What-Cha Burma Mogok 'Tiny Temple' Green Tea

I picked this up from What-Cha out of pure curiosity, as I had never tried a green tea from Burma (Myanmar) before. The genetic makeup alone made it worth a look. This is essentially a green tea made from native old Burmese Assamica bushes, a broad-leaf plant almost exclusively used to make heavy, robust black teas.

The marketing hype and the £15 price tag:

If you read the marketing material surrounding this estate, prepare for some serious eye-rolling. The tea comes drowning in a heroic, feel-good backstory about village redemption, complete with a shiny "Highly Commended" badge from the 2022 Leafies awards. While What-Cha keeps the hype slightly lower than other vendors who hilariously claim this leaf tastes like lychee and young bamboo shoots, they still lean on that exhausting narrative to justify selling 50g of mediocrity for £15.

When a brand lays it on that thick, the liquid needs to do the talking. The PR campaign does not belong in the teapot.

Brewing and tasting notes:

Stripped of the pretentious fluff and the shiny awards, what you actually get is a very straightforward, heavy cup. I brewed this at 70-75C for exactly 1 minute to stop the notoriously harsh Assamica leaf from turning overly bitter.

The flavour: You get a massive punch of strong, vegetal malt right up front. It tastes exactly how you would expect a standard Assam to taste, just in green tea form.

The finish: It goes down surprisingly smoothly. There is a pleasant sweetness on the swallow and a lingering sweet aftertaste that helps balance out the heavy malt.

Honestly, that is all I can say about it. There is absolutely nothing else going on in this cup. It is a smooth, malty, and entirely one-note brew. There is certainly nothing here that screams "award-winning" or backs up the self-congratulatory hype.

3 stars purely because a green Assam is a unique novelty to try once. I would absolutely never buy it again.