Assamica Agro Green Adventure and Tulsi Green Sensation

Assamica Agro Green Adventure

Tulsi Green Sensation

I'm trying out two more teas from Assamica Agro, a tea producing cooperative from Assam.  This time I'm onto a plain green tea and a blend (their Green Adventure and Tulsi Green Sensation).  Tulsi wasn't familiar, but from their description it rings a bell:


Being known as the queen of Indian herbs, it was only natural to include tulsi in our tea blends. Tulsi or Holy Basil is one of the most precious herbs in traditional healing methods. This spicy and warm sensation will help you relax and charge your batteries for a new day, while offering a very pleasant flavor combining anis, basil, cardamom and mint notes all in one. Fresh and deep green tea is serving as a base of this perfectly balanced blend. Mild and pleasant scent of brew is matched by a delicate and savory flavor.  


Holy basil is familiar; we cook with that here.  This reference goes on and on about health benefits.  And I thought it was just another type of basil.

Review

The green tea smells fruity and rich, with a bit of concord grape to the scent, and earthy and mineral notes below that.  It actually smells nice, for a green tea, which is not exactly my favorite category.  That grape scent is not all that closely related to muscatel, another somewhat grape-like range of Darjeelings (or in some Oriental Beauty  Taiwanese oolongs), with that version closer to citrus.

The Green Sensation reminds me a lot of Vietnamese green teas as I first try it.  Those have a distinctive mineral base of flavors that is common to this, with differences in the other flavors.  There is some vegetable, as with those teas, as in those close of kale (which works better than it sounds, but if someone really hates kale then maybe not for them).  Beyond that secondary aspects are more floral than fruity.  Given all that is going on it comes across as complex.  The mineral helps it work, and the sweetness is nice, with clean and bright flavors.  If the taste ranged into cooked kale more--or cooked spinach, or other cooked vegetable range--it wouldn't be as pleasant, but it doesn't, it stays fresh and bright.


Since I wrote these notes I retried a version of Vietnamese tea I wanted to mention, which is pretty close to this one in character.  It's somewhere between kind of crazy and slightly bad form to put a tea review inside a tea review (like a Russian doll, someone once mentioned) but check out this green tea description for Hatvala's Vietnamese Purple Rain:


...distinctive taste which is a little earthy but with flavours that hint of mushrooms and other vegetables such as artichoke and asparagus.  Brewed sympathetically it will show off its natural sweetness with no bitterness.

Hatvala Purple Rain green tea (Vietnamese instead, but still a bit similar)

that tea that day; not the way they drink it

The "brewed sympathetically" in that tea description seemed to mean using cooler than boiling point water (around 75C / 170F, but that varies per preference), and not over-steeping it; nothing too demanding, how anyone would brew green tea.  Except most Vietnamese people, it seems; they tend to like the astringency and go with full boiling point water without limiting infusion times (per my limited understanding).



The last time I was in Hanoi (almost three years ago now; the time just flies) cafe staff brought a pot of green tea to drink, and trying the first cup I noticed it was a little edgy, from that boiling point water temperature choice.  I started to panic when five minutes went by and the pot still had the leaves brewing in it.  There was no way to "drink down" a pot of boiling hot tea, tiny cup after cup.  It must have seemed silly to them for a customer to dump the whole thing out in water glasses to stop the infusion process at that stage, but I did already get enough of the effect of where the extended infusion time was heading.  Hanoi is awesome to visit, by the way, a generally cool spot.


This is probably a good place to go back and cite the Assamica Agro Green Adventure description:


Smooth and tingling, moss and mushrooms with mineral notes that change to leafy vegetable flavor with subsequent steeping, light astringency that melts into a sweet aftertaste.


I noticed they had more interesting product information on that page:

picking tea in Assam (credit Assamica Agro Facebook page)

PERFECT FOR:  Deep and autumnal taste, perfect for refreshment in chilly days. 

