Norbu Tea

Subtle flavor, but complex, with grassy and floral, almost fruity tones. A touch of malt. Lingering sweetness. Rich, smooth mouthfeel.
An excellent, smooth, and well-balanced tea.

I had this tea today with Greg…its quite enjoyable and its appearance is beautiful…

A pot of Norbu Tea Ya Bao was my after-dinner selection this evening. Once again I did a quick hot rinse, but this time I added a bit more of the dried tea to the pot (a cast iron Tetsubin-type), and the brew was slightly darker but still pale. The taste was very much the same, and I continue to struggle with an accurate description.

Others identify this taste as pine or cedar, but it evokes memories from childhood of dandelions—not that I ever ate any of them. There is definitely something weedy about this unique tea… There is just a touch of astringency to it.

Perhaps it simply tastes like Ya Bao! Actually, that would be a pretty funny tasting note to mention in a wine review, come to think of it:
Obscurius per obscurum!

second infusion: this was just as good as the first.

third infusion: I oversteeped this time and found the brew too bitter and less pleasant, so I tossed it.

My Norbu Ya Bao is from spring 2013, but I’m posting my tasting note here because I don’t have time to erect a new tea profile. Does Ya Bao vary enough from year to year to warrant separate entries? Perhaps for connoisseurs. I’m a serious gringo, however, and this is the very first time I’ve even HEARD of this wild tea.

To prepare these unique buds—which bear zero resemblance to tea, I might add!—I rinsed them first with hot water then steeped them at about 180C for three minutes. The liquour is extremely pale—only barely tinged green. The color is more green than yellow, as can be seen if the glass is held up against a sheet of white paper. (I’m using a Bodum double-walled clear glass, as I usually do for green and white teas.)

The scent is ever-so-slightly vegetal and astringent. The taste is perhaps mid-way between a very light green and a white tea, but it doesn’t really taste like any particular green tea or any particular white tea to me. The texture of the liquid on the tongue is silken, just like the dried buds feel to the fingertips.

I bought a package of this hoping that it might be caffeine free, since it looks nothing like tea. However, it appears to derive from a tea-esque plant, so now I’m not sure… I’ll find out later tonight, when it’s time to go to sleep.

second infusion: tasted, smelled, looked, and felt just like the first!

OMFG! Well hello there, everything I didn’t know I wanted in a smoky tea. It’s so nice to meet you. :-) Thank-you to whomever posted about the sale.

Since I’ve spent the better part of the weekend knee-deep in flu plague, I’ve been on a white tea kick. However, this Monday morning, I wanted to go for something a little more pu-erh-y. I split the difference and went for this “white bud pu-erh”. I use quotations on that because I’m still unsure what the difference between a white bud pu-erh and an aged white tea are? Neither really go through a wet-piling, and sometimes aged white teas (and young white teas) are compressed into cakes. So, how does one classify that?

That aside, the taste confused the issue further. It resembled – beat for beat – a young, Yunnan-grown Silver Needle. Citrus and herbal notes and all. Toward the finish, it had some of the winy properties of a sheng pu-erh, only rougher – given its young age.

I guess I’ll leave my philosophical question aside and just answer with, “NOM!”.

Just got this in the mail today. On Black Friday, no less. Oh wait, I just said it was Black Friday one post ago. Oh well, moving on.

Seems to be a Taiwanese sorta day. First a Taiwanese black tea, now a white. Nary an oolong on the tongue. How strange.

This is a very floral and leafy white tea. Brings me back to thoughts of a wild Chinese white, only lighter-bodied and more – I dunno – layered? It almost reminds me of white teas produced in the U.S.

And, yes, that’s tall praise.

I don’t often say to people: YOU MUST BUY THIS NAO!!! But I’m doing so here. Especially to those of you with palates that lean toward the smoky. This is a sugarcane-smoked black tea from Taiwan, and it tastes just like that description implies. It’s smoky-sweet with a floral sensation throughout, much like a Li Shan black…but without the malty kick.

I can’t sing praises about this enough.

I even roped friends into trying it with me. You can read about that here: http://www.norbutea.com/JinXuanXiaoZhong?category_id=133

Yeah, I was floored.

sipdown! This has been my mid morning puerh while i try and figure out the monstrosity that is my other half’s new coffee maker. lol It’s a breville gind n’ brew thing and takes up a ton of room. However, it makes him happy and since we got it for free with my airmiles, i can hardly complain.

