Small Leaf Black Tea

Tea type
Black Tea
Ingredients
Not available
Flavors
Bread, Cherry, Honey, Malt, Mineral, Raisins, Raspberry, Rye, Spices, Sugarcane, Tannin, Wood
Sold in
Loose Leaf
Caffeine
Not available
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Girl Meets Gaiwan
Average preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 6 g 4 oz / 120 ml

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From Eco-Cha Artisan Teas

Flavor: Sweet, fruit pastry aroma. Rich, complex, balanced composition. Notes of dried fruit. Clean, dry finish.

Garden: This batch of tea comes from Yonglong Village, just above Dong Ding Mountain. Yonglong is known for its rich soil which differs from other locales in Lu Gu Township. This farm is managed by a father and son team who inherited their family tradition as artisans of Dong Ding Oolong. The son is one of the earliest tea makers in the area to begin using their late spring and summer crops to make Black Tea. Like their Dong Ding Oolong, we truly feel that it is some of the finest Black Tea we’ve experienced.

Harvest: Hand picked in small batches. Summer 2016. Yonglong, Taiwan.

Elevation: 700m

About Eco-Cha Artisan Teas View company

Company description not available.

3 Tasting Notes

413 tasting notes

Purchased as part of the Eco-Cha Tea Club sometime in 2016, this hongcha has spent too long in my tea museum. Its flavours are very soft and hard to coax out, and I have a feeling that’s due to age. I also laughed at the description of this as small leaf black tea, as the leaves of this tea are wiry and huge! I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 20, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 180 seconds.

The dry aroma is of rye bread, wood, honey, and cherries. The first steep has notes of rye bread, honey, malt, wood, minerals, and tannins, with aromas of cherry and raspberry that don’t make it into the cup. Mild raspberry appears in steeps two and three, and there’s a pronounced honey aftertaste. There could be some sugarcane in there too. The next couple steeps add raisins and spices. The tea fades into rye bread, wood, tannins, and minerals.

I wish I’d tried this tea when it wasn’t over six years old! It has some characteristics I associate with Taiwanese Assam (though I’m not sure this is actually an Assam tea), but I’ll be happy to see it leave my cupboard.

Flavors: Bread, Cherry, Honey, Malt, Mineral, Raisins, Raspberry, Rye, Spices, Sugarcane, Tannin, Wood

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 6 g 4 OZ / 120 ML
Daylon R Thomas

I had a hard time coaxing out a lot of Black Tea flavors from Eco-Cha.

Leafhopper

That’s interesting! I haven’t had many black teas from Eco-Cha, and the ones I’ve had have been older. I think I had a Ruby 18 from them that was flavourful, but I tend to like other Taiwanese black tea cultivars more. I have an old Shan Lin Xi Black from the tea club to try next!

Daylon R Thomas

Oooh, that’s going to be good.

Leafhopper

Fingers crossed! :)

tea-sipper

This one is in my tea museum as well.. I also had a laugh at the “small” leaves.

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70
4169 tasting notes

This is from SkySamurai, quite a while ago now. Thank you! This has always been a puzzler for me. Even the name of this “small leaf” seems like a joke because the leaves here are HUGE. The flavor is on the lighter side — hints of peach possibly, but then wafts away until it is mostly mineral and cotton tasting. Maybe sweet hay turning into dried black cherry. I’m sure this tea is very old by now. Somehow with these flavor notes I’m making it sound both better but also worse? hmm… I don’t think even fresh leafed that this tea would have been something I would gravitate towards. It’s too light for me.
Steep #1 // 2 teaspoons for big mug // 21 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 3 minute steep

gmathis

I think you described it well.

tea-sipper

why thanks :D

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65
38 tasting notes

(Only seem to have time for western & cold brewing these days. As with several others I’ve sampled recently, I hope to try gongfu with this tea soon and will update.)

Tea is from summer 2016.
Western (5g/200ml/95 C) – pkg directions for western brewing call for pretty heavy leaf of 8g/300ml, so tried to stay close to that ratio.
Dry leaf is very fragrant & pleasant, but hard to describe. Smells bright, reminds me of dark cherries and some spice?
3 min – Very pretty red brew. A little malt up front, quickly moves to some dried cherry fruitiness and some earth, and wood & floral to finish. Maybe some hints cinnamon & vanilla? Smooth with some tannins on the finish, but no bitterness. Had to work hard to pick out these flavors, though – overall impression is pleasing but limited.
4 min – Similar, though flavors are lighter.
6 min – Ditto.
No changes between infusions, no real complexity – just generally ok brew that grows weaker.

Cold brew (1g/100ml; 1 resteep @ 1g/50ml blended in – a little too weak on its own)
Nice sweet black tea aroma with cane sugar notes. Taste is lighter version of “darker” flavors like cocoa powder, dried fruit like prunes. Unfortunately resteep on its own has a strange wet cloth aftertaste – it blends nicely into the first infusion, though. Like with western, flavor is good but not very interesting.

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