Vahdam Teas

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Recent Tasting Notes

85

The description from Vahdam Teas is on the mark. This tea is pretty complex, and I wouldn’t brew it for any longer than 3 minutes to avoid becoming overly astringent. Maybe a little too far on the grassy side for my taste, but the distinct properties of black tea are still there.

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec 4 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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70

339/365

…and another from the Chai sampler! This is one I’ve been looking forward to, since Assam is one of my favourite black teas and I like a Chai with a decently strong base. I was pleased to see this one wasn’t a CTC; it seems truer to the spirit of Assam that way! This one’s a fairly simple chai blend, with just cardamom, cinnamon, clove, and black pepper.

I like this one, as I knew I would, although it’s a little heavier on the clove than I’d hoped. There’s also rather a lot of cardamom, although I don’t mind that so much. The cinnamon pulls it back, though, and the pepper! I love a chai with lots of black pepper, and this one ticks that box without question.

It’s straightforward and classic, no kookiness here! It also means it’s not particularly unique, but there’s room for that. A solid chai in autumn is never a bad thing!

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec 1 tsp

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75

332/365

This is one of the more straightforward blends from the Vadham chai sampler; for some reason, I seem to have saved those until last! I quite like cardamom, so this should be okay.

Like some of the other blends from the sampler, this one has a CTC base, with lots of whole and crushed cardamom pods. As you might expect, it brews up really quickly. I’d say it definitely needs milk.

To taste, it’s significantly smoother than I expected, although that’s probably mostly a result of my own prejudices – not all CTCs are equal, after all. Some are more equal than others, and this is one of them.

Did it just get a little Orwellian around here? Just me, maybe.

The cardamom is very prominent, also as you might expect. It strikes a nice balance, though, and isn’t too harsh. The base tea is nicer than I expected; malty and fairly sweet. I expected it to be on the tannic side, maybe even verging on bitter/astringent, but it’s none of those things desipte the fact that I left it at least four minutes because I got distracted. By work, of all things.

The cardamom pretty much overpowers any other spices, but if you like cardamom then that’s going to be okay – and you probably wouldn’t have bought this blend if you didn’t. The overall flavour isn’t what I think of as chai, but it’s a solid cardamom flavoured black. There are worse things in the world.

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec 1 tsp

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60

229/365

Another from the Vahdam chai sampler. This one’s a green base, with cardamom, cinnamon, almond, and saffron. To taste, it’s deliciously sweet and smooth. There’s definitely lots of saffron! It’s also quite nutty, and slightly creamy in the way almond can be when it’s good. It’s mildly spicy, but there’s not much in the way of cardamom or cinnamon. This is mostly about the almond and saffron.

I like this one. It’s kind of unusual amongst the teas I drink, and I don’t feel like I’ve tried that many green-based chai blends in the past. The green tea works pretty well – it’s a little grassy, but subtle and unobtrusive. It allows the flavours to shine, and I think that’s pretty important when it comes to chai. I’m going to say that I prefer black tea as a base for chai on balance, but that’s mainly personal preference. I’ll have no problem finishing up my sample.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 0 sec 1 tsp

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100

Two 100s in a week for me, LOL. Happy to have discovered first flush darjeelings on my first order from Vahdam Teas. I’ve had second flush darjeeling and I like it, but first flush is even better I think. May have another 100 on the way when I get around to reviewing the autumn flush darjeeling from the same order. That one is special, too. Love me some darjeelings. Guess I need to tighten up my rating system, though.

Flavors: Apple, Astringent, Champagne, Creamy, Floral, Forest Floor, Muscatel

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec 4 g 16 OZ / 473 ML
Keemunlover

I solemnly swear to drink the tea, the whole leaf tea, and nothing but the tea, so help me Gopaldhara!

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55

Not entirely bad, but won’t buy again. Tea was sticking in large clumps when I opened package. Creates a cloudy brew somewhere between green and orange in color. Lots of sediment at the bottom of the pot, which I believe may be powder from the nuts. Tasted better than it looks. Not quite as aromatic as I remember other rose black teas, but has a nice aroma. I was hoping the pistachios would have more of a presence. The pistachios and almonds are there, but mostly they serve to dial back the floral aspects from the rose. The spices are a nice touch and add to the complexity.

I think I’ll finish the rest of this off by making a lot of iced tea.

Flavors: Cardamom, Floral, Nuts, Saffron

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec 4 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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65

327/365

Another from the chai sampler! Some of these combinations strike me as being partiularly odd, and this one’s no exception. In practice, though, it works better than I thought it would.

It’s kinda herby – much more tulsi than chai. If you don’t like tulsi, this is definitely isn’t the blend for you! There’s only a very small amount of CTC black amongst the other ingredients (primarily tulsi, but also some spices – cardamon pods, the odd clove, and a lot of powdered spices). Of the spices, the cardamon is most prominent, which works for me since I quite like cardamon in general. I’m not a huge fan of ginger or clove, but they don’t come across too heavy handed here, which is nice.

