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Home – 5:30 PM
This tea came from my recent swap with AJRimmer.
I’ve liked the ginseng oolongs I’ve tried in the past, so I figured it would be interesting to try a green tea with ginseng. This looks to be a sencha, so I was surprised to be read that it’s a Chinese green tea. I assume the red wood splinter-looking things are the red sandalwood mentioned in the ingredients? They turn an even more stunning bright red color once wet.
The base tea here is very mild – it tastes like a combination of grass and dry leaves. It’s quite smooth and pleasant. I can definitely taste the ginseng, which (to me) always tastes sweet and earthy with a bit of a mineral note. It’s not as strong here as in a ginseng oolong, but it’s a lovely supporting flavor. There is a touch of strawberry that compliments the other notes nicely, and it’s not too weak or too strong. I’m not sure I taste the sandalwood, but it may be blending in with the ginseng.
Overall, this is a lovely subtle tea that is in perfect balance. It’s sweet but earthy and fresh at the same time. I should really remember to buy a ginseng oolong the next time I order from Teavivre or somewhere similar…
Flavors: Autumn Leaf Pile, Earth, Grass, Mineral, Smooth, Strawberry, Sweet
Preparation
Thanks so much, Meowster! I thought this lemon tea would be great to try on one of the last warm days. Somehow, the flavor is very cherry to me with hints of lemon. It made me think possibly the cherry flavor is coming from the base. Then I was realizing that many of the Dammann Freres that I’ve been able to try taste like cherry, so possibly it is with the base on those teas as well? I never really considered it could be the base since I was usually only noticing it with teas with additional flavors, like DF was possibly overusing the cherry flavoring or something. Anyway, so I liked this one but since the flavor seemed more cherry than lemon, it didn’t really fit with what I expected. I DID like that it wasn’t a weaker black tea anyway.
Steep #1 // 1 1/4 teaspoons for a full mug// 10 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
Flavors: Cherry
I wanted to try out my new tiny little gaiwan (my first gaiwan, a little 50ml one, it looks like it’s for a doll!) so decided to try out the oolong from yesterday gong fu (got an earlier start on the evening and hopefully with the little 40ml infusions I won’t have to worry about having too much caffeinated tea before bed). I will admit that being brand new to using a gaiwan, I’m pretty fail-fish at it right now when it comes to pouring; it’s going to take several more sessions to stop making a mess, methinks. Definitely easier to deal with the shiboridashi in that regard.
Gong fu / 2.5g / 190F / 40ml / 25s|30s|40s|50s|60s|65s|75s|90s|120s
Overall, the Se Chung wasn’t very impressive gong fu style; the flavor was deeply roasty, nutty, and woody, but there was a very sharp, tangy, astringent finish right at the back of the tongue which wasn’t present in the western brew at all. The astringency did mellow a bit by the fifth steep, but never went away entirely. While some of the sweeter notes did start to come through mid-session, it was never the sort of floral honeysuckle note that came out in the western brew, with the woody/roasted nuts flavors remaining dominant. The tea remained to have a lot of staying power and may have had some more infusions in it past the ten I drank, but my final impression is this is a tea more ideal for western brewing, and I appreciated the chance to get some gaiwan practice in, since my pour was showing much improvement already by the ending infusions compared to the earlier ones.
I was carefully measuring the amount of water I put into the gaiwan (I’m not good at the pour so if I get too close to 50ml which is pretty much RIGHT at the lid-line I make more of a mess and the water would sometimes seep up above the lid, so I did much better at 40ml in that regard, and use a small glass measuring glass that measures from 10-120ml for this purpose) so I know I had a consistent liquid amount going in. Coming out, I definitely had less tea being produced and going into my teacup in later infusions than earlier infusions.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I sometimes pour too much in and get the floating lid going on. Keep trying with a few different oolongs and less leaf in your gaiwan and compare that to how you would typically brew western. You may eventually find that in brewing gong fu you become comfortable with imprecise measurements and ‘less flavor’ and more nuance. Or you may find that you just prefer western.
