Good morning, dear tea friends! I’m glad to be back with a new tea post to share with you. My poor desktop is gone, replaced by my laptop, which is actually much faster. My biggest challenge was finding a new photo editing software that didn’t break the bank. I’m trying out Photoshop Elements on a free trial and, so far, it’s doing everything I’d like it to do. I hadn’t realized how slow my old desktop was. She served me well for 15 years. Ok, on to tea…

This morning’s tea is an Assam tea from the Tonganagaon Estate. This black tea from northeastern India has been cultivated without the use of synthetic pesticides and herbicides so it’s a certified organic tea. I couldn’t find much information about this tea garden other than it’s small and located near the Namdapha National Park, one of the richest areas of biodiversity in all of India.

I steeped the variegated, tippy leaves for 4 minutes in boiling point (212F) water. If you enjoy milk in your tea, I recommend steeping for a minute or so longer. A pronounced toasty aroma wafted up from my glass teapot as the leaves steeped.

This tea is considered a whole leaf tea but all I saw were large broken pieces of leaf. I think that a tea can be designated as whole leaf if the leaf bits are above a certain size as they’re running them through sieves during processing.

The tea liquor is a gorgeous, glowing orange. The flavor is silky smooth with light notes of spice and malt, along with some toasty nuances. This is the most complex organic Assam tea I’ve tasted in a long time, quite a pleasure.

A little while ago, it was teeming rain and now big fat flakes of snow seem to be pouring out of the sky, coating everything with an icy white frosting. I’m spending an afternoon with my family this afternoon, celebrating another birthday and looking forward to a wonderful year to come!

Have a great week and enjoy your tea!

“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”  ~William Shakespeare