It occurred to me while I was drinking this one that it’s more refreshing than I expected. I like it – lots more than I anticipated. It’s always nice to be surprised!

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 4 min, 0 sec 1 tsp

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70

320/365

From the chai sampler, which I’ve been keeping since the summer in anticipation of the colder weather. Definitely the right decision! I’ve never had an EG Chai before, and it honestly seems like an interesting concept. They’re not two things I’ve have put together, so I guess we’ll see how that goes.

As it turns out, this is a CTC base, so I kept the brew time short. In flavour terms, it’s mostly chai (composed of cardamon, cinnamon, clove, and black pepper). The cardamon is most prominent, followed by the cinnamon. There’s not much clove, and really no pepper to speak of (which is a shame, because I love pepper, especially in chai). The bergamot is there in the background to begin with, but gains prominence with successive sips. It’s an odd combination, but not unpleasant.

In practice, the CTC base is a little brisk but also quite malty. It works well with the Chai and the EG flavourings, so no complaints there really. I found this an intriguing and unusual blend, and I’d definitely drink it again. I have high hopes for the rest of the sampler now!

Preparation
Boiling 1 min, 0 sec 1 tsp
tea-sipper

Well, a chai EG is certainly a blend I wouldn’t think up! I love both but not sure how they would work together.

Bluegreen

Why?! Why?!

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80

Floral aroma. Taste is somewhere between cinnamon and jasmine, more on the cinnamon side. Not very complex, and taste does not linger for too long. Good tea but wouldn’t order again. I would recommend for people who want hints of cinnamon in their oolong.

Flavors: Cinnamon, Jasmine

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec 4 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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70

Okay tea. Dry tea leaves are attractive and large, with shades of silver, white, and gray. The appearance makes evident that the tea was processed in a quality fashion. Weak floral aroma. Makes a reddish brew. Taste has mineral, peppery, and perhaps some woody qualities. I do not discern fruit or floral hints at all. Does not linger long or build, which are qualities I prefer. At the current price of $16.99/50g, I don’t think I would purchase this again.

Flavors: Mineral, Pepper, Wood

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML

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90

I received this tea due to a minor mistake in fulfilling my order, but it is a pleasant surprise. Vahdam Teas was excellent in fixing the mistake, by the way, and I quickly received the missing tea from my order as well as being able to keep and try this one.

I’ve never had white tea, so I can’t really compare to other white teas. The description here from Steepster is right on. The only thing I would add is that this tea has a lot of “build,” which is a quality I find in my favorite teas. As you drink, the flavor lingers and builds morphing into something more. Despite the tea’s initial light grassy-ness, the build leaves me with more of an impression of having had an oolong or maybe a black tea. I love it.

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100

This may be my favorite tea so far. A great find if you are looking for an excellent lighter black tea or darker oolong without paying much of premium. At 5.49/100g, this one is a steal. I love how the light darjeeling-style fruity notes give way to a little wood and a faint “golden monkey” bottom that lingers and builds. I haven’t very much liked any of the golden monkey teas that I have tried in the past, but this tea definitely brings them to mind between sips – this time around it is not unwelcome. Love how this tea sits with you for a while and creates a nice build.

Flavors: Apricot, Cedar, Malt, Mineral, Muscatel

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec 4 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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95

Heavenly Aroma – The scent of the dry leaves is incredible! This tea is closer to a 2nd flush black darjeeling type flavor, and has great depth. I found this for $14.99/100 grams at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K78VZE4?pf_rd_p=d1f45e03-8b73-4c9a-9beb-4819111bef9a&pf_rd_r=EM6C0BS8ABVG84TKMXKY, and I am so glad I ordered this one. It has notes of rose, deep muscatel grapes, and a grapefruit finish. Darjeeling oolong is definitely not a bad idea. I will be trying some more Vahdam teas, for sure.

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec 13 g 35 OZ / 1035 ML
Keemunlover

As a follow-up:
The “high mountain darjeeling oolong” sold at the Vahdam Teas website is apparently not the same variety of tea sold under the same name on Amazon.com. The high mountain darjeeling oolong tea I purchased from the Vahdam website was not nearly as impressive, and tastes more like an ordinarly lower-grade dark formosa oolong. Not entirely bad, but without the heavenly aroma, the rose, the grapes, or the grapefruit finish. Some of the other teas I acquired from their website are top-notch, though. I guess they can’t all be winners.

Keemunlover

Drinking this one again tonight, and the old magic is back. I think my brew was a little off the last time.

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Had this hot a few days ago with a little bit of honey.

