Dark Roast 10 Year Aged Tieguanyin

Ahh… it’s so good to sleep in, wake up and not have to go anywhere. It’s unforgivably cold outside, so I’m staying in, making homemade pancakes and drinking this wonderful tea.

Today I added extra leaf and that was a good choice. I used 7 gram for 6 ounces of water. I rinsed the leaves first and waited 1 minute to wake them up. I then steeped for 3/6/10 seconds.

Yummy! The tea tasted amazing from the first steep which was roasty, floral and sweet. By the third steep the tea was full bodied, roasty, floral with notes of caramel and fruit. My unsophisticated palate wasn’t sure what fruit was that. There was a slight astringency developing towards the end of the sip. Very delicious.

I’m going to continue stepping this for the rest of the afternoon and see where else it will take me. :)

This has been a rough & non-productive week for me, for the most part. My desk is piled high with unfinished business, I did almost nothing in my garden all week. OK, I did pick some asparagus, onions, & lettuces, & today I finally went out there for an hour & weeded the gazebo, where hopefully tomorrow I’ll plant grapes & kiwi’s. But that’s really pretty much it. Allergies suck!

This tea, on the other hand, is a lovely oasis of delight. I sipped it over the afternoon, & I know I should give some description of it, but I’m brain dead, & I just can’t think of anything to say. Except it is lovely.

There’s a lot going on here. The first steepings had a lingering sweetness after the forest floor notes of the initial hit. Later on, the sweetness is gone, replaced by, well, I can’t do better than Verdant’s description of ‘nag champa incense.’

Sipdown! I’ll admit up front that I probably didn’t do this tea justice in its last few steepings. I prepared it western style and drank it over the course of the workday. Usually I stick to my middling teas during work so I don’t feel bad for not giving them much attention, but its been rough going lately so I’ve been leaning into quality teas more to cheer up the day. On the flip side, that means good teas are not getting my full focus.

Anyway, this was a really comforting, richly roasted cup. I steeped it pretty strong, so only got three robust steeps out of it, but they were great. It paired well with chilly, gloomy weather. I could see this making a good iced tea, too, actually.

This is one of those teas I’ve had sitting in the back of my cabinet forever — not because I dislike it, but because I didn’t want to use it up. Thankfully this tea holds up to additional age well, because it tastes just how I remember!

I brewed this with boiling water, starting with a ten second brew and adding 3 seconds each brew for the first 9 rounds. I was easily able to get 12 brews out of this session.

It’s hard for me to describe what I like about this tea because one of my favorite parts somewhat defies description — it simply tastes aged.

It reminds me of going into my uncle’s garden shed. It smells of must, peat, wood, tobacco and smoke. The liquor brews up a beautiful champagne gold. The texture is rich and creamy. The flavor leads with peat and smoke but it’s incredibly smooth, with no harsh bite from the smoke. It’s backed up by this incredible toffee sweetness and a savoriness of an artisan loaf of bread.

This is a deeply roasted tea — so there’s no point in the session where the roast washes off and leaves you with a totally different tea. It’s not a tea I find incredibly complex, and yet I love it. Rarely have I tasted a tea with a peat note, and never one this strong and satisfying.

Hm, wasn’t really my taste personally. I had a hard time picking out flavors apart from the real heavy roast on this one, although it was very smooth. There was that standard mineral/rock personality and some sweetness, along with a bit of a cloying dry fruit-ish flavor, but it was kind of flat to me. Definitely had a buttery quality to it though, and it wasn’t bad, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to get it again.

Prior to this morning I had a little packet of this just sitting in my tea cabinet. I received it as a free sample with an order from Verdant Tea around a couple months ago. With my recent consumption skewing heavily in the direction of black and green teas, I have not had much of a chance to review many oolongs. After working six days straight and dealing with unseasonable cold, however, I decided that I needed something a little heavier to wake me up this morning. It was finally time to break this one out and spend some serious time pondering it.

To brew this tea, I decided on a multi-step Western infusion. Normally, I follow the brewing guidelines suggested by the vendor, but today, I decided to lower the water temperature just a tad. I still kept it within a range acceptable for most oolongs, but the last time I brewed a tea from Verdant, I found that their suggested temperatures are slightly on the high side for my taste. The initial steep times were 2 minutes, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, and 6 minutes. I allowed for an optional final steep of around 8 minutes just in case. I settled on this method because I have had a lot of success with 4-6 step infusions with aged oolongs in the past. I figured one could work here.

