While at The Tea Centre at Macquarie Shopping Centre in North Ryde, Australia I bought some Australian Daintree Tea along with some Vietnam High Mountain Oolong Tea.

The Australian Daintree is a black tea and is grown in Australia.

The Daintree tea is grown way up in the north of Queensland near Cairns and Port Douglas.

The tea plantation is near the Daintree National Park which is a part of the oldest surviving tropical rainforest in the world. In the picture above you can also see that the Great Barrier Reef is just off the coast.

The tea is not full leaf, but this may be because of the way it is processed. It is cut earlier and dried quickly. With more surface area of the leaves it also brews quickly.

I almost decided to use a tea ball instead of my glass infuser, but wanted to see the tea brewing. You can see here that the lighter leaf pieces are floating in the brewing tea.

Here is a view of the leaves after brewing. You can see that they are small particles. Some of the smaller particles made it through the infuser during brewing, but not as much as I thought.

The tea had a nice aroma and a reddish color. The tea had a full taste and was surprisingly smooth for a black tea. It was as smooth as some of my oolong teas. The taste is a bit earthy with just a hint of vanilla.

They had brewed a sample for me at The Tea Centre, however tonight it tasted better than what I remember from the sample. Perhaps it is because of the brewing method. The sample was served to me in a paper cup and I think perhaps this had an effect on the flavor development as it cooled. Perhaps I would have bought a larger amount if it tasted the same then 🙂

It is interesting that this is a pure black tea and not a blend. In fact Daintree is often added to other teas to boost flavor.

I saw some other teas in the supermarkets that were marked as Australian teas, but they simply had a bit of Daintree in the blend. It was nice to find a true 100% Australian tea.

Have you tried Daintree tea?

Steven