226 Tasting Notes

87

I am not into green teas but still diligently buying them and trying to develop a liking. The greens are supposedly really dependent on being fresh so here it comes a new harvest, right off the fields, Spring Snail Bi Luo Chun.

It is a very good looking, fragrant tea. it is rolled into nice little heavy snails, making it easy to put too much into a teapot if you go by volume vs. weight. Both dry and wet leaves smell of umami, grass and spices.

The taste is the same. I started with 15 secs (5g/100g) and it was to short, resulting in the taste being mostly umami a-la sencha. Then I increased the time to 25-so seconds and hit the right spot, bringing in the complexity. The tea gave off 4 solid steeps.

This is the tea that is hard to grade: the taste was good but not great, while the aroma and appearance are top notch.

Flavors: Floral, Grass, Spices, Umami

Preparation
5 g 3 OZ / 100 ML

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83

An interesting tea. The leaves are nicely curled and when steeped they are gradually opening up into large unbroken beautiful whole leaves. The aroma is very good and representative of Laoshan Blacks. The taste has dark chocolate, overbaked bread, sweet potatoes, flowers and honey.

First I tried steeping it for 10-15 secs (5g leaves in 90 g water) but , while exquisite, that taste was clearly not enough. This tea benefits from longer steeps of about 30 secs. Both the fragrance and the taste are pleasantly complex. The tea lasted for 5 steeps and the last two were markedly sweeter.

In short, this is the tea worth playing around with on the leaf/water ratio and the length of infusions; it would give something different under different conditions. The only letdown is the pale liquor: I like more intense colors in my cup.

Flavors: Bread, Dark Chocolate, Flowers, Honey, Sweet Potatoes

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 30 sec 5 g 3 OZ / 90 ML

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85

This is supposed to be one of the Nepal teas that should be similar to Darjeelings but without all the associated price premium. The tea is very light and floral. It has a winning brisk fragrance of grasses, spring flowers (tulips?) and some citrus peel zestiness.

The leaf is very much green and, while it is sold as SFTGFOP, it consists mostly of broken leaves with a fair amount of stems, while the tips are quite few and between. Truth in advertising, anyone?

With all that in mind, the taste is well-defined and not bad at all. Herbal, grassy, notes of dry white wine with bracing zest and pleasant bitterness. You need to be careful with it as it requires some steeping time to show the complexity but let it sit a bit longer and the bitterness will overwhelm everything. Despite being a South Asian tea it lends itself much better to the gong fu style preparation with its greater control over steeping times. I was content with 15-20 seconds infusions. Young sheng fans with a higher tolerance of bitterness can go longer than that since longer times definitely result in more fragrance and taste complexity. The aftertaste is long and, again, reminiscent of young raw puers but with the addition of floral notes.

In the end, this tea comes off as a lower grade offering from a good tea estate and, while not quite displaying a complex flavor of Darjeeling’s, still has an interesting aroma and a well-defined memorable taste. It is a solid buy for its price. Unfortunately, I tend to prefer more subtle and mellow tasting profile of Chinese teas and, while recognizing all the objectively good qualities of Himalayan Bliss, only very rarely feel the mood to drink it.

Flavors: Citrus Zest, Floral, Herbaceous, White Wine

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67

The risky buy of the month. It is the cheapest 100g-brick of puerh on Yunnansourcing.us and for a reason.

First, the good stuff: it smells good. The wet leaf has a complex, multi-faceted aroma that is very enjoyable. No fishy smell, no pure decay.

Now, the bad part: it needs at least 5 more years to develop because the acidic tatse of the fermentation is there, ready to pounce and overpower everything else. Which is a shame, because there ARE a number of more subtle, interesting flavors. Unfortunately, the only way to bring them all on the scene together is to do super-short steeps of 5-10 secs, and avoid the boiling water. So, you end up “savoring” a weak puerh for a 2-3 steeps – after that regardless of your efforts the sourness pushes everything else in far corners of the palate.

Oh, and I forgot to add that the brisk is tightly packed and produces a lot of dust – and whatever is not dust consists of small broken leaf pieces and lots of stems. That is, even five years from now it will still be a low-grade puerh of a questionable quality.

The take-away: avoid this brick, there are much better shengs for just a little bit more money.

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73

I am not a big fan of Assams but my supplies of Chinese teas are getting dangerously low and I want to wait for the 2018 harvest for reordering. So, I am resorting to drinking long forgotten and neglected samples from the bottom of my tea cupboard.

This particular Assam is actually not that bad. The taste is not complex by any means – your typical Assam here- but pleasant and if you do the short infusions the bitterness is avoided. It has a pleasant floral smell too. The taste is floral with some pine notes plus a bit of sweet potato. A solid if unspectacular tea.

