Posts Tagged ‘Golden Monkey tea’
June 12, 2010 | 
Author After blogging about Golden Monkey tea on May 6, I finally figured that I\’d better taste it.
If everything I’d read about it was true, I figured I’d be in for a rich smooth cup. The first sip all but knocked my socks off. Yes, it was rich and smooth, but it was also fruity and, well, suprisingly different. It was fruitier than a Darjeeling, maltier than an Assam, and it had something like the flavor of aged Pu-erh.
I then tried it with sugar, but that proved to be a distraction from all the flavor notes. Then I added cream (half and half actually) and found that Golden Monkey can stand up to it. If it wasn’t such a good tea on its own, I’d recommend it as part of a British style blend.
This one tea could replace both the Assam and the Darjeeling.
I then brewed it a bit lighter, and it became a really good Chinese restaurant style tea. Not only does Golden Monkey deliver in the flavor department, but it also looks really interesting with its long strands, some golden, some black, that resemble pipe tobacco.
Roland Petrov
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Golden Monkey is the name of a black tea from both Fujian and Yunnan provinces in China. The tea looks pretty as it is characterized by lots of golden tips. This tea, which is hand picked each spring, is low in tannins and astringency but rich in flavor.
Some think that this tea was named Golden Monkey because the shape of the dried leaves resembles monkey claws; others cite the legend in which this tea grew on precipitous peaks making it hazardous to pluck, so the locals trained monkeys to do it.
The tea has its golden appearance, and monkeys may have picked it once; however, golden monkeys themselves are not native to China but to the Virunga volcanic mountains of Central Africa. Rwanda is a tea producing nation with golden monkeys within its borders. Unlike the tea, however, which though highly prized is not rare, the real monkeys are endangered.
Golden Monkey tea won both first and second place in the Black Tea category at the 2009 Tea Expo in Las Vegas.
Roland Petrov