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I made a bit of a cock-up of this.

At the time or writing, there are no instructions for this on the website or the advice sheet but, as an oolong, I let the water go off the boil for several minutes, used a heaped teaspoon and gave it two minutes’ steeping.

It’s a coarsely granular tea in the dry, giving a dark, reddish-brown, but transparent infusion. Any aroma was vanishingly little and I really couldn’t offer a description.

In the mouth there were basic tea and a firm, though not quite bitter, element a little reminiscent of the smell of a freshly-mown lawn but without that smell’s sweetness. That was it, really. I couldn’t detect anything else so, no real complexity of flavour.

This was an ‘okay’ tea – nothing wrong with it – and the basic tea element gave it that ‘satisfying’ thing I look for, but it was really nothing special.

So, I got that far and realised I may have been making a mistake with these oolongs. I noticed that, for the Nothing But Tea Black Dragon Oolong I’ve previously written up, the advice sheet gives one teaspoon while the website calls for two. In this case, my sample only had about enough for two of my version of a heaped teaspoon and I used half of it in this mug, which made things problematic. The site also gave three to four minutes’ brewing, not two, for the Black Dragon.

So, to try to retrieve the situation, for what was intended to be my second infusion of the original teaspoon, I added a second heaped teaspoon to the original tea. So this second mug, half of which is in front of me now, is brewed from a heaped teaspoon that’s been steeped once, plus a fresh teaspoon. It’s been brewed for three and a half minutes.

This resulted in a darker brown, more intensely-coloured brew with a slight aroma of uncooked pastry-dough with, perhaps, a hint of cut grass.

In the mouth, basic tea, of course, but the new-mown lawn element has now strengthened into something between cut grass and liquorice, but still quite a firm element, without the sweetness I’d associate with those two things.

It’s a little more satisfying and enjoyable than the previous mug, a more robust brew, but I’d still characterise it as lacking in complexity and not that special. However, I think I’ll give it ten or fifteen extra points on what I had in mind with the first mug. It’s quite a reasonable mug of tea.

By the way, ‘cock-up’ is not rude. The original ‘cock-up’ was an old English breakfast of fried-up leftovers – something like ‘bubble and squeak’, I imagine.

I’ve found this one of those most difficult of teas to describe. On first sup, it doesn’t seem anything special and I’d describe it as having very little flavour, but then it sort of sneaks up on me and I realise that I’m quite enjoying it and finding it quite satisfying. The best summation I can think of is as a ‘very subtle’ tea, though I know that doesn’t mean much.

I can’t really detect anything in the way of aroma – nothing I can describe, anyway. In the mouth, there is a quite mild flavour somewhere in the middle between chocolate, roast beef and basic tea – I don’t mean three elements but one, somewhere between them all. There is also a subtle, difficult-to-define, ‘tingle’ to it: it’s not really that hint of ginger or white pepper I get from some teas – I want to say ‘metallic’ but it’s not at all unpleasant, as ‘metallic’ implies, rather something like the smell of nettles, but cleaner – perhaps leaning very, very slightly towards spearmint. There’s a very faint fruitiness to it, too faint to define more exactly but making the tea a fraction sweeter than the norm. There’s the faintest hint of liquorice. Oddly these flavours seem to get more noticeable as the level in the cup falls – perhaps because the tea is cooling?

The instructions are for 2.5gms to the cup, which is a bit more than normal, so I used two heaped teaspoons; for one to two minutes’ steeping, so I gave it two; and for only 70°, so I let the water go off the boil for several minutes and then for several minutes more (so two severals of minutes off the boil – really must sort out a thermometer).

I actually got a fourth infusion out of the tea with no noticeable difference in flavour and the tea still floating at the surface and I’m sure I could have gone on.

Quite an intriguing tea.

I made a mug with a moderately-heaped teaspoon and brewed for five minutes, boiling water (the tasting notes on the site have five minutes while the instructions on the sheet say two to three).

This was nothing very special: quite dark in the mug with a very slight metallic aroma; in the mouth basic tea – not very strong, a hint of digestive biscuits or similar, a slight hint of butter.

I made a second mug with a well-heaped teaspoon and brewed for five minutes. It was not really different to the previous mug.

Rather disappointing, this one.

Brewed this for three minutes with boiling water.

It has a slightly yeasty aroma. In the flavour there are hints of cut grass, orange and toffee. This is quite pleasant but it’s quite similar to and – to my taste – inferior to Nothing But Tea’s Natala’s Gold Standard, from the same person; so I shan’t get any more of this once the sample’s used up.

I can’t resist writing another note on this. The last one was on a small sample I had and I liked it so much that when the site got more in stock I ordered a couple of hundred grammes. This is my first mug of that order.

