Upton Tea Imports

OK my wang chun practice gets even more extreme. We are down from 1 minute steeps to nearly instantaneous steepings! At least for the first couple cups.

Astonishingly, the first cup is still black coffee dark. I’m finding that if I start with a generous mound of dry leaf, and do the first 3 steeps at more or less no time whatsoever, I can easily get seven cups of tea from one set of leaves (stretching the later steeps up from 15 seconds to a minute, to 3 and to 5).

If nothing else, this means I’ll be using up less tea over the same frame of time.

I’ve actually started to radically change how I brew this tea. I used to brew fermented pu-erh for long stretches of time (10, 15 minutes, sometimes longer). Based on some reading, and mostly on a whim, I started doing 1 minute steeps.

I still don’t hold to this business of throwing away steeps (rinsing). If you’re entertaining guests, I could see doing a rinse for a few seconds just to ensure you don’t serve dusty tea. But I’ve read about people doing 5 minute steeps and then chucking it. I just don’t get the point of something like that. Especially now that I’m doing these shorter steeps.

The first steep, even at this short time frame, is still very dark and strong. One thing I do notice with this approach is that some favors begin to emerge that are more familiar with a raw pu-erh and which I hadn’t found in a fermented before. Those “construction site” or “cabin in the sun” flavors I’ve talked about in the past.

One interesting development is that I believe this infamous impact on one’s “chi” is a lot more in evidence with these shorter steeping times.

At least for this particular tea, I would strongly recommend making 5-7 steepings of very short duration for best results. (This explains why so many traditional pu-erh pots are so tiny.)

Lightening flashed at 3:15AM. The dog awoke and went into her usual multi-hours long frenzy. At 5 I gave up, got up, and took her out into the living space so that Liz could try to get some sleep. I decided to make a pot of pu-erh and try to polish off “The Last Chinese Chef”.

I really don’t like this book at all. The parts of this book that are about the food and the history of the places (and the history of the food) read as though they were written by someone else entirely. The actual narrative story is incredibly trite, obvious and badly in need of a stern faced editor. But the food parts were worth the rest. I will now forever be obsessed with a cuisine I will probably never get to eat. Part of me feels like reading books that aren’t very good is a sinful waste of time. But a bigger part of me feels like I need to read bad writing sometimes in order to fully appreciate the writing that is so good it makes me laugh out loud with joy just from the mere structure of the sentences, let alone the content. I need to read Nicole Mones in order to truly love Neal Stephenson.

I was supposed to go throw disc this morning at Tom Bass park, but the rain has picked up again, and so that’s not going to happen. Now I’m just alone with the dawn listening to Gabriela Montero do terrible things to Bach on a piano (which upsets me intellectually, but makes great background music) drinking absolutely transcendent tea, listening to the dogs snore and realizing that the ringing in my ears is almost exclusively on the right side, now, not both.

I keep forgetting it is winter. My younger brother’s first born joined the world late Tuesday and everyone’s been complaining about the weather getting them two and from the hospital and this and that and I keep thinking “but it was 80 and sunny yesterday” and then I remember that it is late February and they live 1500 miles away to the Northeast.

sip

Pu-erh fixes EVERYTHING.

Second steeping:

Mostly I just want to see if the Twitter and FB thing will work. The twitter one doesn’t seem to be.

Well, I’ve done it again. I ordered something I thought was new to me, only to discover I already have tasting notes for it on Steepster which means I’ve had it before.

I need to start doing that in the other order.

This pu-erh is probably the least exciting non-tou-cha pu-erh I’ve had.

“But you gave it a 94”.

Yeah. Pu-erh is THAT good.

First and foremost, this name makes me giggle. Enough said.

The dry leaf is incredibly small. It looks like a broken, tippy tea.

The scent from the dry leaf is that very typical deep, earthy, loamy, mushroom smell.

