Superfine Tan Yang Gong Fu Black Tea

T&C TTB Tea #14 Backlog May 26

Yum yum.
I really enjoyed this one. Super malty and bready. It reminded me of when I was a kid and I used to sniff beer cans….I should clarify that. My parents didn’t drink so I wasn’t often around people drinking beer, but once in a while, when I was, I loved the smell of it! So I used to go around sniffing empty beer cans. One time my uncle offered me a taste and it did NOT taste like it smelled. sadness.

This tea tasted much better than that!

It brewed up pretty light in colour but not in flavour.

I kept it!

(3 min @92 degrees)

Sipdown!!

I don’t remember having the last cup of this but I am certainly enjoying this one. Honestly, it is great. Thank you Dexter for sharing this with me! Notes of chocolate, raisins, bread are all floating in the cup. Delicious!

Thank you so much Nicole for having sent this gorgeous tea.
It is not a yunnan wrote Nicole on the sample but it has a similar taste profile.
Interesting thing first is the leaf itself, sooooo thin, 2 colours golden and chocolate. Lovely.

I don’t drink gongfu style but even western style it is really delicious, it has an incredible lightness and mellowness in the same time.
Medium bodied, malt and sweet patatoe make this tea a real winner.
Yummy.

I haven’t been having many epic tea experiences lately, just drinking lots and lots of what I often drink. But this tea stopped me in my tracks yesterday to sit and admire it.

The first times I had it years ago I noted it had strong sweet potato notes. Years later, I described it as creamy and smokey. That is what I got yesterday.

I was trying to clean up my tea shelves and saw a sample of this in the box, and I th8nk I have a whole bag in another box. I decided it was a good candidate to go with my cookies in the sunny spot in the yard. I didn’t expect to be bowled over, but I was.

The first year I tried it I said I would prefer it gong fu style without food, but this smokier season is brilliant with food. It is very nearly like Grace Tea Russian Caravan. I am having it again today because I enjoyed it so much.

Some fun news – mrmopar and I have been very, very busy digging around on the internet because I noticed some of the places he talked about visiting and one of them is a town where my grandfather’s family came from. My mother didn’t really know him as she was raised in an orphanage but we knew who her parents were. I decided mrmopar and I might be distant cousins in my Virginia line so I wrote to him and asked if he would share his grandparent’s names, which he did.

Well, surprise, surprise! We ARE related, but more distantly than I thought and from before the families moved to America. (Both sides have mostly been here since 1690-1750. They are primarily Scottish, Irish, English, and Welsh.)

My ninth great-grandmother is his eleventh great-grandmother, way back when they still lived in merry olde England! The generations are somewhat off because my mother was a very late in life child for her dad and I was also for my parents. When this happens over repeated generations, two people of the same age can end up being “removed” cousins, as happened with us.

I am tickled pink, even if it was so far back! We have had a lot of fun tracking these things down and I am proud to be a cousin, however distantly, to mrmopar!

Oh man, I have such terrible spring fever. I can barely sit still, I just want to go frolicking in the flowers and dance in rain of pollen. This happens to me every year, unless I am sick, since I am not I get to revel in the beauties of spring-time. Also the excellent surprise of my new Yixing arriving much sooner than I was expecting. I still have not decided which tea to season it for, I need to stare at it to get a good feel for it.

Today’s Teavivre tea is one of Fujian’s famous Gong Fu black teas, specifically Superfine Tan Yang Gong Fu Black Tea is considered to be the best. Grown in the Tanyang Village in Fu’an, Fujian, this delightfully fuzzy gold tea was plucked in March of 2013. The aroma is very fruity, strong notes of juicy plums with a side of roasted peanuts and a faint malt at the finish. I really want to make sure everyone knows this tea is very fruity, almost surprisingly so! It does not smell at all like a flavored tea, but like someone placed a plate of sliced plums right next to the leaves.

