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This one was a pretty cool combo. I would not think to combine jasmine and strawberry, and the cup I got was a very sweet one. It reminded me of the high priced Taiwanese and Tong Mu Chinese blacks I get in some ways. This tea was a little bit astringent for me at first western after three minutes, then I brewed it again for 30, and liked it all the better. I think the blackberry helps transition between the strawberry and the jasmine. I’m not ready to rate it, but I’m really glad I got a sample of it.

No. 648 Red Jade Ruby 2020
I’m trying this out for last to see how it goes, and I’m doing it without reading the notes. I’ve already got the eucalyptus, malt and menthol expectations up as I try it out, and I hope it’s not as astringent as other Red Jades I’ve had.

I went 5 grams 150 ml, 15, 30, 45, 65 and stopped.

The earlier notes I mentioned were there as expected, and this one was considerably smoother to drink. Each brew had a bright ruby red color, and lots to offer in the aroma in terms of mint, eucalyptus, sage, and malt. The flavors are much the same, but steep three gave me a little bit of cherry hint, and every steep was sweeter than normal, as if it had simple syrup added. Overall, the effect reminded me of cough syrup or sweetened cough medicine, but I didn’t have a major headache afterwards. I’d give it a 75-80 rating. I could also see other people giving it a much higher rating.

While I’m still not someone who likes the Red Jade varietal in blacks and whites as much now, I appreciated and enjoyed the tea because it was smoother than others I’ve had prior. This last note solidifies how well rounded the sampler is to give people an idea of what Taiwan teas are like. I preferred some over others and wish there might have been at least a Assam or Qin Xin Black, yet this is a good gift box for someone learning about or adoring of Taiwanese teas. Again, I deeply recommend Zhao Zhou.

Backlog/continued from yesterday:

No. 218 Formosa White Jade 2021
5 oz, 10 sec beginning, 10 sec increments, 185 roughly in temperature.
Dark leaves, nearly black with some green thrown in. Sage/eucalyptus like aroma, and trying it out, liquor is a darker orange or light brown. The Red Jade cultivar aroma of cinnamon, fruit, and balmy herbs lingers. The note “Steamed aroma: Summer dried wildflowers and herbs, spicy apple compote, nutmeg and taste of subtle flowers, chamomile, jasmine, tiger balm, sweet spices.Energizes gently.” The taste is extremely sweet and syrupy like ripe fruit, like apple compote. It’s brown like apple compote. Dense, full body every steep highlighted by jasmine green tea like florals like they said, and a healthy dose of eucalyptus/sage/mint/camphor/balm-again, typical red jade stuff. AAAAAaaaand, I could not manage past steep four. Too much for me. I think I can conclude that no matter how high quality and exceptional the tea, I still have a hard time with this varietal.

So, I gave myself a break by going into the green tea.

No. 341 Taiwan Primeur Green 2021
15 beginning, 10 sec increments, other parameters the same.
Again, I’ll borrow their description:
“steamed scent: chestnuts, baked buns, spinach, toasted fish skin, edamame beans
at 85 degrees: the scent of water chestnut, peach, lotus seed, Gingko Biloba, and the typical Maofeng greenish fresh scent, the aftertaste is long and pleasantly green, with typical notes of Qing Xin.”

Tasting notes hit me. Very peachy and forward with the water chestnut, and insanely green and fresh, easy to drink. I could get to steep 5 really easily, and then it was too green. Very creamy. I see the Gingko Biloba in the kind of green notes it has.

That’s all I have for now. I like the green a little bit more. Highly recommend this sampler and any teatasting from Zhao Zhou. I will say it is also re-affirming my biases for oolong and qin xin blacks. Typical.

I used my last sampler, and I still wasn’t satisfied. I used cold water, mixed it into a paste, put it in a double wall tumbler with hot water, shook it, and poured the drink into a small cup. The tea wasn’t nearly as clumpy and better mixed, but was still grassy and bitter. It had the trademark Lishan creaminess, orchid, plumeria, and even buttery bread complexities, but they were undercut by the bitterness.