I used a well-heaped teaspoon. This is difficult to judge as it’s very light and long and straggly (I doubt I could get a 100gms of it in one of my 200gms caddies) and difficult to spoon out; but I put in what looked like a good spoonful and added a little more to be on the safe side. I steeped with boiling water for three minutes.

It’s an intense but clear brown-orange in the mug with quite a difficult-to-pin-down aroma. I think I get warm butter (as on your hot toast), cooked cauliflower, a metallic tinge and, possibly, nettles.

The flavour has good basic tea in it. It has a warm, round element which has touches of rum, liquorice and the smell of loose tobacco to it – something in the middle of those three, say – and the buttery element again, giving a pleasant ‘smoothness’. All this warmth and smoothness is balance by a slight, invigorating ‘bite’, something like the smell of nettles but more fruity – perhaps half-way between the smell of nettles and the taste of oranges.

I know everyone’s taste is different, but I really can’t praise this highly enough – it’s really captivated me.

The instructions are for a heaped teaspoon for one and a half to two minutes and water at 80°; so I made it with a heaped teaspoon and brewed for one and three-quarter minutes with water that had gone off the boil for a few minutes.

There’s a faint aroma of rust. In the mouth it’s quite mild: there are the merest hints of liquorice, greenery – reminds me of the smell you get round shrubbery and undergrowth after a sharp shower in hot, dry weather – and there’s a very tiny ‘bite’ – it’s difficult to place, not black or white pepper or ginger, not in anyway harsh or unpleasant – it’s perhaps nearer to the bite of lemon juice than any of those but it’s not quite that either. In spite of its mild flavour this tea has a quite ‘satisfying’ quality to it.

I made a second mug with the same tea: I lost track of it and left it about two and a half minutes, but it didn’t taste any different. The tea was still floating, too, so probably good for more infusions, but I didn’t want another cup.

I’ve finished this sample now but here’s a follow-up to my last note.

I managed on one or two occasions to get a reasonable brew out of this. It had a difficult-to-pin-down ‘greenery’ aroma – not quite cut grass and not quite nettles. This was an element in the flavour as well, plus an equally difficult-to-pin-down hint of ‘fruitiness’ – possibly gooseberry. On the strength of this (though I really didn’t find any ‘strength’ to the flavour), I’m upping my rating from 50 to 60.

The instructions are a little confusing for this as the website recommends 1gm to a cup and the packet recommends 3gms. It’s quite a light tea – long, tangly strands – so I shoved in two heaped teaspoons (brewing in the mug). I used boiling water (they say 80-100 °) and brewed for three minutes (they say two but – absent-mindedness).

The brew was an intense, but clear, orange-brown with an aroma that was part yeasty and part new-mown grass. The flavour had some basic tea, a firm, fruity element somewhere between orange-peel and gooseberry, and an element somewhere between new-mown grass and good, sweet hay. There may have been, just on the very edge of my sense of taste, a floral perfume element – or possibly vanilla.

The instructions say that it ‘can be rebrewed a number of times’, so I made a second mug with the same tea. This was a little weaker but, strangely, there seemed to be more ‘bite’ to it – a slight hint of raw ginger root.

I have to say that I find this rather special – an excellent tea and definitely one of the best Darjeelings I’ve tried.

ETA – I’ve realised that I haven’t really explained why I’m so much more enthusiastic about this than some other Darjeelings I’ve tried. Quite simply, for me it has a noticeably more intense flavour.

Another ETA – I can’t resist just adding that I found this tea delightful(!)

I used a well-heaped teaspoonful to a half-pint mug. The instructions for this are for two minutes’ brewing at 85° – 100°, so I let the water go off the boil for a couple of minutes and then brewed for two minutes. I noticed that all the tea had not sunk to the bottom – the instructions say you can get a second infusion.

It was quite a strong colour in the mug, a dark orange-brown, but I couldn’t detect anything much with the nose. In the mouth it had a little basic tea flavour – not a lot, at all – and, perhaps, the tiniest hint of butter smoothness.

I made a second infusion from the same tea and that was definitely a bit watery.

So I made another mug with a well-heaped teaspoonful and this time I used boiling water and brewed for three minutes. It really wasn’t much different. There may, possibly, have been the tiniest hint of fruitiness and a metallic hint, but they were very elusive and I only really detected them at all on the very first sip.

That was all yesterday. I made another boiling water stroke three minutes mug today, remembering how other Darjeelings have struck me differently on different days, but this one was no different.

This is a disappointment for a comparatively expensive tea, but it’s quite innocuous – nothing at all unpleasant about it – so I’m going to give it a neutral 50 rating.

A postscript: this tea prompted me to experiment with my kitchen scales and some of the teas I have in quantity, to work out the weights of various teas, and I am definitely using at least the recommended quantity (Imperial Teas recommends 1gm to 100mls for this one).