Three Cultivar Red Tea

First tea of the morning. I still don’t love it, but it’s good with the maple-y flavor of the yacon syrup.

My early evening tea: If you can remember I forgot about this one the other day and I steeped it for a half-hour and it was still nice. Tonight I paid attention. Lovely fragrance and a soft delicious liquor. I am tasting honey and caramel. I never time anything so I am assuming it was around 4 minutes. I used the remainder of the sample bag which probably a bit over a teaspoon. This is not your typical black tea. I am actually getting very relaxed. Not a bad thing after this mornings Sheng. This is something I would definitely buy….

I made this while eating a baked brie covered with mango habanero jelly and working on my trusts law assignment. That was not what I intended on working on today but my partner is super on top of things and had already started drafting and I didn’t want to seem like a slacker. So I added to the assignment, hopefully useful information, and sipped on this tea.

Since I was focused on the assignment and not the tea, the sips were spread out and I don’t really remember much other than it being fairly meh. Decent but nothing special. It is now cold and seems to have maintained the same malt/flavor of the hot tea which is impressive that it is consistent at all temperatures. Still, at any temperature, there is nothing amazing about this. Good for every day, absent-minded sipping though. Thanks Roswell Strange for sharing!!

Gongfu from this morning, drank at work.

It was only a 1/2 day today at work which was very fortunate for me – with my ear infection I don’t think I would have lasted a full day, I was already doing mad at my desk with pain and restlessness by hour two of the day.

I wasn’t very happy with this session – but I’m going to revisit the tea since I have a gut feeling that all the tea I consume throughout the course of this ear infection are going to be perceived more negatively than they otherwise would be.

I did stretch the session out over the course of the whole morning – and the taste was actually alright; kind of a honeyed sweetness, bit of a baked bread note, and a higher noted red fruit profile (pomegranate, red apple?). I would normally really enjoy that combination of flavours so I’m not particularly sure why I didn’t today. The finish was a little smokey and had a sort of aggressive dryness about it, and that was really the nail in the coffin.

As I said, I’m going to rebrew this when I feel well – and we’ll see how I feel about it then,

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI34LYmJ1Fs

thanks for this one variaTEA! I’ve had this before and it’s nice to see that i STILL really enjoy it. I just wish red blossom’s teas weren’t so expensive. sigh

from steeptimes.blogspot.com:

Today I’ll be reviewing another tea from Red Blossom. I purchased The Discovery Collection which comes with four sample teas, all of which I’ll review. I’ll be drinking the Three Cultivar Red today.

From the Red Blossom website:

“Our Three Cultivar Red is a unique blend of three varieties from Wuyi Shan and Fujian Province. In a world defined by tradition and age-old crafting methods, this tea is a rare innovation. The tea maker who created it is amongst a small group experimenting with new cultivars and crafting styles to create wonderful and delicious teas that buck tradition.
The leaves for this tea were harvested the first week of May 2014. It consists of leaves of two aromatic cultivars typically reserved for Wuyi Oolongs: Huang Guan Yin and Jin Guan Yin. These teas were then blended with a small leaf cultivar typically used to make green tea.”

The leaf is a beautiful brown color, thin, stiff, and releases a strong sweet aroma that lingers.

I used the recommended 3.5 grams for a gaiwan and did a 10 second rinse to wake the tea and warm the tools. Then I infused for 2 minutes at 205 degrees F.

The liquor had the color of maple syrup and had a soft sweet smell. The leaf had an Earthy sweet aroma.

The first steep was very good. The front of the taste was black tea but it transformed into an earthy sweetness that lasted for a while on my palate and into the next steeping. I wanted to drink every drop of the steep. I was surprised by the transition from black tea taste to the sweetness. It had no overtones of any other flavors.

The second steep was more of the same with the aftertaste building on itself. It lost a little of the black tea front and gained more of the sweetness. I didn’t taste any bitterness or astringency and it was a very gentle finish. I went on to do two more steeps and the tea remained sweet throughout. It lost some flavor but I probably could have went past four steeps and I was pushing the times towards the end to between 4-5 minutes.

I loved this tea so much I tried it the next day at work and went through three large steepings. It had the same great tastes and aromas of the gaiwan session. The sweetness from each steep will stay on your tongue into the next steeping. This is a tea I keep looking forward to drinking again as I love the mix of earthy sweetness with that of a traditional black tea taste. I didn’t get much Qi from either session but it did perk me up. I could see this being an everyday drinker for me. I think this is the best of the sample set.

For a key to my rating scale, check out my bio.

Before trying this tea, I was never a huge fan of black teas, but Red Blossom Tea Company’s “Three Cultivar Red – 三品紅” has made me reconsider. The tea is unusual for a black tea, in that it is crafted with cultivars used normally for Wuyi oolong teas (also called Wuyi Rock Tea). This means that while “Three Cultivar Red” possesses all the trademark flavors of a black tea, it is more layered and nuanced like an oolong.

Red Blossom loves to toss in a free sample when you buy tea online. Not always, but usually, you open the box and there is a little something something in the bottom, a thank you from the wonderful folks in San Francisco.

I usually save them, so I have a small stack of them, but today I decided to go after one. I had two samples of this, which I need in order to use my 32 ounce Bodum Assam teapot.

It is amazing. Totally different from a regular, traditional black tea. This is like traditional tea meets science to create a super tea.

The Steve Austin of tea.

The aroma is amazing, so smooth, so full, but yet so delicate. By looking at it, you would think it would have a thick, creamy, velvety feel. But no. It’s so smooth and bright, absolutely not bitter at all.

The Red Blossom website mentions hints of green apple and cantaloupe. Yes, in a black tea.

This is totally different from what I am used to, so it takes some getting used to. It is so well balanced, the individual flavors can be hard to pick out, but overall it’s smoothness is mind blowing.