Titan Chinese Commodity Express

I ordered a big bag of this and drank through it really fast. It was wonderful and it’s on my list to reorder as soon as my cupboard is a bit smaller.

This is the very first tea I picked up from this supplier and it is still my favourite! This is quite different than Tao Tea leafs version for those who are familiar with it. While Tao’s has similarities with some keemun and jinjunmei I’ve had this tea’s first steep tastes like a rich hot chocolate.

This is a a Congou tea with fairly long dark folded and loosely curled leaves that smell of dark chocolate, malt and a hint of molasses. It resteeps quite well but the first steep is by far the most memorable. It smells of cocoa, cinnamon, hot chocolate with a deeper note of toasted grains, a light hint of molasses, sweet potato skins, spice, honey, and hints of broiled plum.
The flavour is initially light on top with fruit at the front, with plum, opening quickly to sugary caramel notes, hot cocoa, cinnamon, and a charred sweet potato skin mixed with toasted grains and a faint hint of a sweet walnut. The aftertaste is of hot chocolate with a faint hint of cinnamon.

Later steeps do maintain consistent flavour but with cream and malt added. There are stronger nutty, molasses notes that are a little bit boozy. The aftertaste of some later steeps reminds me of brownies.

Overall this is a wonderful tea!

Fujian Zhenghe Gongfu Black Tea herbal tea health tea Chinese 100g bagged tea
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Fujian-Zhenghe-Gongfu-Black-Tea-herbal-tea-health-tea-Chinese-100g-bagged-tea/1980624893.html
(from AliExpress Android)
https://instagram.com/p/0xwtjImKxv/
https://instagram.com/p/0xyKsnmK02/

Now that this tea has mellowed from the fall the roasted notes have combined fortuitously with the other flavours in the tea to create a flavour note that reminds me at first taste if carob. I could also see it tasting like charred sweet potato skins to others. This is mixed with cream and a dryish cocoa note. Once the carob settles back it reveals a beautiful mixture of caramel, cinnamon, and an amber note with a hint of vanilla orchid and a creamy plum note. It is soft, sweet, and spicy at the same time. The tea feels creamy on the tongue but this dissolves to a bubbling light astringency to reveal a slightly cooling and drying sensation which could be interpreted as woodiness. My leaf is slightly glossy and slightly twisted flat blades. They have the same char and carob smell as the initial flavour. A pleasant and easy to drink tea and quite different from my other wild black tea.

I have to thank yyz for posting a link to this Ali store a while back, because this tea is incredible and I doubt I would have stumbled across it by any other means.

This is by far the most chocolatey tea I have ever tried. It’s incredibly rich and smooth with notes of caramelized sugar and a bit of grain hiding out in there. God, it’s decadent. I have to say I think it’s better than the ZhengHe Gongfu I have from Tao of Tea. I’ll have to try that one later today in order to compare. But I’m pretty sure this one has much stronger notes of chocolate while it’s less grainy/hay tasting than Tao’s.

I purchased here http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-shipping-The-50-g-classic-grade-Zheng-He-Gong-Fu-of-chinese-tea-is-belong/2043915983.html and had no issues at all. I picked up a few black teas from the seller and everything was fantastic, though this was by far my favorite.

This tea is one of the maltier versions of a jinjunmei I have had. The first time I had it I used my standard method for jinjunmei’s ( boiling water 5-10s steeps) and the tea overpowered me with the tart upper tones of malt so this time I steeped 1 tsp at closer to 90°C for @1 minute.

The result was a tea that smelled of smoke spice, cocoa, honey, cream, plum.

It yielded a flavour full of grainy notes mixed with cocoa, caramel and a light dose of wood smoke, with hints of malt and plum and cream.

This is a tea where temperature matters. If brewed at higher temperatures this tea becomes very malty and the cocoa and caramel notes are masked. Caramel and plum notes strengthen as it cools. The tea has a nice full body and is heavier in body than many of the Fujian blacks I have had.

The 2nd steep( 2minutes) tasted of malt, caramel, cocoa, plum, and smokey notes with grain accents.

The 3rd steep was similar.

This tea could easily yield more steeps.

The leaf is very similar to the picture with dark blades with golden tips and buds scattered throughout and had a smell of molasses malt and cocoa.

Although I prefer the other teas I have from this seller. This is a nice, good value, malty tea.
I definitely prefer it brewed at lower temperatures where the malt is balanced by the other flavours.

This is a sample from cookies. I’m always willing to try more samples from AliExpress, it feels like such a gamble since you never know what the quality will be like, but the prices are usually really low. These leaves are jet black and fairly large, and they have that fragile look about them. Dry scent is surprisingly smoky, I had to make sure this was the right tea since I thought it was a lapsang at first.

The smoke has lessened a lot in the tea itself, thankfully. This is definitely a very earthy and woody tea, in fact the first thought that popped into my head when tasting it was, “Ost wouldn’t like this, it tastes like wood.” Teehee. There’s also a fair amount of smoke along with a strong mineral taste. So overall, very earthy with a lot of dark complementary notes. Sort of forest floor-y!