Curious Tea – Jin Zhen Golden Needle
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Before I started this whole tea-fancying endeavour, I had no idea how many teas existed in the world that I absolutely have to own right now. I blame Instagram. There’s quite the whole tea-fancying community over there, and many is the time that a spot of light catching up on Instagram posts has resulted in me making yet another “Must Have” tea purchase. I have no idea quite how many tea blends I currently have unopened in my house, and quite frankly I don’t want to count. I fear it may reflect badly on me.
In addition to the numerous impulse buys, I am currently signed up to two tea subscriptions. I have Bird & Blend’s Tea Tasting Club for the more frivolous side of things, and Curious Tea’s monthly Discovery Box for some proper grown up connoisseur-type tea experiences.
At least that’s the plan. What with the aforementioned copious tea stash and everything, Curious Tea‘s May selection arrived before I’d even had a chance to sample any of April’s offerings. I briefly considered cancelling my subscription, but given that the monthly subscription box is only £11 for four varied and beautifully presented teas samples, I really don’t want to. “Look here, Em,” I told myself. “You’re just going to have to drink more tea.” Happily, this is an entirely achievable life goal.
If my first experience of Curious Tea’s range, Jin Zhen Golden Needle is anything to go by, the company are damn find sourcers of extraordinary teas.
Jin Zhen Golden Needle is a Keemun tea (an old timey spelling of Qimon, the area in which this tea is grown). The ‘golden needle’ part of its name refers to the long needles of tightly rolled leaves that comprise the tea in its dried form.
Once the tea has been steeped for a while, the needles slowly unfurl into satisfying large, recognisable leaves. It is an absolutely beautiful tea: rich dark and unmistakably malty.
When I’m a proper grown-up tea reviewer, I will describe high-quality, single-source teas like this one in the proper tea connoisseur language they deserve. But I’m not there yet. In trying to articulate to myself the full-on flavour experience I got from this tea, I hit upon the notion of pretending that I was a master blender for an enterprising Tea Company. (Because that’s a dream we all have, right?) What would I use this tea for? The obvious answer is a Malt Loaf tea. Whack in some dried fruit and some sunflower petals for creaminess and this tea would be a dead ringer for Soreen’s doughy, fruity classic.
Not that you’d actually want to add anything to this tea. It is absolutely perfect as it is. I did add a tiny dash of milk to subsequent cups, after I had tried it black. I worry that doing so is akin to mixing your ten year old malt whisky with Diet Coke. But it’s a dark sturdy black tea and I reckoned it could handle it. If anything the milk made the rich barley malt taste even more pronounced, presumably because of the tiny amount of sweetness that milk brings to the party.
This tea really reminded me of bran flakes. It has a wholesome slightly nutty flavour that makes you feel like you’re consuming something with roughage. (I’m not sure my imaginary tea company is going to be terribly successful if I bring out a ‘Bran Flakes Tea’. Will people be flocking to buy my range of healthy breakfast cereal-inspired tea blends, do we think?)
Curious Tea encourage multiple steepings of this tea. This tea remains delicious throughout, but I really couldn’t detect any noticeable change in taste between the first and fourth cups. Although there was cat hair in my fourth cup, I’m not suggesting that has anything to do with Curious Tea and their manufacturing process. Getting covered in cat hair is just what naturally happens to anything that’s been sitting around for more than five minutes in my crazy cat lady house.
I absolutely loved Jin Zhen Golden Needle. Each month tea selection from Curious Tea contains a range of different tea types and different countries of origin. In addition to this marvellous Chinese black tea, I have a Japanese Sencha, a Taiwanese white tea and a Darjeeling still to sample. And that’s just the April box, Quite frankly, I need to get cracking.
Today’s featured book is Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop in order to justify the terrible wordplay in this review’s title. (And, yes, I know that the word “Ye” in quaint old-timey-esque shops isn’t an actual word in that context. The “Y” is playing the part of the thorn, an old English letter which is in fact pronounced ‘th’.)
