Oddly, no matter what I do, I can’t get the link for the picture of this from the Todd & Holland site to show up in the tea description. Which is a shame because it’s gorgeous. It looks almost like a white jasmine pearl. Tightly rolled ampersands, dark green with silver streaks.
This was a strange choice for me today. For the past week or so, the air around me has smelled charred and smoky. It’s the effect of the fires in Napa and Sonoma. Last Monday and Tuesday, the air was hazy and the school district sent out email saying they were keeping the kids inside. No. 2 reported that one of his classmates suffered an asthma attack.
I’m not a fan of smoke in my lungs, generally. I gave that up in the mid-1990s. But a hint of smoke and sometimes even more of a hint can be quite tasty in food and drink.
In the packet, this has a sort of sweet-smoky scent. The tea’s aroma reminds me of the whiff you get right before eating roasted zucchini or red peppers (not a flavor choice on Steepster, so I picked green) — the kind salad bars serve with the black grill marks through them like a badge of honor and slight charring around the edges. It also has a sweetness to it, a kind of vegetable-caramelized smell.
The flavor is much greener and grassier than most Chinese greens I’ve had, with a smoky edge. As grassiness tends to be more of a Japanese green feature, I find this interesting.
I’m a little surprised that the roasted vegetable smell isn’t really present in the taste. I’m also wondering what “Tribute” in the name means. As in, is this intended to be a “Tribute” to “Gunpowder” tea, like a tribute band. Or is it a conflation of the gunpowder appellation with “tribute tea”? I think the latter. Googling reveals that a famous gunpowder, Hui Bai, was made exclusively for the emperor.
It’s a good tea, and I probably will enjoy it more when the air around here clears.
Flavors: Grass, Green, Green Bell Peppers, Smoke, Vegetal, Zucchini