Kind of an interesting cup; it’s got some malt to it and a pretty distinct muscatel/raisin sort of taste but a lot of the profile are notes that could easily be ascribed to a green tea; a grassy finish, some astringency/bite, and a smokey quality. Really, it sort of feels like it’s very carefully treading that line between green and black. Honey was a good choice though; it helped with the astringency and fleeting notes of bitterness.

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77

Summer Vacation! I had a pretty bad experience with darjeeling yesterday, but one cuppa isn’t enough to turn me away from a tea! So tonight I grabbed the other two darjeelings (the only other two in my collection, I believe) to sample to try to get a better general idea of the taste, because I’m hoping I can get these to brew up less bitter. Both of these teas were graciously made available to me from the Here’s Hoping Traveling Teabox, so thanks so much to tea-sipper for organizing and all those that contributed teas to the box! Otherwise I wouldn’t even have the opportunity to get to try some more darjeeling teas, so I really appreciate it!

Both of these teas are from the Arya Estate, and one is a first flush and one is a second flush (and me knowing nothing about these kind of teas, I honestly don’t even know much about the difference, so it’ll be interesting to sample both). Since I mistakening grabbed the second flush, first, first up is the second flush Arya darjeeling. The dry leaf has a maltier black tea scent to me than the darjeeling I drank from T2 last night, and also smells just a little peppery.

I had a single serving sample, and this time I weighed the leaf to ratio out the water accordingly (I still don’t know why I blindly trusted T2s directions on the outside of their sampler packet instead of doing that last night, honestly). The brewed cup has a lovely honeyed-orange color, and the aroma is a very malty aroma with a honeyed sweetness to it. The first sip and I’m already so pleased to not taste any bitterness; it’s very smooth! The first flavor note that really strikes me is a very pleasant orange rind/marmalade flavor, with some additional notes of malt, honey, and some subtle autumn leaf vegetal notes near the finish.

This is a very different experience from the cup I had yesterday. Very pleasant, with lots of fruity and sweet notes, and lacking the harshness and astringency. I really enjoy this!

Flavors: Autumn Leaf Pile, Honey, Malt, Orange, Smooth, Sweet, Vegetal

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 2 min, 0 sec 2 g 12 OZ / 350 ML

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75

Summer Vacation! Here is the second of the Arya darjeeling teas in my collection… and as it turns out, I had them mixed up, looking at my self-labeled sampler packet this morning, which is labeled as the “Arya Classic First Flush.” Which means the one I drank yesterday night was the second flush, and I reviewed it in the wrong place. Oops. So I had to delete my previous review and move it to the correct location, so if you are getting deja vu, that’s what happened… sorry for the mistake, but it’s fixed now! This tea is also courtesy of the Here’s Hoping Traveling Teabox, so thanks to tea-sipper for organizing and all the lovely folks who contributed.

This tea brewed up a much paler orange color than the second flush Arya tea I sampled last night. The aroma from the cup still smells very sweet and fruity to me, almost tropical… a bit like a POG juice. The flavor of the tea tastes more like and delicate than the second flush I sampled last night… it doesn’t have that deeper, malty note. Rather, it almost makes me think of a white tea, as there is this deeply floral taste to the brew, with a slight vegetal undertone. I’m still getting some orange fruity notes to the cup, as well, which is seems to share with the other Arya tea.

I’m enjoying this tea as well, and I’d say all in all darjeelings may be Indian teas I need to explore, while it is assams that just aren’t my thing. I am really curious how that other darjeeling may have faired, if T2 hadn’t botched the directions so badly (or perhaps it just was that low of quality, and was just a really astringent tea… who knows!) Between these two Arya teas, I really like both, though think I like the second flush just a touch more; I think the second flush makes a better breakfast tea and the first flush a better light afternoon tea/high tea sort of sip, though. And it is the sort of thing I’d prefer if I’m in one of my floral moods (which tend to take me often).

Flavors: Floral, Orange, Smooth, Sweet, Vegetal

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 2 min, 0 sec 2 g 400 OZ / 11829 ML

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95

An absolutely incredible tea- all the fruity / muscatel flavors you would want from a Darjeeling in a strong cup.

Flavors: Fruity, Muscatel

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70

216/365

This one also came as a free sample with my first Vahdam order. I’m not usually a massive oolong fan, although there are some that really like. They tend to be in the minority, though. This one is quite nice – it’s a dark/roasted oolong, with some mild milk chocolate notes and a touch of caramelised sugar. Pretty sweet, on the whole, with just the tiniest hint of metallic in the aftertaste. After a few sips, I can detect a light nuttiness in the mid-sip – I’d call it hazelnut, if I had to pin it down, but it’s not super strong.

I like a nice chocolatey oolong, so this one’s close to being a winner with me. I’m not sure I’d buy a large bag, simply because oolong isn’t something I turn to all that often, but I’d certainly pick up the occasional sample.

