Hand Picked Spring Tieguanyin (2012)

Thanks Dexter3657!

Freshly steeped, this one smelled almost overwhelmingly vegetal. I waited for this to be cool enough to drink and was pleasantly surprised. I’m halfway through my cup now and it’s creamy with maybe the most subtle hint of spiciness and vanilla. That’s sounds bizarre, but that’s what my taste buds are telling me. I’m looking forward to subsequent steeps.

1st steep – 2 tsp. @ ~208 F for 1 min.
2nd steep – 2 mins. — The steeped scent is much more floral this time around.

TREAT YO’SELF!
Finally finally finally I can get back to all this tea. I promised myself I’d spend a whole day with this one on this short break before I have to go housesit for my parents and then go to class every day in June and July. Not going to want hot tea much then.

I’m using my gaiwan and combining two steepings. I love to intermix them like this, mostly because there is really no other easy way for me to get water than to do two at once.

1&2 – Green veggies, sugar, and grass. The first sip just hit me like, this is definitely spring. Definitely reminds me of my plants outside since they got a nice spring soaking yesterday. They seem extra green today. It’s just a little bit creamy, but mostly I’m getting a lot of sweet, grassy flavors that almost remind me of green tea instead. I think the creamy notes help assert it to be like, “no girl, this is a tie guan yin.”

3&4 – Now the floral flavors are coming out with the sweetness. It’s more buttery now, and still reminds me of green vegetables. It’s a nice combination. All I can really think right now is “I want to bathe in this!”

5&6 – This one got a bit too cool because I’m trying to fashion a way for my plants to get water for 6 days I’ll be gone. This cup was still very buttery, but the floral notes started to give way to a berrylike taste. I saw goji berry mentioned in the description, but I’ve never had goji by itself to know if that’s what I’m getting.

7&8 – Still creamy, sweet, and amazing. I think more fruit flavors are coming through, but it was so easy to sip these steeps down that I don’t have much more to say.

Then sadly I was pretty much done for the day (or more like I passed out for 2 hours in the late afternoon and didn’t feel like tea when I woke up) and I didn’t give the leaves a good enough time to dry out. They are now sitting on top of my sage, rosemary, and strawberry plants and hopefully will help them grow even better!

Tieguanyin time!

Truthfully, this tea is the sole reason that I made my order at Verdant. I knew that I had my monthly tea allowance to spend so I decided to just save some money and spend it all at one place. Needless to say, however, I’m super excited for this one. I feel like I ramble on too much during my infusion notes so I’m going to try and make this one as brief as possible.

First Infusion
Rinse with 208F for ~15 seconds, steep with 205F for 1 minute. The second I poured the water on the leaves, a strong aroma of fresh spinach filled my nostrils. That quickly faded a certain fresh aroma that I can’t place has somewhat masked it. This is really good! I can see why David described this as the Essence of Spring-it definitely tastes very fresh and floral and almost like that new smell in the air that you associate with spring. This is super good!

Second Infusion
208F for 1 minute and 15 seconds. Again I got a spinach-like aroma that dissipated really quickly. This infusion is a bit grassier than the first, but there’s a super sweet rock-candy-esque aftertaste. As this one cools, the floral notes come out more. This one is yummy too!

Third Infusion
208F for 1 minute and 30 seconds. This one is a lot more floral! Wow, this tastes like flower juice! I’m 98.6% sure that this is my favorite out of all of the infusions so far. This is magnificently floral and sweet, and it does taste like spring in a cup! I’m getting exhausted and (although this tea is extraordinary), I’m ready to change teas! This one has lasted me practically all day!

So far, all of my teas from Verdant have been AMAZING! I’m so glad I have two more to try but I’m going to try and space out my trying of them so I don’t ware them all out at once!

Tightly rolled little green balls that smell floral, creamy and of parsley. Wet they smell like greens sautéed in butter. The infusion smells floral and creamy. Brewed this gaiwan style at 208F for about 5-6 seconds after an initial rinse. I always forget how much these little balls open up and I ended up putting in a little too much leaf (I don’t have a scale) and had to take some out for later use.

Initial cup was wonderfully floral and creamy. The next few infusions I could taste lilac and orchid with the tingling mint feeling on the tip of my tongue. As the infusions go on the creaminess got stronger. Around cup 4 I flipped the leaves around and then tasted vanilla and the mouthfeel became stronger. A juiciness came into play around steep number 6 as did the parsley I was smelling earlier. Around #8 the floral notes were gone and the creaminess and parsley notes were stronger as was the mouthfeel.

I stopped for a little and came back to it but after the floral notes completely fade and the mouthfeel becomes really rich with a mouth coating aftertaste with a silky texture. I really love the floral notes with this and how I can pick out actual flowers other than orchid.

Theresa was a real task master yesterday, keeping me working in the office until midnight & beyond! We did get some things done, although there is always more.

I’ve been looking through my piles of samples from various places, & also trying to get myself to use up greens & green oolongs, to make room for the new ones that will be coming soon! So I had a sampler packet of this one. It is a delightful tieguanyin, brightest green, tighty pressed into little pieces that unfold amazingly to totally fill my Gaiwan. it is light, sweet, floral, fruity, & veggie-like, & quite honestly the epitome of spring!

