Nannuoshan

A decent rock oolong that is pretty easy to brew and enjoy.

This one has a multilayered aroma when dry; including notes of brownies, fruits, nuts, coffee, and orchids; unlike later in the session. The first infusion tastes sour, yeasty and milky, with an aftertaste of nectarines and sweet wood. The tea has a nice mouthfeel that’s astringent but not abrasive. The rest of the session gives a more warming and floral vibe. There are some more savoury steeps with butter flavour. Interestingly, I find it impossible to overbrew this tea, which is certainly not a given among yancha.

I appreciate the expereince of the age on this one. Something good happened and I broke out this box of tea to celebrate. Intense, woody, roasty, uniquely tasty. An experience I will not soon forget.

This is a sweet, fruity yancha with a woody bitterness and flavours of sour cherry, nectar, paper, and beeswax. I really like its bubbly and astringent mouthfeel.

In terms of aromas, the tea greets you with a spicy and perfumy mix of cloves, cinnamon, vanilla, and ebony.

Roasty, rich and tannic, this 28 year old tea must have been properly stored, because there are no stale or musty notes at all. Tieguanyin is often offered in lighter, green roasts. As far as I’m concerned, those aren’t really Tieguanyin. This properly dark roasted offering gives you the Iron Goddess of Mercy as she was intended to be, with plum skin sweetness and red wine astringency. Forget the green stuff. Once you go black, you’ll never go back.

This one is a very pleasant rock oolong that I could even drining semi-regularly. Besides the well-integrated taste profile, I also like its sticky, fatty texture and strong body presence it induces.

The aroma reminds me of brownies, cherries and orange, while the taste is bready and bitter with notes of licorice, coffee, and apples. The aftertaste further brings flavours such as honey and cola to the mix.

A refreshingly savoury tea with a sweet aftertaste and soft mouthfeel – that’s how I would summarize this tea. At times it has quite a buttery character, other times it has some marine umami that is similar to a sencha.

Its aroma is also quite complex, dry leaves smell of chestnut, sawdust, hay, and apple pie. On the other hand, during the session I got notes of asparagus, grass, green peas, and chicken meat.

[Spring 2021 harvest]

Good yellow tea that reminds me of a Dong Ding oolong at times, but it has also got more of fermentation notes and at times more bitterness.

Dry leaf aroma reminds me of a clean barn with its hints of hay, compost and wood as well as of coffee leaves. Wet leaves then smell of canola, fried chicken and mint.

I’ve had two sessions with the tea, one with close to boiling water and one with lower temperatures. I definitely prefer the former due to a better thickness, the liquor has an oily rather than watery texture then. It gets bitter, but not aggressively so, and astringency is never an issue. The tea is brightly nutty, mineral and floral with a pungent sweet aftertaste. It gives off a warm, summery vibe.

A fairly average Fu Zhuan with a largely woody and nutty character and an intriguing numbing and cooling mouthfeel. In its aromas, it reminds me of candles, wooden cabinets and ant mounds, while the taste bring hints of sawdust, coffee fruitiness, and some sour fermantation notes.

I feel like I may be warming up to the Yancha profile. First two times I’ve had this particular one, I thought it was a high quality tea that is perhaps not really for me. However, today the complex room-filling aroma brought a very comfortable feeling that was then supported by the rest of the session.

Dry leaves have a perfumy smell with notes of wooden cabinets, nectarine, fruit tree flowers and coffee. The wet leaf aroma is sweet and marine with a hint of nettle.

The liquor has a fluffy, colloidal texture and a thick, mouth-watering mouthfeel. It tastes woody and bitter with a sort of vegetal sweetness to it. There is a sweet and spicy finish with a distinct cinnamon note. The protracted aftertaste is very strong and evolving – it is sweet, sour, and savoury and involves a warming and spicy fragrance that emerges from the throat

This is one of my more expensive teas, but I was already buying some teaware from Gabrielle, so I might as well – paying those ,2€/g really does pay off – especially at Nannuoshan.
This sheng pu erh is fantastic. I usually have a hard time noticing the savoury notes, but not with this tea; it is very savoury.

I usually brew this tea lightly, ≈5sec in my gaiwan (I know I should buy a yixing pot…). It is very creamy, viscous, and with a lot of forest notes (mushroom, fresh vegestables, forrest berry).

Overall a very good experience.

I got the chance to try this when Nannuoshan added it to the EU TTB some time back, and was so enamoured with my first aged white tea that I decided to keep the remaining sample. This is a very unique tea, and I can’t really do it justice this afternoon as it was drank while doing puzzles in the newspaper and not really paying attention to it. It’s sweet, but not mild, almost like nectar with a mouth feel just as thick. There are some honeyed floral notes and something like sweet hay. The tea has a faint humming qi which is warming and comforting without being too defocusing or making me drowsy. It’s like a woolly jumper in tea form.

Perfect for discovering rock teas, light, slightly flowery, light torefaction note, perfect to discover the teas of this family.

In short, a tea too light for me.

Gongfu cha methode 45s/45s/60s/90s Water 95°c

Thick creamy viscous with a strong steaming vegetable character and a hint musk melon. In comparison with the Bi Luo Chun this guy doesn’t tend to fall into bitterness that easy. This whole vegetable basket steaming intensely within a nice fusion of zucchini, edamame and avocado while it covers every inch of your senses and inner mouth section with a fine coat of this elegant impression. But beside that it is going the left you behind mouth watering, craving for more while this whole coating more and more transforms into some kind of sweetness and a bit different vegetable profile of green sweet peppers and also naturally sweet corn. This Green fellow really is a sensation of its own and left quite the impression. Another aspect I really enjoyed was the salty ocean case – in this very case it created a feeling of a fine breeze whistling which brought an experience near my senses of standing on an open view ocean scene while the wind carries this fine sea salty scent through the air and my senses. A really lovely aspect.

First white tea for me that had significant age to it.

There was an intriguing sweetness to it that was hard to pin down. It was sort of like coconut or carob, where the sweetness is balanced by a sort of woody/stem-y note.

Definitely a departure from a fresh white tea. Much richer base sweetness and much more complexity.
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Dry leaf – honeysuckle, blackberry syrup, carob, sweet floral

Smell – cherry wood, coconut, marshmallow, blackberry syrup, fruit leaf (? – I don’t know, just sort of a fruit-sweet mixed with leafiness…)

Taste – coconut, carob, dark chocolate cherry cordial are predominant. Base flavors of English breakfast tea, some hints of tea with lemon juice.