338 Tasting Notes
Another nice Korean green tea. Description is perfect, green taste (i get peas) transition into sweet corn. Green aroma, perhaps a slight nice bitter along the sweetness, compared to some of the other Korean offerings.
Managed to get a nice second cup too.
Flavors: Green, Peas, Sweet
I’ve been looking to get me some nice Korean green tea, but it’s always over my by budget. Oh, and by the way, I received the 7536 yesterday! I’m going to let it acclimate for a month or so.
Great. You should try some, these are similar to your mao fengs and long jins, but their own thing
There is a nice Korean tea house in Manhattan called Franchia that serves/sells excellent sejak green tea, but at a premium. I think $30 for 50g.
I can’t think of one in London! Maybe some cheaper tea from a restaurant but that’s about it
I’ve always been turned off by the high cost of Korean tea, especially because greens aren’t my favourite. I was also underwhelmed by Teavana’s Jeju Island Green. However, your two tasting notes might change that. Moreover, after Jiri Horse, some more balhyocha might be in my future.
With Korean tea it’s important to keep a few things in mind:
1) Jeju grown tea is a lot lower quality (due to cultivars and geography) and quite different from traditional Korean tea, it’s best to treat it as something different.
2) Korean tea which is hand picked and processed is very expensive due to the high labour costs in South Korea. You can get cheaper but it has to be a later picking (Daejak) which has larger sized leaves (larger leaves weigh more so are less labour intensive to pick a given weight) coupled with machine processing. It’s why I’ve found Dong Cheon’s Daejak to be the perfect starting point for Korean greens as it’s not expensive while being representative of what to expect from the more expensive earlier pickings.
Thanks for the info. I figured Teavana wouldn’t have top-flight Korean tea. I might have to pick up some Daejak from you when my tea cupboard is a little emptier.
I’ve had some nice Korean greens when I was traveling in the Hadong, Gimhae, and Busan area, and I do think it’s worth a try. Personally, I still don’t think it’s worth the price for everyday consumption, since I can get something of comparable quality from China (hand picked!) or Japan for far less. I think it’s more of a fad in the West that will pass with time. Perhaps something as unique as Balhyocha or hwangcha will always have a place in the Western tea world.
Chestnuts, salty, thick, also surprisingly sweet in the mouth coating. Slightly toasty savoury finish. Less aromatic aftertaste and more about the mouthfeels this one.
Flavors: Chestnut, Nuts, Salt, Sweet, Umami
Korean teas (especially green teas) have some very special character – semi-wild sounds even better, gonna have to try this one too.
Yeah I like them – dont know much about them apart from the wild greens and balhyocha really, but enjoy them as an alternative to my mao fengs & long jins
One of my swaps from the Steepster meet, this is a Lao Ban Zhang, aka the king of teas, aka the expensive stuff. Number 16117-1 from Chadao.de
First off – amazing colour & fuzz on the leaf! That’s some seriously show-offy silver hair.
The session starts with a glorious sweet perfume right off the bat. It’s one of those tastes that manages to be indefinable, yet so obvious when experiencing. Soft pineapple sweets are there too, such a nice flavour!
Chaqi is strong, but not so much that it’s uncomfortable, I feel relaxed, & over the course of the day I expected bitterness or sour to creep in but had been informed by Rui that this one goes twenty steeps, and so I took it there, and it followed perfectly. I didn’t detect the bitter notes of young plantation trees, so if they were there they were skillfully blended in as not to affect the taste. It also wasn’t face melting aggressiveness like people seem to expect from Ban Zhang, but instead elegant.
Seriously good tea. Throughout twenty steeps it stayed harmonious & balanced, and only when I got near the magic number did it just fade off quietly into a perfume water. I also noted the body still being good well into the teens.
https://looseleaf.blog/2017/10/25/2017-lao-ban-zhang-chadao/
Flavors: Perfume, Pineapple
delicious stuff. Lovely ‘wild’ fruit taste, with less bitterness than others I have had from around this area. A hint of steamed darkened fruity leaf in there.
It just goes and goes with limited change to the taste of the steeps. Robust good leaf. Soft gummy plump mouthfeel and more candy huigan. So good :)
Flavors: Fruity
It’s like nature’s own haribo :)
If it just had a bit more of a punch to it I would get a tong.
oh man, these wild teas are gorgeous but soft arent they. I like them brewed with power & sometimes chop and change to benefit from the strength of one sheng then the fruit of wilds
I’ve been considering blending one of them with something that with a little bit more power, but that might overwhelm all those delicate notes.
good idea, I might try that too
