Laoshan White

Quick Notes Thanks to Bonnie for sharing with me :)

Dry – lighty vegetal, sweet, somewhat nutty/buttery.
Wet – Vegetal, snow peas/sweet peas, nutty, buttery.
Liquor – light/pale green.

1st 20secs – lightly sweet and refreshing with buttery and creaminess up front. As it washes down the vegetal notes become more apparent but the creaminess. The after is clean and slowly turns sweet and vegetal.

2nd 15secs – Creamy, buttery, sweet and vegetal notes up front. As it washes down, it is smooth and sweeter with snow pea notes and sugary sweetness that lightly lingers in the aftertaste.

3rd 20secs – Creamy, buttery and vegetal with some sweetness up front. As it washes down, it is more vegetal and slightly savory that wears a slight, pleasant astringency. The aftertaste is vegetal, nutty and sweet.

4th 40secs – Lightly creamy, smooth, sweet with vegetal hints up front. As it washes down, it is more vegetal and slightly savory that turns sweet again; there some astringency present.

5th 1min – Cleaner, sweeter with light creamy and vegetal notes up front. As it washes down, it is slightly creamier with faint vegetal notes that turn sweeter.

Final Notes
Amazing white tea, I like how it is creamy and smooth. Once again I love whites/greens to reset the taste buds, I feel like ‘back to basics’ and you can’t EVER have too much ‘basic’(training, learning and tea).

I’m sad to see this go. Is this where I say sip-down? This tea is fantastic. It’s not like any other white tea out there that I’ve ever encountered. It’s a lot like Summer Laoshan Green, but lighter. It’s super smooth and creamy, I love it. This was my morning and early afternoon partner today for studying…finals are coming.

So after bashing my head in Stage Combat, I decided to fix up my head by trying my sample of this tea. After reading all of these reviews I cannot wait to get this going, I can only hope it lives up to the hype hahaha.

I have decided to follow the instructions on the site, which seems interesting. I hope this turns out well. So far the dry smells a lot like Matcha tea or peas, loving it.

1st: 20sec @ 175F. Tastes just like snow peas with a bit of sweetness similar to honey or rock sugar. Color is a nice pale yellow. There is a tail note of soy milk or almond milk

2nd + 3rd: 25 sec @ 175F. Taste is even stronger this time, in a good way. My mouth feels so fresh and clean right now and I love it.

4th+5th: 35 sec @ 175F. Very sweet this time and a little less peay.

So in all this is fantastic. Would order more, if only I had money.

This tea tastes more like a green tea to me than a white; I enjoy both however, and this is really good! I was trying to figure out which vegetable this tasted like and to me it tastes like fresh edamame. It has a lovely soft texture and delicate sweetness that is enjoyable. It has this wonderfully weird trait of leaving the feeling that I just ate something very savory, and salty.
I brewed this western style with about 1 1/2 tsp of leaf for 12 oz. I know I’m naughty for not brewing it like Verdant suggests but I don’t have much of this tea and I’m trying to stretch it out! It was good this way, too.
Steep one, one minute. Steep two, 1 min 30 sec. I plan to keep going!

The dry leaf and the brewed tea smells very vegetal. Not really floral like I expected from a white tea. The leaves are really cute looking, curly and bright green when steeped.

First steep, 20seconds. I am getting boiled spinach with slightly salted butter. No hint of floral, but it is creamy.

Second steep for 25seconds. Maybe a little bit sweeter with a little bit less vegetal taste. More creamy in a way.

Third steeping for 25seconds. The aroma and taste of snap peas with a silky smooth finish enters my senses at this point.

Fourth steeping for 35seconds. This is probably my favourite steeping, it is lightly vegetal with creamy notes. I am not sure if I am getting soymilk, almond, or vanilla but there are maybe hints of each one.

Fifth steeping for 35seconds. Much the same as the fourth

To be honest, this is a lot more vegetal than I was expecting for a white tea. However, it is a tea of exceptional quality and flavour.

First off, I would like to give a hearty (and italicized ) “Thank YOU!” to LiberTeas for this sample. I’m always up for trying new whites, especially one with a name that looks dangerously close to “lotion”.

I was able to try this after a day of two failed interviews, a well-deserved nap, and a cat-puking wake-up alarm (no really). I am constantly impressed with the oddities that Verdant is dishing out, it tickles my geeky bone. As…wrong as that sounds.

This looked like a green tea on appearance, also smelled like one. It had the aroma of buttered veggies. When I brewed it, I accidentally went a little hot on the water. As a result, I decided to lower the brewing temperature by a minute or two – going with a minute-thirty.

The result was a pale yellow liquor that smelled like a green but tasted like a white. It reminded me of a cross between a Bai Mu Dan and a Mao Feng. Or some unholy hybrid of the two. Point is, I loved it. Mainly for the full-bodied aspect of it…but that might’ve just been my brewing. However, a good sign of a good tea is whether or not it can put up with my neglect. And this did. Good orphan.

