Patkai Tea – Spice Sensation, Evening Rose, and Morning Gold
If you should find yourself in the borough of Richmond one Saturday or Sunday, then I recommend that you take a scenic riverside stroll to the Duck Pond Market at Heron Square. It’s a small but dignified open-air artisan affair where a band of friendly stallholders will sell you all the handmade jewellery, scented candles, and tasty Palestine lentil dip that your little Bohemian heart could wish for.
And – on the occasion that I visited, at least – a lovely lady from Patkai tea selling a selection of Assam-based loose-leaf teas. I was, as I’m sure you can imagine, quite excited to see her there and burbled on quite happily about my tea blog and love of tea in general.
Afterwards, I was worried that I may have sounded like I was trying to cadge free stuff in an uncouth “Hey, I’m an influencer!” manner. My boyfriend reassured me that I didn’t but I suspect that he says things like that to me because I’m easier to handle when I’m not riddled with anxiety.
Anyway, I just want to make it clear to any teamongers reading this, that if I encounter you in the wild, I’m not mentioning my tea-reviewing habits because I’m after freebies. I’m just a bit starstruck at being in the presence of a tea professional and I want you to know that I take my tea really, really seriously.
Patkai offer five different Assam blends at present, and I purchased three of them: Spice Sensation, Evening Rose, and Morning Gold. (The other two are Kohua Afternoon, a green tea, lemongrass, and ginger blend, and Blue Tea, with green tea, spices, and butterfly pea flowers.) I shall review each of them for your delectation and delight.
Spice Sensation
First up, we have Spice Sensation, Patkai’s masala chai blend, made by someone who knows what’s what in the spicy Indian tea arena.
Some time ago, I reviewed Asda’s masala chai and pointed out how very suspicious (or at least, extremely cheeky) it was that it had exactly the same set of spices as my perennial masala chai favourite from Tea India.
Not so, Spice Sensation, which, while staying with the classic combo of ginger, cinnamon and cardamom, introduces a couple of new fellows that I haven’t encountered in a masala chai blend before – star anise and bay leaves.
OK, star anise isn’t completely out there as a spicy chai ingredient. Anise pops up in a number of other blends, and while star anise and anise may be completely different plants (Illicium verum and Pimpinella anisum, respectively), they do share a similar taste profile. As well as the same surname.
Bay leaves, though! That’s a turn-up for the books and no mistake. I wasn’t expecting to find that in there. If I’d had to guess the flavours of this blend without cheating and looking at the ingredients list, I wouldn’t have guessed bay as the mystery ingredient.
This delicious masala blend does taste rather different from any other chai teas I’ve encountered. It has a vigorous punch to it, and I reckon – with a bit of practice – I could pick Patkai Spice Sensation out of a masala chai-based line-up.
It’s an altogether deeply satisfying tea, where all the spices are loud and proud and the black tea base is holding its own beautifully. It’s a very satisfying start.
Evening Rose
I didn’t initially twig that Evening Rose was a green tea blend. Mostly because I am unfamiliar with green Assams, so I just sort of assumed this rose petal-infused blend was made with regular black Assam. As a consequence, the first few cups I made had milk in them. It was actually perfectly tasty that way, though, although the colour was a bit insipid looking.
Once I realised that the leaves in this tea were of the unoxygenated variety, I set about making it “properly” with 80° water and no milk. It’s only later down the line that I actually read the brewing instructions and discovered that this tea is supposed to be made with boiling water, which rather undermines everything I thought I knew about green tea. Maybe it’s a var assamica thing.
So eventually I managed to put together a cup of Evening Rose, made and served as its manufacturer intended. And it’s very, very nice indeed. It’s a blend of green Assam tea (have I mentioned that it’s green?), cardamom and rose petals. It deserves an extra star for letting its ingredients do all the flavour-work and not relying on ‘natural flavourings’ as so many other blenders of rose teas are inclined to do. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Whittard and Bird & Blend.)
Morning Gold
And now we come to the straightforward, no-messing-about-with-other-ingredients, honest-to-goodness black tea of the set. This is Assam tea, pure and simple, and it’s a delight.
Mrs Patkai (certainly not her real name, given that the tea firm takes its name from a range of mountains in Northern India) explains on the Patkai website, that when she moved to the U.K., her excitement at moving to a ‘tea-loving’ nation, was somewhat tempered when she discovered that much of the tea we drink here in Blighty is really rather crap.
She didn’t phrase it like that. She was much more polite, but honestly, I’m with her. A lot of the tea you get served here is terrible. So, like a missionary spreading Christianity (but a lot less contentious and more welcome because it’s tea), she is endeavouring to introduce us all to the good stuff from Assam, the land where she grew up.
I’m all for it, of course. The world always needs more carefully sourced, beautifully blended tea orchestrated by people who know their stuff and love everything about it.
Every single one of these Patkai teas is a welcome addition to my tea shelf, and I will be keeping an eye out for her selling her wares next time I’m in the Richmond region. (Or I could just buy it off the website, of course. That works too.)
Today’s book pairings are The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan, Flower Fairies of the Garden by Cicely Mary Barker, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote.
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