Tea Tasting Saturday #49 - Assam Boisahabi CTC

Have any leftover pie from Thanksgiving? Something super sweet and syrupy like pecan pie (or my chocolate chip pie), perhaps? Then I have the perfect tea for you to pair with it!

Category: Assam Black Tea

Purveyor: Tea Gschwendner

Dry leaf appearance: Choppy, tiny little bits of tea, mostly dark brown with a few lighter bits in the mix.

Wet leaf appearance: This is another of those teas which reminded me of wet fish food when steeped. The flat, flake-ish looking bits stuck to the side of the pot when the liquid was poured off.

Steeping temperature and time: 1 teaspoon of tea, 212 degrees, 4 minutes.

Scent: Dry, this tea simply smelled like any old black tea to me. Steeped, however, the scent was much more complex. It didn't have a malty smell but more of a roasty/toasty scent, with a finish of something in the maple/honey/brown sugar family.

Color: Medium copper brown.

Flavor: I was worried that even the four minutes of steeping might be too strong for my taste, but it ended up being, as Goldilocks would say, "justtttttt right." This Assam had a rich, full flavor, only the merest hint of astringency, and I enjoyed two cups of it (no milk) with an evening sliver of pie.

Additional notes: The Assam Boisahabi is a CTC tea, which means it is produced by the "Crush, Tear and Curl" method. Michael Harney notes that this is the only CTC tea he includes in the book. "The flavor is comfortingly stable but also somewhat predictable."

Next week's tea: Ceylon Black Teas