Highest Indian SFTGFOP1 grade Single Estate green tea first flush 2014. Here’s this Indian green tea from Golden Tips tea shop, 2015 and organic. Got this tea long ago, but had no time to review it due to huge work overload I had this spring and summer. It’s arrived in very beautiful “vintage look” canvas covered package with sealing wax stamps, that once were used by USSR post offices too.

Dry leaves are amazingly full in shape, undamaged and have a fairy tale forest smell. Spicy pepper aroma. I’ve decided to use my large new picturesque gaiwan, as I don’t have Indian tea ware yet. Feared to break such a beautiful leaves in a smaller one.

Flash rinse released tea leaves.

1st steep for 2 min at 95°C: feared I brewed it too much time, but it was good, something like a bit overbrewed Chinese Bai MuDan, but with deeper more solid tones that I must explore more now 🙂 For sure very natural, not fermented taste. Very nice sweetness lays beneath spicy but natural tea taste. Liquor was pale green towards yellow. Some bubbles tell us there are good healthy ingredients in the tea. Tea leaves look released after this steep.

2nd steep – 1.20min at 90°C – pleasant prominent body taste. Sweet aftertaste is very nice after each sip.

3rd steep – 3min at 80°C – tea still feels very natural, some sourness appearing, we are getting to the core, after such long steeps. Great aftertaste is very mouth watering and sweet, really high grade tea. I enjoy it very much.

4th steep – 3min at 90°C – it is still producing bubbles! Taste is good, but complex aromas started to fade. So next steeps will fade gradually… But I had a very long steeps to get a hardcore taste, so it’s OK.

As I started to use tea filter for almost all teas, I also stated to notice sediments on my filter. This tea leaves almost no residue at all. A very good sign.

Didn’t tried Indian green teas at all before that. Very nice and potent tea. Could be a daily tea for me. It’s almost “white tea” with somehow more spicy flavour. I will explore more tea samples from this shop, looks very promising. Suppose to find some great black teas from India too. I drank black Indian teas my whole youth in Ukraine, so it’s interesting to know them better now.