Sun Dried Jingshan Green

My allergies are going haywire this morning – yesterday it was raining and today it’s sunny. I just checked Weather.com and the pollen count is high today and will be for the rest of the week. MEH!

Anyway when my allergies are bothering me that’s a good time to focus on green tea. I decided to revisit this one this morning and I need to finish it off anyway because I’ve had it for a while. A delicate tea with the flavor of peas this morning. See previous notes for more info.

achoo! =)

I just realized this is my 999th tasting note! What? Really?
How did THAT happen?
Of course, many of my notes are repeats of teas I’ve already reviewed, because once I find something I love, I want to drink it over & over again, & tell everyone how great it is.
But it feels a little crazy that my next tasting note (after this one) will be #1000. I feel like I should do something special, & in all honesty, if I’d realized this was #999 before I poured the water, I probably would have picked a different tea. Too late.
So…I will openly admit that this is not my favorite green tea. It starts out tasting rather wine like, with a bright fruitiness that quickly morphs into a lime citrus taste & oral sensation. There is also a floral element that is just a little too perfumey for my tastes. The mouthfeel is very bright & almost metalic on the tip of my tongue, again, that citrus-like sensation, & astringent to my throat. I can never make it through all the steepings of this one, as it is the type of green tea that tends to irritate my stomach as well. On the other hand, it seems to have some nice Chaqi. I wonder if they ever process this leaf as Sheng?
Time to drink a big glass of cold water!

Verdant green tea #3 for the evening.

First infusion:
Hmm, my nose isn’t detecting any aroma. Maybe it’s tired. Mmmm, this is clearly different from the other two. I almost got the sort of tea flavour one gets from a black tea, which is interesting. It’s sweet as well, but much different from the dragonwell as there’s more body to it. I was strangely just reminded of an earl grey… yep, still getting that weird association. (It just occurred to me that I may be interpreting the citrusy note from my earlier review as the bergamot from an earl grey, but I can’t be certain).

Huh – I just went back to my first tasting note, and it totally isn’t meshing with what I’m tasting here, but I think I used a fair bit more leaf previously, given that I only steeped it for 1 minute that time. Also… wondering a touch if my teaball still had traces of Coconut Cream Pie lingering in it. Please don’t rag on me about the teaball – I know it’s less than optimal, but I only have two “open-water” infusers. Maybe I should have strained it instead. Actually, I had contemplated that earlier… I guess I forgot.

Anyways, this one probably is a poor comparison, in retrospect. I’m really thrown by how it’s tasting a bit like a black tea. Ah well. I know it was great the first time around. Might try a second infusion later, but I’ve kind of lost the will to bother at this point.

I think I should also compare these three in a more gong-fu sort of style (although I doubt I have patience for 3-second infusions, I could do 15 or 30 second ones). A fun experiment another night.

Revisiting this tea this afternoon. This is one of the very best green teas that I’ve had. It is sweet and delicate and has a complexity all its own.

I managed six infusions from these leaves (combining the liquor of 2 infusions in one cup), with each cup tasting quite different from the previous one. The first cup was quite sweet, soft and crisp. It has a remarkably clean taste, with hints of citrus that become more apparent in the aftertaste. The second cup was still sweet, but the sweetness had mellowed somewhat and there was a new, savory tone that was emerging. The third and final cup offered a very pleasant savory tone. It was still sweet, but less so than in the first four infusions.

A very, very pleasant green tea. This is one that I will need to order very soon.

This is for the 2013 harvest as I’m not apt to creating new entries for each year unless someone already has that done. I’ve come to recognise that as far as greens go, i’m best to have small samples for when i want a green straight tea rather than buying actual ounces of tea. I like green teas but they require a certain state of mind from me to really enjoy them. Blacks are still my go to tea.

This is a really lovely tea. I’ve been drinking it this morning while i get ready to meet up with raritea to visit doors open toronto for a wee bit and head to the king edward for late afternoon tea. It should be a really nice time and it looks like the weather is cooperating even if it is a bit cooler than i’d like. My over all impressions of this are that it’s light, slightly floral but not in a way that i don’t like, there’s a sweetness to it as well…I’ll likely be finishing this off over the weekend so more to come.

OMG. Is this really green tea? I’m brewing this in the little yellow pot I usually use for oolongs and I suspect I’m somehow drinking an oolong instead of a green. Is it possible for green tea to have such sweet complexity and floral savory smoothness? This lightly colored liquor is absolutely lovely. It’s got this bright exotic citrus zestiness and an underlying vegetal deliciousness. Mmmm…

Steep two is more vegetal with a ghostly hint of limey flowers. It’s pleasingly drying. Mmm..brothy…

I can imagine this being so good lemon pound cake or thai food. versatile and so very good. I totally get why people are crazy over these Verdant Teas.