Tieguanyinathon Pt.I
Sort of in the spirit of the “Saturday Sipdown” I’m going to be tasting the Verdant spring, summer, and autumn Ti Guan Yins sent to me by Autumn Hearth and maybe even some other TGY’s I have sitting around. :)

Early steeps: The early steeps are sweet and smooth with a nice, milky texture. The flavor is slightly floral and reminiscent of honeysuckle, and I also get notes of pumpkin and hazelnut. The leaves opened up really fast! By the 3rd steep they were almost completely unfolded.

Middle steeps: In the middle steeps, the floral sweetness was largely repaced by savory chestnut flavors, and something that reminded me slightly of turmeric (though that might have just been my cooking) :)

Later steeps: Around the sixth steep, the floral notes return to balance out the savory. These later steepings are well balanced, and have the flavors of the earlier steeps, but I also begin to notice new flavors like parsley and vanilla, a slight cooling effect like mint, and a cake-like fluffiness.

I will say that I love Autumn oolongs more because of the butteriness they have to them. In the past with spring oolongs I was never a huge fan, but I can appreciate this one. Nice floral orchid notes from it. This was my sample that I received with my last order. I did 6 steeps of it and it kept producing good tea.

First of all, I must rant about the leaves of this tea. They’re of incredible quality. When dry, I received beautiful aromas of sweet vanilla, stone fruits, honeycombs, and orchids which transferred exquisitely into a thick, intensely floral, biscuity sweet smell when wet. I have to say, these are the best-smelling leaves of any tea I’ve had so far. But wait! After steeping and steeping, they unfold to reveal their most fantastic appearance. On the backdrop of their forest green blades tinged with a very slight bruising, is a gorgeous array of spindly, silvery-green veins that spiderweb across the surface—a lovely aspect that I rarely see with such clarity and liveliness in other teas. They feel thick, healthy, and very strong—just as though they were plucked off the bush minutes before they found their way into my gaiwan. I must say, I’m quite impressed.

The infusions these beauties create are just as vibrant: bright, grassy green with golden undertones which produce a surprisingly powerful smell exactly like the wet leaf’s aroma. Everything about this tieguanyin feels alive. Flavors and aromas burst with springtime nuances, while after a sip, the tastes bloom forth and continue to grow, before fading into a great aftertaste of sweet stone fruits and lingering floral notes. The taste pairs wonderfully with the buttery smoothness and silky, creamy textures that build into the fourth steep, where flavor and mouthfeel meld into a thick, honey-like sweetness where the fruity notes reach a climax. Continuing on, the body somewhat lessens and with too short of a steep, becomes a bit weak. However, interesting undertones become apparent from this point and come and go throughout the last steeps: a parsley-like spice, fresh grass, and a mineral/stone flavor.

This tieguanyin provides quite an experience. At any rate, I think I’m starting to get addicted to this tea. I just finished an 11 steep gong fu session, and all I want to do is finish this review and make more…

Ummm, gotta go…

So I enjoyed 13 or so sessions with this tea, five yesterday and the rest today. They were very quick steeps starting at 2 secs to 15 sec yesterday and only reaching a minute with the last two today. I used around two teaspoons of leaf to around 4-6 ounces of water, in the gravity tea infuser (read: Teavana perfect tea maker). The third and fifth infusions were probably my favorite, they were the most floral and green but I had some nice ones today as well that were more buttery and slightly spicy. For some reason I kept expecting this to be more than it was, which is a great spring Tieguanyin, like the Autumn harvest or another variety of oolong altogether (I had Oriental Beauty earlier in the day and I love how different it is), which is quite silly of me.

I actually brought this to work on Sunday and brewed it side by side with the Autumn harvest and go the tea makers switched around, but I was still pretty certain which was which, the Autumn was much more of a cool depth to it, but surprisingly they are both buttery. For fun we also brewed Teavana’s Monkey Picked Oolong, which I would assume is a Spring 2011 harvest (but who knows). Most of the co-workers preferred Verdant, except of course the boss lady who while she thought they were interesting commented, “I think ours is smoother, don’t you?”.

No actually not at all, I thought it was a little bit more pungent up front and finished quite dry, whereas Verdant’s two offerings left my tongue feeling silky and moist. mmmgood304 thought the dry leaf smelled like lilacs, I concur. Honestly it didn’t preform as well at work as it did at home, maybe it was the water, or the residue on the tea makers or the fact were were pouring out of paper cups into plastic sample cups, but it wasn’t until the third steep at home that I tasted the essence of spring and it was quite lovely.

I haven’t rated a tea in awhile and don’t feel like it tonight, so will probably withhold until the sipdown on this one. But I am impressed with the mouthfeel in early steeps and the sheer longevity of the leaves. I probably could have gone for several more infusions, but gosh I need to buy a gaiwan of a yixing pot. I am just grateful to be able to drink a tea picked this spring, just weeks ago, I find that amazing.

This tea smells amazing! Incredibly sweet & floral. Mmm.. first sips are wonderfully tasty. I am really loving the strong & sweet floral flavor. This is funny because I tried another floral oolong from Verdant Tea before and really hated it. This one seems completely different and completely delicious! Even though it’s very yummy, I find that I can’t have too many cups of this because it’s so floral and intense. I think this would be a nice tea to have for those times when nothing but a rich & sweet treat will do!