SEASON:  Second Flush, 2017 

FARMER:  Prithivi Group of Small Growers, Dibrugarh (Assam)

CERTIFICATION:  This tea is produced following India's National Program for Organic Production (NPOP) Standards.  



I'm not so sure about the fall day theme but it is interesting that the teas are harvested in flushes (like Darjeeling), that the producer is a co-operative of sorts (I probably should have said more about that by now in earlier reviews), and that the teas are organic.


Neither of the descriptions for the Vietnamese tea or the Assam mentioned kale but they both taste a bit like that to me.  I'm not noticing mushroom so much in either, but some flavor depth for both could be that.  Unless I'm remembering wrong both have some floral tone to them, and a good bit of mineral base, and are kind of similar.  Good Vietnamese green tea is a nice thing, and even ordinary versions are nice, very consistent, with that "Purple Rain" version a good bit better and more interesting than average.  It's a good tea to seem similar to, for the Assam version, if someone is into complex, clean-flavored, mineral based, slightly vegetal green tea with some rich floral tone.


I'm not necessarily noticing the concord grape (in the Assam tea; back on target here).  There is a lot going on for flavors though, and it could include that.  I'd also list citrus, and the floral range is along the lines of lavender, on the rich side.  To the extent that I like green teas in the normal range for green teas I like this one.  It's not really astringent, the balance works, and it's not "straight grass."

Tulsi left (a bit darker than plain green tea), Green Adventure right

The Tulsi Green is really an herb blend, something I don't get to much.  I drank tisanes instead of tea for a long time, for something like 15 years, so I'm open to the experience of them, and still dabble in them a little.  I just never get around to drinking tea and herb blends, since I tend to value the simple, natural range of aspects in plain teas.  I really appreciate the way complexity and subtlety can result from using only one type of plant leaf processed in one way.

The scent of this dry tea is a bit like incense, or a spice blend, kind of hard to describe, but appealing, and bit intense.

I guess it tastes like infused tulsi (holy basil; one kind of it since there are two).  It's closest to lemongrass, based on spices range I'm familiar with, but comes across as an herb blend that also includes lemongrass, with that as only a base for part of the flavor range.  It shares some taste range with licorice.  Of course I mean the black candy and plant type, although I only ever tend to experience the plant flavor in better versions of the black candy.  It's funny how the Twizzlers version sort of tastes like that and sort of doesn't.  That candy is still nice, it just doesn't taste exactly like real licorice.

The complex flavor range doesn't leave off there, but that's where a struggle to describe it picks up.  A lemongrass and licorice blend would taste like this, but it goes further.  That probably would be a good idea for an herb blend, based on trying this.  That reminds me to check what licorice really is, since I'm only familiar with the somewhat chewy candy:


Liquorice (British English) or licorice (American English) /ˈlɪkrɪʃ, ˈlɪkər-, -ɪs/ LIK-(ə-)rish, LIK-(ə-)ris)[5] is the root of Glycyrrhiza glabra from which a sweet flavour can be extracted. The liquorice plant is a herbaceous perennial legume native to southern Europe and parts of Asia, such as India. It is not botanically related to anise, star anise, or fennel, which are sources of similar flavouring compounds.

Most liquorice is used as a flavouring agent for tobacco, particularly US blend cigarettes, to which liquorice lends a natural sweetness and a distinctive flavour and makes it easier to inhale the smoke by creating bronchodilators, which open up the lungs.[6][7] Liquorice flavours are also used as candies or sweeteners, particularly in some European and Middle Eastern countries.


Cool, I did not know all that.  Funny how the British are about spelling.

It might have a sweet tone to it that could be floral, it's just hard to isolate as that.  A hint of spice is out towards one that I'm not completely familiar with, maybe tumeric or coriander.  I do cook and eat lots of foreign foods but my range of taste awareness still has limits.  I can barely remember the names for different types of flat breads with Indian foods.