Given that I could not finish about a half of Assam samples that I had tried it probably means that it would be a good budget choice for someone who actually enjoys drinking Assams.

Flavors: Floral, Pine, Sweet Potatoes

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81

I am not a big fan of licorice. But I should admit that this pairing of ginger and licorice is very good and complimentary. IF you like licorice. And, oh, it smells like heaven.

But if you are like me you better stay away from this blend: I honestly tried hard to drink myself into liking it – but this licorice is just too damn powerful in all its uncompromising glory.

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83

I thought that Teavivre is a place to find just inexpensive passable puerh (with their core competency rather being green and red teas) but I was certainly wrong with this one. These little cubes are solid. The first steeps deliver a good balance of earthiness, mushrooms and sweetness. In later steeps sweetness becomes a dominant flavor. No hint of astringency, funkiness or any fishy flavor.

It comes out good with short light infusions and with longer deeper ones. The taste is not the most original or overly complex but there is enough going on to keep you interested. It also looks and smells right and generally presents itself as a quintessential solid ripe puerh. That combines with the ability to give you many quality resteeps and very affordable price.

I really liked this shou and, inspired by it, will certainly get samples of several more puerhs from Teavivre hoping to find more hidden gems there. Because their puer prices are certainly one of the cheapest I encountered so far.

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94

Now this is a puer that stood out for me on so many levels. I kept it for a while and, after a more than a moment of hesitation, still decided to try it at 10 PM about an hour before I would have to go to bed. In my experience, a typical shou is not the best choice option for a late-night tea…but this tea is anything but typical.

First, it has a very appealing formulation: 20 g. It opens so many different ways to use it while still being fairly easily portable. Second, the taste: it was the most unusual shu that I tried so far. There was none of the common heavily earthy, woody and generally oppressive notes of decay. Instead, this tea is incredibly light and sweet. But this sweetness is not floral-based but rather intertwined with equally light notes of mushrooms, meat-based broth and, most prominently, the taste of naturally sweet water from a well or a spring somewhere in the wilderness.

This Gold Melon works extremely well with short infusion, it works equally well with the longer ones: the sweetness becomes even more pronounced without any hint of bitterness.

All-in-all, this puer is a very optimistic, sunshine-filled and uplifting drink. Good on its own, even better as a desert after a hearty meal. This tea is so tasty and “different” that I will certainly order a sleeve of it – because in addition to all its goodness this puer is also very affordable.

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75
drank 2017 Daily Drinker by white2tea
226 tasting notes

I tried it as a sample. The operative words for this tea are smooth and inoffensive. Way to many young puerhs that I had tried were acid-like in their astringency and sourness and required the unfailing precision in their steeping time and temperature to be enjoyed. This Daily Drinker is the opposite: it is smooth and very forgiving.

The tasting profile is actually pretty typical for young shengs and not complicated at all -floral, cranberry, some honeyed sweetness – with the commendable long aftertaste.

Now, for the bad part: this tea tastes very generic and fairly boring and does not produce many steeps. It is not going to turn anybody off but it will not wow anyone either. There are simply way to many puerhs that actually have some character and that’s why I will never return to Daily Drinker.

Flavors: Cranberry, Floral, Grass, Honey

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86

What a nice surprise it was after a streak of quite forgettable Harney’s teas. This tea certainly has a very distinct fragrance and flavor profile. The aroma is very perfume-like but not in a bad, sickly- sweet way and over-the top way. There is some freshness and boldness in the smell.

The taste is also distinct. It is charmingly restrained (the bergamot is certainly not as bold as in the Harney’s Earl Grey Supreme) and the slight sourness of the grapefruit blends well with all of that bergamoty goodness. Also, the tea base is lighter than in other H&T flavored teas.

The end result is some understated sophistication without any pretentiousness, which actually befits its name. I am surprised that Diamond Jubilee is not as popular as, say Paris or Vanilla Comoro. Good job Harney and Sons.

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Profile

Bio

I like to drink teas to recreate a specific mood, or just to take a break at work. The world of tea is so endless, patiently waiting for exploration and rewarding you in many ways big and small.

I am looking forward to years of playing with tea leaves, gaiwans, cups, and YouTube videos.

My ratings:

90 or more – a very good/excellent tea, I can see myself ordering it again.

80-89 – it is a good tea, I enjoyed it but not enough to reorder.

70-79 – an OK, drinkable tea but there are certainly much better options even in the same class/type.

60-69 – this tea has such major flaws that you have to force yourself to finish what you ordered.

<60 – truly horrible teas that must be avoided at all costs.

Location

USA

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