Teabox – Badamtam Moonlight Spring White (First Flush Darjeeling)
First Flush tea is the name given to the season’s first tea harvest in spring. It consists of the newest leaves and buds, and is a delicate white tea prized for its flavour.
The first time I became aware of First Flush tea was when I was a teenager. I was in a teamongers, saw a teeny-tiny packet of First Flush Darjeeling for not-teeny-tiny amounts of money, and wondered to myself how good such a tea could possibly be. And then, I wondered, on and off, about it for the next thirty years.
Well today, ladies and gentlemen, I can happily say that I am no longer a First Flush virgin. I figured I’m a grown up now with my own tea blog and everything and if I want to splash out a ridiculous amount of money on a small amount of tea in order to find out what the fuss is about then I jolly well can.
The tea that I’m reviewing here is Moonlight Spring White grown on the Badamtam estate in Darjeeling available through Teabox.com. My batch was harvested only a few weeks ago, on 1st April 2021. At £15.50 for 10 grams (roughly a third of an ounce), it is, without doubt, the most expensive tea I’ve ever purchased.
It’s quite intimidating trying such a tea. I’m not entirely sure I’m fancy enough for such an endeavour. This is the champagne of teas, and I’m someone who – back in my drinking days – was perfectly happy with a bottle of Cava.
The tea leaves are large, pale and light with recognisable bits of tea buds. By sticking my nose in the tea packet, I can report that even before hot water is added, this tea smells absolutely divine. But it’s after the hot (but not boiling) water is added and the appropriate steeping time is observed that the magic really happens.
From the first sip, this tea is absolutely heavenly. I could describe it in terms of its naturally fruity flavours (there is certainly a mango and lychee vibe going on here), but I don’t feel like that would be doing it justice. This ain’t no fruity tisane. This is tea. It’s tea ramped up to eleven. It’s Camelia Sinensis in all its full satisfying glory.
It’s obviously nothing like the tea I was raised on, and yet it vindicates the love I’ve had for tea my whole life. Everything that makes tea tea is here, as though it has been distilled down to its purest essence. Tea is more than just a pleasant tasting hot drink. And Badamtam Moonlight made it clear to me why.
I’m struggling to articulate how it made me feel without making the obvious comparison to alcohol and drugs, so fuck it, I won’t even try. You know how Renton describes heroin in Irvine Walsh’s Trainspotting? Yeah, that.
Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty and you’re still fucking miles off the pace.
Irvine Welsh
Teabox assert that, like many good teas, Badamtam Moonlight Spring White can be steeped several times. In fact the tea producers positively encourage it. Serious tea connoisseurs reckon that the taste of the tea subtly changes with each steeping, releasing new depths of flavour.
This is not something I usually do. In fact, I have an inherent resistance to doing so. I’m not a student! I don’t need to reuse my tea leaves! In the interest of scientific research, however, I did as was suggested and steeped this tea several times.
Doing so made it evident to me that, although I might be playing with the big boys, I’m clearly not any kind of tea connoisseur just yet. The second and third steepings were still gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t enjoy them as much as the first cup. I didn’t get the different flavour experiences described in this article for example. It was, to me, a case of diminishing returns. A perfectly acceptable couple of sequels, but in no way as good as the original. It is entirely possible though, I was doing it wrong somehow.
But then I don’t claim to be any kind of tea expert. I’m just a woman who really, really loves tea. If I had been in any doubt about that (which I wasn’t) Badamtam Moonlight Spring White has made it abundantly clear that I am not wrong to do so.
This tea excited me, it calmed me, it cleared my head, it fired my synapses and it made me extraordinarily happy. Tea is just fucking awesome, isn’t it?
