No. 03 Classic Chinese Black Tea from Joseph Wesley Black Tea – Tea Review

Everything I tried from Joseph Wesley Black tea has been excellent, I can’t recommend them enough if you are a black tea lover. A couple good tea friends have told me No. 03 Classic Chinese black tea is a really good one from Joseph Wesley. When I ordered the Qimen, I sneaked in a tin of Classic Chinese black tea.

Of course with Joseph Wesley, their teas have an awesome modern design that I love.

No03 Classic Chinese Black Tea from Joseph Wesley - Oolong Owl (1)

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Enclosed leaflet with the tea.

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Dry Leaf

Classic Chinese Black features delicate and wiry black tea leaf with the rare golden tip. The dry leaf is a raisin fruity fragrance explosion upon opening the package.

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Steeping Instructions

The container lists western steeping instructions at 175-180F for 2.5 to 3 minutes.

No03 Classic Chinese Black Tea from Joseph Wesley - Oolong Owl (3)

I’m doing Gongfu cha style brewing, so boiling spring water, 5 grams of tea in a 75ml gaiwan. Live fast, leaf hard.

Derp, I am steeping this tea at 7,000 Feet/2100 meters. So it’s technically boiling as my kettle loses its mind at 199F. My steeping and tasting might be a little different than yours because of my elevation.

Tasting of Joseph Wesley Black Tea’s No.03 Classic Chinese Black Tea

First and Second Infusion: Classic Chinese Black steeps up a light golden orange colour with a strong raisin scent. It appears Black Tea Owl is still caught up in the dry leaf scent.

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The first steeping is quite light, with some creamy smoothness. Second infusion picks up with creamy caramel notes and is lightly sweet and cakey, like poundcake dotted with raisins.

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Third, Fourth, Fifth Infusion: The tea has changed yet again, it seems this black tea needs a couple infusions to settle in. changes again to an even stronger flavor – malt, off-the-charts bittersweet dark chocolate with a slight background of smoke.

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Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Infusion: Classic Chinese black tea is smoothing out to a light caramel, cream, bitter sweet chocolate, and malt with a little bit of astringency as an after sip. Each steeping gets lighter losing the bittersweet and malt and getting more clean cream and caramel. Very delicious!

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Comments

Joseph Wesley Black Tea’s No. 03 Classic Chinese Black tea is an easy to drink black with excellent dessert like notes. Classic Chinese black tea is a great complex black for the tea heads, but also an excellent quality black for the black tea lover. This tea would also make a great western brew too!

Hoot, a little help here please.

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