Norbu Tea

First time with this tea in a while, so smooth and delicious, sweet and toasty, rich and mellow. Mmmmm. Bulk brewed up a bunch of it for my thermos to enjoy over the next few hours.

Shocked to realize I didn’t post a review of this one before. I liked the sample enough to buy several packages, and I’m well on my way through the lot of it. It’s a toasty oolong without any deep roasted bitterness, a little spicy, a little fruity, and a lot delicious: thick mouthfeel, and wonderful quality holding well in the thermos, or for quick infusion after infusion gongfu cha. I can pack the leaves in pretty aggressively and it all stays lovely.

I was very lucky and won one of the Steepster Select boxes for October and this was included as one of the selections.

The dry tea had a light herbaceous quality that I found interesting as I couldn’t quite pinpoint the aroma. I steeped this in boiling water for 3 minutes (directions on the Steepster package) and the leaves produced a very bright (almost florescent) yellow with a beautiful floral aroma.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when tasting this tea, but oh was I ever surprised. I love this tea – it was soft and smooth with a beautiful floral taste and finish. (Norbu’s website describes it as lilac or orchid and I definitely get the orchid flavor). There’s also a hint of greenness, but it’s faint so it didn’t compete with the floral. I can’t stop drinking it and the second, third and fourth (!) steepings I’ve done of this tea have been just as wonderful, though obviously the strength of the tea decreases with each brewing. For me, it’s one of those teas that just wraps you up and hugs you and makes you wish you could just stay inside all day drinking it. I’ll definitely be ordering this tea again!

An AWESOME Oolong. But Norbu has never disappointed me yet with their tea, so I was very happy when I saw that this was included as part of Oolong October’s Steepster Select box. Yay!

This is so good. It almost rivals my favorite Ali Shan (almost). The Steepster Select box this month was worth it for just this tea. It is fab!

I ordered a sample of this with my most recent order from Norbu. I’ve been really enjoying the other green teas I’ve tried from Greg this year.

Sweet vegetal scent of flat light green leaves, peas and grass. These are long thin young leaves, one or two leaves with a bud, but rather flat like a Long Jing before steeping. The leaves swell up to light asparagus green.

Flash rinse with 185 degree water—drank rinse, sweet and tasty and light.

1st infusión, 160 degrees, about 20 seconds—delicious honeydew melon, cucumber, hints of peas, but more sweet floral notes. Very nice.

2nd infusion, 160 degrees, 30 seconds, but realized afterwards I used more water, more dilute, oops—sweet, peas coming up stronger now, touch of floral, but a little light on the flavor, should have lengthened the infusion.

3rd infusion, 160 degrees, 1 minute, sweet, light, flowers/grass/cucumber/melon. Mmm.

4th infusion, another 160 degrees, 1 minute, delicious sweet, light, floral, melon, wonderful.

5th infusion, another 160 degrees, forgot it for almost 10 minutes (oops), still sweet, floral, delicious, but quite mild despite the overly long infusion—really this should count as about 3!

6th infusion, 180 degrees, 5 minutes, and delicately sweet and floral, but really done now.

I prepared a second series of infusions, and again it is delicious, sweet, vegetal, grassy, a little floral, and highly tasty. I started again with a hotter rinse to ‘wake’ the leaves, then moved up in temps from 150s to 190s, probably 9 or 10 infusions, and the infusions have been good all the way through. Wonderful stuff.

This is another lovely green tea from Norbu. I am getting more of the qualities that I enjoy in a green tea from these than from most of the others I’ve had from other sources, and don’t yet know how much is simply better tea, and how much is better brewing. Right now it seems like better tea is the more important thing, and this one makes me very happy.

Its still a little warm in GA today, but this oolong is light and refreshing. This tea has a delicate floral smell. The flavor matches the aroma, but it has the other levels that you would expect from an oolong. Very enjoyable.

Wow…love this tea. I really can’t place the taste…it is leaning over to more of a vegetal milk oolong. I have been drinking it non-stop.

Steeped this for the proper time on package this time… last time I got doing on the ‘net and didn’t hear my timer. Oops.

