Ceylon Idulgashinna 'Blue Nettle' Oolong Tea

This was another of my more recent sipdowns. It was also a tea that was wholly new to me. I normally don’t think of oolongs when I think of Ceylonese tea and prefer to stick with the more familiar and readily available Ceylonese black teas while occasionally giving some time to a Ceylonese green or white tea, but when I saw this tea, I was immediately intrigued. I purchased it shortly after What-Cha listed it, but naturally, I didn’t get around to trying it until a little earlier this month. While I loved this tea’s unique and appealing presentation, it was not entirely successful otherwise, as I found the tea liquor to be a bit lacking in body, depth, and complexity.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a standard 10 second rinse, I steeped approximately 6 grams of the formed tea leaves in 4 ounces of 185 F water for 10 seconds. This infusion was chased by 17 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and 20 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves produced aromas of honey, malt, sweet potato, and brown sugar. After the rinse, I detected new aromas of cream, butter, and sorghum molasses underscored by a subtle stewed tomato scent. The first infusion introduced aromas of sugarcane and candied orange. In the mouth, the tea liquor presented notes of cream, butter, sorghum molasses, sweet potato, and honey that were balanced by subtler impressions of sugarcane, malt, brown sugar, minerals, pear, and roasted almond. The subsequent infusions revealed aromas of apricot, plum, tamarind, pear, and apple that were balanced by subtle baked bread scents. Stronger and more immediately detectable notes of minerals, pear, roasted almond, sugarcane, and malt appeared in the mouth alongside impressions of apricot, tamarind, plum, apple, and lemon zest. Hints of baked bread, stewed tomato, and candied orange were also present. As the tea settled and faded, the liquor began to emphasize notes of minerals, sorghum molasses, cream, malt, lemon zest, sweet potato, honey, and sugarcane that were underscored by lingering hints of apple, pear, roasted almond, butter, candied orange, and brown sugar.

This was a very interesting tea with a ton of longevity, but it was just lacking some characteristics that would have made it more appealing to me. As mentioned towards the end of this review’s introductory paragraph, the liquor was a bit thin and struck me as being slightly lacking in depth and complexity. At times, it also came off as being somewhat unbalanced, as the aroma and flavor components sometimes fought one another. This was also a very, very sweet tea. That may not be an issue for some people, but I often found the sweetness overwhelming. In the end, I am certainly glad that I took the opportunity to try this tea. I actually did enjoy it to a certain extent, though I also feel that its flaws were very noticeable and virtually impossible to overlook. Still, it was definitely not an offering to avoid.

Gosh, this is bland! First steeping has maybe the merest hint of peach. Someone below said ‘peach mineral water’ and that feel right. Second steeping and beyond picked up some of the fruit notes and I got a hint of jasmine. But there isn’t much to this. But it would be a perfect palate cleanser between courses of a meal.

What an interesting dry presentation. . . Looks strange, smells like tamari of all things. . . My cat tried to run off with one (it was safely retrieved with no harm done to either tea or cat). Considerably less unusual in the pot. Nice, light flavor. I didn’t get the advertised apricot, but I did taste a strong overtone of spring wildflower honey that’s very pleasurable and eerily spot on for what my coworker’s bees most recently produced.
It has a downside— unlike most oolong, it did not take kindly to being left in a cooling pot to continue steeping past the initial, recommended point in time, and my second cup was thus bitter. I’d have brewed it in a filter if I’d known it wouldn’t behave as well as most in its class do, but ah well. Hind sight and all that.

The pile of WIP on my painting desk is slowly shrinking. See my big plans for Christmas gifts this year are buy a miniature I think the receiver will like and paint it for them. It goes with my usual tradition of making gifts for people, and I wanted an early start. My goal is to get the gifts for family finished first and then do a bit of an open season, open it up to like 15 or so of my online friends and tell them to claim a spot and they get a mini. Thank you Reaper Minis Bones line for being affordable! Also yay for not having a job other than tea rambling, so I can devote a ton of time to painting things for people I care about.

