly differently.

On the third infusion the Nepal tea doesn't change much, maybe just a little nicer.  That cocoa, malt, cinnamon, and citrus integrate well together.  The other "earthy" range is more dark wood than mineral, or just a bit off cedar towards something darker yet, but not at all murky in effect.  The malt sort of has that brightness and complexity it seems to have in very different black teas, just not paired with astringency at all, and with different flavors altogether.  The spice tone (close to cinnamon, but not exactly that) covers range out towards coffee, just a mild version of it, a light roast, I guess.

Rohini plantation (photo credit)

The Darjeeling is moving into a richer, earthier range.  Without trying that Nepal tea just prior it would seem a lot different, brighter in comparison, with some of the same general aspects filling it out (cocoa, malt, citrus).  Due to direct comparison with the Nepal tea just prior a heavy, earthy tone stands out a lot more.  With that comparative bias going it seems a little towards a shou or aged pu'er, that dramatic, but once you adjust to tasting it on it's own it's nothing at all like that, just earthier.

Is all this clear?  It's covering similar cinnamon / coffee complexity range as in the Nepalese tea, just earthier, more centered towards a dark wood, and it seems the difference stands out more than the rest of the common flavors profile--most of what comes across--due to comparing the two teas.  It wouldn't be unusual for someone to attribute that to something else, peat, autumn leaves, mineral range, or something else, but it's clean and integrated, not "off" in any way.  The tea works well.

The Laos tea is more subtle than the others, again with part of that down to brewing parameters issues, trying to brew teas that aren't identical in the same way.  I can taste around that, and let it sit a little longer next time.  As with white teas this seems a little like tasting a silver needle style against a bai mu dan type.  Of course there is less complexity for including one type of thing instead of two (buds versus leaves and buds).  I think I'm biased towards that more complex effect, in general for both types, related to tasting these and for those white teas.  The opposite preference would also make perfect sense; it's subjective.  The tea is great though, as I just reviewed separately.  Cocoa, malt, hay, citrus, and fruit make for a nice profile, and it's quite clean and well presented.  It's possible to ramp up infusion strength different ways with brewing, it's just not possible to add more elements that aren't already there, and those aspects and balance are nice.


On the next infusion the Nepal tea is still similar, picking up just a touch of dark caramel tone.  I would expect it to start tapering off a little from here but who knows.  The Darjeeling version stays clean, with dark wood still pronounced, maybe shifting a little closer to the Nepal version, starting to come across more in between spice and light coffee.  It is a little more earthy than the Nepal tea.  The Laos tea is just hitting it's stride, bright in effect and picking up more complexity, but then it had already been complex.

not so related, but she does love tea

I think I'm liking these teas a lot more for calibrating my expectations to the range more, for appreciating them as a bit subtle (compared to leaf-only black teas).  It didn't hurt that two versions met me in the middle for including fine leaves in addition to buds, more familiar to me and a better match for my preference, that additional complexity.  And all three are really nice teas; that helps.


I suppose I am describing them in such a way that the Nepal tea sounds better, and I do like it better, slightly, but the Darjeeling is quite close in aspects range, so they are more similar than different.  The differences stand out a lot more for trying them side by side; tasted a month apart it might be harder to distinguish the two.  The Laos tea has a different effect going, brighter, in a slightly different range, but it's also nice in a different way.


It's odd the mineral aspects are so subdued in all these teas that I've barely mentioned them.  It must be an underlying element of the flavors context, part of the reason they come across as complex, but quite subtle for all.  I like the way the dark woods / spice range is doing more for the two more Himalayan teas, with different citrus higher notes supporting the more dominant cocoa for all three.


On the next infusion I think all the three teas are dropping back a bit  The same elements are there but they're thinner, and would surely keep getting thinner.  Based on the tasting last time that Laos Golden Flame really is able to go more rounds than one would expect, staying consistent across longer infusion times for a number of extra rounds.

lower left Laos, right Nepal, top Darjeeling

The spent leaves look a little different but the Nepal and Darjeeling versions aren't so far apart, more a slight color difference, with the Nepal leaves just a little darker.


That was interesting!  A word of caution about comparison tasting golden tips style teas:  the level of caffeine in these feels substantial, with that effect going a bit far given how many rounds I tasted through.  It took a good number of hours for that extra level of tweak to wear off.