Sampler Sipdown September! This tea was generously provided to me by Meowster from their cupboard destash, thank you so much! Last month I sampled a Se Chung I picked up from Snake River Tea in Boise, though I was uncertain of their source. I was sort of craving that tea tonight, so decided to break out the Upton Tea Import version since I figured it would scratch that itch, while allowing me to compare.
It is more or less the flavor, with a few slight differences, as far as I can remember… perhaps some night when I’m not making tea just hours before bed and honestly shouldn’t be having caffeine at all I’ll make a cup of each so I can compare properly without having to rely on my over-medicated-shit-brain-memory. Still has a nice, roasted nut and mildly honeyed aroma, and the flavor is giving me roasted nuts with a sweet, honeysuckle finish. This cup is giving me a slightly more woody note, and I feel like I get a very subtle hint of a cinnamon taste toward the finish. I remember the other cup of Se Chung being quite roasted/nutty, but having what I’d consider a fairly strong “green oolong” vegetal/floral sort of taste in the finish, which I’m not really noticing here (other than the floral honey note; I’m not really getting much vegetal taste).
This sampler has my priority to sipdown so maybe I’ll have a chance to properly do a side-by-side cuppa as I work on using it up. I may have to wait until the weekend to have the time to gong fu it, but I’m definitely hoping to make a cold brew batch, which I think will turn out nicely. I love the roasty taste of Mugicha cold brewed, and I have a feeling this will hit that same sort of spot for me.
Flavors: Cinnamon, Floral, Honey, Honeysuckle, Nutty, Roasted, Roasted Nuts, Smooth, Wood
Preparation
Bright. Filling. Rain clouds. A solo fiddle in a field. Surprising.
Pre-Chingming. Pale liquor, surprising hints of toast and grain. There’s depth to this. Can work as a morning or afternoon cuppa. Some may find a bit on the astringent side, but I think it is balanced enough. Wakes up the palate, even after a cup of Keemun. Second infusion still grassy, slightly toasty, complexity subsides. Spent leaves turn strongly vegetative.
Flavors: Astringent, Bell Pepper, Grain, Sweet, Warm Grass, Toast
Preparation
Summer Vacation! My China installment tonight is a pu-erh sample I picked up from Meowster (thanks Meowster!) I have tried hardly any pu-erhs, and will admit of the few I have tried, they’ve been in flavored blends. It’s a tea I keep meaning to sample more but just haven’t gotten around to yet.
I am tired tonight, not in a great mood, and trying to fight a developing migraine (my job has been a butt to me about having chronic migraine, so if the pain keeps on I know I’ll be working through it tomorrow, even though I have FMLA on file for this condition from a migraine specialist that I have to travel two hours away to see. SIGH.) So I admit I forgot to rinse my leaf, and my brewed cup does smell just a little pu-fishy to me. Ah well. Your brain just isn’t all there when you are migraining.
As the cup cools, the aroma is a lot more earthy, a bit like fresh, wet potting soil, and my first sip has a deep, earthy flavor. It’s a very wet earth note, with a heavy mineral taste on the finish. There is also a subtle vegetal flavor, that comes off a bit like moss, likely because of all the heavy wet, earthy notes. I wish we’d get some rain as a relief from this unbarable heat, because I can imagine this would be a nice rainy day tea.
Flavors: Mineral, Moss, Wet Earth
Preparation
2023 Ode To Tea – Part II – J
I was hesitant to sip this one down already, but Jun Chiyabari usually wins the award for ‘Complex flavors, that change/age the fastest’. So I finished this one today! Why wait? Even the second steep tended to lose a ton of flavor, but again, no fault of this tea. Only my hoarding.
2023 sipdowns: 65
Additional notes: If I were to suggest one tea to drink out of your stash the fastest and the freshest it would be any Jun Chiyabari you might have lying around. It changes the flavor the fastest of any other tea varietal I’ve ever had. This is like a different tea from what I had a year and a half ago (yes, that is quite a long time from “fresh”.) I knew it would be different but not THIS different. Only one serving remaining and was very happy to try it when it tasted so nice the last time.