The scent from the wet leaf is, as with some others I’ve reviewed, like an unpainted wooden cabin or shed, very dusty, that has absorbed a lot of heat energy from the sun. There is a smell that goes with this and you either know it, or you don’t.

The scent from the cup is more like the dry leaf than the wet. Always fascinating when that happens.

The flavor of the liqueur oddly subtle, given the above. Porcini mushroom and wet stone with a surprisingly swift finish. Almost nothing lingers here except the aroma.

This is not nearly as fascinating as the two pu-erh I got from CS, but then, it wasn’t nearly as dear, either. This is priced to be a daily drinker if you’re into pu-erh the way I am.

Sipdown no. 6 of May 2019 (no. 68 of 2019 total, no. 556 grand total).

Drank this both hot and cold until it was gone.

I think I liked it better when I first tasted it, perhaps because it was in fact better back then. But it may also just be that I’ve since had other caramel teas that I preferred. Back when I originally wrote about this I described it as an “every day” caramel, so I’d already had a few I preferred.

I am now pretty down on the concept of an “every day” tea. There is so much extraordinary tea out there, it seems a shame to compromise, budget permitting.

It smells really caramelly in the tin. The little candy squares are kinda cute, they remind me of the Dammann Freres Caramel-Toffee.

It tastes just fine, but the one thing it doesn’t have going for it is that indescribable French thing that Dammann Freres and Kusmi both have. I would describe this as an “every day” caramel. It’s quite good, the flavor is exactly as described, but something about the way the blend is put together makes it taste less than exceptional. If I were going to have an every day caramel this would be a fine choice. I can’t understand why I’d do that, though, when I could have have something extraordinary instead?

I think Upton is a solid tea company, but I’m finding in general that I think they excel more at unflavored teas. Whereas I think the reverse tends to be true of the French companies, if my recent Mariage Freres experience with English Breakfast is any indicator.

Sipdown no. 2 of August 2019 (no. 88 of 2019 total, no. 576 grand total).

To the original note on this, I’ll add that it was quite nice cold. So much so that No. 1 pretty much drank up every pitcher I made before I could have more than a glass or two.

And with that, the cupboard is down to 18 pages. Yahoo!

I refuse to view this as chai, despite the cardamom. No ginger, no black pepper. French name. I’m not putting in the chai category. I’m calling it a chocolate spice flavored tea.

So I’m drinking it straight up as my first morning tea, because I felt like something mixed up and flavored with a chance of being sweet after my epic green tea experience last night. I feel much too healthy and clean for my own good. Time to get some approximation of candy into my bloodstream.

This does just fine, and it doesn’t require milk or sugar to get there. It’s got a very chocolate fragrance in the tin, and I can see the green cardamom pods in there. Pretty.

The tea’s aroma smells like baked goods, like something that would go into a tart or pie. It’s a blend of chocolate and cinnamon mostly and a touch of cardamom.

The taste is mild with a minor kick that doesn’t take it out of the mild category, in my view. Just a little love pat on the tongue to remind you it has spices in it. It’s terrifically drinkable without milk. The chocolate succeeds in giving it a little sweetness, which is what I was hoping for this morning. There’s no bitterness, and no sense that you’re drinking something other than the way it was meant to be had (which I’ve sometimes felt trying to drink chais straight).

A nice not-chai for the collection.

What a perfect farewell to summer, the last of my white tips.

Not that “end of summer” means much in Houston Texas, mind you. Our weather forecast for the first day of autumn is 90 degrees despite possible thunder storms.

Backlogging. Had this Tea on Monday. There is something almost obscene about these tea leaves, both dry and wet. I really like the cup, but I find myself avoiding this tea because the leaves kind of freak me out.

I’m really not sleeping well, at all; I’m not at all clear on why, either. It isn’t that I cannot get comfortable or that the room is too warm or too cool. I just keep waking up at such short intervals that I get no real rest. So I need tea. Lots of it. And a sense of something cozy.

