Two Teas - An Indian and a Hawaiian!

First - as promised - the poppet. :) (That's for you, Stacey.)

I'm back from the weekend's wedding festivities. My cousin looked beautiful and it was five days of time with family. I have eleven cousins on that side of the family, most with spouses or partners, and nearly everyone made it up to Maine for the big day. It was amazing to see everyone and rehash all our childhood memories. (And to create some new "childish" memories.)

Now, it's time to get back to business. Some friends and I have been developing a pseudo writing group to help keep each other motivated. I promised that I'd do a couple posts a week at minimum so now I have even more people keeping me accountable. I really love doing the blog and I'm so appreciative that so many of you take the time to write.

I have recently added some new "operating rules" to the blog. They can be found via the "About Us" section at the top of the blog. These are promises that I am making to you as my readers. I have re-printed them here for your convenience:

• Tea Pages will always be a site dedicated to providing fun, educational, and (hopefully) interesting information about the world of tea.


• I will do my best to provide unbiased opinions. Readers should always remember that these are simply my opinions. They are no more or less valid than your own opinions.


• I am also a freelance writer so I will occasionally do work for tea companies. I will not review any tea from those companies during my period of employment. For companies with whom I have "click through"/affiliate agreements on my website, I promise to continue to give unbiased opinions that you can trust are solely mine.


• I promise to disclose when I receive a tea, book, or product as a free sample.


• I commit to donating a percentage of proceeds from "click-throughs"/affiliate/donations to charity each year.


• I promise to respond promptly to any concerns you may have about my reviews, the blog, or any perceived bias.


• I promise to do this as long as I love what I do.
  

NOW, WHAT ABOUT THE TEA? I know. Let's get back to what you all came here for.

Darjeeling Okayti 1st Flush FTGFOP1 - Tea Source

First, let's dispense with the acronym: FTGFOP1. It represents Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe 1. The "Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe" part suggests that this tea is a whole leaf tea composed of large golden tips. The Finest means that it is a particularly high quality plucking of this type of tea. The 1 is an additional designation indicating a slightly better grade than other teas of the same type.

First Flush means that this tea was collected during the first harvest of the season. This particular tea hails from the Okayti Estate in the Darjeeling region of India. In general I think you will find 1st flush teas to be a bit lighter with more green tones than 2nd flush.

The dry leaf was absolutely gorgeous. The color mix was striking - chocolate browns, emerald, and golden tips. It smelled very springy and fresh to me, slightly reminiscent of asparagus.

I brewed 1 tsp of this tea for 3 minutes. The liquor had a bit of a peach tone to it. The scent was peachy, with another note of broccoli.

I was struck by how long lasting the flavor of this tea was. I picked up the flavor of apricot. It was a buttery tea, with a rich full-bodied mouthfeel.

This was an excellent 1st flush Darjeeling.


Kilinoe Green - Narien Tea

I have been positively ecstatic about this tea. It really feels like a watershed moment for me. Hawaii has now become the second location in the country that is growing tea for commercial sale. Tea has been being grown on the island for several years now. (The source of this tea, Big Island Tea, planted their crop in January 2002.) There are, I believe, four tea producers in Hawaii right now, but this is the first Hawaiian tea that will be sold on the US mainland. (I will certainly do a post with further exploration of the Hawaiian tea industry in the future.)

This tea is organically grown on the "volcanic slopes of Mauna Loa," according to Narien's website. The Chinese methods of harvesting, rolling, and firing by hand are used.

Now, on to the specifics of this tea. The dry leaf is very long and curly. It does not have a particularly tight twist. There actually didn't seem to be very much uniformity of the leaf form. I was also surprised to find the leaf very springy, not crisp. I didn't feel like I'd seen that in a tea before.

The scent was sweet and fruity - a bit like nectarines.

The liquor was a very pale yellow and the scent was extraordinarily subtle. Surprisingly subtle.

The flavor was striking. Although prepared in the Chinese style, the flavor reminded me more of Japanese greens like Fukamushi. I detected flavor like broccoli.

I was really taken by this tea. I'm not sure if it's the story, the provenance, or the tea itself that I like. At any rate, my interest in supporting this new growing area will certainly lead me to place another order.

Taken from http://teapages.blogspot.com/