Found it!

I was stoked about this one. I haven’t had a first flush in close to a year, let alone Jun Chiyabari. I only had 5 grams of it, and I divided it up in 3 oz for some small cold brewing, and 2 grams for semi-gong fu and western.

I have only started it recently, not letting it exceed 30 seconds. It’s got some green woody bitterness and some typical first flush peppery astringency. You can read their notes too get an accurate idea of what you will have. It’s pretty green to me, bordering on being olive like with a bit of hoppy and citrusy zest. Woodsy camphor and balmy menthol definitely in there too. Tiger Balm was always citrusy for me anyway, so I’m not surprised. I actually didn’t camphor was a tree, and an oil used in balm, so it was cool to learn that. Every time I journey into more obscure teas, the more flower language and modicums of herbology I come across.

I’m still not finished with the tea yet, going through 1.5 minutes second time, and it’s more citrusy and blamy. Still twiggy.

I’ll have to write another note to see how far I get. I usually stop early with first flushes because of their astringency, but this one has very oolong like, so we’ll see.

… next morning, and the leaves smell too bitter and astringent for me. I disposed of those, and then retrieved my cold brew from the fridge. So much smoother. Citrus, orange, creamy, floral, refreshing and juicy in layers. Sip starts out honeysuckle, then light orange blossom, full on citrus, light spice, and creamy, juicy finish. Tasted like orange or lemon water. Yeah, this one was significantly better cold brew for me.

Overall rating is above an 80. High quality tea, and definitely for first flush lovers, though cold brew is the easy way to go. Despite drinking tea for over 20 years, I still like the more flavor forward teas. I’m so thankful to get to try this sample. I cannot recommend Zhao Zhou enough.

I’ve had this sample for a while, and rediscovered it entombed in my White Lotus bag Whispering Pines sample as I was trying to find what happened to my other Zhao Zhou Jun Chiyabari black tea sample. Hysteric understates my mentality when trying to find my sample-because it was not where I thought I put it. So sifted through layers of my reused bags to see if I put it in a weird place, and I decided to finish off the whopping 7 grams I had of this at once in a full teapot using flash steeps.

I think this tea is underrated because it combines a higher oxidized tea with gardenia scenting. I wasn’t in love with it at first because it was cloying and bordering on tannic, but it’s grown on me as I’ve fallen in love with similarly profiled teas like Qilans. It is sweeter and ruddier, but I like it enough to at least have two cups of it. I get notes of incense in the dryleaf smell, and woody incense again in the taste, gardenia, brown sugar, and a little bit of tannin.

I still wouldn’t buy this, though I appreciate it now more than I have over two years ago.

So I played with this one more. I am having fun to see how it changes. It hasn’t lost anything, and I keep on finding different smooth traits each time. I used tumbler today, and the first brew was caramel coconut spinach with some texture, and the second was creamy egg yolk and milk tasting. Again, it’s why I kind of think of Irish Cream. It’s not as sweet or obviously riddled with whiskey, but it’s thick and creamy like irish cream. Maybe flan is a better descriptor. Again, not dessert sweet cause it’s still a straight grassy green oolong, yet it’s totally something you’d eat with a chease cake, brie, or something soft.

I tried the High Mountain GABA, and I did it in imprecise 30 second steeps. It was extremely sweet and forgiving.

Trying it out, it had the baker spices and mulled wine the company writes about. I made some mulled wine to compare it. It was pretty close, but the spices were more in the aroma and accented the teas natural hong sweetness. I personally didn’t think it was that green, and the tea was very brown and a little ruddy. The spices and wine were most pronounced in steep one, but steep two onward were more savory. I kept on getting brown sugar, corn, chicory, and barley in how I tasted the tea. Later notes became more sweet and plummy, but not intense with a little bit of florals, maybe gardenia if you want to stretch.

