Hunan Cloud and Mist Green

Cloud an mist teas tend are grown at mid to higher altitudes in areas with high humidity and less sunshine as a result of high cloud cover through out the years. This video is a nice introduction to the manufacturing of this style of tea:

I really enjoyed this tea. It seems like a nice green to take into winter as it had a nice body and a good depth and variety in its flavour with a good mix of floral and fruity sweetness, nuttiness, and sweet and bitter vegetal notes combined with a really nice sparkling brightness.

The dry leaves smell bright and sweet with a green pea scent and a hint of tartness. The leaves are tightly twisted forest to earthy green leaves with silvery straw coloured furry buds.

After 45s brewed in an open gaiwan at about 175*F I had a pale golden yellow green tinted broth, with a sweet scent with hints of fresh hulled peas, chestnut, and sweet honeysuckle floral. The tea had a clean taste. The broth was silky to buttery with a first note that was nutty to bitter green that opened up to sweet pea, with light floral and herbal notes (faint basil), with a hint of brightness that was slightly fruity hinting at orange. A light astringency created a fresh and sparkling sensation in the mouth. There was a sweet green, floral aftertaste that lingers. A lower temperature and a little less leaf might reduce the astringency and increase the focus on the teas sweetness. The Wet leaf smelled of chestnuts.

The tea has enough body and depth to the flavour that it is a nice green to take into winter. It had a nice level of caffeine that left me feeling pleasantly alert.

After a 60s brew the tea smelt of sweet floral spice with chestnut underneath. It tasted very sweet at first and was creamy and silky opening up to bright freshness, with a sweet fresh green note (like eating green pea pods) with fruit notes merging into a floral orange blossom note. Chestnut was lightly present underneath. The floral fruity green aftertaste lingers. The tea scent had floral, herbal, green notes as it cooled.

Later steeps (70, 80, 90, 110s) had a sweet floral scent and tasted of plum, orange, light bitter green, floral and chestnut notes.

This particular tea is from Hunan, China and was provided as a very generous and much appreciated sample by Capital Tea Ltd http://www.capitaltea.com/shop/product.php?productid=225&cat=5&page=1 . I look forward to future experimentation with this tea and am definitely interested in purchasing some more once I work through at least one of the greens I currently have in my cupboard.

I had this one this morning and just brewed in my mug with the infusion basket for 2 min – 80C. This tea had a fruitiness to it that I really enjoyed. Did I pick up only a slight floral in the background? I’m not sure. It seemed to be there and then was not. I might have been picking up on the aroma of the fruitiness. This tea also had the chestnut flavor that most green teas have but it was very subtle.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. Fruity straight green teas are not that common so I do love it when I get one. Thanks Christina for the sample!

GCTTB
This is outside my comfort zone, and I was pleasantly surprised. My thoughts are a little different than other reviewers, but I did steep it Western 80C 3min.
No floral, no grass, no vegetal – I thought it was more savory than most green teas I’ve tried. Deeper, darker somehow. It’s still not something that I would stock, but I enjoyed getting to try it.

Backlog note 8 of 13.

This was yet another sample I had at the Canadian Coffee and Tea Show on Sunday. And I loved it. The taste was like a softer, less savoury version of Bi Luo Chun. It was sweet and gentle, but still somewhat savoury. I much preferred this over the Yunnan Green FOP I tasted at the same time.

Again, this one is totally on my wishlist – I’m looking forward to buying it when Black Friday comes. (And of course, now I’ve got the song by Steely Dan in my head. Curses!)

The leaves on this have lots of silver in them and they’re very twisted and curly, very beautiful. They smell vegetal and sweet.

Steeped up, it’s slightly astringent and bitter, sweet chestnut and peas, a light floral note, which lingers with the sweet pea taste in a nice aftertaste. I’m learning to not totally reject slight astringency, and don’t mind it in this tea. I’m also finding that I don’t like most straight green teas with sweetener. I tried added some to the last half of the cup, ad found that I like this much more unadulterated.

Oh how tastes change, I used to have to sweeten everything, and now not only can I drink a bunch of teas unsweetened, but I prefer some that way.

YYZ sent me this one and i wanted to hold off for some time when i had more than 20 seconds to drink it to go through a few steepings. I don’t drink a lot of non black teas but when i do, i try to pay attention to them more than normal because they surely can’t all taste the same – aka “green” :)

Plus this Comes highly recommended by YYZ so yeah :) I followed her steeping paramters and the first few infusions were floral, but smooth, there was no vegetal taste to this, just mildly sweet water heh later steeps this became a little more floral and less to my liking but the first few steeps were pretty tasty. Sadly, greens just don’t have a permanent place in my cupboard but this was rather nice :) thank you, again, for sharing YYZ!