These Paklum Tips are the biggest, fuzziest, softest white tea I’ve ever seen.

The cup brews up a cheery, bright yellow which fades to golden brown.

The flavor is not as complex as some of the flat leaf white teas, but probably also not as fragile. Soft, fuzzy and mildly earthy, like the leaves themselves, this tea is like a gentle hug from a girl you used to have a crush on, years ago, and these days you’re just happy to see each other happy.

I can’t help but wonder if there is a problem with consistency from batch to batch with this tea, because the other tasting note speaks of broken, short tips. My leaves here are so soft they couldn’t break and they are quite long. Not a “silver needle” at all, just a bag full of fuzzy buds.

A non-traditional oolong due to it’s particularly flowery aroma. Color of the brewed tea is a very light golden yellow. Light to medium viscosity. Slight acidity and aftertaste lingers on the tongue. Good wind down or evening tea.

I have to downgrade my score here by a lot. It is way too hard to avoid this getting really bitter. When it is not bitter, it is very tasty, but I veer too close to making tea look like a chemistry experiment as it is.

Boy, I tell you, this unorthodox steeping method of mine makes even very tricky leaves a lot more forgiving. I steeped this the full three minutes, last time only just over 2 minutes, and it tastes less vegetal, astringent and bitter than it did the last time, not more.

The result is a really great cup of Darjeeling tea which is just a bit green around the edges.

I have to say, this wide mouthed, covered Pyrex approach is the way to go.

Peppery. Green and peppery. The typical soft, smooth, round flavors of a Darjeeling with a little spinach and black pepper right at the end.

I steeped less than the recommended time, and I am glad I did. I get the hint from what I can taste right now that another 45-60 seconds really would have made this like drinking a spinach salad. So I’m glad I cut it short.

This is definitely a unique set of leaves, as the name Darjeeling green oolong would suggest that they are.

Organic teas make up probably 10-20% of my collection. I love organic items but to be honest, for teas, I don’t go out of my way to buy organic. The aroma is very characteristic Darjeeling as the hue of the tea. After my first sip, I must report the taste is wonderful. It’s not a standout tea but it’s able to stand up on it’s own. At 16 cents per cup (if buying the 500g pack), it’s definitely an affordable treat for yourself first thing in the morning. I know plenty of people love putting milk, sugar, honey or other oddities in their black teas. I don’t personally, but even if I did, I would not advise messing with this cup since it’s on the lighter side already.

What a short brew time! Not unexpected though since it’s a green. The leaves are short and crunchy and smell really good. The brew is a light light caramel color. Maybe more like yellow-brown than caramel. There is some acidity but nothing really strong. I want to say it tastes slightly citrusy but don’t take that to mean it’s super acidic. It’s not. It’s a good tea but I am not sure if it’s a “WOW” tea.

What’s up? I am back from a vacation in Montreal where I had zero, I repeat, zero tea. I was having tea withdrawals. Luckily, when I returned, Upton had a box for me with over 60 kinds of tea to choose from. Today I am trying a, new to me, Chinese black tea. I’ll be honest, I was busy so I drank this after it cooled a bit. I think that’s fine since I don’t like sipping boiling water. Anyway, the dry leaves are very interesting looking and their aroma is quite inviting. They look like they might be hard and crispy but actually yield quite a bit when touched. The brew has some slight bitterness, not unexpected from a black but it doesn’t have that back-of-the-tongue aftertaste that most black Indian teas have. I drink primarily Indian and Chinese teas but there’s something a little bit harsh about the former and a little more soothing about the latter. This is shaping up to be a very good tea for me and I am going to have to recommend it to all my followers.

Had this one again this morning without milk. Such a smooth drink. I agree with the other reviewer that this one has cocoa undertones. So, to compare to Dawn, this one has less cocoa but it is more full-bodied for a first cup in the morning. For the summer, a brisk assam is too strong, soo, this is becoming my “go-to” breakfast tea.