Eco-Cha Artisan Teas

This is a step above most generic four seasons oolong teas. The flavor profile is a little difficult to pin down as it changes every time. Sometimes it reminds me of TGY. It has the same sweet floral essence but not in your face. Thinner body and more delicate. Using more leaf accentuates its fruitiness and nectar especially when brewed in a yixing teapot.

Though I enjoyed this tea, it pales in comparison to BTT’s four seasons oolong which has a far more complex and memorable flavor.

Bought from a reddit tea sale. Used 3g in a 60mL gaiwan with 185 degree water.

Got a lot of floral and some vegetal flavors with a nice creamy texture – not super thick, but noticeable mouth feel. Pretty sweet tasting as well. Leaves seem like they’re pretty high quality, good vibrant green color and not too beat up or anything. In the later steeps I started getting a bit of a crisp, almost fruity note – may be what some have referred to as apple. This is my first Eco-Cha tea – may have to make an order with them at some point.

I didin’t use any specific steeping times with this since they lack suggestions for gongfu brewing. So I went with feeling and what seemed right, it turned out pretty good actually.

Nuggets are emerald green with light brown stems. They are small and even size. As a winter batch the leaves are quite small. Opened leaves are vegetal green.

Clear light green brew, latter steeps turn more orange/yellow hue. Mild scent. Full-bodied taste with notes of cream, vanilla, milk, fruit, osmanthus and some burnt sugar with woodsy notes. Terrific with really nice silky, thick and creamy mouthfeel. I can already say after couple steeps that this is the best Jin Xuan oolong that I’ve tasted. Others have been too milky or not milky at all, but this is in perfect balance. I’m definitely buying more after I’ve emptied my stash a bit.

Not what I expected. I should have realized that this four season was a high mountain tea and not the usual Tie Guan Yin. I’ve never had a fruitier four seasons tea that yielded so many cups gong fu. I’d guess eight or nine.

Perfume, asian pear, apple, cinnamon, flowers, and honey were the kind of things I tasted. The fruity taste also had a tropical character which I loved. The cinnamon is a bit of an exaggeration, but there was an odd spiciness that I could at least approximate as cinnamon. Like the Shan Lin Xi, I particularly enjoyed this and would get some more Eco-Cha myself.

And this was all thanks to LuckyMe.

Quick note: used this in my new tumbler, and I used too many leaves for grandpa style. I brewed it western and it was impressive. I gotta say that this 2018 harvest is a major comeback considering the new notes of violet and strawberry I’ve been getting with the typical ripe green and floral ones.

I got a sample from the club order, and I missed this baby. The 2018 harvest also is delivering some great fruit notes in the first steep, like mango topped with hyacinth in a honeysuckle finish. You can expect me to write more about this soon, among others in this crazy hiatus.

Sip down. Brewed it right this time. Pineapple and grass notes were well balanced in floral creaminess. I need to remind myself that less leaf and time means less grassy.

What is up with me. Maybe I’ve been over-leaving or steeping, but I have not enjoyed my jade oolongs lately. They have either been too grassy or sour, especially this one. I’ve gotten more florals, mint, and watercress which I do not always enjoy. It could be seasonal, because I am finding myself craving something like a Loashan oolong or black tea. Either way, I’ve been having a hard time drinking this variety.

Still one of my top favorites, and I am so happy I can taste it while sick. I don’t know if my mucus is doing this, but I’m getting a little bit more coconut in the savory body. The lovely confused yellow fruitiness between apples, pineapples, and “Asian Pears” remains.

Well, I officially prefer the winter crop of this. Or I might have liked the four seasons more since the two teas tasted incredibly similar to me when I first had them. After reading some of the tasting notes including the websites own descriptions, there was a good amount of difference per season. I still am very glad to have a mini stash of this because the fruity floral character is something I do not like being without.

I think I brewed this wrong. More vegetal with a sweet honey, fruity, floral aftertaste. I did notice this was a lot more savory and honeyed than the last time I had it.

Lord I love this tea…

Thank you Luckyme! Finally got to try this!

It actually yielded several cups with about 2 grams in 3 ounces of water, seven to be precise and all of them were fairly consistent in flavor. I did not count the seconds, I just brewed by impulse that was not quite western nor Gong Fu. The third steep was a little over two minutes and the rest were closer to western. I didn’t taste as much coconut as I thought I was going to, but it was there. The tea had a strong floral and fruity smell, and had a light creaminess with a heavy nectar quality. Honey, pineapple, and other tropical fruits were the kinds of things I was tasting with the florals and slight creaminess. This tea reminded me of Hawaii.

I might have to get some of this myself eventually. I may even join their tea club….