Comparison review of two green teas from Nepal

Nepal Tea jade pearls

Himalayan Tea Shop green

Background / context

I reviewed a number of teas from a nice source for teas from Nepal, appropriately named Nepal Tea (website here and Facebook page here).  This post reviewed a gold tips version and a green tea, and this one a black tea and an oolong.  Good stuff!  I didn't see this tea (jade pearls) on the site now, maybe just not in the current product line, so here is a reference green tea they sell instead.

Another vendor selling teas from Nepal, Arpan Khambu, of the Himalayan Tea Shop, recently sent me some teas to review, so it made sense to compare versions, with both reviewed here.

Or does that make sense?  It violates a convention about mixing marketing functions, and misses the functional generality of comparing very similar teas.  They're not even the same thing, really, one green tea prepared as loose, untwisted tea leaves and the other as jade pearls (rolled ball style, as oolongs more typically are prepared).  A little contrast in types can be informative too, but tasting very similar teas together highlights a fine level of differences, a benefit that is lost in the other approach.  So why do it?

One reason:  Nepal Teas is doing a kickstarter program I wanted to mention, which I'll get to after reviews.  Also as with mentioning two different Ceylon vendors in Bangkok in the same post recently these two vendors are operating within different business scopes, so they're not competing as directly as it might seem.  Nepal Tea is moving from being an established online web vendor into what that kickstarter is about (more of that?), and the Himalayan Tea Shop (HTS, might work better) is a brand new Nepal-based small scale wholesale-oriented vendor, a completely different thing.  Maybe they could both sell you a kilogram of one of these teas via shipping, so there could be some overlap, but they're basically completely different types of vendors.

And besides, I'm getting behind in reviews.  And if I had posted one review on one day and the other a week later the writing would be functionally similar, just thinner for not working as direct comparison.  On to it then.

looks like green tea (Nepal Tea right, HTS left)

Review

The first tastes of these two teas has me thinking this review will be a mix of describing grassy and vegetal flavors along with explaining how green tea is not my favorite type, largely because of those aspects.  Sometimes I am in the mood for it, and that range does tend to pair with a type of freshness, but I typically like a different style of green teas better.  It seems the frying process used to make Longjing style green teas--a Chinese version, essentially the main one--softens and mutes those aspects, shifting emphasis from grass, vegetables, and seaweed towards nuttiness or cooked rice, still retaining a bright freshness (in the better examples).  But we'll see how these go.



The Nepal Tea green pearl tea is nice enough, vegetal but still on the smooth and balanced side.  There's grass and kale for aspects, but beyond that some richness and mineral complexity.  Another list of vegetables doesn't come to mind, maybe just a push towards a seaweed umami.  The mineral complexity helps it balance.

The other (Himalayan Tea Shop; let's really do stick with HTS) is more in the range of vegetable aspects, but there is an interesting spice tone--or what I'm interpreting as such--below that.  Or maybe just beyond that, and the spatial analogy may not be informative in this case.  It also has grass as a primary taste / flavor element, along with green bell pepper and green bean, so plenty vegetal.  That spice tone is really woodiness extending just a little towards cinnamon.  It works better with that as a balance, definitely not straight grass.  Maybe this tasting will be fine.

Both are fresh tasting teas, perhaps as much a comment about their styles as related to optimum storage results.  It's possible that woodiness did evolve in that second tea as a result of aging, or it could've just been like that.  People make a lot out of how green teas go bad quickly, and I think it might work instead to describe changes that can occur over different time frames.  I tried some of a green tea I've held onto for quite awhile recently, that green from North Korea, which was too novel to drink through quickly and too aged--for a green--to give away.  The freshness does diminish, so for some the tea could be ruined, but flavors shift to woodiness or dried hay and other complexity, just different.

tea growing area with a view (photo credit Arpan Khambu, and maybe Google) 

Tasting again there's probably a bit of floral higher note in the Nepal tea, easy to miss for grass being stronger and mineral undertone below that.   The way the other HTS tea impacts your whole mouth is unusual, not really about feel, but the way the flavors are experienced with intensity.  It might be an effect that would lead green tea lovers to like the tea more, with the opposite corresponding effect for people not on that page.  Both are "clean" enough and pleasant, nothing "off" about them.

