Bailin Gongfu Black Tea

Thank you Teavivre for the samples I won on your Facebook page woop!

It’s exciting for me right now – I’m in a place where I’m delving into straight teas more than I have in the past (and not just oolongs, even though they’re my favorite). I found it very exciting when I correctly identified the unmarked tea from my aunt in China as Big Red Robe!
With this tea, I’m discovering what makes it a fujian – and right now for me that flavour is in the realm of pumpkin seeds and caramel.

This particular tea had a hint of savoury tomato in it, which to be honest is not my favorite when I catch that flavour (as I have in many Adagio teas), but after the first steep it settled into a nice, rich, dark profile that I did enjoy.

There’s a little too much malt for me, and the tomato notes aren’t really for me either – but this is a quality tea and I did enjoy my half sample of it. Thank you! :)

Tea sample provided by Teavivre for review

Down to my last sample from Teavivre to try. For now I’ll prepare it with one long steep, and then later on in the day with at least 8 short steeps.

I was pleasantly surprised with this in my morning’s cup. I’m picking up on lots of flavours; something floral, pepper, lychee, chocolate, honey, spice (makes me think of pumpkin spice to some extent), and of course a good black tea body.

200ml glass teapot, 1 packet (2tsp? 5g?), 1 steep

By the way, I went on their website to check out some info on this tea and I saw that they had some new stuff in stock. When I spotted the Oriental Beauty @ about $15 USD for 100g my eyeballs nearly popped out! I have no idea how good it is, but usually their tea is at an already excellent price to flavour ratio. I’m seriously very tempted to put in an order. There is also some DongDing and Jin Xuan Milk Oolong. I hope they keep stocking more tea from Taiwan. :D MmmmMMMM yeah!

Been a l-o-n-g week; reentry after the holidays has been nuts. So I needed something really good to coax me out the door this morning.

Thanks to the lovely jacquelinem, I have just that—a cup that starts out cocoa-sweet at the beginning with a tangy, fruity sign-off at the end. Really too good for a workday morning. Highly recommended.

1 tbsp for 375 ml

Smooth taste with black tea dilute lemony note. Very faint leathery tone. Bordering on a steamed spinach type of taste. Faint almost chocolate in background. Hint of smokiness.

Thanks to Sil for passing this on to me!

THANK YOU Teavivre for sending me this sample MANY MONTHS AGO. I apologize for not opening it – I was on a tea hiatus of sorts and am now back.

This tea smelled like chocolate when I opened up the package.

The result has very little astringency and a light malty flavor that is slightly sweet. As the tea cools the sweet notes emerge. I really enjoyed this sample and recommend this tea!

Thank you to Bonnie for this amazing sample from Teavivre!!

I woke up this morning excited to start the day! Tuesdays and Thursdays mean “swim” class with my daughter – although it’s really more like splash around in the pool at the rec center. Regardless, at 15 months old she is a ball of energy and I love the time we are able to enjoy together doing anything at all. 45 minutes of romping in the shallow end left me waterlogged and ready for brunch so it was home and happy in the kitchen next for me! Bonnie was so kind to send me a wealth of samples which I received last night, and I promptly set aside this BaiLin Gongfu knowing that it would be the perfect way to start delving into the myriad of duct tape labeled packages with steeping times and anecdotes jotted carefully across them. This was my first taste of what Teavivre has to offer and I must say that I was very impressed! I was admittedly doubtful when I saw the sample packaging, thinking that it looked more like a bag of novelty candies than tea.. however it is very efficient and locks the flavor in nicely.

After having tried other loose black teas that went vindictive and downright hostile if steeped for more than 3 or 4 minutes, I decided to play it safe and stay just inside the low end of the company’s guidelines and let it dance in the cup for 2:15 on the first go. The result was a smoothly balanced liquor of salted caramel, toffee, and signature black with just a hint of clove in the aftertaste. All in all a deliciously understated cup that left me very pleased with myself for not overdoing it! But..

I couldn’t help myself. The kettle went back on the boil and then over the unwitting leaves before they knew what was coming. 2.. 2.5.. 3.. 3.5.. 4 minutes of rolling red liquor later and I sat down to the business of hoping I hadn’t taken a beautiful thing and marred it with my ambition to pull a toasted monster from the wreckage. Oh WOW! THIS IS THE BEST BLACK TEA I HAVE EVER TASTED!! Sorry for shouting. I promise it wasn’t at you, although it was at the cup in my hands! Take every flavor I mentioned from the first steeping and crank it up 20 notches, then dip it in mocha and you might begin to get a feel for what the evil geniuses at Teavivre are concocting! Bravo!

I am not in a good mood and I am watching a panda cam from China instead of writing up something on France’s healthcare system. Except all the pandas have vacated the area so now I guess I have to do that. It’s funny, when I started this class, I was mad he was going to spend so much time on healthcare and now I’m dead set on taking a straight out health economics class ASAP.

But anyway, what goes better with watching pandas in China than Chinese tea?

I don’t know what I did this time, but this tea tastes really sweet this time. I still get a lot of caramel. It’s how I imagine a black tea creme brûlée might taste if it was strongly infused with a black tea.

This is a nice rich flavor that is really saving my day from being a total bust right now.

I love black tea and this is truly an outstanding cup. Leaves smell of chocolate, coffee and raisins. Brews up to be a gorgeous dark chestnut color. Has a natural sweetness reminiscent of caramel and raisins. It’s so mellow I can drink it without soymilk which I don’t often do with black teas. I am pretty pleased with this! I will also need to find out more about Bailin Gong Fus.

All of these black teas from Teavivre have been KILLER. This one is no exception. The dry leaf looks itself looks and smells incredible. Once steeped, the tea has a reddish brown color, and I can ACTUALLY detect notes of chocolate in the taste. Most of the time when I read the “notes” people detect, I think it’s mostly bogus, because I can never pick up on anything, it just tastes like tea. But with this one, again, I could actually taste chocolate. So that was cool.

I love this product !!!!