144 Tasting Notes
Lovely flower tea!
For the first time round, I did a half tablespoon in 300mL boiling water for around 5 minutes. It was a light and subtle taste which suited the late evening when I wasn’t looking for too much sensory stimulation. The fragrance is wonderfully mild and I can’t really compare it to anything else. I did read that the Japanese use this flower in fragrances to scent linen and I can see how that would work beautifully. Good resteeped for an unknown number of minutes as well.
The second time, I experimented with a heaped tablespoon in 300mL water at 100C, and forgot about it for some time. I returned to quite a sharply bitter tea which reminded me of the outside coating of antihistamine tablets. However, this bitterness was somehow deeply thirst-quenching? I wouldn’t recommend oversteeping it though.
Also seemed to improve my dry cough symptoms the following morning, and I can see why this is used as medicine.
A rare and wonderful find.
This tasting note is just to log that today, I steeped a half tablespoon in 200mL-ish for 5 minutes at 100C, and the sweetness was more prominent than when I’ve steeped a heaped tablespoon in 200mL-ish for 3 minutes at 100C.
Can you describe the physical appearance of the dry leaf you received? I often have trouble measuring my taiwanese blacks using a spoon!
Some length and spindliness perhaps. I use a spoon that one would use for eating – less curvature on the sides. As opposed to a baker’s tablespoon used for measuring, which may be harder to get odd leaf shapes upon.
Sipdown no.6 for 2025!
The 25g bag of this went down surprisingly fast. Too bad the last steeping of this, I forgot about the 85C – 90C recommendation and blasted it with boiling water, to the demise of the warm baked bread notes. A reminder for me to check the brewing instructions, even if I sometimes do tend to steer in a different direction than suggested.
Anyway, I can confidently recommend this tea to anyone who likes black tea.
Sipdown! No.5 in 2025 (counting samples over 10g…)
This oolong is on the greener side, and I found it quite non-descript to be honest. I liked having it, and got 3 good steeps before it became even more non-descript. But it also has a random mildly sharp bitter edge unless you are super precise in brewing.
By no means a bad tea. I’ve just had some realllyyy good other Tie Guan Yins in my day.
Interesting tea, @Catherine Baratheon. I read through the teavivre description, and although I noticed them mixing up the actual vitamin deficiency responsible for scurvy, I saw nothing explaining how the monkeys pick the tea, how they maintain good hygiene, and whether they are humanely cared for. Did your tea come with any information about that?
Haha it’s just the name of the tea, born of myth and legend. I don’t wanna support no slavery monkey business
Oooohhhh, just the name! Next you’ll be telling me that there is no dragon where they make Dragonwell tea, and no metallic Iron Goddess involved in making tie guan yin tea, and that golden buds and silver needles are mere metaphors too! Sheesh! Don’t get me started on the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy…. ;-)
There are dragons where the make the Dragonwell tea, it’s just not made in a well
Hahahahaha! Dragons I can handle, and a phoenix, too. But this stuff makes me tremble:
http://steepster.com/teas/white2tea/86509-duck-shit-dancong-oolong
And then there’s Kopi Luwak, which is 100% real, receiving high praise from coffee conniseurs!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak
Keen to try the dancong!!
The Kopi Luwak I’ve tried in Bali.. a bit sour for my taste and overpriced imo, but that’s also because the coffee we have in Australia is probably the best in the world
An Australian brand tea that I tried yesterday at high tea in Vaucluse, a fancy expensive suburb in Sydney which we hardly every visit.
Ovvio’s French Grey was a lovely floral tea which felt uplifting to drink. I don’t reach for rose often, but it felt right yesterday enjoying some quality time with my husband.
Now that I’ve got good memories associated with this tea, it’s hard to stop myself from purchasing a whole tin of it. I’ve been wanting a French bergamot blend for ages, while avoiding most of them on the market due to artificial flavourings.
I’ve now found a natural, organic one now as per my wishes, but I’ve got so much tea in the cupboard and more tea on the way.. including the Earl Grey blends from Whispering Pines. So surely I ought to try those first before purchasing more tea, right? Right?!
Sipdown! The fourth one of 2025! (now, this was a sample sipdown.. but I’m going to count this for any sample sizes over 10g)
Enjoyable and greener than I expected. I’ve had Dong Ding in a bubble milk tea before and while fragrant, it tasted quite watery and weak in the milk and sugar.
Glad to try this as a standalone tea without additions. I love roasted oolongs and don’t tend to go for green notes, but when I do want the green freshness, this product hit the spot. Got 10 enjoyable steeps out of this one, albeit quite light after steep 5 without much interesting development in flavour profile.
Has piqued my interest in trying more Taiwanese oolongs in the future.
Sipdown!
My 1st one since getting back into tea as a special interest 2 months ago. Since then I’ve amassed 5 months worth of tea, assuming I only have one session a day.
Haha the way I deep dive..
Anyway this chamomile is often a fine line between weak and tasting oversteeped but when you get it just right, it is lovely.
Shall be trying more chamomile from different brands now though.
Presence is everything.
I got to brew and drink this with all the time in the world today. And it becomes a completely different tea when I do so.
Having this for the first time while I was rushing to get to work, I could not notice a single thing about it other than ‘Chinese black tea.’ But today, I took a sick day and just sat with the tea and my experience of it.
100C, Western style with 1 tablespoon in 200mL for 3 steeps. Afterwards, I contemplated what tea to have next, and then promptly chose to brew another tablespoon of the Imperial Golden Needle.
Beyond words and descriptions, I simply enjoyed it without bothering the cognitive mind with specifics. I like when vendors are detailed with their tasting notes, because it gives me the option to search out those notes in the tea without bothering to go down memory lane to retrieve those impressions myself.
Power of suggestion. Which is what most of reality is, anyway. But sincerely, I agree with Brendan’s descriptions. The chocolate-covered strawberry note comes out more as the tea cools, by the way. It’s one of those teas where I notice that the temperature it is drank makes a change to the notes in each sip.