The color this time is noticeably lighter, I mean much. The smell is strong and green with a hint of sweetness. Makes me think of summer green fields or a slightly bitter grass scent.

The taste is very green and bitter, with a floral note at the end. It’s a strong and full Oolong, maybe the most robust I’ve ever tasted.

I’m not sure I like it. It’s one that’s going to either be “ugh yuck” or “mmm, delicious” after a couple-three tries. I’m not sure which way it’ll go, but it definitely will be a strong opinion when I have one lol.

The more this cools and the more I drink it, the more I lean toward the “yuck” side. The green bitterness would be different and enjoyable if not for that floral twist to it. The flowery flavor lingers on the tongue and consumes the finish, leaving a feeling of perfume in one’s mouth.

Waaaay over-steeped this. Gonna try again.

A very pleasant tea with an attractive green-gold color, and a more than subtle hint of flowers in the aroma (jasmine-like), this is a gentle tea but one with a hint of strength in its finish. I quite enjoy it.

I’ve never had Oolong tea before so this was my first try. I’m not a huge fan of the scent however, I am not disappointed by the taste. It’s very light with a nice smooth flavor. There is nothing bitter or startling about it. A nice tasting, light tea.

Pretty new to pu-erh, including sheng. I’ve never had a tea from Lincang that I knew was from Lincang, have never had a white bud pu-erh, and have not yet had another 2011 pu. Basically, those are the salt-grains one should take along with my review.

Cake itself was fairly loose; I managed to pry out about 10g with my hands alone. The cake appears to be the same pretty leaf inside as on the face. Dry leaf smells slightly sweet, like a white.
Using 5.2g of leaf in a 100ml porcelain gaiwan, with 195F-ish tap water [that I don’t know the composition of]. Gave the tea a 30-sec rinse with hot water.

Wet leaf smells spicy-vegetal-minty in a way I can’t really put my finger on, much less describe. It’s a very strong smell, amazingly different from the taste (the taste carries only the vaguest hint of the spice), and I’m quite bothered that I can’t place it or even decompose it into recognizable elements. Maybe this is what people describe as “medicinal”, though that’s not an association I would make with this tea.

First infusion was ~10sec; very pale yellow liquor. Tastes very slightly dusty, slightly sweet in a white tea sort of way. Found in the centre of my cup, prettily enough, what appeared to be a feather. Very perplexed that I can’t identify the leaf scent.
Second infusion ~20sec; slightly darker yellow liquor; may have overdone it, but if I did, the tea is not punishing me for it. Kind of a sweet minty floral taste — not strongly floral, just a bit. Round flavour; I wouldn’t say buttery, but similar. Still a light dusty note on top. Liquid smells kind of summery. Astringency is hardly present. Pleasant light aftertaste, sweetly floral with hints of wood.

Infusions continue to be ~20sec apiece. Slightly more sheng-style astringency comes out, though not a lot. The previously-observed not-buttery mouthfeel progresses into something I would tentatively describe as “chewy”. Liquor continues to smell and taste sweet; almost like a candy-tea, though not what I would call overwhelmingly sweet, and it does have a sharper dusty-spicy scent on top. This is the strength of sweetness I always hoped to get out of white teas and never managed, so it’s interesting to get it out of a raw pu-erh processed white tea, though I suppose maybe that’s what Norbu means when they say it’s bolder than a normal white tea.

This might be lovely as a dessert tea in any season, being lightly and cleanly sweet with hints of spice and having a clean aftertaste of reasonable lifetime. A very interesting flavour; I’m wondering what will happen if I provide a good aging environment.