On the second infusion the teas approach each other more; odd it works out like that. The Nepal Tea tea warms up a little, picking up a little woody earthiness, but the floral picks up too, and vegetal tones subdue.  I might suspect being a rolled tea affected that end point but I'd have no idea how.  The grassiness recedes as well so the balance is nice, even better.

The other HTS tea softens too, with grass receding, and a different floral tone joins in.  I'll probably fumble putting types to those flowers but I'll try it.  The HTS tea is how I'd imagine sunflowers to smell, not that I think I ever have, earthy, warm, sweet and rich, towards a mild but complex honey.  The general effect is a bit towards lightly browned butter, just not exactly that.  The other tea's floral tone is more like lavender, sweet but different, not earthy, floral-floral.

On the next infusion the HTS version starts to become a bit subdued, probably not giving out yet--I went heavy on tea proportion, although still generally in a Western style--but softening further.  It almost pulls into Longjing range a little, that mild nutty / toasted rice range I'd mentioned.  There is still floral range present but grassiness and those vegetables recede to almost completely dropping out.

The intensity of the Nepal jade pearls tea picks up instead of dropping off.  Floral is still dominant, moving into a more perfume-like range, intensifying.  Along with a subdued mineral range it couples with a slight dry feel.  I bet these both could go one more interesting infusion but I have to leave off, so I'll set them aside to cold brew to get one more round out of them, stashed in the refrigerator in room temperature water to come back to much later.


One thing I haven't mentioned:  which tea do I like more?  Maybe the HTS version, if only because in the later infusions it drifts closer to that green tea range of preference I'd mentioned, a warmer, nutty / toasted rice range (or at least closer to that).  But the Nepal Tea green was great as a really floral version of green tea, quite nicely balanced, complex and not too vegetal.  It seems possible it could even be a slightly better tea, in some objective sense, so that preference comment really does relate to style.  I must admit I really did like the other Nepal Tea types more, but then I like other styles more than green in general.  I did enjoy this tasting though; better green teas were nice for a change, and both are good versions of green tea, complex and a bit unique.

Himalayan Tea Shop left, Nepal Tea right (different leaf size)

The part about the Nepal Tea kickstarter program

The project is a ramp-up of their business, with the focus on the function and philosophy of the company, and on the rewards structure.  So I'll mention the link to that information (here) and site one part:


We are Nishchal Banskota and Sashreek Shrestha, two college graduates and are interested in social development. We are both Nepalese and see the opportunity to improve the lives of people in our homeland and put Nepal's tea on the world map...  With this vision, Nepal Tea is initiating and expanding its social projects...

The tea farm (Kanchanjangha Tea Estate) was established by in 1984 by Nishchal's father, and is Nepal’s 1st certified organic tea garden. All our teas are 100% organic.


That context definitely adds credibility to the later claims that increasing their business really will funnel back to workers' benefit, and their program lists specific steps they're working on.  As I'm reading this the project is sort of an extension of one plantation's sales overseas in the States, although I think they also sell other different teas.  But you wouldn't have to help them only out of altruism since their main focus for "selling" this venture is a rewards structure for contributing, which isn't all that different than tea sales pricing.


One might wonder, to what extent does helping any vendor also benefit farmers?  This line of thought leads straight to the standard set of fair-trade issues.  It re-frames to a question about to what degree improved business activity actually trickles down, and how business profits allocate to other vendors than the original growers.  None of that would reduce to simple answers.  It starts into complicated considerations about how different source-chain models work, background about aggregator companies, or tea processors versus initial growers, or the function of different wholesale levels of sales.  The general idea is that buying more directly would be better, but really who knows, that might well vary case by case.  One single wholesale vendor buying and selling step could source directly from a tea farmer at standard market rates and triple their purchase price, so that "fair trade" would be a lot fairer for them than for that grower or the end consumer, or the one last resale-step vendor, if that also applied.


This leads to consider a little more about Arphan Khambu, and that Himalayan Tea Shop business (more just him selling tea, really); what kind of vendor is he?  Is he rescuing poor struggling farmers from a brutal and unfair source-chain system, or taking advantage of them?  Seems as likely neither.  He comes from a family background in selling tea, per my understanding, maybe just not operating on the same level as a plantation owner.  He's definitely new to selling tea internationally, with that Facebook contact page still a bit thin, a work in progress.  I can't say more about how all that works out in terms of ethics.  I'll review other teas he sent and go further into it then, if I can.