Kim Tuyen 'Rainforest Black' Vietnam Organic

Most people have never knowingly drunk a Vietnamese tea, which is odd when you learn that tea is native to northern Vietnam, has grown there for over three thousand years, and that Vietnam is now the sixth-largest producer in the world. So this is not a rare tea because tea is new to the country; it is rare only because so little of it ever reaches us. That, to my mind, makes it well worth seeking out.

It comes from the Tam Duong district, in the foothills of the Hoang Lien Son mountains north of Hanoi, right on the border with Yunnan, the great Chinese tea region, so tea knowledge has flowed back and forth here for centuries. It is made from the Kim Tuyen varietal and grown in a genuine tropical rainforest climate, and that climate is the making of it: it gives the tea a wonderfully lively, heady, almost tropical aroma that lifts out of the cup before you have even taken a sip.

The flavour follows through: bright, floral and naturally sweet, refreshing rather than heavy. It is an autumn, late-harvest tea, given a long, slow oxidation over a day and a half or more, which is where that tropical character comes from; in oxidation and body it sits somewhere near a Darjeeling second flush. It is organic, and it makes a lovely afternoon cup.

It is a proper, loose-leaf black tea, so there is caffeine in it, and it is best without milk, to keep all that fragrance and sweetness clear.

Brew at 100°C for 3 minutes.

Ingredients || Organic Black Tea

Warning, packed in an environment that contains nuts

Caffeine || Yes

Tasting Notes || Bright floral tea, naturally sweet tea with a heady tropical aroma

Brewing Notes || 1 teaspoon per cup, 100ºC, brew for 3 minutes.