Unknown Vendor - China

Gongfu…

This tea sample was a gift from a coworker who shared several mystery teas from China with me a while back; they’re in the vacuum sealed bags that a log of single portion tea samples often seem to come in and there’s no English on the packaging so figuring out what each tea is can be a little bit of a mystery. Some of them do have illustrations though, and that’s how I knew this was an oolong tea.

After opening it up, this feels like it might be something like a greener Ti Kuan Yin but it’s hard to know for sure. I enjoyed drinking a session of it though; the tea had a bit of a “radioactive green” kind of quality and some sharpness/roughness around the edges but also some really good buttery notes with a little bit of a toasty roasted nut finish that made the session pretty good overall. After getting through the first few more nuclear green infusions it was mostly smooth sailing from there…

Obviously not a phenomenal tea, but I feel like for this type of mystery tea sample this was a good an experience as you can rationally except.

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/B_vJ-knAEy6/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qNzEHYib_U&t=29s

This was a gift from a coworker today; it came in a little yellow wrapped packet with a window to let you see what was inside and it was basically a GIANT yellow chrysanthemum flower – singular. It’s actually probably the largest (dried) chrysanthemum that I’ve seen in my life, and at first I thought it was a rather ornate blooming tea…

I tossed the whole chrysanthemum flower in a Nordic mug this afternoon and have been drinking it Grandpa style ever since, though it’s starting to get pretty weak and be unable to “resteep” now. I imagine the first “steep” from filling the mug was probably super intense, but I actually knocked over the mug and spilled all of it so I don’t know. Thankfully the mug didn’t break, and the flower stayed sort of ‘glued’ to the side of the mug so everything was salvagable.

I mean, it tastes basically like what you would expect it to – a strong and distinct chrysanthemum flavour. I mostly like chrysanthemum (though I have a strong preference for snow chrysanthemum over this more yellow type), so I didn’t mind it – but it’s not something I could drink all the time. It’s also got a peppery finish, which isn’t bad but it’s a little much when it starts off so intense.

Also it’s just very pretty – looks like a yellow sea anemone hanging out at the bottom of my mug…