It's odd this doesn't taste that much like basil, any kind of it.  This herb version I cook with isn't just like sweet basil, and definitely not like Thai basil, which tastes a lot like mint, but in cooking it did seem to remind me more of sweet basil than this tea does.  Then again I'm always mixing it with food, and drying an herb can change the flavor more than one might expect sometimes.  Or it doesn't always seem to, it depends on the herb.  Dried rosemary infused as a tisane tastes a lot like fresh rosemary and infused papaya leaf varies lots in taste depending on if you heated it at all during drying or not.

Second infusion

I'm brewing these Western style so there won't be a long list of different infusions to comment on; this second will do, even though these will surely brew a third.

The green tea didn't transition that much, at least in one sense.  The flavor might be a little less bright, filling in some depth in richness instead, with the mineral range broadening.  It's funny how shifting the balance of aspects really did change this tea but I would still describe it using the same concepts, it's just not the same with them layered differently.  With that mineral picking up as much as it did it's now on the flintier, limestone side leaning a little towards metal.  That might sound horrible but I don't mind it; it's the grassy, seaweed or cooked vegetable range I don't care for in green teas.

The kale had been ok, but the overall balance has shifted more towards mineral now, with some floral undertone hanging in there.  But that's a personal preference thing: someone else could love or hate seaweed or intense mineral.  And likes can change over time.  I started out on Japanese green teas, and did like that seaweed / grass range in those, and then later moved on to liking black teas and more roasted oolong aspects range most.

The "Tulsi" tea is fading just a little, but still plenty intense.  It lost a little in terms of the brightest range, and picked up depth and earthiness.  The lemongrass related effect dropped off a little, and the licorice picked up.  I guess it must taste a lot like holy basil, but then I can pick that up locally, dry it out, and check further to verify that.  It has an interesting mouthfeel too, a slight drying effect, which I don't find to be positive or negative, just different.

I have to close this on the early side.  It's time to chase the kids, who seem to be trying to tear down one of the walls from the sound of it.  I did brew a couple more infusions later but didn't take notes on those; as likely it was more of the same, with limited transition.

Both teas were nice, and trying out a tea and herb blend went better than I would have expected.  They included a rose petal and green tea blend sample, way off what I usually drink, but if that turns out to be interesting I'll mention it.  They also sell the rose petals as a plain tisane and I think per my preference I might like that better with black tea, and it would be easy enough to buy both from them and mix them.

they look like trouble, don't they?

Assamica Agro Queen of Assam review (orthodox black tea)

I'm trying out another Assam version, after comparing two others from Assamica Agro in a recent post.  This version sounded good in the description,  with cocoa paired with malty aspects versus more towards fruit in the others.  I may as well cite that description, since I've brought it up:


Dry leaves offer strong fruity aroma that develops into full-bodied and well-rounded robust malty brew with chocolate and molasses layers. It will leave a bit of tangy feeling at the tip of your tongue that will soon change into a sweet aftertaste. Organically grown, handcrafted by small farmers and exclusively brought to you for pure enjoyment.


The tea looks good, long twisted leaves with some tips. The dry scent is nice; there is some cocoa, along with a but of sun dried tomato range savory tone.  I'm brewing the tea straight Western style this time, no messing around with Gongfu preparation (which I do like doing, the messing around with parameters part).  I've really taken a liking to an infuser that my parents bought me for Christmas (odd they'd get that right); a really basic device that is well designed, shown in a picture later in the post.

It is nice, based on tasting the brewed tea.  I really pick up that savory sun dried tomato aspect more than cocoa, of course along with malt, which is more subdued in this version.  It's definitely not overly astringent, on the softer side if anything.  I can see cocoa being an accurate description but it's not so pronounced that I would have certainly identified it.  It tastes a little like that softer version of malt too, like ovaltine, which of course tastes a little like cocoa.


Beyond that there is some additional complexity.  Some cedar range wood tones fill in some earthiness (on the vegetal and earthy borderline) and fruit range is back to along the lines of dried tamarind.  It's complex but not intense; depending on preference that could either be seen as a weakness in the tea or as just right.  Some Dian Hong can be like that (Yunnan black teas), really nice in character with plenty of depth but subtle.  I'm not really claiming this is like a Dian Hong but related to some aspect range and general character it's definitely along a similar line.


