Tea from Taiwan

Mmm, smells nice – sweet and like a light floral. There’s also a buttery smell to it. So flower butter maybe. Brewed up, the scent is more solid green floral oolong base but there is still some creamy butter laid over top.

The company’s note says that this tea has slight astringency and I can kind of see that. It’s not what I would normally peg as astringent since it isn’t that strong but it definitely has a sharper edge than I’m used to in green oolongs. But it’s very pleasant. On the first part of the sip I’m getting sweetness and soft floral, then I get the rougher taste of green bushes (or something) – fresh and solid but not heavy. As it cools it becomes creamier like butter heavily flavored with bushes. Why bushes? The taste isn’t sweet enough to be grass or not heavy enough to be tree but it is something green and fresh. And that’s the only thing I could think of to compare.

Anyway, it makes it nice. Simultaneously light and solid, this is a softer tea that isn’t delicate but nor is it heavy. So I’m grooving on the bush butter tea so far.

Second steep, also @ 2:30, the bush taste is a little softer, the butter taste more milky aftertaste. Quite nice. As it cools, the milky tastes almost gets a little toasty hint and I’m reminded of Samovar’s Ryokucha which is never a bad thing.

All in all, a milder milk oolong (I’m guessing because there is no artificial flavors) that I find very nice.

ETA:
Third steep @ 3:30. Not overly special or distinctive but has a sweet, floral, milky note that fills my mouth and makes it attractive. Almost tastes a little sugared.

Fourth steep @ 4:30. The taste is milder now, softer. The milky is fading into a general smoothness along with a more generic green oolong taste.
3g/6oz

Okay, I just spent 2 hours tracking 5 different steeps of this tea and then Firefox crashed and it all went poof. Yeah, I need to write tasting notes in a different program and just paste into Steepster because. Not. Cool. Sigh. Okay, this might be for the best since having to remember what happened will mean that this is shorter than the original. Not short, mind you. Just shorter.

I have no idea what I’m doing with this tea but I’ll do my best to muddle through. Since I have the time and inclination, I’m going to use the whole almost 8g sample and brew it up in my gaiwan. It fills about 1/4th of the gaiwan so this is either the correct amount or not quite enough. Whatever. Muddling.

The leaves look like dark, slightly large Gunpowder. Or very tiny raisins. The dry leaves smell dusty and a little dirty. Like my back porch right before spring cleaning. Gave it a 10s rinse and OMG, not cool. The wet leaves smell like burnt coffee. Badly burnt. Yuck.

First Steep: 35s at 185°. The leaves smell horrible. Thankfully, the tea smells like a blend of non-burnt coffee and pu-erh hay smell. The taste? Wow. Weird. Very weird. It tastes like how I drink restaurant coffee – very sweet and creamy. Specifically, I’d say about 3 sugars and 2 creamers. Crazy. I’m getting a little hint of caramel syrup in the aftertaste.
Second Steep: 40s at 195°. The burnt coffee smell of the leaves is so strong that it is almost a physical blow when I raise the lid to the gaiwan. There is a little more coffee flavor than pu-erh flavor. Now it tastes like coffee with perhaps two sugars and only one creamer but it’s a flavored creamer.
Third Steep: 45s at 190°. The leaves are opening up some and now they look like small angry beetles that will attack me. Now the taste is pretty much two sugars and half of a flavored creamer.
Fourth Steep: 50s at 185°. Really wish the leaves didn’t smell like burnt coffee. This steep tastes almost exactly like the one before but now the creamer is unflavored.
Fifth Steep: 60s at 195°. The leaves are not even half way open and this steep tastes almost exactly like the second steep. This is the tea that will never die.

Whew. All caught up. Now new stuff but honestly? I have no idea how long this tea will last so we’re going keep the same level of detail as the recap above because I have no desire to find out if Steepster has a character limit on logs.

Sixth Steep: 70s at 195°. Starting to transition into something more pu-erh hay-like with a coffee under note.
Seventh and Eight Steeps: 80s and 90s respectively, at 195°. The leaves are opened enough to look like mangled cricket legs… from decently large crickets. (How do I know this? My cats like to pull the back legs off of crickets and then eat the crickets (or so I assume as we ever only find the legs)). Currently the flavor is somewhere between coffee-flavored pu-erh and steeps one and two. This. Tea. Will. Never. Die.
Ninth Steep: 1:40 at 195°. Nope, not dead. The aftertaste if full on sweet pu-erh aftertaste now though.
Tenth Steep: 2min at 195°. Okay, this might be hinting that in 3 or 5 or so steeps, the flavor will start to fade but right now? This tastes like pretty much like all the other steeps I’ve had of this. I’ve had around 40 ounces of this tea. I’m going to be smelling like coffee for days, sweating it out my pores. This tea wins, I wave the white flag.

So now the big question: how does this tea rate?

I have no idea.

Is it high quality? Yes, so a 4/5 stars there which puts it at anywhere over 70. I mean come on. Ten steeps? Seriously? And it’s smooth and sweet and flavorful. Very good quality (in my less-than-pu-erh-knowledgeable opinion).

Would I repurchase this tea (which would give it a rank over 80)? I have no idea. First or second steep I would have said sure, probably. It’s weird but I like it. Not really my norm but enjoyable and something I could dip into every now and again. But after ten steeps (and more left in the leaves), I kind of feel that there is no way I can fully appreciate a tea like this, a tea that lasts this long. So maybe it should be filed under “Good Tea but Too Serious For Me”. (I’d totally make a file folder for that). But at the same time, it is tasty. And I wouldn’t have to do ten steeps each time I had it (and I doubt it would last that long done Western style). So I’ll have to make that answer a strong maybe and I’ll rate it accordingly.

