Good morning, dear tea friends! I hope you all had a wonderful, tea-filled week. I have another experiment in my cup this morning, with a 2-year-old first flush Darjeeling from the Tumsong Estate. I’ve decided to do the opposite of my last experiment and try the tea first before going back and looking at my first post about it. So, here goes…

Taking into account its age, I used a little bit more leaf and steeped for 4 minutes in boiling point (212F) water. The olive-colored leaves are mostly broken up but I was able to find an intact baby leaf here and there.

Like this lovely specimen.

Isn’t that marvelous? Whenever I see a whole leaf like that, it conjures up images of tea bushes growing under a wide, blue sky on the other side of the world, with women in brightly colored garments weaving in a delicate dance amongst the rows, plucking the newly grown leaf.

The tea liquor is a brilliant golden sunshine-y color with an orange tinge reminding me of fresh papaya. The flavor is tangy, with a rounded pungency that wakes up my taste buds. A whisper of almond and refreshing citrus greets those awakened taste buds with each sip.

I love the color of this tea so much that I brought out my glass teamug so I could enjoy it while I sipped.

My conclusion is that like the other older first flush teas I’ve tried, this tea has stood up well and can be quite a wonderful cup if you give it some tweaks to how it might have been originally steeped when it was a newborn.

Stay tuned for next week when I rerun my post from two years ago. I’m really enjoying this first flush journey and hope you are, too!

“When you have a dream, you’ve got to grab it and never let it go.”

~Carol Burnett