Da Hong Pao

It is our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary today and to celebrate I wanted to…do what we do most Friday nights and get Chinese take out! LOL! i guess I am pretty low maintenance! At least, I hope I am.

I am getting low on this tea, but since the mystery Da Hong Pao from the restaurant was so good with our Chinese take out I thought we would have this again. At first I thought I should use it up since it is getting older, but I have seen some things that say that oolongs often age well, and on eBay they sell aged and pressed cake oolongs that look like puerh. I need to find out more about this.

There are a lot of notes about this one and I don’t have a lot to add other than that I now find it a favorite to pair with meals.

I was kind of nervous about this tea, because, if you’ve read my bio you’d know that I don’t really care much for red robe Oolong teas, but I decided to break out of my comfort zone in a big way when I ordered this tea.

And I’m glad I ordered it! The flavor IS smoky, but, I found that a quick rinse to awaken the tea leaves did much to soften the smoky taste of this tea. Now it is pleasantly roasty with a mild smoky note. It has a nice sweetness and a distant floral note.

Now… I guess I should change my bio!

Monday morning tea success!

And much needed too! My office Bigwig will soon be arriving. You know the type, right? The Bigwig lives in a totally different state and has no idea how to do your job, yet is in charge of “suggesting” and then implementing their ideas on how to do your job better. Of course their “suggestions” only add to the number of steps you already take to do the exact same thing…thus causing a major pain in your butt and making you wish you could transport them back to their office…or better yet, some awful frozen tundra of doom? Yeah, I thought so.

So, how about this tea? :)

My first whiff of the liquor resulted in mostly roasty toasty notes, but also a light fruit smell. I’m not quite sure what type of fruit it is, but it’s juicy smelling. That’s right…juicy smelling. That same juicy note comes over in the taste as well, albeit in the aftertaste. The taste progression goes a little something like this: roasty toasty, mineral-y, OOLONG, juicy. The juicy effect actually made my mouth water. Crazyness. I’ve never had a roasted oolong quite like this one. It’s quite delicious. I’m glad I ordered a large tin. Nom nom nom!

More H&S to come!

When teas are fired over three hundred degrees, the Maillard reaction occurs… and what that simply means is that there will be nutty and sweet undertones which will make your life that much better.

I’m going back to what I think is the second tea I reviewed on Steepster. It’s my late evening brew. Da Hong Pao. The first steeping yields a brew that brims with juicy peach flavors. It’s almost as if the peaches were caramelized ever so slightly. Retaining enough of the natural flavor of the fruit with a hint of burnt sugar. This is a very enjoyable tea.

It has been a while since I logged a new tea. I have been working through my stash, considering a purchase down the road but you know how it is, too much on the shelf to justify more. Well, this will be on my list, when I get the stash dwindled down a bit. I found this to be a lovely tea, somewhat light considering the notes. H&S says it is lighter than usual. Light yet robust? Yes and the deep, dark roasted oolong flavor is there, but veiled like a princess whose beauty is only hinted at through her eyes… Thanks to QuiltGuppy for this excellent experience.

So on Sunday I went to the Harney & Sons store, and they had this in their tasting room and I just had to get it.

First steep, 8oz, little less than a minute. Ah this tea is so good. The smell is very similiar to a barley tea , and the taste is just so subtle but still has so body and doesn’t taste very watery at all. There is a definite nutty flavor to it, but it’s not overpowering or anything. I didn’t even steep this with rock sugar and it doesn’t need sweetening at all.

Second Steep. Lower temp water, longer steep, 8oz. The nutty-ness comes out a lot more in this steep, and the color is a tad more dark as well. Still, same flavor but a little more intense. And I’m loving every sip of it. I hope I can get a lot of steeps out of this !

So this wasn’t my cuppa. Solid but nevertheless.

A quick video review for your viewing pleasure…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQf-N7aTQt4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

This was so good! Roasted oolongs are hit or miss with me. Some I love, others just don’t seem to taste all that great, or the smoky flavor overpowers the oolong taste.

This tea smelled wonderful in the pouch — a bit charcoal-y. It brewed to a medium yellow liquor. When I took my first sip, it started off with a strong roasted flavor, but the finish was sweet and clean, not astringent or bitter at all. This was a surprise, the way the flavors morphed as I drank it. There was no aftertaste.

Such an interesting flavor profile, and yet smooth and easy to drink. I’m looking forward to repeat infusions.

After several weeks of lots and lots of black teas and herbals I realized that my poor oolong yixing teapot was so very lonely. And I missed my oolongs! So I decided to open up a new tin this evening.

This is definitely the nicest Wuyi oolong that I’ve tried so far. It had quite a kick on the first steep — quite nutty with a hint of Play Dough (yes, that’s one of many things I associate with Wuyis. Yes, I know that I’m weird). As it cooled it seemed more and more like I was drinking the essence of plant with just a bit-o-butter. Nom! The second steep seemed like the poor tea gave up. I almost gave up on the tea, but I gave it one more go. The third steep is still nothing like the first steep, but it suddenly has a nice floral note to it. But it’s definitely the last steep for this tea.

Next time I shall try this tea in my gaiwan (sorry yixing!). NE