Mountain Tea

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80
drank Black Pearl by Mountain Tea
350 tasting notes

I got this in this month’s Tea Sparrow box – a neat change of pace from the flavoured teas! I spent a bit of time trying to decide where to leave this tasting note, since there are duplicate entries in the database, this one under “The Mountain Tea co” and the one under “Mountain Tea”. If you look at those two company listings, one has 25 teas listed under it and the other has 19, with a fair bit of duplication. What a mess! This one has a lot more tasting notes, which is why I chose it.

This is an interesting tea! With dark oolongs I tend to assume they’re going to be heavily roasted, but this one is actually just heavily oxidized – I don’t detect any roastiness at all. It is a neat blend of malty and floral, with a light, fruity note that I convinced myself was apple after reading the description. :) It’s like a light, surprisingly floral, black tea.

Flavors: Apple, Floral, Malt

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec 4 g 10 OZ / 295 ML
Fjellrev

Btw, are you enjoying Tea Sparrow?

Lindsay

Yes! It’s 4 teas per month, usually one each of black/green/rooibos/herbal, 15-20g of each. They get them from all over, so it’s a neat chance to try teas from various companies without having to pay for international shipping. Having said all that, I think I may have to put my subscription on hold while I focus on drinking down my crazy tea excess, lol.

Fjellrev

Sounds good! I’ve been considering them or Amoda but can’t make up my mind, so end up with neither haha. Both had a booth at a tea fest a couple years ago and the employees were really nice. You can tell they love what they do.

Lindsay

Just to make your decision harder, there’s also Postal Teas: https://postalteas.com/
3 bags of tea per month, all from the same producer, mostly small Canadian companies.

OMGsrsly

They say “producer” on the postal teas site, but I’ve been poking around and some of the places are Metropolitan resellers. Some of them do blend their own, but it’s always disappointing to me when companies talk about producing teas, but they only have a few of their own blends.

Lindsay

I wondered about that, since some of them seemed to be “tea shops” (mostly in Toronto) rather than tea blenders.

OMGsrsly

I have nothing against Metropolitan, but I can get them a lot cheaper in a visit to Victoria than ordering from a lot of these websites! :)

Lindsay

See, I don’t have a local (or even semi-local) tea shop, so it’s actually nice to get samples to try. I’m always hoping to find places that’ll sell Metropolitan tea online in small quantities – so many seem to be 50-100g only. :)

OMGsrsly

Yeah, even Georgie’s (my dealer is Bear With Me!) only sells “tin” sizes. The smallest tin is about 50g. (If you don’t buy a tin, he fills one up to the MAX then dumps it into a foil bag. SO MUCH TEA!) There’s a cafe out in Hope that carries most of the teas, so you can get a tea to go. I’ve done that a couple times, passing through.

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drank BlackPearl by Mountain Tea
350 tasting notes

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85
drank GABA Oolong by Mountain Tea
19 tasting notes

For today’s review, I decided to review a rather interesting tea. This tea is a GABA processed oolong from Taiwan. The GABA processing for teas was discovered in Japan in the late 1980’s. You can find GABA black and green teas, but most are oolong teas. I’m not sure why that is, especially since green tea is so much more popular in Japan. Perhaps somebody out there has the answer to this dilemma, and can tell us in the comments!

If you’ve ever taken an Intro to Psychology or Neuroscience course in college, you are probably familiar with GABA. Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid is one of the main neurotransmitters for the Central Nervous System (CNS). Its most important role is to reduce neuron excitability. Thus, GABA supplements are most commonly associated with their calming effect on the nervous system. These teas are usually advertised for their ability to improve relaxation and sleep quality, lower blood pressure, and lowering cholesterol levels. Some students in Japan will use GABA teas to improve their performance on exams. While searching through vast online articles about obscure teas, I even found some articles suggesting that GABA teas can help fight off schizophrenia. As with most excessive health claims, these are probably only true to a certain extent…or not true at all, in my opinion! But if you enjoy this tea anyways, I suppose that is a pleasant potential side effect.

Although this seems like a bit of a silly marketing scam (because it probably is…) many tea bloggers and tea aficionados in the world really enjoy GABA teas due to their unique taste.