It’s very good, and I like that it’s not just a funky fruit-corn tasting tea. I definitely calmed down, but was a bit more alert than I wanted to be at 9:00 last night. Focus and clarity resonated. I wouldn’t reach out for it because I like greener oolongs, but I think it’s very good and memorable. I’d rate it a 84-87.

I swear I added this one. I am losing it! Oh well.

I’ve actually had this three times, one of them from Bloom Coffee Roasters-a company that I am not sure is any longer in Lansing. It’s Spirit Tea’s staple yunnan breakfast that is dense with malt and other layers, thick with the dark chocolate malt profile a lot of people look for in their tea. It’s barely astringent, but has some bitterness that is actually kind of nice, and like any good yunnan, balances the savory elements with the sweeter and darker ones.

It usually brews an intense amber orange when I make it gong fu, or a glowing red-orange black if I do longer steeps. It can do western well, but I prefer gong fu. It also survives tumbler grandpa, and when I went lighter, it was sweet savory malty-but more prominent on the chocolate.

The malt is the most overwhelming this about this tea which pushes me away from really loving it, but it’s got enough honey sweetness , apricot-y sourness, and other layers to keep me engaged and to keep it distinct from others. It doesn’t really have the same yam profile most Yunnan’s do, which is pretty interesting. Maybe sweet potato in the tannin and sweeter aftertaste, but leans more fruity.

I wouldn’t drink this one all the time, but I really like it. Any Yunnan Tea lover or malty-breakfast tea lover would highly enjoy it for its full body. I’m impressed with how malty it can get without sacrificing its complexity, and you can still taste a lot of the same things if you add some cream and sugar to it like a English Breakfast-I don’t recommend that often. It’s also $12 for 50 grams, and it’s actually not a bad price for this one. I’ve been extremely critical of Spirit before, but I am changing my mind as I try more of their teas and as they add more diversity to their collection, especially as they have less common teas like Lishan Tie Guan Yins, higher end Thai Blacks, and others.

Saw this on Nichole’s blog, and reading the description, the milk oolong was not a usual Jin Xuan: it’s actually a Shan Lin Xi Jin Xuan. So with that and stellar reviews of the company from many bloggers, I got some.

Of course, I began with the Green Oolongs.

Yunnan Black-cake style black.
I tried it out first to give it a chance and at behest of dark chocolate notes and crashing from pneumonia symptoms. It’s smoother than most Yunnan Blacks with some pu-erh like qualities, very Cabernet like in parallel notes. It was more malty and tannin heavy than I like in my blacks, though not bad. Only got through four rebrews though before I gave up.

Milk Oolong-
If I were blind tasting this, I would have thought Shan Lin Xi because of it’s thick, sweet profile and high mountain misty quality green and florality. I do get orchid and some definite hazelnut in layers, but not so much on the “fudge.” Maybe oolong spinachy milk in the viscousness? Still good, though I have not made up my mind on it yet. I do like it very much in comparison to other Jin Xuan’s I’ve had.

High Mountain Oolong
It’s an Alishan, and I forced myself to try to be surprised I liked the it best, yet I was not. It’s technically more vegetal than the Milk Oolong, and very nutty with a slightly higher oxidation while still being green, buttery and naturally sweet. I finished it quickly.

The Bai Mu DAn
Higher trichomes than normal, some needles with the rest of the silver leaves. Very crisp and vegetal, cucumber, bready, light, and malty. I have yet to get the muscat grapes described. Maybe white grapes. Good and I still need to play with it.

Haven’t done the Ceylon yet or the lemongrass. They’ll come in the future. Oolongs impressed me overall the most. The milk oolong was more distinct, though the High Mountain Oolong had the fullest flavor. The Bai Mudan is the highest quality, though it’s finickier to brew than expected. I was very pleased with everything I got though, and am enjoying my new tea journal.