I think I might go soak a leaf or two for a few hours just to see if they are truly capable of fully expanding.

And if you care, a few pictures on my blog here: http://bit.ly/a0iwHM

Mmm. Smells floral and almost lemony. Tastes rich and chewy and buttery. Today this is reminding me of some pouchongs I’ve had. Solid and thick and rich but not heavy. There’s a good, interesting flavor to this tea but it is also very drinkable. For me it seems to straddle the line between a good everyday tea and a more special occasion tea, ultimate tipping over to the everyday tea side.
4g/6oz

Having yesterday’s steeps 4 & 5 iced. Steep 3 was a horrible experience because of mouthwash (and my own stupidity) but the leaves still smelled good so I brewed more up and stuck it in the fridge.

The taste is very strong actually – stronger than I was expecting for a green oolong iced (which usually seem to need to be warmed up to have a lot of taste) and for being later steeps. Very green tasting, floral – a higher, sweeter floral that I was getting from it last night. The overall feel of the tea is a bit thin but that thinness doesn’t carry over into the taste. All in all, a surprisingly good tea iced.

No brewing directions so I’m just using my general oolong parameters. I know it says this is ideally suited for gaiwan brewing, but honestly? I’m too lazy to do it right now. Western(ish)-style it is! I’ve got almost 8g in this sample so I’m going to split it about in half which means I get to try this heavy on the leaf. Should give me hints of gaiwan possibilities.

This smells so good. The dry leaf is sweet, fruity, buttery, a hint of something spicy. Maybe a dark floral? It makes me think of a milk oolong crossed with a pouchong. Brewed up it smells sweet and light and floral but there is a tickle of a dark, rich scent underneath.

Taste-wise, I was expecting something more like a light floral Tung Ting oolong but it has a slightly darker taste, more like some Ti Kuan Yin I’ve had. But at the same time not. There is a buttery flavor in there that reminds me of a good Ali Shan I had from Red Blossom. This is really hard to describe because there is so much going on – the base flavor is that of a less delicate green oolong. But there is an under-note of a rich, buttery and green thickness. And a top-note of spicy floral sweetness with almost a hint of fruity sharpness that makes me think of the Fuiji apple I had at lunch.

This tea has lots of depth to it, which I find is not always true of lighter oolongs. This is borderline delicate but I think falls ultimately on the rich side, not the delicate side. It’s not quite a sip-it-quietly-and-contemplate-beauty tea for me. More like a mmm-guzzle-it-down-and-wish-I-had-made-a-bigger-cup tea.

Second steep @ 2:00. The lighter note is not really there on this steep but the rich flavor is a bit more present. The tea feel silky as I swallow. Mmm.
3.9g/5oz

The leaves are ugly and broken with rather long stems poking out. Each time I brew this, I just don’t expect much. But the taste does certainly deliver. Sweet with a faint nectar/floral honey top note and an almost nutty bottom note. Why can’t I remember the tastiness of this tea when I’m not actually sipping it?

Still recovering from yesterday’s migraine so while I have Maeda-en’s Sen-Cha Fukamushi Reserve sitting on my counter, crying out to be made, I need something softer. So I made a big cup of this up.

Making it up in a cup this large (and with an in cup filter, not in my tea pot) seems to have made the taste a tad murky. But it’s not bad at all. My cup got emptied very quickly so I’m not going to complain. Well, not about the taste or drinkability. Can I just take a moment to complain about the leaves?

There are stems in my leaves. Huge, two or three inch stems. And broken leaves. And they all look unshiny and unhappy. The leaves disappoint me each time I see them. But, the taste that comes out of those leaves? Pretty good. Very drinkable.

Overall, not a fancy tea but a good daily type tea. Shines a little more in a smaller cup.
6g/12oz

These leaves are pretty sad. A bit broken up, lots of long twigs, a bit older looking than what I expected even for something that is admittedly a bit old. But as I poured the tea into cups, I got a nice whiff of fresh, buttery greenness. So fingers crossed.

The taste is pretty nice actually, much better than I was expecting/fearing. One of the best baozhong/pouchongs I’ve had was thick and rich, almost chewy and definitely buttery. This one isn’t that intense. But it’s floral, green, soft, tropical, fresh and very sweet.

Aside from the depressing little leaves, there’s nothing wrong with this tea. Sure, it doesn’t hit my baozhong perfection of thick, rich, make-your-mouth-water-buttery. But this is still a really good daily tea. I’m pleasantly surprised, especially based on the sad leaf. When I opened the package, I was afraid I’d have to force myself to drink through the 75g I got but now I don’t think I’ll have any trouble finding the bottom of the tin this tea is now in.

ETA: Oops, forgot to rate it. And…
2nd steep @ 2:30 – the floral has transitioned a little from light floral to a faintly spicy floral.
6g/12oz

This is a dark oolong, plenty of toasty fragrance overlaying an orchid-y, fruity sweetness in the dry leaves. I got 4 steeps out of this, one minute duration each, by the 4th it was getting pretty ordinary so I don’t think I’ll bother with a fifth. Orchid flavour in the first and second steeps, and for some reason ‘melon’ popped into my head as well… mellowing out to toasty, new-leathery and woody flavours in the 3rd and somewhat in the fourth steeps. This is a great tea for a grey, cool and rainy day which is what we’re having in Melbourne today (not that I’m complaining after the heat we’ve had the rest of the week).