Prepared this way, using standard Western parameters,  it will give up another nice second infusion and a third might be a stretch, typically losing complexity and pulling towards woodiness or even cardboard while thinning.  Shifting the tea proportion up a little and shortening times allows for a better third infusion and might improve the first two slightly, but that choice also starts to depend on how long you want to spend and how much tea to drink.  A 3, 4, and 5 minute brewing cycle (just and example) takes 12 minutes in all, and would still work with a half hour breakfast, but using two 4 and 5 minute steeps lets you rush things.

The second steep picked up a little more caramel tone (they said the tea tasted like molasses in the description; I guess at some point citing caramel, toffee, or molasses gets to be an interpretation as much as a distinction).  I tend to use water around 90 instead of full boiling point for a lot of black teas but as soft as this is and being a bit subtle full boiling point would be fine (the producer recommends 90 to 95; sounds right).


Caramel sweetness picks up more at hot brewing temperatures, which reminded me of that point.  This infusion is still nice, with good intensity for going longer and bumping temperature a little.   The malt just starts to transition to that earlier pine aspect I'd mentioned in the last review, with the savory sun dried tomato dropping off.


Now that I think of it another infusion could transition to pine more, not woodiness, based on how those last teas went, which I liked better.  This infusion version and tea in general is still fine, clean, balanced, and complex, with aspects a good match for my personal preferences.

The next infusion did thin a little but moved in the same direction, more caramel (or toffee, or molasses).  The pine aspect isn't pronounced but a faint version of it serves as a context or flavor structure.  This tea might be ok for a fourth steep or I guess could work for an extra cold brewing infusion (sitting it in the fridge with room temperature water to brew for a day), but I'll just let it go instead.  The flavors range is limited enough that even if drawing out brewed intensity worked it wouldn't be the same.  Western style brewing black tea generally works out like that; three good infusions using relatively long brewing times is plenty (compared to Gongfu style preparation).


It's not really ideal to only try a tea one time for a review, and if I did try it once or twice more I'd probably shift this impression a little, maybe adding an aspect, or clarifying how it might change if prepared slightly differently.  I think this does already capture the basic nature of the tea though, give or take a detail or two.

Conclusion

I liked this tea the best of the three I tried; it's nice.  I'd probably have more to say related to placing it in a range if I'd tried other versions of Assam on this level, but I haven't.  I've tried reasonable versions of Assams that weren't necessarily CTC tea but they were chopped up a bit, maybe as much due to machine harvesting steps used as processing style.

Looking back through this blog to compare it to other teas there isn't an Assam review here, besides blending some in making masala chai.  I went back to tasting notes covering a nice version of one from Lattakoojan Estate in 2013, just before this blog started, and it sounded good but not exactly similar, more citrus and aspects of raisin and spice instead of cocoa and dried tamarind (along with malt).  Obviously I can't really compare them from memory, and the leaf appearance of that tea wasn't well noted there.

These teas have been ok compared to orthodox versions from other regions.  The malt was a bit intense in the first two versions but milder here.  Astringency wasn't really a problem for any, related to being balanced well.  If anything this tea was a little on the soft side, which works well for me, but others' opinions could vary on that.  I didn't add much about feel here in this write-up but it didn't have a lot of dryness or structure too it, just enough fullness to work out.

I suppose these teas could have been a bit more refined, brighter, or intense to compare to the best examples of black teas from other regions but for the most part more than that the character and aspects are just in a different range.  Somehow drinking a tea like this makes perfect sense for breakfast; it paired very well with a granola cereal this morning.