Received a sample of this with my order from Norbu, consisting of two roughly 5g chunks. Compression seems quite loose, though I’m no expert. Brewing the first 5g chunk up at work in 100ml porcelain gaiwan — tap water. Temperature unknown, but last measured at 195F.
Rinsed twice at 30sec, resting 20sec in between. Like another reviewer mentioned, the wet leaf does indeed smell like acrid leather, reminiscent of horseback riding as a child. Over subsequent infusions, this smell transforms into slightly sweeter, but remains a clean scent. The brewed liquid smells sweeter.
First infusion is light orangey brown, very little astringency, sweetish aftertaste somewhere between floral and vegetal. Second infusion brings in more of the astringency I’m starting to become used to in sheng, though the mouthfeel remains rounded. Aftertaste is more sweet — actually reminds me of jasmine green. Further infusions remain similar in character. I can’t quite articulate the main flavour, though it is there.

I like this tea a lot — it’s impressive even with the sub-optimal brewing environment (an office kitchen).

Post-brewing leaf dissection reveals mostly smaller to medium leaves, with a few huuuuge (!) leaves mixed in. Fairly stemmy.

Brews a light yellow with a greenish tint and smells amazing. It’s so thick yet smooth when you take a sip. I can’t quite place the flavor it reminds me of but for some reason it makes me think of corns and grains. Really nice for oolong lovers or a green tea fan looking to branch out.

5 grams of Yunnan “Snow Dragon” white tea from Norbu in a 6 ounce glass teapot. The dry leaves have a wonderful scent, sweet, fruity, grassy—and they’re pretty, beautifully curled, feathery and lovely.

Water 160 degrees, first infusion, liquor is pale yellow. The leaves have hardly begun to unfurl, but they’re released sweet floral essence into the liquor already, delicate and delicious. Not sure about the timing, at least 30 seconds, but not more than a minute or so—I was distracted taking a few pictures. The flavor is very reminiscent of several Yunnan green teas I’ve enjoyed in the past couple of years—one called Jade Pole from Yunnan Sourcing and Yunnan Mao Feng from Norbu—obviously the same or very similar tea cultivar—but no hints of astringency or bitterness. The tea hasn’t opened up much yet.

The second infusion, about 90 seconds, has a hint of astringency underneath the floral and sweet. The curls are opening more now.

Pushing up the temp to 170 for the next infusion: there is a new flavor coming to the fore, not bitterness, exactly, but a spicy/astringent quality, as the sweet and floral notes decline a bit. Still some curl to the pretty leaves.

At 170 and 3 minutes, the 4th still has sweetness, fruitiness, and the astringent/spicy is now less apparent. It really does need to be drunk quickly, because if the same infusion sits and cools a bit, the more astringent/spicy flavors take over.

After a 5th infusion, the leaves are straight, thin, small, and olive green, and quite intact, no stem or broken leaves.

Like the Jade Pole and the Yunnan Mao Feng, this tea gives up the marvelous initial flavors quickly, so it doesn’t yield a lot of infusions. It’s quite odd to me that similar tea varietals, processed in slightly different ways—for white/green vs for puerh—have such different tolerances for multiple infusions. Processed as white or green teas, these give up their floral and fruity notes immediately, in a marvelous rush of flavor, and then the spicy/astringent notes take over quickly. Processed for puerh, the astringent and bitter and earthy notes may dominate early infusions, and the sweet/spicy/fruity notes take several infusion to start opening up, but the sweet/spicy/fruity just keep going on and on and on. Fortunately, these lovely white and green Yunnan teas are inexpensive enough that a few marvelous infusions are enough to get my money’s worth.

This didn’t go as well with pancakes as I had imagined it would. Pancakes had rather too much flavour to really be able to taste this tea. Secondly, there wasn’t really enough leaf for the size of pot I was making.

What I did get out of it, though, was something bordering on caramelised with floral edges and pinch of cocoa. Also something rather raisin-y in there.

That’s it really. This was another one of those teas I could have sworn I had posted about before and so therefore I wasn’t paying too much attention to it. Also, pancakes.

