61
drank Grand Pouchong T-103 by Chado
311 tasting notes

Brewing up a bit of this, towards the end of a batch purchased probably more than a year ago. I had loved the pouchong I bought at TenRen—my first experience of a lightly oxidized oolong—and was looking for more of the same. What a surprise! This is a darker, spicier, fruitier tea, not as earthy and toasted as the SeaDyke Ti Kuan Yin I ‘grew up’ drinking, but not much resembling the lighter TenRen tea. I keep forgetting and rediscovering it in the back of the cupboard. Shame on me. It doesn’t deserve forgetting. The spice is reminiscent of the Rou Gui I recently tried for the first time.

The dry leaf is dark, long, relatively straight but twisted around the long axis. It smells fruity/spicy already.

Brewing about 1 gram of leaf per ounce or 30mL of water in a small gaiwain, water at about 195 degrees.

The liquor is amber to reddish, sweet, spicy, but like Rou Gui, doesn’t have the really long legs of a Dan Cong or Wuyi Oolong: it’s tiring at 5 infusions, with spicy still there but more astringency and the fruity gone. Even after all 5 infusions, the leaves aren’t fully unfurled, seems like there should be more to give, but tonight a 6th infusion is pretty much just spice.

If rated on the first infusion alone, this would be a 90; on the first-through-5th, it’s lower.

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 0 min, 30 sec

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I’ve been drinking tea for 30 years, but only bought 2 brands of 2 different teas for most of that time. It took me almost 30 years to discover sencha, puerh, and green oolongs. Now I am making up for lost time.

I try to log most of my teas at least once, but then get lazy and stop recording, so # times logged should not be considered as a marker of how much a particular tea is drunk or enjoyed.

Also debunix on TeaForum.org and TeaChat.

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