India Bihar Doke Hand-Made 'Rolling Thunder' Oolong Tea

An Indian oolong! What is going on here? Sorry, I just couldn’t resist the urge to open this review by saying something silly. Still, it should be noted that I do not exactly associate India with oolong production. In all honesty, I do not associate the state of Bihar with tea production at all, despite the fact that the Doke Tea Estate has been quietly pumping out a number of innovative and generally well-regarded teas for some time. This being my first Indian oolong, I really wanted to like it. Unfortunately, I could not get into it at all.

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

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves produced thick aromas of wood, black grape, malt, and spice. After the rinse, the black grape and malt scents intensified and were joined by a slight herbal character. The first infusion produced a decidedly more balanced bouquet with stronger hints of herbs and indistinct floral touches. In the mouth, the tea was initially dominated by tentative notes of wood, malt, and black grape underscored by timid nutmeg, herbal, and floral impressions. Subsequent infusions upped the black grape and malt aromas and flavors, while touches of nutmeg, anise, sweet potato, chocolate, brown sugar, violet, rose, minerals, and cooling wintergreen emerged at one point or another. The final infusions were decidedly heavy on minerals, wood, and malt, though somewhat distant impressions of flowers, herbs, and black grapes were still flitting around in the background.

As mentioned above, this tea did not do it for me. The black grape, malt, and floral notes were nice, but to me, this tea displayed such an odd and unexpected mix of aromas and flavors. It definitely did not have the sort of profile for which I typically go. Several of the early and middle infusions displayed such a pronounced sugary, fruity sweetness that a number of off-kilter juxtapositions were created when the other components were fully engaged. Table grapes and wintergreen, anyone? How about anise and chocolate? Would sweet potato and rose petals happen to be up anyone’s alley? Alright, enough of that. What I’m trying to say is that I found this one to be weird, and not entirely in a pleasant kind of way. I really tried to give it a fair shake, but I just couldn’t wrap my head, my nose, or perhaps most importantly, my taste buds around it.

Backlog – 190F, 2min, 2tsp
Dry leaf – hay, grass, spice
Grape spicy/spice malt. Spice note is different – almost spicy/hot w/o actual heat.
Body fairly thick, nearly no aftertaste.
2 min – sort of like dry grape skin feeling of mouth coating. More grape, less spice, malt.

Not a combination I’d want to repurchase. Grape flavor kills it for me – one of my blindspots. Rest of it went to a good home – gave it relatives who like tea. Sipdown

I brewed 5g in 110ml Gongfu, the aroma was smokey for the first 3 steeps then went to a wet grass smell, but the taste was mild wood, wet sunflower seeds at back of tongue, but a lingering sweetness around, with some floral notes to it. Very silky and smooth tea.

I had the wonkiest dream last night, it combined my current obsessions of Magic The Gathering and Ark: Survival Evolved with crazy apocalypse stuff most likely caused by my brushing up on the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event. It is always weird when the brain comes up with a crazy mish-mash of whatever you were thinking about before sleep and tries to make it into a story, most the time in the dream it makes perfect sense, but of course when you wake up it is so illogical and weird. And if anyone is curious about my Ark shenanigans for today, I’m planning on finding and taming a Carno, sure I could wait for an epic Rex or Spino, but the derpy arms and horns of the Carno kinda win so I need one to go hunting with my Pile ’o Dilos.

So, since it is Wednesday it is time to look at a tea from What-Cha, their India Bihar Doke Hand-Made ‘Rolling Thunder’ Oolong Tea is the lucky pick from my notes today. From the Doke Tea Garden in Bihar, the Lochan family once again is pushing the boundaries of tea in India, putting Bihar on the map as a tea region. The gentle curling leaves have a very sweet aroma, blending strong notes of plums, raisins and fresh grapes with a accompaniment of malt and dried tomato. The dried tomato note was a bit odd in concert with the other notes, but it is not an unpleasant oddness.

Into my steeping apparatus the leaves went for their nice little steeping session, I decided to go western style for this tea, because why not? I admit I primarily focus on gongfu so it is nice to switch things up a bit, keep me versatile. The aroma of the soggy steeped leaves is very fruity, blending tart slightly underripe plums, prunes, grapes, and raisins, the tartness is pretty fun, giving it a briskness. The liquid is very mild and sweet, blending grapes and prunes with a drizzling of honey, it has a richness to it that is not at all overpowering.

There is something about drinking tea from elegant or beautiful tea gear that makes it all the more wonderful, now I admit that my more recent collection of cups not all being pure white does skew the coloring of the tea a bit, but the beauty makes it worth it for me, and hopefully my dear readers don’t mind too much. The coloring matches the golden color of my cup perfectly, it looks like liquid sunlight. The mouthfeel is nice and smooth, pretty juicy with a bit of thickness, like warm fruit juice without the sticky. Tasting the tea, it is very sweet, mixing honey and plums with a gentle allspice note and a touch of raisins. Towards the end it gets a little dry and more heavily into the grape notes, reminding me a bit of spiced wine.

I did steep a second time, but a lot of the potency was lost, there is still mellow plum and grapes, but towards the end a note of dried tomato appears which was a bit surprising. The first steep really was quite enjoyable, the second steep was not at all bad, just diminished.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/01/what-cha-india-bihar-doke-hand-made.html