This was a sample that came with a recent purchase, so I’m going to take a moment to give a big shout-out to David!

Alright, the first cup was preparrtd with gently-steaming water, and steeped for 15 seconds. The result is a very pleasant sweet tea, which tastes like the finest sweet peas. Unlike most white teas, which get their sweetness from therir floral flavors, this does it by refinig the Laoshan pea flavor. While I wouldn’t call the texture silky, it is a very smooth cup of tea, which is perfect for the lovely weather that I’m enjoying today. I can;t wait to see how the tea develops.

The second cup was prepared the same as the first, except it was only steeped for 10 seconds. It has lost a bit of the sweetness, but not enough to make it unpleasant. The texture has also changed, and is almost creamy, but not quite there. The aftertaste seems to climb up your mouth, and lingers for a good 90 seconds on the hard palate. Wow, that was a lot of interesting developments, can’t wait to see what comes next.

The taste of the third cup is pretty much the same as the second, except the bolder parts havce started to fade away, which is pretty much what I expected, since I rarely get more than four infusions out of a white tea. Oh well, I’ll just have to see what the next cup tastes like, and if it’s too weak I’ll stop.

Right, last cup, REALLY late, and I’m super tired now. This cup tasted adn selt much like an asamushi sencha, with a delicate grassiness and a smooth, almost creamy texture. The taste lingers pleasantly on the roof of the mouth, and stays there for about a minute. A very nice way to end an interesting session.

Music of the Day – Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47: IV. Allegro non troppo by Dimitri Shostakovich, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogJFXqYEYd8

Pretty good quality, and Bernstein is a great conductor for pieces like this, with lots of energy and emotion.

Another Verdant white tea night. The aroma of dry leaf when it falls to the bottom of my warmed mug is incredible, so green and creamy, it takes me away, leaving all my cares behind. Lovely dark curly leaves turn vibrant green when steeped for mere seconds and produce the palest gold liquor. Now in this tasting I can’t help to compare this to the Aged Yunnan White I drank last night whereas the description contrasts it more with the green. In this respect I find the first steep to be quite creamy in addition to being silky, its just a very different silky than the silver needle, it’s thicker and greener and milkier, yes milky. And yes, I am very much reminded of the Laoshan greens, but this white suits my taste buds better than the intense but still delicious greens. I have a hard time pinning down the second infusion but the third brings new sweetness which has coated my tongue and seems intent to stay and I am very content with that. This is so very good and I am so grateful to be drinking this, thank you to the folks at Verdant Tea and the farmers of Laoshan for their continued innovation, hard work and artistry.

Another sample sent to me by Bonnie. Many thanks for the generous selection and especially for this tea.

This was not what I expected from a white tea. I made it as per the directions on the website and took a sip. Prime steak! Yes, that’s right, the first flavour that hit my tongue was a high quality steak flavour. Then it settled down into a more pea-like vegetal flavour. This was nothing like any white tea I have had before. It was meaty yet smooth, sweet and silky. It gave me a prickly feeling on my tongue and the aftertaste was delightful. I resteeped it half a dozen times and each cup was as good as the last. Better yet, it has left me all relaxed like a good massage might. This tea is most excellent.

First of all, thanks so much to Bonnie for greeting me with this sample, as well as a host of other samples, when we met at the Rocky Mountain Tea Festival!

I have been super busy lately, and I have not had time to review, let alone taste, any new teas for quite some time now. Today, I finally have a wealth of free time, and what better way to use it than drinking and writing about a tea from one of my favorite tea companies :)

Bonnie gave me quite a generous sample of this tea, enough for two pots, but I decided to chuck the entire sample into my little 100mL gaiwan and put it to the ultimate gongfu test. I put the water on the stove, put the leaves into the vessel, and waited for the crab eyes to start blinking at me from the bottom of the pan. When the crab eyes caught my attention, I drenched the leaves, stirred them up a bit, and took a whiff…

It smelled like green tea. There was nothing white about it. It was beany, vegetal, and earthy. The first sip confirmed my nasal sense. It tasted just like a high quality, everyday-type green tea. This is not to say that it was not delicious. It just tasted nothing like a white tea. The second steep mellowed out the balance of tannin and sweetness. Once, again, it was very delicious. The third steep was even more mellow, with a lighter body, but still nothing white about it.

This Laoshan green tea that may have been processed as a white tea is very good indeed. It upheld its freshness very well. Every steep tells a different story, or at least chapters of the same story. Maybe I will tell the story some day. It will be a story of how there is absolutely no agreement in the tea business on what a white tea should be. Every company seems to have a different definition, and these discrepancies are enabling them to produce a wealth of different flavors, looks and aromas — essentially, different teas that all parade under the name of “white.” With all these variances, I’m becoming more and more confused. If you’re reading this, maybe you could tell me: how do YOU define what a white tea is? Do you simply submit to what every company tells you, even if their white tea tastes completely green, or even almost black (as Teatulia’s white tea tastes)? Or do you, as I do, feel the need for a little more formality in the definition of “white” tea?