Vahdam Tea Advent Calendar: Day 1 - Himalayan Green Tea
The packaging is STUNNING and eclipses every other tea advent I've done to date. The outer box is heavy pressed paper/cardboard with a nice smooth coating and two magnets to help it snap closed. I love that the boxes are in order instead of all mixed up (a thing so many advent calendars do which actually really annoys me). Each box contains a little tin which is individually sealed with a plastic safety seal that has enough loose leaf tea to make an entire pot. This means I get to share the daily teas with the rest of the household and get multiple palates worth of feedback!
So then - on to the first day of tea!!
Day 1 is a Himalayan Green Tea (see how pretty the little tins are!!!) Now, when it comes to green tea, I'm most familiar with Japanese green tea, which, on average, is grown at a lower altitude than most of the entire country of Nepal. So, I was interested to see how a Himalayan green would be different from what I'm used to.
The leaf looked bigger and less tight than the greens that I'm used to. After all, my usual gunpowder green is so tightly balled that it could be considered little pellets. The result, of course, was that this leaf unfurled much quicker once in the hot water - which gave it more surface area in the steep. Mum's palate noticed this IMEDIATELY - but we'll get to that.
The nose of the dry leaf was fresh grass, mountain underbrush, and a slight touch of mint (even though there is no mint in the blend).
Once steeped, the nose on the tea was an earthy almost petrichor scent but again with a strong mint component - Sean called it close to a spearmint and for him that was the dominant note in the nose. He claimed it filled the whole kitchen after I brewed my pot.
The color was what I expected from a green tea.
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Flavor: Hot off the steep it has a very light flavor. So light in fact that my first few sips tasted like nothing but hot water. A quarter of the way through my cup I started getting the traditional grassy end note of green tea. Half way through my cup the mint because the top note on every sip - which makes sense since it's in the scent of the tea. As for the rest of the flavor, it's hard for me to describe without comparing it to other teas.
You see, as I mentioned before, I'm more used to a lower altitude Japanese green tea. That having been said, I'm also quite familiar with high altitude leaf from some of my Taiwanese black teas and there is something in the flavor of this tea that does in fact remind me of those high altitude black teas from Taiwan.... I just don't know how to describe what in the flavor of this is the "high altitude" flavor.
I have a Chinese silver tip high quality tea that shares a flavors with this green - the best I can do to describe that similar flavor is that they both have a mid note that tastes the way a peony smells.
Most greens that I'm used to have an undercurrent of a sort of grassy flavor, but this one felt less grassy and more....I guess vegetative is a better word. More like I was sipping mountain underbrush instead of rice fields. In fact, now that I type that - I realize that one of the flavors missing from this green is the hint of rice starch that I always taste on the side of my tongue when I drink a Japanese green.
I mentioned that Mum's palate immediately noticed the difference in the leaf shape - well, that is because the greater surface area of this less tightly coiled leaf in the water upped the astringency. It has the delicate flavor of a green tea, but with the mouth feel astringency of almost a black tea. When the tea is still HOT, I enjoy the combination. However, as the tea starts to cool, the delicate flavor loses some of its complexity and the astringency feels harsher. As such, I very much enjoy this tea when it is hotter.
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Now, my usual trick with green tea is to brew it with water that is at Oolong temperatures (slightly hotter) - but I think that is too hot to brew this at. I frankly think that Oolong temperatures might scald this leaf. I brewed my pot at White Tea temperatures (between traditional Green and Oolong temperatures) and my palate can in fact taste just a touch of scalded flavor in the end note of the cooled end of the pot. That means that this isn't a blend that you can really brew in mass quantities. This delicate and finicky little baby needs to be brewed a single cup at a time so that you can have it hot without scalding it and to keep the astringency from overpowering the flavors. An electric mug to keep it warm would also be an idea.... but I specifically didn't want to use mine because I drink black tea out of it WAY too much and didn't want to muddle the flavors.
Final thoughts: I'm glad I have some leaf left in the tin. I very much want to brew myself another cup to be able to enjoy it again fresh and hot. If I was out of green tea, I would consider buying less Japanese green to make room for this as a green tea option - however, I would not replace my Japanese green tea with this completely. That having been said, if I was going to bake green tea flavored cookies or a cake and I didn't want the specifically matcha flavor - THIS is the green tea that I would bake with.
8.5 out of 10
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