Reviewing Assamica Agro specialty Assam black teas

Assamica Agro Classic Morning Delight

Organic Assam Tea (mixed CTC and orthodox leaves)

Assam is a tea region and type I've never really done justice to, trying a few higher end relatively commercial versions, but never really doing much with better specialty tea versions.  Per my understanding Assamica Agro is moving away from only producing CTC teas, to shift consumer options range and produce higher value orthodox tea products.  We'll see how that worked out based on review.


Upon opening the box I noticed it was half green teas.  I suppose that is a development related to moving away from more uniform black tea range, but those not being a personal favorite--a personal least favorite, really--could be a challenge.  I can still try them and pass on thoughts, and even account for not liking grassy and vegetal range in teas to some degree, to judge them beyond that.


In a sense it makes personal preference less of a valid marker because surely some people tend to drink green tea based on being open to grassy or vegetal elements, so I might rate a tea higher for being atypical, but that may not necessarily relate only to overall quality or to others' judgments.  I'm on black teas for this post anyway.

Kind of different; they sent a few empty tea bags with this set of teas (described on their website here).  I could make tea bag tea out of them.  I won't, or maybe more to the point can't imagine doing it, and already have a pretty good idea where that would lead (the tea turns out about the same), but it seemed cool to me all the same.


I'll hang onto them, and eventually having them around will make sense in some way.  I could use them for adding spices to a stock, for example, if I wanted to take the herbs back out.  I asked them if they would recommend re-using them (they said sure), and that would avoid problems related to composting tea bags.  I would expect them to retain some flavor if re-used but there could be a fix for that.  It's been coming up enough lately it might be common knowledge that even some of the paper versions of tea bags contain some plastic, so it just depends which tea bag materials are used for them to have a chance of ever breaking down in composting.  The obvious fix:  use loose tea.


There is plenty on their website about organic farming practices and fair trade issues, summarized on this page, with a bit on the growers here.  I've got a lot of ground to cover related to this being a comparison review so I won't really get into all that, but it is a subject I've been discussing quite a bit with people in different places, in India and elsewhere.  The welfare of the tea growing and production staff is a real issue, obviously.  It's hard to fully evaluate any set of claims based only on the vendor's input but an expression of commitment in a mission statement is a good start.  I might get back to this subject in a later post.

Review

The "Morning Delight" version looks like reasonably whole leaves (they refer to them as Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (FTGFOP); I would have accepted Broken Pekoe, but I don't keep up with those terms).  The "Organic Assam" version is a mix of more ground tea and broken leaves, described in the packaging as CTC mixed with orthodox tea; different.

They mention this is more or less designed for use in chai (not mentioning "masala chai," the actual name we accept in the West for the spice blend range, but I'd assume that's implied).  I have tended to use a mix of whatever CTC tea I have around (if any) with some orthodox tea for making masala chai, covered in a few other posts here.  I never thought to try drinking that mix of two teas alone, which I'm giving a go now.

As to brewing approach I'm preparing the tea Gongfu style, a version of that allowing for a moderate proportion of tea to water and a bit more infusion time than I use for some other types.  It might have made more sense to just use Western style brewing, since that's how these teas would typically be prepared, but I'm not on that page lately.  I want to compare them to my own impression of other tea types more than to as pass on some sort of standard, objective, complete, reviewer-removed review.  I tried the Morning Delight tea a second time (later) prepared Western style, just to check if there would be any surprises, if it would work out to be quite different.  It was similar enough I won't go into that here, sticking to the original taste comparison notes.

Whether it is even possible or not to achieve an objective review gets to be a bit of a philosophical issue.  Of course to some extent with proper training and background it surely is, but the discussion of how to get there might involve comparing the role, capability, and knowledge set of a hobby tea reviewer like myself versus a professional tea taster.  A person in such a dedicated taster role would typically not be attempting to judge teas from across a lot of tea regions, and varying types they try on a regular basis, and that's exactly what I do, mix it up.