Once the leaves have been rinsed and steeped for their quick bath (a whopping five seconds!) the aroma pf the wet leaves is more predominantly roasted peanuts and malt with a finish of stewed plums. They have gone from fresh plums to cooked and rich plums. I am perfectly ok with that. The poured off liquid is surprisingly floral, a blend of sweet roses and honeysuckle with strong plums and peanuts. Very delicious smelling, I admit that I cannot wait to taste it.

The first thing I notice is the smooth mouthfeel, very smooth and a tiny bit fuzzy from the tricomes on the leaves. The initial steep is very mild, almost a bit too mild for my liking (it was only a five second steep, I guess I am not that refined yet) there was plum sweetness and roasted peanuts, but they seemed delicate preludes to the future.

For the second steep the aroma of the liquid is less floral and more stewed plums. It is very rich and sweet. Hello sweetness! The taste is much bolder than the previous steep, the roasted peanut is more prominent in the middle which fades to a sweet aftertaste.

The third steep’s aroma is very sweet still, but with the floral notes no longer present and a strong roasted nut presence. It starts out with very sweet juicy stewed plums and roasted peanuts, this fades to a slightly peppery finish and has a fruity aftertaste that lingers for a while. The tea still has a very smooth mouthfeel.

For the fourth steep’s aroma is still of stewed plums and roasted peanuts, but there is a peppery note and I notice it is not as sweet as the previous steep’s aromas. The taste is just as sweet as before, but instead of being just stewed plums there is also a rich honey taste. This fades to malt and sweet potatoes and finishes with a peppery aftertaste. I really feel like the tea really shined this steeping.

The fifth steep, I really have nothing to add, it was almost identical in aroma and taste to the fourth steep. I savored every drop. I did notice the malt taste was a little weaker and the honey a little stronger, but the amount was minuscule.

And with the sixth steep I call it quits, the tea is fading and I am tea drunk. The aroma is fruity and sweet, blending stewed plums and bit of honey. The taste is pretty much the same as the aroma, plums and honey with a delicate peppery finish.

For photos and blog: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/04/teavivre-superfine-tan-yang-gong-fu.html

I finally got a day off today! I got to sleep in past 11 AM, ran some errands, and took a walk with my mother and Fritzy (my adorable Wirehaired Dachshund). I am just now sitting down to enjoy the second half of this pot of tea (Fritzy is at my feet with his bat toy in his mouth trying to get me to play. He has unlimited energy). I’ve been very impressed with the two Teavivre black teas I’ve tried so far. This one especially is incredibly smooth and “seamless” (as I’d say in the tasting room). When brewed per the instructions, this is neither bold nor assertive. It would make a nice afternoon tea with pastries. I gave one of each of the 7g samples I have to my boyfriend, CaseyZero, to bring to work. Maybe one day he will write a tasting note…

Good morning/afternoon Steepster! I am having a slow start to the day due to staying up til around 1:30 on Halloween night haha. It wasn’t an overly eventful evening, it was my first year handing out candy to the kids at our new house, so that was kind of fun! Watched Nightmare before Christmas and Ghostbusters with a friend, fell asleep after my second beer, then just went to bed late lol. Oh, and ate too much candy. Can you say sugar crash? Lol, it was quite fun anyways, just fairly low key :)

This is my tea I am attempting to wake myself up with this morning. I did about a 1.5 min steeping time, and this is sooo malty and honeyed, and delicious, but honestly not really waking me up. It is actually kind of relaxing me, which usually never happens from black teas. Maybe I am just so tired, my brain is like ‘I do not comprehend this thing that is caffeine’. Lol, whatever it is, I need to get in gear and clean up the house for my mom and aunt’s visit in 2 hours! Haha let’s get crackin! Oh, and see previous notes on this delicious tea from the wonderful people at Teavivre (this was a free sample from them!).

This tea has a pleasant caramel/molasses-like smell and its taste is smooth, sweet and faintly fungal.

The aroma of this tea is a pleasing mixture of molasses and earthy hay. It is sweet and malty with the flavors of molasses, sweet potato, and cocoa. The aftertaste is light and pleasant. This is an excellent tea.