In picking which tea to review I looked through what my friend Ralph liked best in his Instagram based reviews, and noticed one of these teas from Gopaldhara is smoked. That should be different. Of course Lapsang Souchong is the main smoked tea, the traditional Chinese version, and I've tried a version from Japan before that was nice, one smoked using the wood from whiskey barrels to give it even more complexity.
I tend to never read any description of teas before reviewing them, to approach them with a clean slate, since hearing a description will influence what you pick up, but it seems like a reasonable time to make an exception. I'll read and copy Ralph's description here, from his Instagram post:
2021 Smoky Muscatel Lapsang Black FTGFOP1 Autumn Flush from Gopaldhara, Darjeeling, @gopaldharateas
The tea variety is an AV2 bush grown in high elevation at an average of 6000ft (1830m), the tea gets heated over pinewood for the smoked flavor.
1st infusion: great! A rounded, sweet, fruity and smoked Lapsang aroma, where the smoke is nowhere bitter or too intense, just obvious enough to blend in very balanced and add to the flavor. Minerality is nice as well and gives an oily viscosity.
2nd infusion: it's a bit lighter, but still very sweet and fruity, the pine smoke shows some slightly fresh sour notes now with a very tiny bit of bitterness in the background which is just typical as these notes are naturally in the pine needles and the smoke itself...
Daily facts: a great version of a Lapsang Souchong and as a Darjeeling tea it's even more fruity and sweet than the usual Chinese Lapsang souchong. It might be not as thick and powerful in the mouth as other versions, but totally makes up for that with sweetness, fruitiness and quality.
Daily rating: 4.8/5
Sounds good. Maybe I can even keep the description short to adjust for including two reviews here.
One thing that stood out was calling this "Lapsang," since that seems to reference that Chinese tea type, Lapsang Souchong, which this isn't (I don't think). In looking up their website description, cited at the end, it doesn't include "Lapsang." That's probably better, since everyone would already know what smoked black tea means. Of course comparing the character / aspects to the main smoked black tea type, Lapsang Souchong, makes a lot of sense.
It occurred to me just as I was pouring the first infusion of water into the gaiwan that Western brewing might work better, since the smoke flavor might extract faster than the rest using multiple infusions / Gongfu style. I guess I'll know better soon enough, but trying it brewed both ways would tell the full story.
Review:
first infusion: it is smoky, and smoke flavor is extracting faster than that of tea. It could still fall into a normal range balance next round, since surely one fast infusion didn't rinse off the smoke, and tea flavors should be ramped up a lot even by a second round. The smoke effect is nice. It's hard to get the level to balance, which I can judge better next round, but a pronounced but still clean effect is also important, which is easy enough to assess this round, since smoke dominates. It tastes like pine smoke. Dryness is at a good level, adding an edge to the feel and aftertaste, but that could easily be rough, and it's not. Too strong and a pine smoke aftertaste would seem a bit cloying, but this is still just pronounced.
second infusion: it's a cool effect the way that both tea flavor and smoke ramped way up, even for using a fairly fast infusion time, under 10 seconds. This would brew good intensity tea Western style at a moderate proportion. Smoke is still a little strong in proportion, but for Lapsang Souchong that can be normal. I've tried much stronger. The smoke isn't balanced with sweetness and tea flavors but it still works, and that should even out next round.
The effect is clean; a heavy mineral base and higher end smoke make this tea intense, but it's not rough, overly earthy, or sour. A touch of sourness is present, or maybe even a medium level, but it works in relation to the sweetness, other flavors, and smoke taste. It's going to be hard to judge if these infusions wouldn't be better combined. I could've "stacked" the last half of the first three rounds, but I just thought of that too. My mind is running behind in planning out this tasting session.
third infusion: tea sweetness and flavor ramped up, with smoke dropping back in proportion. I don't think it's fading just yet, but this was a really fast infusion, drawing out less of that. The way it balances makes for a pleasant effect. A dry feel to the tea, a good bit of edge, but not astringency roughness, works well along with the strong flavors. That feel reminds me more of good Assam than Darjeeling, which tend to either be smooth or have a sharper bite, but not so much the dryness, which seems to pair with the malt flavor in Assam.
Sweetness is a little towards molasses, but it stops short of that, landing more where a sweet version of cured leather smells. Or it's like the sweet scent in pipe tobacco, which may or may not translate over to the taste of that smoke; I've never smoked one of those old style pipes to find out. With the smoke in this it might remind someone a lot of a pipe tobacco effect. There is other range, beyond the heavy mineral base, it's just hard to break out as a list, beyond the smoke and the rest I've described. It's complex.
fourth infusion: that "other range" is really emerging this round. I can see how someone might like this better combined together as two more complex infusions, or how some others would rather experience it layer by layer like this. Smoke, heavy mineral base, and dryness are still present, but the leather / tobacco sweetness is developing quite a bit. A bit of citrus seems to develop, along the line of orange peel, or maybe red grapefruit instead. The leather tone is slightly woodier, but sweet and rich, along the line of cured (aged) sawdust. That's a favorite scent from my childhood, from lots of playing on a huge old pile of sawdust that was part of a long forgotten sawmill operation on my parent's property. No one had any memory of that sawmill, or the trees, but judging from old pictures the land had been clear-cut decades before.
