Roughage

Roughage drank Gyokuro by Happy Lucky's Tea House

Swap from Bonnie. Thank you, Bonnie, this is muchly appreciated.

A parcel of tea samples arrived on Monday (it is now Wednesday) containing a large range of teas. Naturally I was excited to try them all out, but I wanted to finish the samples that Teavivre had sent me first because they had been around longer, so yesterday I wrote them up. Now on to Bonnie’s teas. Where to start? I had no preference and all excited me equally, so I picked a bag at random. It was this Gyokuro.

The leaves were a dark green, like pine needles. They danced in the hot water and an aroma of fresh greens wafted up to me as I waited for the tea to brew. Visually this tea is brilliant. So, on to the tasting. Very nice. It is smooth with quite a thick buttery liquor. The flavour is a bit like asparagus to me. It is very pleasant. Good tea. I think that I have enough to try this under ice next time. That will be an interesting experiment.

2012-07-11 07:43:17 -0400

180 °F / 82 °C

1 min 0 sec

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I am a professional Vikingologist and I like tea! To be honest, I have always liked decent tea, but in 2011 I started working at learning what good tea really is. I am busily expanding my tea horizons quite significantly, much to the chagrin of my wife, who despairs of my enthusiasm. My favourite teas are Darjeelings and sheng puerhs, but I struggle to find black teas (other than Darjeelings) that really float my boat. My absolute favourite teas at the moment are Anji Bai Cha and Dong Fang Mei Ren both from Canton Tea Co, neither of which are shengs or Darjeelings. Seems odd, but that’s the way it is. I do wonder if the scores I give out actually reflect my predilection for Darjeelings and shengs.

I am slowly adding to my experience by trying as many different products as possible. I like to think that I am developing my palate and becoming more learned about tea, but I suspect that may be wishful thinking!

I find rating the teas difficult. Often a particular tea will appeal to me because of my mood, even though it does not get a top rating on here from me. As a general guide, I use the following ratings:

0-25 Undrinkable
26-50 Really not to my taste
51-75 Ok to good
76-99 Always welcome in my pot
100 – There ain’t no such thing as a perfect score!

As I rate teas, I try to revisit my scores and check that my old scores are in line with the new ones.