BOH

Boh is the Lipton/Twinings of Malaysian highlands. Most of its tea being sold bagged in supermarket, with even 2 in 1 (tea+sugar) or 3 in 2 (tea+sugar+cream) mix available, that makes me cringe each time I see them.
While visiting the plantation, I decided to give a chance to the highest quality teas offered and chose 2 out of the 3, based on the look at the leaves and quick smell.
The leaves are quite long and actually look like dried and partly rolled leaves from a tree. At each opening of the box, I smell it and come back with this only feeling : nice black tea, but…
After the steeping, the tea color is golden honey like, clear.
The taste is quite nice and reminds me of a forest, starting with a green taste like grass or green leaves and switching to a more earthy aftertaste. To my opinion, it seems like the taste of a perfect black tea, completely pure and excluding any kind of flavour.

Now come the ridiculous part, which shows how far I still am from knowing much about tea. On the box I had read flowery pekoe; I remembered having drunk orange pekoe long ago. I wrongly assumed this tea would be flavoured with the flowers of a citrus tree;) Therefore I was surprised not to notice any tangy smell on the leaves, neither on the tea while/after steeping, nor any taste while drinking it.
I then decided to research a bit and understood that flowery pekoe just relates to the quality of the leaves selected for making the tea; flowery pekoe being either the highest or second highest quality range, according to this British classification used throughout India and former British colonies (such as Malaysia).

So this is probably the explanation to my good but not excellent rating to this tea. Despite my conviction this tea is probably a very fine unflavored black tea, but I’ll probably never know for sure as I’m not so keen on black teas, especially when unflavored. At least, this tea helped me understanding that.

Grown in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. Great tea from this plantation, Boh. Excellent climate conditions for growing in, produces very flavorsome teas.

My favorite blend in the ‘flavored’ departmant of blacks.
The leafs look very moist and juicy. The odor of this blend is fascinating from the moment of opening the tin until putting the tea cup to one’s lips.
Obviously very warm spices were used for this fine blend. Very comforting in winter time and rather cooling during summer. Suppose one might get a excellent ice tea out of it (although I never did and probably never will).
By the way, a handful of dried plums go great with that tea.
None of the spicy chai blends I tried before got close to the excitement of drinking this BOH blend…my palate gets confused with all this ginger, sandalwood, cinnamon and endless other notes that get thrown in common chai blends nowadays. Therfore: two thumbs up for BOH.

Oversteep it this time. But still as good. Will keep it below 8 mins the next time.

Rich and smooth. It tastes so good that I actually prefer to go without milk(my usual practice).