Let's fill that in a little.  I started editing this the next day while drinking a nice Dan Cong (Chinese oolong), and the day before the tasting I tried a version of shou pu'er that arrived with an order of other hei cha and a Chinese black tea.  The day before that I had Wuyi Yancha with breakfast and aged shou mei cake tea in the afternoon, and I've drank Laos green tea and a compressed Yunnan black tea since.  This year I've been on teas from India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Taiwan (in addition to China; always mostly those), with more focus on Nepal and Indonesia in the recent past.  It does come at a cost, drinking teas from lots of places, giving up focus and familiarity related to a more narrow range.  More than anything my pu'er exposure suffers.  But for me the writing, research, and discussion is a function of enjoying drinking different teas, not the other way around.  On to reviewing these then, and I'll try to place them related to teas from lots of other places at the end.

Review

I brewed both teas relatively quickly on the first infusion, using a 30 second or so steep time, thinking that might have prepared them on the lighter side in spite of the higher than average proportion (related to Western parameters).  That ended up resulting in a typical conventional Western brewing intensity, although stronger than a Gongfu approach usually results in for most tea types.  I'm expecting level of astringency to be one of the main factors to review, a main input to the effect of the tea, but we'll see how that goes.

Morning Delight left, Organic Assam right

The "Organic Assam Tea" version (the one with some CTC ground tea content) is strong, but in the normal range, and quite pleasant at first taste.  Astringency is significant, especially given that I'm used to drinking softer Chinese black teas, but it's well balanced as this particular infusion is prepared.  It's not harsh, dry, or overpowering, but balanced.  Beyond that the tea is nice.  Malt, mineral and earthy tones inform the rest of the experience.  I get the sense that in this review I'm going to be explaining the general Assam tea profile as much as describing this particular tea, even though at a guess this is a good version of it (exactly how good I'd have trouble judging; I don't really drink better Assam).

Malt stands out as the main flavor aspect.  From there it's really tempting to say something like "it tastes like Assam."  The astringency is the other main defining element for the experience, coming across as a lot of structure in this tea, but not harsh, so on a decent level.  It's hard to tease out the mineral and earthiness further; mineral is one of those ranges that's not easy to sort in general.  The earthiness is in the range of a dark wood, kind of common for how a more subdued darker tea element goes.  It is a little fruity but not so much that fruits come to mind too.  I suppose if someone pulled some fruits out of thin air, say raisin and peach, they could interpret them in this tea, but citrus and dried persimmon might be just as good a description.  Or there could be a lot of fruit, all four of those aspects, and another four, but all so subtle and integrated that the separation process gets tricky.  Someone less into rambling would say it's only a little fruity.

The "Classical Morning Delight" is a different kind of experience, with less astringency as baseline for that.  In that sense this tea is going to work better for me, just based on not normally experiencing or preferring "bold and brisk" teas, or in other words, a fair amount of astringency.  Mind you that first tea was nothing like ground up commercial Ceylon; it didn't have me thinking I should add milk and sugar to it.  The last time I tried a better Ceylon I actually tried that as an experiment, adding milk and sugar, and didn't end up liking it for those masking the experience of the tea.

The mineral element is different in this tea, and there is a specific range of mineral and fruit that I'm going to have trouble pinning down, which is interesting and positive.  It comes across as lightly brewed, made in exactly the same way as the other tea, while that one could have been slightly lighter, not brewed as strong.  In that Ceylon review I mentioned I also mentioned that another blogger described Ceylon as "tasting like blood," which I took to be a commentary on how the mineral elements combined together.  Or I suppose it could even relate to an effect from a trace of saltiness.  This is not exactly the same, the mineral aspects and combined effect, but it's not so far off.

There is something lighter and brighter going on with this second tea.  It almost starts towards a root-spice effect, off the dark wood / mineral / dark toffee / malt range into a lighter, different taste range.  I suppose that could be interpreted as a bit more citrus instead, in the range of dried orange peel, maybe, or maybe dried tangerine peel.  It's not really light and bright but it's not as close to earthiness as the rest of what is going on in the two teas.  Mind you the teas are pleasant; this is nothing like the experience of drinking a commercial blended tea bag tea (not that there is anything wrong with that; to each their own).

