Meghma Oolong Limited Edition (Review)
I’ll confess: I’m new to the art of writing about taste sensations. For a long time I’ve marvelled at those perceptive or creative souls who write the blurbs on wine bottles. You know, the type who pick up hints of tobacco, chocolate and dusty desert roads when all you can taste is grape, fermented and alcoholic.
But since I’ve started a website about tea, one of my goals has been to learn this art. Don’t get me wrong, my problem isn’t in picking a good tea from a bad tea, or distinguishing between an exceptional tea and a good tea. I can taste the quality. But describing it is much more challenging.
On Saturday I prepared for myself a cup of Meghma Oolong Limited Edition, a rare tea grown in Nepal in 2008 and sent to my by Ya-Ya Teahouse in Christchurch, New Zealand. The blurb on the package describes it as such:
“Mr. Tamang’s oolongs have gained the reputation of being of outstanding quality. Even at his high standards, this Limited Edition oolong is a very special treat.”
If you’ve never tasted tea from Nepal, you’re not alone. Nepal’s tea industry is small, dominated by small-scale tea farmers, not large tea estates.
Teas grown in the east, such as this one, share traits with the renowned teas of Darjeeling, which is just a few hours across the Indo-Nepal border. Meghan is a small village, high up in the Himalayas. Madan Tamang, the man behind the tea, runs a tea plantation on about 85 acres (as of October 2006) in a very remote region. No wonder this is a limited edition tea.
The dry tea leaves are small, with frequent white tips, and smell of honey and bushfire. Or so I think.
When brewing, I went with Ya-ya’s instructions: 4.5 teaspoons of tea to 200 mil of water at 85° C. Steeping time is supposed to be 40 seconds, though I let this go for about a minute twenty (not intentionally).
Sitting down with my freshly brewed tea while Bec ate Doritos with dip, I took a heavy whiff of the tea, paused a moment, then announced: “I smell corn chips. I smell tsatsiki.” (This was said like Manny, if you’ve seen the Black Books
I joke, of course. The tea was lively and fruity, and very unique. In The Story of Tea
While relishing the tea and attempting to decipher its aroma and flavour, I tried to describe to Bec what I was tasting and smelling (most of which has ended up in the paragraph above). Eventually, perhaps growing tired of my ramblings, Bec took the cup, sniffed deeply and said: “I smell grape. With a hint of corn chips.”