Hey! This is my first Verdant? I think I’ll have to explore further…
Thank you Azzrian for this delicious sample! so good!

I truly believe I have found a great tea seller with Verdant! This Sun Dried Jing Shan Green is a gorgeous tea. Especially after drinking the Hand Picked Oolong! The aroma is intoxicating and so is the flavor! I brewed this basket style with a generous amount of leaves. I am higher than 10 Himalayans! My sincere thanks to David for honoring my request for a sample of Big Red Robe { a generous amount too } and the Dragonwell. You have a loyal customer….

This is different from any tea I have ever tasted. I think I now understand what ‘linen’ means. I am not sure if I like it or not. I don’t hate it but I think this one is going to be a bit of an acquired taste for me. I feel terrible not loving it as much as all the cool kids do. :( I’ve tried it Western style and jingshan style. I will continue messing with steep times to see if my opinion changes. I think the biggest problem I have is that linen taste and mouthfeel..I will leave the rating off for now. Next attempt will be western style but with about half the steep time.

Okay, having tried it the above way I like it much better. Still leaving the rating off until I ‘get’ this one.

I received this one as a free sample in my latest Verdant order. It’s a tea I’ve been meaning to try but have never got around to ordering or requesting a sample, so I’m glad David read my mind and included it. The website says that the current harvest (2012) is acutally sold out, so I guess I got some of the last bits of it!

The dry tea smells surprisingly floral and not grassy-green teaish at all. Steeped western style it has that lovely, bakery-ish buttery aroma I have come to associate with fine green teas. I never knew about that before, so the first time I encountered it, it was a shock! A pleasant shock. This one doesn’t fall into the cookie-ish category on the flavor, though. No, this is bright and fruity and a tiny bit floral. It also has this almost tingly feel to the sip. There’s also a bit of a snap pea flavor lurking about the edges. This tea is oh so summery to me, which makes it kind of an odd choice for a fall day, but it is delicious nonetheless. I feel like I could have probably used a bit more leaf, not shocking since it is so curly and thus difficult to dish out with a teaspoon, but it still has a good amount of flavor and plenty of aroma.

This is a nostalgic green tea for me. All of Verdant’s other greens are from the far-off village of Laoshan in Shandong Province. This one alone falls within the Southern Chinese growing region, hailing from Yunnan.

The first time I tried this was a dark rainy night in Hangzhou. I had wrapped up a day of interviews with tea vendors, mostly selling Dragonwell, and found myself out in torrential rain walking along the shoreline of the city’s famous lake. My goal was to find either a taxi or a teahouse to get out of the rain. I walked and walked with no luck at either. After about an hour of wandering and thorough pounding from the rain, I saw an old wooden structure down a side street. The whole sign was not visible, but I saw the character for tea, and made a dash for it. As I rounded the corner, I saw that the sign read “Jingshan Teahouse.” I had never heard of Jingshan before, but didn’t particularly care. I entered the old wooden building and asked for a table.

The teahouse was completely empty, and the woman behind the counter scurried upstairs to find a table and some hot water. She handed me a big, wooden-bound menu proudly and I opened it to find just three teas. Jingshan Tea, Jingshan Budset Tea, and Jingshan Early Spring Tea. I almost laughed at the oddity of three menu items, but ordered the Early Spring Tea, and waited. Instead of the usual Gaiwan, the woman brought a short glass, poured hot water and sprinkled the tea leaves on top, telling me to wait for the tea to start dancing around.

This was clearly no ordinary tea waitress. I struck up a conversation while waiting for the leaves to open and found out that her family was a farmer family in Yunnan, and they saved money to open a shop in Hangzhou to spread the tea of their village that they were so proud of. I sipped the tea and experienced a crisp, sparkling and determined sweetness that impressed me. The woman was very happy I liked it and immediately began pulling out books and picture albums of the mountain Jingshan. I convinced her to sell me a little bag of tea to drink at home, and left much happier, and with much more taxi-finding skill.

It took me three years to track her down again, and with some help from good friends in China, I was able to bring the Jingshan green that she shared with me to America. I have been drinking it hot and iced, and notice that its original effect of clearing the mind and having an overall cleansing feeling remains true. When I am not in the mood for the bean-like heartiness of Laoshan, I turn to the lighter Jingshan, and watch the buds uncurl in a glass tumbler.

My hope is that some Americans will get as much joy out of discovering tea from an obscure little-known village as I have. While neither Jingshan or Laoshan are famous, the farmers are honest, devoted and honorable.

Time to go steep up another tumbler-full!