Morning Delight left, Assam Organic right

On the second infusion the "Organic Assam Tea" is nicer, more balanced, with more of a citrus element coming across.  Again I brewed both the same way, for a relatively short 30 second steep, so again this tea will be infused as stronger.  I'll probably need to adjust for that the next time or I'll be reviewing one version that's close to brewed out and another that's in the middle of its cycle.  Lots of pronounced mineral range underlies this flavor experience (not tasting that much like blood, but complex), but more fruit joins in.

One part of that fruit seems like tamarind to me, maybe even across the range of both dried and fresh tamarind; a nice effect given the overall range.  The dark wood element moves a little towards a spice tone, a darker, stronger spice range that isn't completely familiar, sort of like the stronger and less aromatic type of cinnamon effect in some Wuyishan (Fujian Chinese) Rou Gui.  It almost traces into the roast effect that comes in those tea types (roasted oolongs), in the form of the dark toffee sweetness and flavor, but surely this wasn't roasted.  It's nice, especially given there is CTC tea in this.  The astringency is a bit much by soft Chinese black tea standards but moderate and well balanced by Assamica based tea standards (versions I've tried, at least), so it works for me.  It seems conceivable that others could find it overpowering or too soft, depending on varying preferences.

The "Classical Morning Delight" is brewed slightly too weak to evaluate well, using the same parameters, and about the same weight of tea.  It looks like one and a half times more tea in the gaiwan but per weight it's actually not.  The tea is still nice, the aspects are fine, the diluted effect just doesn't present it well.  Instead of the fruit ramping up as in the other tea the woodiness increases just a little.  I think that's probably related to perception difference as a function of infusion strength.  With this brewed twice as strong the mineral and earthy elements would come across more as a baseline structure or context to the tea, even though they would still be pronounced, and fruit and sweeter tones, perhaps spice range, would seem to represent a "higher" range standing separate from the tea.  It will be easy to check that giving it a one minute steep time instead next round, or given how light this is maybe around one minute and twenty seconds.

This tea could be preferable to some based on being much softer; that astringency range just isn't there in the same sense.  If the fruit really does come across stronger in a more strongly infused version then that would help it compare as well or even more favorably as well.  I'll split the preparation styles in the next round, keeping the first version (Organic Assam Tea) on the lighter side, and double brewing time for the Classical Morning Delight, or just over that.

On the next infusion the caramel aspect picks up a little in the first tea (Organic).  This is probably a good time to mention some ideas I just raised in a comment on a group post about brewing green teas, related to someone offering one standard brewing methodology as a suggestion; it's a bit strange but I'll cite that:


It's common to vary temperature for making green tea by green tea type, much lower for some types of Japanese green teas, for example. This one temperature cited, 85 C (or 185 F) is probably a little higher than what is often advised, more typically 80 C instead, 175 F. It just depends on preference though, as also does the infusion proportion (amount of tea to water) and infusion time. Balancing all three in different ways will give different results, and it seems likely that any one person would like different kinds of green teas made according to slightly different parameters best. I didn't mention that re-brewing loose teas is standard, nor did the instructions, but the number of infusions depends on the other parameters as well. Some people really do advocate brewing leaves only one time but they would tend to be in a minority among tea enthusiasts.


The point here is that for some people there would be one standard way to brew Assam teas, with only slight variation required for adjusting for a specific tea turning out better.  But that's not a given.  It would be possible to change any of the factors, and to offset the others to compensate, resulting in a shift in final brewed tea aspects, and in some cases causing some aspects to all but drop out or others to seem to show up.  Using hotter water for black teas will draw out more of a dark caramel aspect, but it will also ramp up astringency too.

