This tea is from TakeT take away tea shop from Jyväskylä, Finland. They also have a nice webshop you should really check out.
Fast review
Yunnan Pine Needle is a full bodied black tea which is easy to make and enjoy. The taste and aroma are strong but sweet without any noticeable bitterness. This is a good tea to enjoy while writing a novel or working on schoolwork. Leaves can be steeped a few times depending on your taste.
Pouch and instructions
Teas from TakeT are sealed inside a plastic-metal-paper pouches which have a self-seal.
While the pouch is paper from the outside the inside is metal film coated with plastic. This is a good way to ensure your tea stays fresh for a while longer. You don’t have to take the tea out of the pouch to store it. For me this is quite convenient.
Instructions are simple: one tea spoon, 2-4 minutes and 100 degrees of celsius. You have to presume that this is meant for 1,5-2 deciliters of water. As the tea is strongly shaped the spoon is quite useless tool for measuring the fresh tea leaves. In the end I just poured them in the strainer of my tea pot.
Fresh leaves
As I open the white pouch the first odor is strong but pleasantly soft and sweet. Even sweeter than black teas from Yunnan usually are. I’d say this one is malty sweet with a hint of brown sugar. What a nice and well rounded odor! Count me interested.
Leaves are pine needle shaped as promised. And their color is a mixture of dark green, almost black leaves and yellow leaves. Longest needles are about four centimeters long. Very beautiful mixture of younger leaf buds and longer older leaves. The shaping is always of an interest for me since it both gives the leaves an aesthetic values and brings forth different aromas inside the cells than simple CTC-bruising (Cruch Tear Curl -method that is used in the “western” tea countries).
Steeping
I put a heapful (about three large dinner spoons) of long needle-like leaves on the open strainer inside my tea pot (Hario 3 dl glass pot with a large open strainer). Freshly boiled water over them and now just wait for two minutes. I usually dislike drowning leaves in hot water since in my opinion it “burns” them but I’m more confident to do this with Yunnanic teas. In my experience they rarely “burn”.
After two minutes the brew is ready. The liquid is cloudy reddish brown. A really warm looking liquid that is just waiting for you to take a sip.
Mellow. That is the word that comes into my mind from the first taste of this tea. Taste is not strong but it is there. It is hard to characterize. The odor from the liquid is quite similar to the fresh leaves. It is sweet but it doesn’t come out in the taste. After few sips the tea is still the same – strong body that can be felt all around your mouth but no upper or lower notes of aroma in it.
The aftertaste is as round as the odor promised but also slightly astrigent. I can’t gather anymore tactile sensations or aromas after it.
Judgement (and alter-steeping)
This isn’t a particularly (or at all) sweet tea. The tea has a full body with a slight astrigency. And that’s about it. A good tea when you have something with it. But slightly annoying to drink just by itself. Still there is something in there that keeps me returning to this tea. As if I just haven’t found out how to steep it in correct manner. Maybe it’s playing with me. =/ I’m baffled.
I had time for a little test and I wanted to see if I could steep a more flavorful liquid with lower temperature and with more leaves. More leaves bring out the astrigency and give the tea even fuller body but lowering the temperature doesn’t seem to bring out any further aromas or sweetness. Even more bafflement!
Final review
Pouch and instructions: 3/5 excellent pouch but lousy instructions.
Tea – fresh: 4/5 sweet and full bodied, beautifully shaped.
Tea – infusion – color n feel: 4/5 warm looking and beautiful.
Tea – infusion – taste n progression: 3/5 good base but no progression or notes.
Bonus: It baffled me!
Overall: 4 / 5
Tea-O-Matic 