Good. I'd been searching for years for an Assam as good as the '07-'12 Meleng/Mangalam from SpecialTeas and Tea Stop. I finally realize I was just lucky to have found consistent, truly Great Assam during those years, because nothing else I'd found until now measured up.tencats_tea wrote:Haven't seen any good Mangalam yet this seasom. TeaBox though has just recently relisted a Mangalam Gold for 2017.
You said " the Vahdam's taste hit me over the head". Is that a good or a bad tea taste?
I tried nearly every decent-looking Upton 2013-4 Assam SKU. They were all disappointing so I gave up until Winter '16/17, when I started my hunt anew. By this time, I'd tried 100+ sku's from ~20 different vendors from 2013-2017, before I found a few that weren't a letdown- Teasource's Duflating SFTGFOP1, a Dikom all-gold tips from Harney, Mariage Frere's Numalighur, Dejoo, and Koilamari; and a mystery Special Golden Tips from Jayshreetea: https://www.jayshreetea.com/black-tea/a ... -black-tea
But it wasn't until this 2017 Halmari Gold that I was, as mentioned, really satisfied. I thought I maybe preferred Vahdam's batch, but I need some more time with them to reach a conclusion. Could be 'higher-price bias.' They're both great: https://www.reddit.com/r/tea/comments/6 ... _compared/
As for Mangalam, Jayshreetea posted a 2017 batch here: https://www.jayshreetea.com/black-tea/a ... -black-tea
Shipping is not built into their pricing (they should probably work on this), so it's $21 min for 100-500g, $38 for 600+. But prices are very low, so it works out. They have good Darjeeling too- they own all the estates they sell.
Cheers and happy sipping.