I recently opened up my first package of this 2010 harvest. I’ve been trying to space out my TGYs and other greener oolongs so that I don’t have more than one or at most two open at a time in one place, so it was some weeks since I’d finished my previous package of TGY, with other green oolongs in between. And….I’m not having quite the usual ‘aaahhhh’ response I have to TGY when I open a package after flirtations with other teas. Since I’ve been trying to be more conscientious about not opening too many at once, I don’t have any of the previous vintage/order available to compare this with, so I’m not sure if the issue is a change in my palate or this particular vintage (as I’ve been having more trouble with my allergies lately, the possibility of change in palate is very real). The rich sweetness and sense of drinking a meadow of late-summer hay is still there, but something else is not…..or perhaps, something else is there in such abundance that it is masking something else I crave—an overwhelming richness in those first infusions, which may simply need to be a lot shorter. I’m well into this package and I haven’t figured it out yet, but it’s certainly rich and sweet and TGY-ish enough to make continued investigation worthwhile—particularly as I have a lot of it left in the tea drawer at home!

I prepared this one with 3 grams of tea and about 60mL of 205°F/96°C tap water, in a small unglazed porcelain pot. First infusions (about 1 minute) are very strongly floral, sweet, and delicate; the second one brings out a bit more spiciness; the middle infusions nicely balance a rich caramel sweetness, fresh summer hay, and a peppery spiciness, but if they go just a bit too long, some astringency and even bitterness comes out. Later infusions again fade to sweet water—with this tea to water ratio, the 5th and 6th are already stretching to 2-3 minutes, and by 7 and 8 it’s at least 5 minutes.

It reminds me very strongly of another new tea from Norbu, a “White Oolong” also from Taiwan. I believe it is a different tea varietal, but they do quite remind me of each other. A comparative tasting of both is in order…..but in the meantime, this is a very lovely tea.

1st 30 second steep, 205 degrees, leaf enough to coat bottom plus of empty gaiwan, filled up when unfurled (too lazy to weigh it, bad me)

Very delicate and floral, a bit underwhelming, really.

2nd, again 30" (short but this is now well-opened and this 30" is more than the prior 30", effectively) similar, delicate, spicy, and very like an Alishan….but not quite.

3rd, went longer—2 minutes—still delicate, floral, light, delicious, and not-quite-Alishan! I guess this is the ‘flavor of the tea varietal’ used. Mmmm.

Somewhere 5th or 6th infusion….yes, I see the difficulty in labeling this tea. The flavor is very like a white tea in delicacy, but there is an element of depth and richness and spice that is distinctly oolong in nature, and the staying power of the tea is all oolong. This is wonderful stuff.

Preparing a 2nd series of infusions after the first one started to lose power….delicious stuff, spicy sweet. I am a fan.
….

(Sometime later) Stopped taking detailed notes, but the flavor of this one kept it pleasant right out to sweet water stage. I must have liked it because I drank 3 sessions of it in a row. Drinking it again now, a couple of days later, with some Dan Cong and Tie Guan Yin in between, and it still sings to me. Mmmm.

I let the first infusion go longer and am loving it from the first sip now.

Even the leaves are elegant and lovely as they unfurl—a rich deep green.

First time drinking this one. Free sample included with a large recent order.

3 grams, six ounce glass pot, water 150 degrees

60"—probably a little short, given the small quantity of leaf—but delicious infusion, floral, sweet, fruity, like drinking peaches, very nice

165 degrees and probably 3 minutes—got distracted, but it’s good to ‘push’ a tea on first testing, right? Still quite tasty, fruity, stronger than I really prefer, but nothing unpleasant revealed by the overlong infusion.

180 degrees and several minutes again, liquor is becoming light amber, quite floral and fruity still, though not so strong or sweet as at first. I like this quite a lot. I kept at it for a few more extended infusions, and it gradually faded very pleasantly.

The iced version was also very good. I put some of this in the shopping cart for my next order.

Finished off this tea while traveling, brewing under not quite optimum circumstances, and it was flexible and forgiving enough to permit many splendid cups despite more distractions and less conducive setup than at home. Delicate, vegetal, floral, springlike, it has many of the features I like best in Long Jing and less of the nuttiness that often overwhelms them.

I liked it best when giving the leaves a ‘hot start’ with a flash rinse of water at 180 or 190 degrees, before starting regular infusions at about 160 degrees, and slowly working back up to water just off the boil after 6-8 infusions.