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 3 min, 0 sec 1 tsp

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54

Cold Brew Sipdown (804)!

I got a litre of fresh squeezed tangerine juice in my weekly Lufa Box a little while ago and I decided that I wanted to cold infuse some black tea into a portion of it because I’ve enjoyed that in the past – I picked this sample because it’s been neglected by me for a while now, and I didn’t love it in the past so I thought it was a great way to breath some new life into it!

As I’ve done in the past with cold infused juices, I left the tea leaf loose in a mason jar of juice in my fridge over night and let it infuse that way – straining afterwards to remove the tea. It came out really well; I’ve described the taste before with other teas but you’re basically adding malt and tannins to orange juice and that definitely sounds weird, but it works really well and adds an interesting nuance/character to the juice as well as cuts some of the natural sugary taste.

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/B7wdxX0A0fY/

Shae

Is the Lufa Box like a CSA subscription?

Roswell Strange

I’m not sure what CSA is, but Lufa is a weekly food box where you can customize a box of fresh local produce/baking and other artisan or small business food and beverage to be delivered to you. I typically get my weekly fruit from Lufa, and like to use it to pick up interesting baking items as well as kombucha.

Shae

CSA is Community Supported Agriculture and with that you basically pay the farmer upfront for a share of the fruits and vegetables throughout the year in order to help them with costs during the growing season. Your box sounds pretty neat in that it seems like you get a wide variety of things, not just fruits and veg. We have one here that does cheese and eggs and flowers, things like that, but it’s really expensive. The one we signed up for runs from April thru November.

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54

Another cuppa from my extended weekend – Western style with some Eucalyptus Blossom honey…

Let me start by saying that I don’t think I’m a fan of this honey; I can’t place exactly why I don’t enjoy it but so far everything I’ve added it to has tasted worse that I recall the tea tasting on its own. So, unfortunately that affected my infusion with this tea as well. Aside from that, this was ok tasting – sort of a floral and greener/more vegetal infusion, with just a little astringency. I find that this is a very flat tasting Indian black tea though; doesn’t have clear/defined flavour notes or the backbone/body to make for a really enjoyable cup. So, even without the honey, I don’t think this would have been an infusion I’d have felt really satisfied with.

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54

So, I bought a whole bunch of samples of Nilgiri teas from Vahdam what was probably ages ago because I wanted to do some region exploration since this was a region during my Sommelier training that we definitely looked at but that we didn’t go nearly as in depth with compared to Assam or Darjeeling…

From what I remember, most of the Nilgiri teas we sampled in class seemed very full bodied and brisk to me, with some of the same malty elements of an Assam but with less overall sweetness and more of a citrus sort of element.

Drinking this one recently, I was surprised about how much of my recollections seemed to ring true still; I’d 100% describe this as a full bodied profile with the main notes leaning very heavily towards both malt and slightly pithy lemon. It’s not a bitter tasting tea, but it does have light astringency, especially on the forefront of the tongue. The rest of the profile is sort of autumnal leaning, with notes of white bread, raisin, and crunchy autumn leaves. The way they smell, not taste – I’ve never eaten an autumn leaf. It’s got some underlying sweetness to it overall, also.

I enjoyed it a lot; and I’m excited to try the other Nilgiri samples I picked up.

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50

This tea is still not good. I’ve learned to appreciate it more as an iced tea, but that is the only way I’ll finish it off. Hard pass on this one.

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50

Darjeeling teas are generally my tea of choice, but the cost for a quality Darjeeling makes it one that I don’t have on a regular basis. I am always looking out for a reasonably-priced Darjeeling that still maintains the flavors that make Darjeeling tea appealing to me, so I was excited to find this one on the Vahdam website when I was doing some shopping recently. The reviews on the website (and older reviews here on Steepster) all seemed to say that this tea maintained the fruity, muscatel flavors of a Darjeeling while also being reasonably-priced, so I thought I had found what I was looking for.

The 2018 version of this tea, though, doesn’t appear to be as good as previous years. There is just a very slight hint of Darjeeling fruitiness to the tea, and no petrichor or wet rock flavor that I find in my favorite Darjeelings. The only flavor I could really identify in it is more of a cocoa/chocolate flavor—something I don’t really want in a Darjeeling. The liquor brews up to a dull brown and seems tired.

Since this had such better reviews in past years, I am guessing the reason this 2018 version is so underwhelming is due to the bad political situation in the Darjeeling area in 2017 which caused so many estates to lose their second flush and autumnal harvests. It’s possible that any affordable Darjeeling tea sold in 2018 will be made up of older harvests left over from previous years or even lower-quality teas. That could explain what happened here.

Overall, it’s meh. I’ll finish it, but I won’t be buying this one again—at least not this year. My search for an affordable daily Darjeeling will continue.

Flavors: Chocolate, Cocoa

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 30 sec 6 g 16 OZ / 473 ML

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