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I grew up in the upper-middle left of this photo, near an old drive-in movie theater |
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a mall replaced that drive-in movie theater, and some forests regrew |
fifth infusion: spice tones ramp way up in this; it's cool that it changes round to round. Citrus is still there, with mineral and smoke dropped way back. If I had brewed this using a conventional two round Western approach I'd expect this infusion range to be a part of the second infusion. The form of that spice is catchy, but hard to pin down. Towards cardamom, just including a touch of fennel seed? It might even lean a little towards clove, or that aromatic aspect could tie back to the grapefruit citrus. It's probably the best that it's been, even with the smoke mostly faded. The dry astringency is dropping out too, giving it a rich and full feel.
sixth infusion: all of the rest fades a little to give way to a more conventional wood tone. This is probably finally on the decline. There is still plenty of positive complexity, but I would imagine it will just get woodier, and although the intensity isn't easing up quickly stretching infusion time to keep that up will draw out less positive flavor range. Citrus might seem more like dried orange peel now, a bit warmer.
I checked the next round and it's just as positive; this might be fading but it's not fading fast.
Conclusion:
Quite positive! The level and type of smoke input was nicely balanced, which makes a lot of difference. The tea input seemed well suited for that, heavy in flavor but sweet and balanced. The form of astringency seemed a little unusual in relation to what I expected, dryness versus light edge, but it worked with the rest of this tea character.
The comparison tasting against Ralph's impression didn't work so well for using two completely different brewing approaches, but it did match well enough. That fruit he mentioned seemed to take the form of fresh orange, then red grapefruit, then dried orange peel. Of course smoke was a primary flavor in the first few rounds, with some sourness joining that, and a lot of mineral range. The rest was harder to interpret, but I saw it as contributing a lot, especially in the 4th and 5th infusions. It was cool how earthiness similar to pipe tobacco transitioned to spice range. Even up to the 7th round this is nicely balanced and complex, and not finished.
I can't really place this in relation to higher quality smoked Lapsang Souchong; I've just not been drinking any versions of that for years. The last I tried was clearly artificially smoke flavored and I guess that put me off.
I've tried a lot more unsmoked Lapsang Souchong over the past 5 years or so, and I suppose this could be a little similar to those. I always did like smoked versions, but it's hard to find versions where the smoke balances well, or where that input isn't a bit off in taste, too sour or contributing a harsh aftertaste, or where using low quality tea doesn't limit complexity detract from overall effect. This doesn't seem to suffer from any of those flaws. The strengths and positive aspects that do shine through are quite pleasant.
Gopaldhara Darjeeling Smoky Muscatel – Clonal Black Tea
This Darjeeling smoky muscatel tea is designed for those who are fond of good quality clonal black tea with smoked preparations. This Darjeeling black tea is made from AV2 bushes which is one of the most flavorful cultivars of Darjeeling; heated over burning pinewood shavings, which contributes to the sweet fruity and smoky flavor with a honey finish. As we are using pinewood for smoke, it also imparts a little pine resin aroma and muscatel flavor taste...
The Gopaldhara smoky muscatel tea is made with hand-picked leaves collected from Darjeeling at 5500 to 7000 FT elevation during the Autumn Flush season. After a little rolling, the tea leaves are passed through the pine smoke chamber several times to get the smoked flavor...
I've been discussing what "muscatel" means a little lately, and it's strange that there isn't a clearer meaning. Let's consider two meanings, from the source of all mostly correct but incomplete knowledge, Wikipedia:
Muscatel (/ˌmʌskəˈtɛl/ MUSK-ə-TEL) is a type of wine made from muscat grapes. The term is now normally used in the United States to refer to a fortified wine made from these grapes rather than just any wine made from these grapes. This fortified muscatel became popular in the United States when, at the end of prohibition, in order to meet the large demand for wine, some poor strains of muscat grapes (used normally for table grapes or raisins) mixed with sugar and cheap brandy were used to produce what has since become infamous as a wino wine. This kind of fortified wine has, in the United States, damaged the reputation of all muscat-based wines and the term muscatel tends no longer to be used for these "better" wines in the United States.[1] In other markets the term Muscatel, or Moscatel, refers to a wide range of sweet wines based on these grapes.
So I always thought it referred to a strong version of wine, towards grape, raisin, and brandy in flavor, also leaning towards heavy citrus. In my mind I was working backwards from what is present in tea, but then who knows, maybe I was always way off, or completely inconsistent. The tea version description:
Muscatel refers to a distinctive flavor found in some Darjeeling teas, especially the second-flush teas. It has been described as a "distinct sweet flavour" that is not present in other flushes or tea from other localities,[1] a "musky spiciness," [2] "a unique muscat-like fruitiness in aroma and flavour,"[3] or "dried raisins with a hay like finish."[4] Though difficult to describe,[4] it is prized by tea aficionados.[5]
The flavor develops in part through the action of sap-sucking insects, jassids and thrips, which partly damage the young tea leaves. The tea plant then produces terpene as an insect repellent. This higher concentration of terpene produces the muscatel flavor.
Right, so sort of related to Oriental Beauty oolong. This tasted like citrus to me, a little, maybe just not so much like grape or wine.
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