Black - Jasmine Review

This tea is the first review I have of a true blend, the tea itself coming from three countries, all var. assamica (as described in the types of tea article) and is generally what we would expect.  As can be seen from the photo, the leaves used are mostly fragmentary and irregular, and there are no visible jasmine flowers in the blend and the box lists "jasmine flavoring" as an ingredient, so I'm assuming that actual jasmine flowers were not used in making this tea.  Personally, I would always prefer to see fragments of the jasmine flowers to really see that I'm getting the real natural thing and it certainly isn't cost prohibitive to do so.  One of the beautiful things about tea is how natural it is - from a single plant you can get an incredible range of flavors, adding artificial flavoring betrays that concept.  

Like other black teas, this tea should be prepared at full boil.  Due to the smaller leaf size, I used just a mesh infuser, there won't be any noticeable leaf expansion that can present deeper flavors, and small fragments would be a headache with gaiwan preparation.  This tea does not do too well with multiple steeps, likely due to those same reasons.  The flavor itself, while lacking depth and complexity, is a full and straight forward jasmine taste with slight sweet notes of stone fruit.  

The saving grace of this tea is of course its price point, it would be easy to use this as an every day tea to drink with meals.  There isn't enough depth to fully appreciate as a tea session, just enjoy it with a heavier meal like a spicy or oily stir fry.  It has good sweetness to be refreshing and enough strength to be warming.