I’ve enjoyed a week of tasting some really amazing teas!  Various friends have given me samples of unusual and rather special leaves to try and I wanted to share the experience of tasting them with you all.  My friend Sayaka Nakanoji, who has a tea business called Silver Pot in Tokyo and who I first met at Bagdogra Airport when we were both on our way up to Darjeeling a few years ago, was in London and brought me some delicious Nilgiri Frost from Glendale Estate.  If you’ve never tried the winter teas from southern India, this is one of the best I’ve ever tried. 

The teas produced in Nilgiri (images of the area above and right) around the year are good but fairly neutral in character.  But when the sun loses some of its strength in December, January and February and the air develops a crisp chill that lasts through till Spring, the tea bushes grow much more slowly and so the flavour of the tea changes markedly. 

Frost teas are noted for their sweet intense fruitiness that is reminiscent of the muscatel notes of the best First Flush Darjeelings.  The Glendale tea that Sayaka gave me displays an intensely peachy quality with the hint of ripe sweet grapes that we look for in a top-quality Formosa Oriental Beauty. 

The dry leaves are long, fine and neatly twisted, rich chocolate brown scattered with silvery tips and a few tiny oaky brown and bright green baby leaves – enticingly pretty! The wet leaves are perfect, unbroken, plump shoots of two leaves and a bud with the most beautiful tawny and green shades and an aroma that is as jammy and sweet as peach preserve – the sort that is packed with fat juicy chunks of fruit!  The liquor is wonderful – amber, sweet, smooth and fruity. 

Glendale feels the cold most intensely in January and February and when the six-day-old leaves are plucked, withered, lightly rolled and oxidized, the tea develops a character that is much more exotic and floral than teas made during the warmer months.  Truly delicious!

My second treat of the week was Kamairi-cha which Tim d’Offay of Postcard Teas gave me to try.  Kamairi-cha is an unusual Japanese green tea – unusual because it’s pan-fried in the traditional Chinese style  - just as all green teas were manufactured in Japan before the steaming process was introduced in the 18^th century.  The freshly harvested leaves are withered briefly before being moved vigorously around in hot pans to de-enzyme the leaf and fix the green. 

Just as in China, the way that the leaf is rolled gives each Kamairi-cha a different appearance – some may be pelleted like a gunpowder, or may consist of roughly broken pieces of leaf and stalk, like the one I tried.  My sample from Postcard Teas was made by Mr Kumamoto who learnt his skill from traditional experienced hand-firers and makes his teas from the leaves of 90-year old tea trees in very small quantities each year.

These panned green teas are still popular in Kyushu in the south of Japan but it’s very unusual to find Kamairi-cha outside Japan so I was really excited to try my sample.

The dry leaf (above the left) is an interesting mixture of broken leaf and stalk and the pale greeny-yellow liquor was like any well-made Chinese green tea - smooth, mellow and mild, very easy on the palate with no hint of bitterness or atringency.

Just as all this year’s First Flush Darjeelings (a Darjeeling garden pictured right) are arriving, I was given a packet of Singbulli Estate’s wonderfully fruity tea (dry leaf above left, liquor left and wet leaf right).  Singbulli makes consistently high quality First Flush teas – despite the difficult weather and late spring that have hampered production for the last three years.

As I opened the packet, an intensely sweet, heady aroma filled the air – reminiscent of just-mown summer grass after the rain.  The dry leaves are tiny, extremely tippy and downy, dark green buds – rather like a neat, early, pre-rains Mao Jian – and they brewed the most delicious rich amber liquor that carried hints of pineapple and other citrus fruits. This is a very sophisticated tea with elegance, a fine balanced flavour and an intriguing, very slightly dry aftertaste.  The aroma of the wet leaf reminded me of sugary crystallised pineapple.

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