The GABA process for tea is quite simple. You just have to expose the tea leaves to extremely elevated levels of nitrogen during processing. During the oxidation phase of processing, all of the oxygen is replaced with nitrogen. This causes the glutamic acid in the tea leaves to be converted to GABA. In order to be considered a true GABA tea, the leaves must contain at least 150 mg of GABA per 100 g of leaf. Most of the GABA teas I found online claim to have between 200 and 300 mg per 100 g of leaf.

GABA teas are quite popular in Japan, but are just making their way to the States, so I feel pretty lucky to get the chance to try such a unique beverage. Thanks, Japan! You never fail to disappoint me with your quirky inventions.

Anyways, on to the exciting part!

Dry Leaf

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The dry leaf of this tea looks pretty similar to your standard rolled style oolong. The leaves look pretty high quality, are there is no dust or broken leaves. The aroma of this tea is so unique. I have never smelled a tea like this. Like other tea bloggers I’ve read, I really have no words to describe what this smells like. While some people on Steepster and other tea enthusiast sites do not like the smell, I actually really enjoy it. It seems kind of bread-like. It’s very yeasty and roasted smelling, kind of similar to a roasted oolong but with a bit of a….sharpness to it. Very intriguing!

Oh, you want to see a more up-close shot of the action? Sure!

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Brewed Tea

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I brewed five grams of the leaves in my tea tasting set. Brewing this tea was an experience in itself. I gave the leaves a quick five second rinse. When I poured the boiling water over the leaves in the first steep, a ton of bubbles came rushing to the surface. This effect lasted several seconds. Presumably this has something to do with the GABA process. Neat!

My first impression of the taste is…wow, this is really weird! The taste is very roasted, like a typical roasted oolong. But the yeasty bread like smell comes through in the taste as well. It’s very odd, but pretty pleasant in my opinion. This tea is also quite fruity. It has a dried fruit/raisin sort of taste, similar to the Medium Roast TieGuanYin from Mountain Tea that I reviewed last week. There is a very notable sour taste to this tea, which many other reviewers have noted. I don’t find this unpleasant, but I don’t think I would necessarily want to drink this regularly. The first and second steep had a strong woody taste to it, but this faded away in the third and fourth steeps. The later steeps became more floral and light. These later steeps were very pleasant, so I would say that this tea holds up very well to multiple infusions.

Finished Leaf

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The leaves unfurled very nicely. Most of the leaves were attached in groups of threes or fours. This looks very high quality! None of the leaves were torn or bruised. There were a lot more stems than oolongs usually have.

Conclusion

This tea is very interesting and strange, but I really enjoyed it. This is definitely a tea worth trying. At $11 for 2 ounces or $23 for 5 ounces, it’s not too expensive either. I would be interested in trying some more GABA oolongs in the future so that I could compare them. I’ll definitely be enjoying the rest of this bag.

Flavors: Fruity, Raisins, Sour

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 45 sec 5 g 5 OZ / 147 ML

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82

For my debut into the online tea snob world, I chose the Medium Roast TieGuanYin from Mountain Tea. Mountain Tea specializes in Taiwanese oolong teas, but they sell a few green and puerh teas from other countries as well. This particular tea is very popular in the online tea community, and won 1st Place in the Traditional TieGuanYin Category of the 2012 North American Tea Championship.

In case you aren’t as obsessed with tea as I am, I can describe the tea a bit. TieGuanYin, also called 铁观音 or 鐵觀音, is a variety of oolong tea from Anxi in Fujian Province, China. The name translates roughly to “Iron Goddess of Mercy,” but you will sometimes see it sold as “Iron Buddha” as well.

Dry Leaf

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The dry leaf has the appearance of a typical rolled style oolong. The leaves seem to be high quality. The leaves have a very notable roasted aroma, which is quite pleasant. They smell very sweet and caramelized. But overall, the smell is not too intense.

Teaware

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I brewed five grams of the leaves in my new tea tasting set. I bought this set at the Beipu Farmers’ Market in Beipu Township, which is in Hsinchu County in northern Taiwan. I’m pretty happy with it, although I had to carry it in my backpack for a week. I’m pretty surprised that this tasting set managed to make it home undamaged.

Brewed Tea

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This tea is very interesting and complex. The first taste that hits my palate is the notable roasted taste. I suppose since the tea is called “medium roast,” I expected the roasted taste to be a bit more subtle. But it is certainly very enjoyable either way. With that said, this tea does still have a slight bit of the bite that is typical of greener oolongs.