This is a lovely puerh! I’m so glad that nofars shared it with terri who shared it with me. This is one of the few puerhs not from mandala that i’ve had that i really enjoy. It’s a very relaxing, dark and roasty sort of puerh for me. Initial steeps were good and then it unfolded into a deep delicious cup of goodness as it progressed. :) thank you both!

sipdown! I have a lofty goal today of trying to get down to 160 so that by next weekend i might possibly have reached my black friday goal, two weeks ahead of schedule. It’s lofty because i have a large number of puerhs to drink and those take time..however i’ve been up since 5am because of work so i think i’ll manage a few more than usual haha

this is a light, sweet, floral puerh. It’s pretty meh for me but i think that’s because it’s closer to a white tea than anything.

steepster is acting up for me this morning so we’ll see how this goes. Sipdown of this one from terri/nofars. I’ve been drinking this all morning now that i’m back in the land of my tea cupboard. I feel like i have a million things to get through today and not enough hours in the day. This is a really tasty Shu so far. It’s not too bold, not too wimpy. I have only been through a few steepings so more to come later. heh

sipdown! I think i need to get my hands on a few more norbu teas. This is a lovely tea. This is a tea with an earthy taste. there’s some sweetness to this as well, and it reminds me of something that i can’t quite place.

Sipdown! this is a fantastic tea! It’s slightly malty with a bit of fruity deliciousness. There’s a sweetness to this that i am really enjoying that goes hand in hand with the slight citrus and background hints of slight bitterness. thanks so much terri (and nofars)!

sipdown. um so yabao is REALLY not my thing. I’ve tried verdant’s and now this version and i can’t get around the taste. I’m sending the last of this off to a friend in the hopes that maybe it will be a tea for her.

Another Sipdown from NofarS.
This is actually the next to last tea in the box Nofar sent me! This is a nicely aged Shu, free of off tastes. A very satisfying contrast to the Sheng I was sampling alongside it.
Thanks again, Nofar, for this awesome trade! I especially like the teas from Norbu!

This has been an awesome afternoon! My son Drew & I went out to lunch, & then I came home & spent the entire afternoon sipping teas like a crazy woman, packing up teas that I promised to send out (almost a month ago), slow roasting tomatoes from my garden, straining both milk & coconut milk Keifers & starting new batches for tomorrow, & drinking more tea! The tea I want to share with my Bodacious Babes arrived, & that’s ready to go! I still haven’t drank much from the HHTTB yet, so I may hang onto that box until next week. Maybe. I’d really like to mail it tomorrow. By the way, it is Huge! Tea Sipper, you’ll never have to buy tea for a year, LOL, maybe longer, as long as you are willing to just drink the stuff that’s in there.

So in the middle of roasting tomatoes, picking & slicing peppers for the pepper steak that’s in the crock pot, measuring out teas, etc, I’ve been sipping. This is a really interesting looking Sheng from NofarS.
It’s not really all that Sheng-like in my opinion, very mild, reminding me of the oaty taste of Ya Bao, but with a tangy twist of lemon! I’ve been sipping cups of this, along side cups of a shu from NofarS as well. I often enjoy the contrast of a Sheng & a Shu, sipped side by side. Other times I’ll sip a sheng for an hour or so, & then break out a Shu. I love them both, & the contrast between the bright ‘raw’ flavors to the super mellow smooth earthy taste is awesome!

Another Sipdown from NofarS!
Every time I drink Yabao, it makes me think of a creamy bowl of steel cut oats with soymilk drizzled over the top. In the background is the taste of cedar or maybe pine, but only mildly.
Yabao is a tea that I don’t really get excited about, or have cravings for, but then I make a cup once in awhile, & even though part of me is saying, “this is really boring”, it’s also really nice. Kind of like white tea, in a way. It’s got a creamy texture to it, a bland milk-toast kind of character, but there is something homey & relaxing about it. I probably should have a cup more often.

Another sipdown from NofarS. This is a very lovely tea with a fruitiness that reminds me of the Sun Moon Lake teas Sil & I bought awhile back.

This is my final sipdown & tea of the day, again from NofarS. I’m ending the day with 278 teas in my collection!

I started drinking gongfu steepings of this while teaching my final student of the day. I’m not sure how many cups I had, but once her lesson ended I got busy cleaning the stove hood, & all tea drinking came to an end. I am saving these leaves, however, as I’m sure they still have much more to give & after a quick rinse tomorrow, I plan to steep them out some more. This is a smooth & tasty shu, free from fermentation flavors & odors, with a sweetness to it & a nice earthy grounding energy. It brews a deep dark cup, & that’s the kind of cup I love!

Sipdown No. 2 for today, from NofarS.
This is a tasty, honey sweet cup of goodness, with an interesting almost oily texture, & some malt. Nice & fruity, & the fragrance is beautiful!

Just prepared this gongfu style and hated it so much that I threw the leaves out after the first cup. This is odd, since I’ve never had such a bad experience with Norbu Tea, but the tea literally tasted like vomit :(
Not grading it or chucking it at the moment – will try again with a different combination of leaves/water/temperature.