The Tao of Tea, First Flush Darjeeling Black Tea, Loose Leaf, 3.5 Ounce Tin

These photos of the dargeeling are after a 5 minute brew. The leaves are clearly green and the tea is a musty pale amber. It is slightly sweet and doesn't taste like a green tea. It tastes like a very light white tea. The aroma is enticing. Clean and welcoming. It is a lovely late afternoon tea when you want to brew a warm pot of something with not much caffeine. I consider this a dessert tea or evening tea. Not a morning tea.The quality and size of the leaves are exceptional and seeing them unfurled is a pleasant experience and why i use a glass tea pot and glass infuser.This is a great price for a USDA organic stamp tea. I enjoy the lightness and the packaging is enchanting.

Very delicious Darjeeling at a lower price than most first flush teas. Gentle flavor, use a little more than regular black tea.

Good flavor .

Tastes great and the double lid packaging is great for keeping the leaves safe. I also liked the fact that they put the brewing instructions on the tin. Many loose leaf teas I've bought don't do this and it's a nice touch helping to ensure a beautiful cup of tea.

First Flush is appreciated for its subtlety. It needs to be good quality and fresh. It consists of very volatile flavor compounds that you need to tune your senses to be able to detect. And even then, it might not be to your liking. It is NOT a black tea, even though it gets labeled as such. It's somewhere between green and oolong. You can tell that much by looking at it.I didn't know ANY of this before I purchased this tea. I just thought it wasn't good. Now that I am aware of the above, and that it is a very different animal from the summer variety, I am trying to appreciate it. Right now, to me, it just tastes like Darjeeling without much flavor. I will be experimenting with it to see if I can get the most out of it.

I like good quality teas from Darjeeling. A few years ago Tao used to make "Darjeeling Muscatel" which was a blend of pretty good darjeelings with a pronounced muscatel taste with a little punch, and this is my favorite tea of recent years, but no longer avaialble. Nowadays, tea companies are putting every kind of flavor and blended crap imaginable in with really bad quality chinese teas, and selling it for the same prices they used to get for rare expensive Darjeeling. So, tea companies now rarely bother with Darjeeling, or they charge an arm and a leg, but most often, it's very poor quality (like ministry of tea, Tea Forte, etc.). What to do? Here you go, $11 today for 100g of high-quality darjeeling. Compare to $16 for 113 g of Darjeeling "Kalimpong" at Peet's. Oh, by the way: I have never liked first flushes, they have always been too subtle for me, little flavor. I really liked this, it has a hint of muscatel with pleasant "green" flavors, but still has full black tea taste. I make it stronger than usual, more like 1.5 tsp./mug than 1 tsp. Other than that provise, go for it, its the best out there, and tell the companies that push flavored crap on you that you will take your business elsewhere until this silly fad runs its course. (BTW I thought I had unusual tastes, but at a family gathering at a fancy tea service, everyone ordered a flavored tea except me, but when we cross-tasted everyone preferred the good 'ol Darjeeling I ordered. Hah!)

The tea leaves are a good quality and since you can use the leaves more than once it is a good value. I would recommend.

This tea is really weak