Thanks so much for that awesome swap, Meowster! I think I’ve only had one Jun Chiyabari before and it was the most delicious, multi layered, complex flavor combination of any tea I’ve ever had (this was from a long ago harvest from SingleOriginTeas.com but it was also the tea that changed flavor the quickest). Now this tea might not be on that level, but every sip was delicious. It’s the most scrumptious of a Darjeeling type flavor. This golden brew has notes of peach along with the muscatel, and I’m pleased to see the description also notices the peach. It’s just a tough tea to describe, you just have to DRINK IT and taste the complexity. I will certainly savor the last few teaspoons I have!
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug// 21 minutes after boiling // 2 1/2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 15 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
Sipdown (623)!
Acquired this one from Starfevre a little while back; finishing it off now as a larger Western pot of tea. I’m about halfway through the pot now, and it’s been nice but not really much of a wow factor here either. Top of the sip is pretty malty, but it moves into a sweeter and more fruity body flavour – definitely muscatel/raisin notes but also some stonefruit/more plum like elements too. Finish is a little bit tannic, but only slightly so. Reminds me a little bit, on the whole, of Easter Bread – you know, sweet pastry with mixed in candied fruits and raisins. Also a little bit of cinnamon, but I’m not really getting a whole lot of spice with the tea…
Biggest thing is just that it feels very thin, in terms of mouthfeel, and also a little watery. There’s just no body to the tea, even though the taste is pretty nice. I’m enjoying it more as it cools, though.
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMUbmiXlHww&index=6&list=LL1M1wDjmJD4SJr_CwzXAGuQ
Pale amber color in the cup. Fragrance of cinnamon, orange and an almost imperceptible note of almond. On the tongue there is an unpleasant bitterness that seems more like it comes from the orange peels than the tea, but either way, it isn’t pleasant. On the other hand, it is quite nice when combined with a dollop of soy creamer.
Preparation
Strong classic tea note with a touch of smoke on both the fragrance and the taste. Also a slight astringency and bitterness. The tea holds up well to milk (soy milk in my case). Recommended as an acceptable morning blend.
I am tasting new black teas trying to find something that bends the curve between the expensive Yunnan teas I love and my preferred budget. This is the first one I’ve tried. I don’t love the astringency, which is present as part of a long finish and the tea doesn’t have the cocoa notes I love, so I will drop this from my list for the future, but I’m glad to have tasted it and think it would be a fine tea for people with slightly different tastes than me.
Flavors: Smoke, Tea, Tobacco
Preparation
I see that this tea had a few very high scores here but my experience was somewhat different. I like the flavor of black currant since my childhood and thus am I very fond of black currant-flavored teas but this blend just did nothing for me. The base tea is of a poor quality, the aroma and the flavor of blackcurrant is rather faint and generic: just a tiny notch above some random black currant teabags at the supermarket.
I have trying to finish a 100g pouch of it for a year and have to literally force myself to choose it over any other tea I have. I will probably have to just throw it away ( which I HATE doing to any tea!) and try my luck with black currant blends from Harney or Simpson & Veil.
I found a free sample of this tea at the very bottom of my pantry. It must have been from an order that I received a year ago so it is quite likely that this tea would be better when fresh but I would likely never know: I have pretty much abandoned Upton as a source of cheap everyday tea in favor of Harney and Sons and so far have been having very few regrets.
So I tried this sample. It has very little to offer for the nose: I had to breath like a whale to pick up some faint generic Yunnan smell. No points for that. The leaves look rather boring: small, slightly twisted, no golden tips. More than a few appeared to be broken.
Then I made it Western style for a minute or two and it came out awfully weak. Undeterred, I steeped another teaspoon for something like 4-5 minutes and was pleasantly surprised: this tea displayed a comforting cherry maltiness and sweetness. It lingered and was quite pleasing. I still had a bit of this tea left and was really looking to that final cup to set my impressions but oh horror – someone from my family mistakenly judged that pouch to be empty and disposed it. Ouch.
I was bummed by it more than I want to admit and had to reinforce the rule that any tea-related thingies randomly strewn throughout my house are to be treated with the utmost respect and never touched /moved by anyone but me, be they full, empty, broken etc.
