Nepal Jun Chiyabari 'Himalayan Tippy' Black Tea

Alright, I have been lazy long enough. It’s time to get some more reviews out of the way in order to keep the number of backlogged reviews from growing any larger. This was one of my sipdowns from the second half of April. I know I tend to display a considerable fondness for the teas produced by Jun Chiyabari, so it should perhaps come as no surprise that I thought this tea was great. I was a little shocked that it did not get a warmer reception on Steepster.

I prepared this tea in the Western style, but I modified my usual brewing approach somewhat for this tea. I normally do not rinse teas from Nepal, Assam, and Darjeeling, but I opted to do so here simply because I did not get much out of the dry leaf material. I only rinsed the leaf material for 5 seconds, but the rinse revealed a tremendous number of new aromas. After the rinse, I steeped my 3 grams of leaf material in approximately 8 ounces of 203 F water for 5 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry leaf material emitted aromas of chocolate and malt. After the rinse, I detected aromas of orange zest, black cherry, violet, baked bread, plum, and Muscatel. The 5 minute infusion introduced aromas of nutmeg, cream, clove, licorice, and anise. In the mouth, the tea liquor presented notes of cream, baked bread, malt, black cherry, violet, plum, Muscatel, orange zest, grass, straw, nutmeg, licorice, anise, clove, and chocolate that were backed by hints of smoke, roasted almond, roasted walnut, blackberry, blueberry, and dried cranberry. Pleasant spice and tart fruit impressions lingered in the mouth after the swallow and were accompanied by somewhat subtler malty, smoky, nutty, and chocolaty notes.

In my opinion, this was a more or less fantastic Nepalese black tea. Jun Chiyabari rarely if ever lets me down, and they certainly did not manage to do so with this offering. My only real quibble with this tea was that I found the body of the tea liquor to be a bit thin. That was seriously the only thing I could find to knock. At this point, I will also add that I found this tea to be very forgiving and flexible in the brewing process. It did not display a tendency to get bitter or astringent quickly, and I also found that this tea was capable of producing multiple satisfying infusions when brewed in the Western style as long as one started with a slightly shorter initial steep than I did during the bulk of my time with it. Overall, this was an impressive tea. I do not mind giving it a higher numerical score than previous reviewers because I feel that it earned that privilege.

Another sample from derk and I am quite excited about this one, knowing the quality of production coming from Jun Chiyabari.

The dry leaf scent is exactly as derk described – a sweet dark cocoa powder. The wet leaves have even sweeter scent that reminds me of christmas with notes like clove, hot apple, cranberries and others that I couldn’t quite put in words. It is quite feminine and sweet but pungent aroma.

The taste is also sweet, but less so, which I appreciate. It has a cocoa bitterness, cherry tartness and very spicy (as in fragrant) finish and aftertaste. I also get a little sickly feeling in the throat after drinking it. The liquor has medium body and a soft, drying mouthfeel.

I don’t think this will be my favourite tea by Jun Chiyabari, but it’s still very good.

This certainly serves its purpose as a pick-me-up had in between classes. I stopped by the cafe and they filled my crappy 16oz thermos with an unknown temperature water they use for their own teas. The cut leaf makes this good for a teaball, but mine doesn’t fit through the opening of this particular crappy thermos. So I dumped in a heaping teaspoon of leaf and drank it over the course of 30 minutes. Not recommended as it gets a little bitter.

The very fragrant dry leaf, dark brown and cut with gold tips, smells of sweet dark cocoa powder. The liquor tastes like a thinned, good quality, sweet dark chocolate syrup with a little bit of red fruit jam mixed in. Some woodiness and maltiness. It was really tasty, especially when accompanied by yogurt pretzels and one of those tiny bananas (the only banana worth a damn) as a snack.

I brewed it western over the weekend, which was much better than this afternoon’s approach. 2tsp/8oz/205F/3 solid steeps. Very dark the first and second steep.

I’ll come back to this one soon with a little more detail.

Thank you Alistair! Man, did these little leaves pack a punch. The chocolaty cocoa and leafy aroma was in the tea before brewing, and then it was accented when brewed. I was going to do this tea Western, but did it semi-gong fu both times after 30 second rinses using 4 grams each times. It had an immense chocolaty taste like a Bai Lin Gong Fu Chinese Black tea, and had sweet notes that made me think of sugar, making the tea almost syrupy. It only lasted for six cups in the first gong fu, and three in the other one that resembled western. The cocoa and caraway was more pronounced in longer steeps making it a little bit more malty, but the notes were more interesting sweet notes in the shorter steeps.