Today’s tea is one of the strangest looking ones I have had the pleasure of brewing, and I admit I got it entirely because it was quirky looking. What-Cha’s Ceylon Idulgashinna Hand-Twisted ‘Blue Nettle’ Oolong Tea as you can tell from the title of said tea, it is an Oolong from the Idulgashinna Tea Estate in Sri Lanka, specifically in the Uva region. This fun little tea bundle is hand twisted by workers, though I admit I have no idea what it has to do with nettle since it really looks nothing like the plant…maybe it is a reference to the jellyfish? Regardless it is quite pretty, the leaves tightly curled and showing a great variety of colors. The aroma is fairly light, a blend of apricots and persimmons with a slightly sour note like unripe plum, it blends sweet fruity and sour fruity very well.

I thought about gongfu brewing this little cluster of surprisingly long leaves, but decided it would be best suited in my tea brewing apparatus, I want to see it unfurl! And you know, even after a couple steeps, it stayed tight together, which I found amusing. The aroma of the leaf pile is sweet, like cooked apricots and persimmons with a definite honey note. The liquid smells like apricots and apple blossoms, very light but sweet.

First steep, it is smooth and pleasant, fairly light, but it has one very distinct note. It tastes like summer squash, specifically summer squash drizzled in honey. It is pretty mild, with an apricot finish, but it is also refreshing in its mildness. So, on we go to another steep.

Second steep, the aroma is picking up some malty and squash tones along with the persimmon and apricot. I like how the tea is kinda orange and the things it smells like (malt aside) are all orange. This is truly the tea to usher in Autumn, hey blenders, maybe use this in a pumpkin themed tea…because it no longer tastes like just summer squash, it tastes like pumpkin! It is still a bit light, defintely a tea that both has a presence and can be slurped without paying attention, at one point during the second steep I reached to pour myself more and realized my steeper was empty…and was confused as to where the tea went. Clearly I slurped it up and didn’t even notice. I also tossed a couple bundles into my tea infuser (sorry no picture, was really distracted with medical crap that day) and this tea handled the long steep very well, bringing the malt and pumpkin sweetness, it was a great accompaniment to a stressful day…and I have a suspicion I am going to get more of this tea to keep around for travel steeping fun.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2015/09/what-cha-ceylon-idulgashinna-hand.html

This is a queued tasting note.

Earlier near the beginning of the month we had the monthly ‘engagement meeting’ at work which of course, as my departments rep, I had to attend. Despite the content discussed at the meetings themselves, they’re actually fairly low-key and I love getting to learn about the different departments and how they’re run, as well as just hanging out with all of the department reps each month. It’s a fun time. Genuinely.

Each month one of us brings food as well – generally something relating to our department. This month Jillian, one of the two dietitians, provided food: a lovely mango/cucumber and red onion salsa and chips made out of beans. “Dietitian approved”. While it’s no cheesecake (which is what I brought last time) it was delicious.

And speaking of food/beverages – each meeting we get free coffee made for us by the coffee bar but I don’t drink coffee! Not a drop – the last time I had an actual cup of coffee was (I’m pretty sure) my 20th birthday when my manager bought me one as a birthday present and I drank it so as to not be rude. So I decided to ‘one up’ the coffee drinkers and bring tea. I brought some of DAVIDsTEA’s Movie Night for anyone else who wanted some – there were a few takers. This is what I brought for myself – and I have to say I had a fun few minutes talking to people and explaining why it didn’t look like any tea they’d ever seen before.

I did enjoy two good infusions of this during the meeting; I could have made more but getting up multiple times to do so probably would have been at least a little frowned upon despite the ‘casual’ feel of these meetings. Even though everyone’s having fun there’s still lots of work to be done!

Sadly, I couldn’t devote my full attention to the tea as I was taking minutes in addition to just contributing – so there were moments I was sipping without noticing anything. At the end of the meeting I had that feeling of drinking really good tea but not recollecting anything about it. Thankfully, my tea obsessed self made time to write a few things in the margins of the meeting’s minutes. So, in order of what I wrote and word for word:

- Apricot notes
- Honey finish
- A nice ‘fog’/malt/cream to it
- Taste & mouthfeel
- Reminds me of a good white tea; White Rhino?
- (A drawing of ‘The Rhino’ from Spiderman)