As a result of this roasting process, the tea’s head note has a very caramelized flavor, with a noticeable honey sweetness. The tea is very nutty tasting, as roasted oolongs tend to be. Surprisingly, I also picked up on a toasted bread-like taste in this body notes of this tea, which many other reviewers online have noted. The aftertaste is very fruity, similar to the lingering apricot or peach notes that are common to some oolongs. However, this fruity flavor is a bit more like a dried fruit taste, perhaps a raisin note?

As I progressed through some repeated steepings, I was a bit disappointed that this tea did not keep its flavor so well. The roasted flavor of this tea became rather flat by the third and fourth steep. However, the fruitiness is more pronounced in the later steeps.

Finished Leaf

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The tightly rolled leaves unfurled nicely. A few of the leaves are a bit choppy and bruised looking, which is generally not a great sign in rolled oolongs. However, this tea still appears to be high quality.

Conclusion

All in all, this tea is quite solid. If you tend to enjoy more roasted tasting oolongs, you will probably enjoy this. I wouldn’t say that this is the absolute best TieGuanYin oolong I’ve had, but it is certainly one of the best TieGuanYin oolongs I have had for the price. At only $9 for 2 ounces, or $18 for 5 ounces, this tea is pretty affordable. I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to buy this tea again, but I will certainly enjoy the rest of the bag and I would recommend it to others.

Flavors: Fruity, Nuts, Peach, Plum, Raisins, Roasted

Preparation
Boiling 1 min, 0 sec 5 g 5 OZ / 147 ML

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82

No notes yet. Add one?

Flavors: Fruity, Nuts, Peach, Plum, Raisins

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81
drank DaYuLing by Mountain Tea
7 tasting notes

A good tea with a lingering sweet aftertaste. I let the boiling water to cool down a bit so the tea doesn’t get too bitter. It is too expensive to drink it everyday though.

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 7 tsp 4 OZ / 118 ML

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81
drank DaYuLing by Mountain Tea
7 tasting notes

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drank Jade Oolong by Mountain Tea
117 tasting notes

Wow, this smells really sweet! The instant I poured water over it, it started smelling like candy, and the candy-scent didn’t stop wafting over at me from two feet away the whole time it was brewing. It’s also floral and lightly fruity… maybe lychee? (Not that I remember what lychee tastes outside of gummy candies anyway.)

I’ll do a second steep tomorrow. Hopefully.

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85

This is my first tea from Mountain Tea and I can say that it won’t be my last! I found out about them from the amount of time they’ve won the NATC! This tea is great very floral smell to it like most Oolong’s but the taste of this tea is very sweet. Almost a black tea malt to it, but more of a light fruity taste that is sweet because of the leafhopper bitten leaves. Once swallowed the fruity taste stays on the tongue, making me appreciate the flavor even more.

Preparation
2 tsp 6 OZ / 177 ML

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90
drank Green Jin Xuan by Mountain Tea
318 tasting notes

Rediscovering just how much I like Taiwanese oolong! For a while now I’ve been drinking mostly pu’er and Yunnan black, neglecting the first tea I fell in love with.

This is a very good one, still delicious despite not being very fresh. Mellow and juicy. Green-ness that reminds me of the amaryllis bulbs my grandma used to grow, balanced with notes of vanilla, cinnamon, and coconut with the bright tang of tamarind.

Flavors: Cinnamon, Coconut, Tangy, Vanilla

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 0 min, 15 sec 5 g 5 OZ / 150 ML

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drank Black Pearl by Mountain Tea
437 tasting notes

This is a dark roast Sumatran grown oolong, with small tightly rolled nuggets of tea that seem to have been allowed to rest as there is no smoke or charcoal notes apparent.

After a rinse, the tea yields a maple coloured brew that maintained a fairly consistent flavour profile.

I used 1 TSP of leaves in 150 ml of 95°C water.

The first three steeps (35,30,25s). maintained a scent profile consisting of apples, and a sweet floral at times cocoa, malt and cinnamon were present.

The tea tasted of an empire like apple, sometimes with skin, cocoa, butter, malt, a floral note, and cinnamon. Often the darker more bitter notes would be most apparent when hot and then gave way to a more balanced tea full of fruit, floral and spice notes. In the last steep of this set an oatmeal note appeared.

I then did 2 steeps of 35 and 45s, that were fairly weak. Next time I would increase the steeping time by more than 10s at this point. The tea at this point had more oatmeal and malt, less cocoa and fading apple.

