Autumn Laoshan Green

I great big ol thank you to MissB for sending this tea my way!
I believe I had the same tea, but summer harvest, a couple weeks or months ago.
I don’t think my palette is.. advanced enough to know the difference between summer and autumn harvest though

But this tea is nice! It’s very similar to the other one. Very vegetal and very green. I don’t think I’ve had that many straight green teas before, and they’re okay. It’s definitely going to get some getting used to. Tastes like liquified sweet spinach ahha but it’s totally fine since that’s how it’s supposed to taste like! Gotta work my tastebuds up to this kind of very green tea :)

Grr. I was just typing out this wonderful, detailed note about this experience I had last night, when I clicked on the wrong thing and the page disappeared. Steepster, there’s got to be a way to save notes in progress!

Anyways, I had a really wonderful experience last night, and I wanted to write it all down for you to share, but now I’m too frustrated.

This tea is a sipdown. I steeped it twice for 4 minutes, and both times it was nice and vegetal, with a flavour of grilled nuts. Thanks muchly to aisling of tea and De for sharing this with me in a swap about 3 1/2 months ago.

If I didn’t just open this, I’d SWEAR this was another tea. I’m so puzzled, and yet so in love. Yes, I said it: I’m in love with this tea, whatever it is.

First off, it’s beautiful. I admired it for a bit before steeping it. I did it Western-style (1.5 tsp for 12 oz) and only let it steep a short while with the intention (hope) of many re-steeps. What I got was.. fresh ripe peaches, with a hint of something like pea shoots or grass or something along those lines. Really though? It’s peach. Authentic, juicy peach. .. or maybe I’m messing up whatever the flavoring is, because I see zero mentions of peach here in other tasting notes. Regardless – it’s sweet, juicy and fresh, and most definitely a green.

Love at first sip. I think if you could make dessert out of vegetables, it would taste like this. I agree with other reviewers about the bean and asparagus flavor, and there’s a creamy sweetness to it. [Disclaimer: I’m apparently overly sensitive to sweet tastes – I usually hate them where they’re intentional and only love them where others may not find them at all. Like here.]

1.5 tbsp

Pumpkin seed aroma in dry leaf. Spinach flavour. Slight astringency present.

This is my go to green tea at present and I’m never disappointed. Vibrant flavors of freshly cut grass, asparagus, fresh spinach and so on. The second steep seems to bring out the most. Never harsh or astringent, good mouthfeel. Maybe not as subtle as some of the fine Japanese greens, but I love it and look forward to the Spring harvest.

My first steeping of this tea was for 40 seconds at 175. I got one sip in before getting distracted and coming back to it when it cooled. It tastes slightly green and grassy, but it is really smooth too and leaves a nice buttery aftertaste that later fades into a grass again. If I wait long enough before taking another sip, I get this brief strange feeling on the back sides of my tongue just like a get when I drink a shot of wheatgrass. It is almost like a pucker or shudder.

The second steep was for a minute, but I had some eggs with this delicious hot sauce I have recently become addicted to (sometimes I search my kitchen for anything that I could put the sauce on just so I can have more) and the long lingering burn is still dominating any delicate flavors like tea. After some time has passed I can taste my tea again and it is a very similar cup as the first. The buttery flavors arrive a little sooner this time.

Third steep was for two minutes and the taste in the sip is much lighter on the grass. Mid sip is mainly buttery, then nothing immediately after and finally more butter which transitions to grass a while after each sip.

This tea is really nice and I am enjoying it, but I don’t know that I like it enough to have multiple cups of it in the same day. I start to get a little bored with how bright and light it is and find myself desiring something a little more heavy and earthy. I know I don’t have to drink multiple cups, but I’d feel like I was wasting it if I wasn’t. Still, this would be a nice tea to keep around when I was in the mood for an awesome buttery green.

very nice.
everyone seems to love it and for good reason and i have nothing to add.
yay tea.

Are there duplicate review pages going for this tea?
Anyhow this smells potent and fresh in the bag, a good sign!
On taste: Nice and rich, relatively smooth, and everything else I expect out of a good green (and usually only seem to get out of Japanese sencha), i.e. buttery, vegetal notes with a little sweetness in the background. The butter-like notes in here are particularly nice.

As I was scouring my mind for a taste descriptor besides buttered popcorn (unsalted), something to describe the particular vegetal note, edamame emerged as the answer, and I was pleased that I’d locked it. Then I read the description from Verdant of the growing process: “Rows of soybeans grow between the tea bushes to distract insects, and the beans are used as … fertilizer.” Whoa, floored me. Here I was thinking I’d pulled out this abstract analogy and it was totally concrete, if the tea absorbs any of its neighbor-plant through air or roots. Like scenting tea with jasmine flowers. I’m clearly no botanist but it seems plausible, and if true, makes me wonder if I’ll ever have such a bulls-eye in future reviews ;) I will not go so far, however, as to start consuming different kinds of worms, soil and fertilizer to further develop this skill.

The tea is smooth and savory, very pleasant, low-key, mild astringency.