In any case, this tea will probably remain my personal unsolved mystery. Despite all of its typical cheap tea drawbacks it had a simple comeliness and some potential that will be never realized with me. In any case, I can totally see how somebody else may choose to use it as an affordable everyday sipper.
Flavors: Bread, Cherry, Honey, Malt
Sipdown no. 29 of 2021 (no. 649 total).
This one strikes me as a true “84.” It’s a good, solid first flush darjeeling. Nice and grapey without the bloaty quality I sometimes get with first flush darjeelings. On the smooth side, not a lot of wood and stonefruit, but some.
And with that, I am down to only 15 cupboard pages in my Steepster cupboard. Huzzah!
I’m a little confused. I think I had shoehorned this tea under another entry that wasn’t exactly the same tea. I think I have it straightened out now.
I steeped this according to label directions. Steeped this way, it is very second-flush like. The dry leaves are dark, but tippy, and they have a sort of a spicy smell — like a gingerbread on first whiff, but that then becomes more winey and earthy.
The liquor is really pretty. It’s the rose gold color that is popular in jewelry for the past ten or so years. Its clear, and smells of stonefruit pits. Peach, I think. And earth. And there’s that pungent wine note that characterizes second flush darjeelings, but without the sharp bite. And weirdly, that gingerbread smell is still there to some degree.
The flavor is smooth. None of the sharpness of some second flushes, but with just a hint of the fullness in some first flush darjeelings that make me feel uncomfortably overfull (what I sometimes think of as a waterlogged feeling). There’s grape in the flavor, and wood, and trees, and peach pits, and just a tiny bit of that unusual gingerbread note.
It’s a solid first flush darjeeling with the qualities I like in teas of this genre. I’d like to taste this one cold.
Flavors: Earth, Ginger, Grapes, Peach, Stonefruit, White Wine
Preparation
I suspect this is from the same source as What-Cha’s Colombian Bitaco “Golden Tippy” black tea, though Upton is charging at least 40% more for it.
The dry leaf is redolent of sweet grain, giving it an assertive but pleasant feed-store aroma.
Los Angeles tap-water, just off the boil throughout. Brewed in a Korean infuser cup. I tried successive infusions, but this is best Western style.
2 minutes: lovely sepia liquor; grain and cocoa throughout, light and gentle in the nose and deep and brooding on the palate. Moderately malty, though the bitter-sweet chocolate notes are center-stage. Toasted grains (oats, spelt, millet, barley) and hints of wood and earth in the finish. Almost like a chocolate brown ale.
4 – 8+ minutes: similar results to the first infusion, just a bit weaker presentation – like good Assam, it is difficult to oversteep.
A proper self-drinker, but I suspect this would be lovely with some cream as well. While it won’t supplant my CTC Assam addiction (especially at this price point), I wouldn’t hesitate to add this to my regular rotation.
Preparation
I found a never-before-opened tin of this that I somehow I missed logging in my cupboard.
I am adding Darjeelings to the list of teas I’m puzzled to have so many of. Like Lapsang, Chai and white tea, I honestly don’t think I need more than a couple of Darjeelings — perhaps one or two first flushes and one or two second flushes. I like it fine; I definitely like it better than most white teas (because I don’t get much flavor out of most white teas) and I probably like it better than Lapsang or at least I find it to have more versatile drinkability. It’s easier to drink than Chai, because it’s a straight steep rather than a recipe, and I have to be in the mood for Chai so there’s that.
But though I like it, it’s not my favorite black tea. I prefer Chinese black teas. or at least blends with them in it. So how did I end up with a gazillion Darjeelings?
OK, that was rhetorical. I know how I ended up with them. I bought them during the impulse-driven acquisitional phase that I’m still sipping down. I thought I was making some headway there until I found another tin I had to add into the cupboard. Ugh.
Sorry I’m being so loquacious this morning. I slept a really long time, comparatively, and still work up tired. I’m in one of those periods where the shit just keeps piling up. There’s tax day coming, my scanner stopped working for no good reason last night, and yesterday I walked out of work to the parking lot to find a crack in my windshield. I’m expecting one more thing to break because breaking things usually come in 3s, I have found. I’m also expecting something else to go wildly wrong because I’ve had a spate of things go wrong other than the breaking things.