The last two steeps were 60s and 2 min. These steeps had tones of apple, oatmeal, malt, cocoa, cinnamon and a hint of honey.

Altogether an enjoyable oolong with good and distinct apple tones. Thanks Nicole, I’ve been wanting to try more of Mountain Tea’s dark Oolong’s.

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This is an oolong that may appeal to lovers of light flavoured Tieguanyin and those who like sweet lightly floral Oolong’s. It lacks that biting ting that I appreciate in floral green Oolong’s, but it does leave a warming tingling sensation in the mouth from its spice notes.

The dry leaves are small tight nuggets that range in colour from a medium sage green to spruce green.

I covered the bottom of my 150ml Gaiwan with leaf and started with about85°C water. I ended up getting 9 steeps out of this tea.

Earlier steeps of this tea had a green floral lilac scent mixed with honey, peach, cream and cinnamon. In later steeps a savoury vegetal note appeared and the floral spice slowly wained.

Flavour notes I found in this tea included: lilac, cream, peach,honey, cinnamon, mint,vanilla, mineral notes, artichoke, spinach and stevia.

The floral tone in this tea is not overpowering and the cinnamon tone is quite nice. It retains a good mix of sweet, vanilla, fruit cream tones and spice for the majority of it steeps, and maintained a creamy body into the last steep. I prefer a brighter and sharper green oolong but this is quite pleasant and cleansing.

Ubacat

You are so good describing the tea in your tasting notes. All I ever say for oolong is it’s buttery and tasty. lol

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65
drank Black Pearl by Mountain Tea
652 tasting notes

T&C TTB Tea # 23 Backlog May 30

Light-medium liquor with a light flavour. Mild apple taste, slightly earthy.

That’s all I got for you. Basically I considered this “straight black tea # 547389” and put it back in the box, because it didn’t really stand out at all.

Sorry for the spam of TTB reviews, I’m done for now!!

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84

To think this tea is available on clearance is just crazy. Ridiculous price.

Taste: Sweet cream, slight tang of a really good fatty butter. Some floral in the flavor. Just delicious as an everyday go to Oolong. Highly recommend for anyone wanting to try Oolong. Like most Oolongs, leaves are forgiving too. You can steep hot (200) or warm (185). I find hotter worked better on this tea especially as infusions went on.

Smell: Initial infusions are very floral. My nose isn’t that great yet, but I’d say gardenia/orchid like. Later infusions turn more to heavy cream scent.

Flavors: Butter, Cream, Floral, Sweet

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 0 min, 45 sec 4 g 100 OZ / 2957 ML

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92

Another great tea from Mountain Tea.

The leaves are just gorgeous. I was totally expecting nutty goodness, but I don’t recall having a roasted TieGuanYin with such a floral perfume background as well. I would be happy just smelling the leaves from each infusion.

The liquor comes out a solid yellow, tinge of green. Great flavors, very complex, changing with each infusion. I got a solid 10 steeps in gaiwan and even though contemplated doing another couple.

Sweet, nutty, floral, little bitty tartness, just delicious. Very high quality.

Flavors: Caramel, Floral, Nutty, Toasty

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 0 min, 45 sec 4 g 3 OZ / 100 ML

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94

Trying this Western style for the first time. It’s just not the same!!!

yyz

I know western style doesn’t do it for me for most Oolong’s.

madametj

it wasn’t very good. I dumped it out :(

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94

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94

Just a quick little gongfu session. Light, but delicious! :)

Flavors: Flowers

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 0 min, 30 sec 2 g 4 OZ / 118 ML
Terri HarpLady

Hi! I just checked out your blog, & you are totally adorable, your blog looks like, fun, & I’m looking forward to reading the ‘building a better closet’ entries especially! Welcome to steepster!

Terri HarpLady

Or, if you’ve already been here awhile, Nice to meet ya!
:)

madametj

Thank you :)

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94

So 7 grams today was definitely much better. Here’s what I did: rinse,25s,25s,30s,60s,70s.

Still experimenting with steeping times. The tea had a nice light flavor with perfumey floral notes as usual. When I jumped to 6o seconds, it got a little bitter so I’ll have to try something different next time. What I REALLY need is a thermometer so I can stop playing the guessing game over here and make this tea properly!