First Infusion: The liquor produced was an attractive pale yellow. Mild aromas of freshly cut grass, roasted nuts, minerals, and wood were evident. In the mouth, I found a pleasant mixture of grass, butter, mineral, moss, toast, wood, and herbal notes that were somewhat reminiscent of ginseng.

Second Infusion: The liquor produced was slightly darker than the first infusion. Stronger, brisker aromas of grass, wood, nuts, minerals, and herbs were present on the nose. Complex notes of leather, tobacco, nuts, brown toast, char, butter, wood, grass, roasted barley, wet stones, moss, minerals, herbs, and steamed buns rolled across the palate.

Third Infusion: The liquor produced was about the same color as that produced by the second infusion. Mild toast, roasted barley, butter and mineral aromas were evident. In the mouth, toast, char, butter, roasted barley, nut, moss, stone, herb, steamed bun, and mineral notes began to give way to creaminess.

Fourth Infusion: The liquor produced was slightly paler. Very subtle aromas of grass, roasted barley, and toast were just barely detectable on the nose. In the mouth, very mild notes of grass, barley, toast, nuts, and minerals were chased by creaminess.

I did try a fifth infusion, but there wasn’t much flavor, so I won’t detail its results here.

Overall, I am pleased with this experiment. I think this is really nice as far as aged oolongs go, and fortunately, the roast characteristics aren’t overwhelming. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this tea to those looking for an oolong with a good deal of complexity.

Slightly under boiling water, brief rinse (already lots of color in rinse => due to fines?),
1st steeping- roasty, a little fermented/old sock flavor, drying
2nd steeping- rich sweetness, earthy, weird sock aftertaste but less defined
3rd steeping- color mellower, nice thickness body, sweet note similar to golden raisin
4th steeping- lot longer steep time 10-15s, distinct oolong scent, gorgeous taste, starting to hit its stride: nice, syrupy and smooth, wonderful aftertaste
5th steeping- 25-30s, lots of stirring with lid, similar to last one but a bit weaker and watery, roasted barley flavor, very smooth and tasty, great mouthfeel
6th steeping- took 1hr break; 45-50s steep, leaves on bottom brought to top, weaker but syrupy, roasted nutty, spices finish
7th steeping- less water, longer steep time 1:20, very syrupy sweet and nutty
8th steeping- 2:15 min, enjoyed it while it lasted, watery and muted, still syrupy tho

Mmm… So in honour of the looming (and extremely exciting) Aged Oolong group buy, I thought I’d treat myself to a session with this exceptional aged tea!

I know it’s not quite as aged as some of the ones that we’ll be getting, but 10 years still gives this tea a real depth and complexity of flavour – in particular, the woodiness, the spiced-notes, and the lovely, deep, dark flavour! Perfect on such a chilly autumn day :-)

(Incidentally, it didn’t occur to me at the time, but I spotted someone else has tagged “coffee” as a flavour note for this tea; it really does kinda remind me of a “fancy latte” (you know, the really delicious, non-bitter ones that you can get from “artisan” coffee houses??). Delicious :D )

(Also also, I brewed this up in my lovely little Acorn teapot from Verdant – it’s so pretty, and some of the crackles are finally starting to develop a bit of darker colour. Lovely! :D )

This was better than the previously aged Tie Guan Yin I’ve had, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. It has that stained wood quality that I’m not a huge fan of, but that note is made up for by its sweet, cedary character. I really understand why sandalwood would be the comparison for it’s spiciness. I made it gongfu, steaped for 30 seconds after five second rinse, and it is sweet and very similar to coffee, but not in a way that you would expect. It has the roasted, sweet berry acidity of coffee, but it tastes more like a coffee berry than anything else. So, surprisingly fruity. I would probably drink this more often in the winter, but not something that I would buy again. I honestly wanted just a sample, but got the full ounce on sale. I’m not sure if I want to steep it a third time though, because the woodsiness is still holding me back.

I think that this tea deserves a higher rating in quality between a 80-95, but in terms of taste, it’s closer to a 65-70 for me because of preference. It might be good western with cream and sugar, though that may be blasphemy. Maybe there are better ways of brewing it that I haven’t figured out yet.