No wonder I slept a long time. I’m stressed.
Anyway, I love the color of this tea’s dry leaves. They’re greener than most and they smell earthy.
The tea’s aroma has a sweet note to it that I find both unusual and pleasant. I don’t think I would have identified pineapple, but I do smell something fruity (I too got plum), and also something a tad bready, like a soft roll. The liquor is light colored, almost a peachy color.
The flavor is pretty smooth, which I’ve come to expect from first flush Darjeelings. But it has some bitterness in the finish that I don’t love and though it doesn’t waterlog me, it’s not highly flavorful either. The flavor it does have isn’t bad, but it doesn’t bowl me over.
Preparation
I think of Margaret’s Hope second flush as the quintessential second flush Darjeeling. I haven’t had enough first flush Darjeelings to identify one as an examplar.
But what blows my mind is how different the two are from each other. This first flush is so mellow and gentle. Nothing sharp about it. The description says it has a balanced pungency, but I don’t find it pungent — or at least so far less pungent than some other Darjeelings that I wouldn’t think of that word to describe it.
I steeped according to the package directions, which is hotter than I’ve read is the temperature for first flush. This yielded a light honey-colored clear tea that smells like peach to me. The flavor is pleasantly nutty, grapey, and and stone fruity as well. I don’t really taste lime zest to the point where I could have identified it had I not read the description, but I think I know what the description is getting at. There’s a slight bitterness, not enough to be unpleasant, but reminiscent of citrus skin.
The tea is light bodied and it does produce in me a bit of that waterlogged feeling I get from first flush Darjeelings.
Flavors: Grapes, Nuts, Peach, Stonefruit
Preparation
I love Margaret’s Hope second flushes! I will have to try Upton Tea’s product since I have been disappointed with another vendor’s product, which seemed older and more tired than I expected.
This is supposed to be one of the Nepal teas that should be similar to Darjeelings but without all the associated price premium. The tea is very light and floral. It has a winning brisk fragrance of grasses, spring flowers (tulips?) and some citrus peel zestiness.
The leaf is very much green and, while it is sold as SFTGFOP, it consists mostly of broken leaves with a fair amount of stems, while the tips are quite few and between. Truth in advertising, anyone?
With all that in mind, the taste is well-defined and not bad at all. Herbal, grassy, notes of dry white wine with bracing zest and pleasant bitterness. You need to be careful with it as it requires some steeping time to show the complexity but let it sit a bit longer and the bitterness will overwhelm everything. Despite being a South Asian tea it lends itself much better to the gong fu style preparation with its greater control over steeping times. I was content with 15-20 seconds infusions. Young sheng fans with a higher tolerance of bitterness can go longer than that since longer times definitely result in more fragrance and taste complexity. The aftertaste is long and, again, reminiscent of young raw puers but with the addition of floral notes.
In the end, this tea comes off as a lower grade offering from a good tea estate and, while not quite displaying a complex flavor of Darjeeling’s, still has an interesting aroma and a well-defined memorable taste. It is a solid buy for its price. Unfortunately, I tend to prefer more subtle and mellow tasting profile of Chinese teas and, while recognizing all the objectively good qualities of Himalayan Bliss, only very rarely feel the mood to drink it.
Flavors: Citrus Zest, Floral, Herbaceous, White Wine
Brewed in my black Korean infuser cup, so I remain largely ignorant of the liquor’s appearance.
New car smell with some floral and dusty sugar notes.
Rich and potent (albeit somewhat generic) flavor, suggesting baking chocolate with hints of banana leaf and river stones in the finish. Vaguely malty. Low vegetal/camp-fire notes in the aftertaste along with a gentle astringency if not briskness if the infusion is pushed.
Medium-thick mouth-feel, but not oily.
A solid, robust, almost “muscular” Kandy offering – while I don’t favor most Ceylons as breakfast teas, I think this one would stand up to a drop of cream.