For some people all this I'm saying is only common sense, and for others complete nonsense.  For many there is one standard, traditional approach that is how to make tea (of a certain type, or I guess perhaps in general, although that does sound strange to me), but as I see it neither general perspective is necessarily right.  I did brew this orthodox-only version using a relatively standard Western approach that second time, using that lower proportion, with water temperature at 90 C.  Some people would go with full boiling point water instead, and it would just be slightly more "brisk" based on the slightly higher temperature.

Back to the tea.  The "Organic" version is dropping off a little in fruit and citrus, the wood-tone picking up; it's nearing the end of the infusion curve.  It will still brew a couple more good infusions made this way (based on using a high proportion of tea to water and short infusion times) but that aspect transition is standard.  It's still good but probably leveling off in terms of some of the nicer aspects being present.

The "Morning" version is nicer brewed twice as strong.  The astringency never does pick up as in the other tea but it adds a bit of structure and an unusual dryness to the tea that is not really positive or negative, just different, to me at least.  If that's some sort of chemical effect I'm picking up it might not be so negative to experience but there could be a health impact, but I'm guessing it's just the way the astringency in that tea type comes across.  I buy the organic production claims.

There is fruit present in this tea, perhaps not completely disconnected from the citrus / tamarind range in the other version, but definitely not the same.  It's doing something different with a root-spice type of effect, and the dark cinnamon aspect is also faintly present but it doesn't play the primary role that it did in that one "Organic" version infusion.  The brighter fruit tones that were in that other tea are mapping onto more a yam range here, closer in effect to how lots of Dian Hong come across (Yunnan black teas, a type I love, that everyone really should love, per my own preference for aspects).  It tastes nothing like a Dian Hong, to keep that clear, but one aspect seems common.

Kanoka Organic farm photo, borrowed from the Assamica Agro FB page

Conclusion

This went long.  I did try brewing these teas again using a couple of longer infusions to see what would happen and they picked up an unusual taste and feel that reminded me a lot of pine-needle tea.  Usually black teas being stretched to produce extra infusions will seem a bit woodier but these didn't; "piney" instead.  I liked that, and it seemed like it could work well as a contribution to a masala chai, but it would depend on someone's feelings about that taste range.

I meant to evaluate these teas against the range of other black teas out there, even though that's never how reviewing specific teas tends to work.  As with the review process of trying lots of any other tea types I could place them better related to quality, and to fitting into a range of other Assams, after lots more experience with versions of the type, so I'll summarize related to general impression instead.  They're nice.

I still love Chinese black teas the most, but then I've tried a lot of good Chinese black teas and that personal connection to the range of types and typical aspects developed over many years.  As for Indian teas I've drank the most Darjeeling, by far, and of course these don't seem anything like any flush version of those.  It really doesn't work well to say if these teas are "as good" as Chinese black teas, or Dian Hong (Yunnan-originated versions), or even a specific tea.  They're different in character but the quality level is fine, at least in the right general range.

out of tea pictures; here's one of my girl

In the sense of trying something different they worked well.  That CTC / orthodox blend worked much better than I expected, maybe even better than the orthodox only tea, for me.  I thought the flavors complexity and intensity in the orthodox version were ok but not a great match for my own preferences.  Trying it brewed Western style confirmed it; the tea was good, clean flavored and complex, but the overall effect didn't completely speak to me.  As with the last better Ceylon I reviewed these two teas would be nice to drink 100 grams or so of for a breakfast tea but beyond that I'd expect the novelty to wear off.

There's one thing I seem to be missing here; from the perspective of someone who likes conventional black teas prepared as tea bags, would this tea be a higher quality, more interesting, still cost-effective alternative?  Absolutely.  Evaluating them from the perspective of a tea enthusiast based on expectations related to better versions of Chinese black teas might be a little unfair.

Their "Queen of Assam" version is sold as a lower cost alternative but the flavors profiles are described differently, with that tea in a chocolate and molasses range versus this one described as floral and fruity.  It may just be that the aspects combination of this Morning Delight doesn't suit my tastes as well as it could, that those don't work as well combined with the dominant malt range for me.  I'll check back later about that version and the green teas they sent.