Bai Hao

Decent Oriental Beauty! I got the 2022 harvest of this tea from my recent order with CS. Beautiful leaves with a great proportion of buds, rich rich aroma in the dry and wet leaf that is complex and nuanced to the max. Liquor is a vibrant orangey red. Flavour is decent, lacking a bit of potency and nuance. Texture is juicy with a slight astringency, but really nice. Character is mediocre, the session was pretty unidimensional. Finish & aftertaste was decent, great lingering muscatel and spice note with a nice airy finish. Cha-qi is almost non-existent, and steep longevity is mediocre to decent, topping out at steep 8.

This was the first of three teas that was served by Marika when I was over at her place for supper this past week. I actually thought, with my first few sips, that this might be a Phoenix Oolong because it had some of those almost lychee like fruit notes alongside a distinct mineral taste and gentle roastiness, but notes of honey, cocoa butter and muscatel grapes settled in as well and something about that made it more distinctly like a Bai Hao/Oriental Beauty to me. It was very smooth and just a good tea to get conversation going and appetites up while waiting for supper.

This is the 2016 harvest. In the bag, it has an aroma of muscatel, florals, and grass, kind of like a first flush Darjeeling. I steeped 5 g of leaf in an 85 ml teapot at 195F for 30, 20, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

I love this tea! The first steep has notes of muscatel, raisin, green grapes, grain, orange blossom, dried flowers, caramel, honey, and wood. It’s like a cross between a really muscatel-heavy first flush and a full-bodied Taiwanese oolong. Even though I used a fair amount of leaf for the size of my vessel, there’s no bitterness; instead, there’s a lovely mouthfeel and a long aftertaste. The subsequent steeps are pretty consistent, which is more than okay in my book. As the session goes on, however, the raisin note grows more prominent, and since I’m not a big raisin fan, this is my only tiny gripe with this tea.

This fascinating bai hao was a pleasure to drink. I loved its similarity to a Darjeeling, though I might be the only one to compare such dissimilar tea types. At $35 for 50 g, it’s certainly not a daily tea for me, but it’s a wonderful occasional indulgence.