Vahdam Teas

This is the 2017 harvest.

I am very excited for this year’s spring teas, for I have a hunch that this will be much better than 2016. This will be my first tea of the spring teas, and this will be a first from this company as well. I usually get my Darjeeling from a few other places, but I have been hearing good things about Vahdam.

I am a huge fan of Upper Namring estate. Their teas are always crisp and refreshing with good fruity sweetness and a short bite. These leaves were small and slightly curled with fresh scents of flowers and sweet tree fruits. I take another inhale to bring about brown sugar and honey butter undertones. I grabbed my tetsubin and scooped in what I had. The brew is sweet and rich. A base of pine notes brings unripe mangoes to the palette. The tea finishes with a light bite that cleanses the palette and sweet succulent aftertaste. The liquor is aromatic with heavy honey roasted almonds and sugar crusted papaya. The taste continues to be smooth and rich with a great complexity of heavier molasses/brown sugar maple tones and higher softer florals/fresh white flesh fruit. This was a great Darjeeling, and a wonderful start to a joyous season!

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Sticking with western brewing today as it takes less of my time while I am building a new display cabinet from Ikea for holding tea and teaware. This is a fairly nice black tea. Not as tasty as a first flush black tea but much stronger. So far all thye teas I have tried from Vahdam Teas have been good. This one is not bitter or astringent but I am not sure how to describe the main note. This one is strong enough that you could add milk if you wanted.

I steeped this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 3 minutes.

Now this one from Vahdam tastes like a black tea. It is strong and robust with notes of malt in there. There is a little bitterness but not much. This is one I could see adding milk too but I did add sugar. I won’t go as far as to say I found chocolate notes. It is not as good as their first flush Darjeelings but still good. Of course this is a Assam so I expect it to be stronger. This is a good one to buy if you like a nice strong cup of tea.

I brewed this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 3 minutes. I think it would have been better with a 2 minute steep.

This is an excellent tea. It has got a fruity note to it. It is a much lighter brew than the average black tea. It has no malty tones nor any astringency. I really can’t think of this as a black tea but it certainly does not taste like a green either. In my opinion first flush Darjeelings are a type of tea of their own.

I brewed this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 3 minutes.

This is a tasty and somewhat malty breakfast tea. It is not as strong as an Irish breakfast tea I think but somewhere around the strength of an English breakfast tea. I am fairly sure this is a blend of teas but the website doesn’t seem to say. It is very good and not so bold as to need milk.

I steeped this twice in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water. I steeped for 3 minutes and 5 minutes.

When I grabbed this to brew I thought I was grabbing a black tea so I brewed it at a bit higher temperature than green tea normally gets. Doesn’t seem to have effected it though. This is very good tea but it doesn’t taste like a green to me any more than the first flush black tasted like a black. I am somewhat at a loss to describe the flavor of it. Sweet but not bitter. Not vegetal or particularly grassy like a green. It is just very tasty.

I brewed this once in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 3 minutes.

While this tea is a little bolder than the first flush I drank a few minutes ago it is not a real strong black tea but still a somewhat lighter taste to it. It had a sweet note with only a little bitterness and no astringency. There were fewer green leaves as in the first flush but there still were some. I don’t know if this tea is 100% oxidized like a regular black tea. It is quite good.

This is a very good tea that I would buy again for sure.

I steeped this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 3 minutes.

Drinking this one now. It is quite good. It has a very light flavor to it and is not a dark a brew as the average black tea. There were a fair amount of green leaves mixed in with some black leaves. This as I understand is common with Darjeeling first flush. This tea has a natural sweet note to it an really no bitterness or astringency. This was my first direct order from India and it was lightning fast at about three days from when I put in the order. They shipped via Fedex and it was delivered before 10:30 this morning.

I brewed this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 3 minutes. I should note that while this has a lot of green leaves it does not taste at all like a green tea. In taste it is really somewhere in between a black and green with it being closer to a black tea.

GCTTB

Quite enjoying my cup of this one. The flavour seems to modify every few minutes as it cools, alternating between stone fruit, muscatel, and soft tones of honey. The tea writeup claims dark chocolate, but I am not quite able to target that flavour in my sips. Clearly, more practice with darjeelings is needed.

Thank you, Mackie, for adding this one to the box.

A distinct fruity flavour unlike the dominating floral flavours of First Flush Darjeeling, it makes for the perfect late afternoon companion. More so if you are stuck with a never-ending presentation. Its mellow flavour calms the mind while alerting the senses, the perfect cuppa to see you through a long day.

Must have! Highly recommend it.

Jungpana is one of the few estates in Darjeeling that never fails to live up to the standards each year. Their definitive muscatel essence sets it apart from the other lighter-bodied First Flush teas. I particularly relish the burnt wood aftertaste.

I saw this tea recommended in a book about teas and so had to try it. The flavor is deep and somewhat fruity with a rich finish. There’s a delicate astringency at the end that’s not unpleasant, but the best part for me are the complex tastes at the front. There’s a lot of depth in this tea, and I can tell I’m gonna enjoy experimenting with steep times to get the most out of it.

I’m not usually one to go for white teas but having heard so much about Arya Pearl and visiting their factory in Darjeeling, I decided to give it a try. I have not regretted it. The Arya Pearl is a sublime tea with its floral flavours and a hint of sweetness in the aftertaste. I hope to take in a lot more of its goodness.

I was looking for a true Peshwari or Kashmiri style chai with a green tea base, green cardamom, almonds and saffron. Very difficult to find among a lot of other cinnamon and clove black chais.

It was difficult to brew this to taste. At first I brewed too strong and burnt the leaves at 200 F. It was extremely bitter and astringent. Then I decreased my ratio of leaves and temp to 176 F, and it was too weak and still astringent. The cardamom was quite pungent and prominent; although I love cardamom, it overpowered any other flavor.

Beautifully fragrant with profound floral notes, yet bitter, despite a light touch with time and temperature. Hard to rate. Were it not for the bitter elements, I’d give this an 80’something. But the bitter notes turn me off quite a bit and merit something in the 50s or 60s. I suppose a 65 is about right.