Flavors: Flowers, Perfume

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 0 min, 30 sec 7 g 4 OZ / 120 ML
sherapop

Having a thermometer is so helpful, and it costs less and is more dependable than a variable temperature kettle! I also love having a small scale, which takes the guess work out of amounts…

madametj

Yes, my little scale has been so handy! Glady I already had that on hand from my knitting hobby :)

sherapop

How interesting, madametj: you weigh yarn?

madametj

I used to be in a group where we were all making blankets like this one: http://lh3.ggpht.com/-BsflSWvrhEk/UCGokQsUXQI/AAAAAAAAB4A/y1WGWPap5zQ/003_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800

and we all wanted as many colors as humanly possible so we would have swaps where each person would buy one 100g ball of yarn, divide it into 20 5g balls and send them off so that we would each end up with 20 different colored 5g balls, hence the scale. So much fun. I’m still using all that yarn. lol

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94

This is only my third time tasting a full-leaf oolong tea. My palate is not very refined so I didn’t notice much of a difference between this and the one that I tried in the Steepster Select Dec 13 box (Nantou Four Seasons by In Pursuit of Tea) but that’s great because I LOVED that one. So anyway that’s why I made sure to get one from Nantou, Taiwan.

This is how I drank my tea:
Water : 120ml – 194℉-ish
Use 9.3 Grams Tea
7 steeps : rinse,39s,25s,30s, 30s, 40s,60s,90s,120s
Yixing pot
Rinsing time is around 5 seconds

9 grams was way too much. By the second steep they expanded so much that I could barely close the lid on the teapot! It didn’t help that I oversteeped the first steep because I was doing something else while counting (big mistake) and went 14 seconds over. It was so bitter that I had to throw out that cup. The second rinse was still bitter, but I drank it anyway., and the following steepings where not quite as bitter. The tea was nice and perfumey, very floral. Only just a little bit overwpowering because I had used too many leaves. The flavor stayed strong with each steeping and seemed like it could go on forever, but by the 7th steep I’d had enough. Next time less leaves and no distractions.

Flavors: Flowers, Orchids, Perfume

Preparation
9 g 4 OZ / 120 ML
yyz

Glad you enjoy it. Steeping times are an inexact science. I have a tgy that you steep only 10-20 seconds and a jin xuan that you start at 45, but it looks like what you did is a good place to start. I usually aim for a little under a 1/4 volume of my gaiwan which for my 150- 170 ml ones is around 1.5-2 TSP. Have fun playing with the tea.

madametj

Thanks!

Cheri

It’s always amazing to me how much full leaf oolongs can expand. It’s so much fun!

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79
drank DaYuLing by Mountain Tea
127 tasting notes

I remember my last mountain tea order being a lot better Im a little concerned they do not display harvest dates so for all I know the quality drop is a by product of stale tea but I have also tasted a lot of tea since my last order so maybe my tastes have just improved. Either way was not impressed with my first trial with this tea. I felt the tea drunk from the gao shan (fish eye lens, tranquility, big dumb smile) but flavor wise it seemed flat. Will wait to throw a # rating out there until I get dipper into the bag but at the moment a little disappointed considering the money I dropped on my last order.

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 30 sec 7 g 3 OZ / 100 ML

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68
drank Pu-Erh, 1980 by Mountain Tea
127 tasting notes

Tried western brewing to maybe get a body or richness out of it but nope still nothing such a shame

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68
drank Pu-Erh, 1980 by Mountain Tea
127 tasting notes

I will try to tinker with steeping but at the moment not worth half the price I paid, some of my hei cha staples are similar in taste/smoothness if not better and a lot less money. That seems to be the tune of my entire last order from mountain tea, I think they have either dropped in quality since winning those awards a few years ago or maybe I have just found much better options since my last order a few years ago either way I will not be reordering from them at the moment. Eco Cha is my new favorite company at the moment :)

Flavors: Earth, Mineral

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 30 sec 6 g 3 OZ / 100 ML
JC

I hate when that happens. Hopefully, you’ll find a better suiting steeping time to make it more drinkable.

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drank Black Pearl by Mountain Tea
117 tasting notes

(Wow, it’s been a while?)

I finally got around to trying this one yesterday, and of course I forgot to log it properly, but it was nice. Kinda like a black tea, but oolongier. I should try more of these.

Sil

welcome back!

OMGsrsly

Hello! :)

Iridium

Aww, thanks. :)

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