[Spring 2018 harvest]
This is an interesting green tea with quite a herbal character. The dry leaf smell is pungent, sweet and nutty. I also get an aroma of vegetable broth and sage. On the other hand the wet leaves smell of pine, grass, cauliflower, lemon balm and a touch of mint and basil.
The taste is kind of refreshing, with a strong sweetness, umami and a peppery finish. There are flavours of pine, sweetcorn, asparagus and nuts. Overall, I found the taste to be quite exciting. The aftertaste is also nice. It is has a vegetal bitterness and is a little biting. It reminds me a bit of tea tree oil. When brewed well (which, admittedly, took me a while to figure out), the mouthfeel is awesome – thick, brothy and soft.
As for brewing the tea, I found high leaf/water ratios to work the best, which is common for higher grade green teas. In order to avoid overly strong bitterness and astringency, one can reduce the temprerature as well as adopt a careful brewing, especially when pouring the water into the teapot.
Flavors: Asparagus, Biting, Bitter, Broth, Grass, Herbs, Mint, Nutty, Pepper, Pine, Sage, Spicy, Umami, Vegetable Broth, Vegetables, Vegetal
Preparation
People who liked this
Comments
I had a really high quality version of this tea in 2017. It was indeed quite tricky to brew. Ultimately I believe the best way I found was to simply keep flash-brewing until I felt like I needed to start extending the time. This is how I brew high quality Jin Jun Mei as well. Lower grade teas will likely behave very differently. This particular green tea tends to produce one of the densest cups of any green tea I’ve had with a really cloudy liquor from all the hairs and a really dense palate of flavors.
Also, while normally a clay person, a silver teapot does wonders to green tea. It’s like cheating, really.
Oh really? I have never considered silver for green teas, not that I have a choice tbh :D
I am considering buying a silver gaiwan though, not just for green teas.
As for this particular tea, I will continue experimenting with it and see what I get.
Silver gaiwans are my favorite form of silver teaware. That and silver cha hais. The cups get too hot for me to hold or comfortably drink from and teapots don’t really justify the price compared to a gaiwan IMO. Haven’t experimented too much which teas silver suits best, but I’ve always been very happy with the results with Chinese green teas. So much so that I always make sure to use silver so that I’m not wasting the potential of good tea. This is just my personal finding though. I only drink a couple of green teas a year when I can get them fresh and the season feels appropriate (summer), so my experience with them is limited to say the least.
I had a really high quality version of this tea in 2017. It was indeed quite tricky to brew. Ultimately I believe the best way I found was to simply keep flash-brewing until I felt like I needed to start extending the time. This is how I brew high quality Jin Jun Mei as well. Lower grade teas will likely behave very differently. This particular green tea tends to produce one of the densest cups of any green tea I’ve had with a really cloudy liquor from all the hairs and a really dense palate of flavors.
Also, while normally a clay person, a silver teapot does wonders to green tea. It’s like cheating, really.
Oh really? I have never considered silver for green teas, not that I have a choice tbh :D
I am considering buying a silver gaiwan though, not just for green teas.
As for this particular tea, I will continue experimenting with it and see what I get.
Silver gaiwans are my favorite form of silver teaware. That and silver cha hais. The cups get too hot for me to hold or comfortably drink from and teapots don’t really justify the price compared to a gaiwan IMO. Haven’t experimented too much which teas silver suits best, but I’ve always been very happy with the results with Chinese green teas. So much so that I always make sure to use silver so that I’m not wasting the potential of good tea. This is just my personal finding though. I only drink a couple of green teas a year when I can get them fresh and the season feels appropriate (summer), so my experience with them is limited to say the least.