Today's tea: first flush Darjeeling Premium from Vahdam India

Given the age of the leaf Darjeeling and Assam left in the house, I wanted to replace it. After a little looking around, I discovered the products I wanted were available from Vahdam India. A visit to their web page looked promising:  all the sustainability, world improving and quality ticky boxes checked, plus good reviews. Also I could avail myself of Amazon Prime shipping and get it quickly.

It arrived Friday, later in the day than I wanted to have caffeine, so I decided to have it this morning. 

For 3.5 ounces of tea (50 cups worth), the Darjeeling was $14.99, the Assam $12.99. When you figure a box of 50 Twinings teabags from Safeway can run about $8, that's not terrible.

I have to tell you about the packaging. Each tea came in a dark green cardboard box. Inside each box was a shrink-wrapped, aluminum lined bag of tea, a mylar zip lock bag to decant it into for freshness, a label to put on the mylar bag - with the name of the tea, since of course you bought more than one, and brewing instructions for the best results. Also included are a glossy little pamphlet about the company (again with brewing suggestions), and a 10% off next purchase card. Not to mention Inspirational Tea Quotes printed inside the box. Yes, this is absolutely designed to be appealing, to convince you of quality and to anoint you with the esteem owed to a genuine teaphile, to evoke posh English drawing rooms and the best bone china and milk and one lump or two and do please buy more of our tea!

  

Steve Jobs! I'm all aquiver. Not. And I don't care about endorsements by Oprah. What does it taste like?

Good aroma when sniffing out of the bag, rich, black and fruity. For a black tea, the leaf color was greener than I had expected. You can see the difference in color between the dried and steeped leaves in the photo below. (Looks nothing like the almost coffee colored Darjeeling I bought from that nice lady at Gulf Wars 2019, which wasn't a bad Darjeeling at the time I bought it.) 

The 3-5 minute suggested steep might be the result of treating tea as a delivery system for milk and sugar - and I haven't had either in a cup of tea since a 1985 horseback tour of Connemara Ireland when we were downing it by the thermosful to keep warm. Boiling water, steep the crap out of it, and then correct for it with milk and sugar because you made ink. 

Not surprisingly, I also found suggestions for brewing a first flush Darjeeling  that recommended lower temperatures. I compromised by steeping at 190F for 2 minutes, using a silicone infuser. At about the 1 minute mark, I opened the infuser and dumped the leaves because the color in the cup wasn't changing. Allowing the leaves to unfurl properly helped, so I just poured through a strainer into a second cup. In future, I'll just brew in the kyusu. 

 Flavor was delicate with fruity, almost citrusy notes. That said, I don't think the longer, hotter steep would hurt this tea. I did a second steep at 212F for three minutes and the aroma backed off a bit. I think 190F with a 3 minute steep might be a good compromise with this one. EDIT: 1/18/21, steeped a fresh pot, 1 well heaped teaspoon/8oz. water for 3 minutes at 200F and it was fine: flavor and scent were good, no bitterness. 

Verdict: a very nice tea, suitable for a lazy Saturday morning. Vahdam also sells Darjeeling harvested at different times of year as well as blended teas made with black Darjeeling, so I might try another in the future.