I had stopped cracking open new green teas during the holiday break because I had a lot of black teas I wanted to taste — and since I didn’t have to sleep well during the break (though I did, fortunately) I spent a lot of time on them.
But now it’s back to work, and back to green tea sipdowns.
This is a reminder to myself (not that anyone else would be interested) that my current note process is: initial tasting note and sipdown note. In between, I typically don’t write notes unless I’m really moved by something different that happens in the taste of the tea or in a connection I make between the tea and something else in my life or the world at large.
In the initial note, I give detailed impressions of experiencing the tea for the first time. Usually for oolongs I’ll take them through multiple steeps (and if I ever get around to my pu erhs the same will apply). In the sipdown note, I sum up my impressions over the course of experiencing the tea, including whether I intend to buy more.
As a practical matter, I try to time initial tastings for when I have time to write the aforementioned detailed notes, which means weekends or holidays. During the week, I just drink what I’ve already written an initial note on.
Since I drink a lot of green tea during the week, I’d gotten into the habit of cracking open new ones during the weekend so I could write initial notes at my leisure. Resuming that trend now.
In the tin, this has dark scent. Darkly vanilla, with some floral around the edges. It’s a beautiful tea to look at.
The aroma is a perfumey vanilla, like Shalimar perfume. It’s a beany vanilla, which I prefer. There’s a floral note, but for me, anyway, it’s minor. The tea is golden yellow and clear.
The flavor is unexpectedly refreshing for a non-citrus flavored green tea. There’s a freshness in the mouth that must come from the tea itself. My sense is the underlying tea has a grassiness that cuts what might otherwise be cloying aspects of the flavor.
It also has that French thing going for it.
I’m rating it on the high side mostly because I was so pleasantly surprised by what this tea wasn’t.
Flavors: Floral, Vanilla
I like your process for doing two notes per tea—the initial tasting and the final sipdown. Since teas can change quite a bit from your first sip to your last, that makes a lot of sense.
Agreed, and that’s pretty much why I arrived at this system.