It is a beautiful day! Perfect weather, intermittent cloud cover with a pleasant breeze, 75 degrees (the perfect temperature for me) and the hint of possible storms in the future. Of course I am spending the day watching Fighting Games on the West Coast Warzone Stream and have been doing that since yesterday. I am using a break in stream (by break I mean it is a game I don’t care about, sorry Guilty Gear) to blog about some yummy tea.

Today I am looking at one of the teas from Eco-Cha’s most awesome club which I am a member of, I joined at the beginning and paid for the whole year because I know Eco-Cha has good tea, so far I have been very pleased. I plan on writing about all of the teas I have gotten at some point, but this one needed blogging about now because Taiwanese Black Teas are a thing of epic beauty. ShanLinXi Black Tea (the link takes you to their blog post, very informative) comes from, you guessed it, Shan Lin Xi Mountain, one of my favorite mountains in Taiwan to procure tea from. The aroma of these curly leaves knocked me out of my chair from first sniff, seriously, I am so easily floored by red teas, it is a bit embarrassing. There are notes of lychee, mango, papaya, cocoa, cream, and nutty almost coconut water undertones, this tea smells tropical and immensely sweet and rich.

Into my beloved ruyao gaiwan the leaves go, the aroma keeps up the tropical fruit notes with papaya, longan, lychee, mango, and a touch of cherries. There is also an undertone of chocolate and cream, it is so sweet, it is almost cloying but manages to sneak right under the cloying radar and fall happily into richness. Wow, somehow the liquid manages to smell even sweeter, but still manages to not be cloying, probably because it smells like fruit juice rather than candy, with notes of papaya, cherry, and lychees, with a woody and cocoa undertone and a delicate hint of cream.

Wow, just wow, this tea is sooo sweet! It is a bit mind boggling! It is very smooth in the mouth with a tiny bit of bright crispness at the finish that let’s you know there might be some tannins somewhere in this tea, but only a hint. It starts with papaya and lychee, then moves on to woody and creamy with cocoa undertones. The finish is a bit of autumn leaves and mineral. Then the real fun, the aftertaste on this tea goes on forever, super sweet tropical fruit creamy goodness that just does not quit.

Second steep, the aroma keeps up the intense sweetness, but it also has a distant floral note that took me forever to pin down, at first I thought maybe the spring flowers outside my window were playing with my sense of smell so I took the tea elsewhere to sniff where I was able to determine it has a subtle peony and plumeria notes. The taste also has a hint of that floral quality, it is almost ghostly dancing in and out of taste. The fruity and creamy cocoa notes stay strong, and woody notes become a little more pronounced, along with a mineral quality to the finish. The aftertaste is not quite as long lasting as the first steep, but it was still long lasting.

The third steep’s aroma has a stronger floral note, definitely picking up on that peony and plumeria, though it is woodier this steep, the cocoa notes are also more prominent. Wow, the mouthfeel on this steep is super smooth, which goes well with its nectar like sweetness. The tropical fruit notes are not as strong this steep, mostly the lychee note sticks around, it is joined by strong creamy cocoa and coconut water and a woody finish. The aftertaste is still strong but not as strong as previous steeps. And perfect timing, as I wrap this post up Mortal Kombat Top 8 is starting, so I shall take my tea and stare at the stream happily. Happy weekend everyone!

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/04/eco-cha-tea-club-batch-5-shanlinxi.html

Resbonsibly sourced artisan tea that looks really great. How can you pass that? I recently ordered samples of unroasted green oolongs from Eco-cha. Couple of them were already sold out so I picked best of the rest; Jin Xuan, Tsui Yu and this one, Four Seasons Spring. Today I picked them up from post office and I’m already amazed. They came in vacuum sealed bags (like most oolongs do) and they even had this tiny thing that keeps moisture out. I don’t remember the word. :D
Anyways, Four seasons spring oolong has quite mild aroma, but still fresh and floral. Every nugget seems to have picked with passion. They’re even sized, quite small and look just fabulous. Shiny and glossy.
The brew is delicate, aromatic, floral and crisp with nice fruity finish. Longer brews bring out some spicy notes, especially cinnamon like stated in eco-cha website. Really clean and buttery mouthfeel. The color of it is also very pretty, pale green.
Really, really nice tea. One of the best four seasons I’ve tried.

Okay I’m upping the rating on this one after an enjoyable session this afternoon. I steeped it gongfu and then combined the steeps into my travel tumbler. The tea is much improved by compounding the steeps this way. Sweet orchid aroma and flavor and a honeyed orange blossom like aftertaste as it cools.

I still think it’s too expensive for what it is. Glad I got to try it but likely will not revisit it in the future.

This was less impressive than Eco-Cha’s other lower priced offerings. It’s light and buttery with an orchid and steamed vegetables flavor. Nothing mind-blowing or memorable, just a decent jade oolong. I don’t get the hype about Da Yu Ling. This is the second one I’ve tried and both were underwhelming. Maybe it’s the scarcity of the tea, but to me its not worth the price it commands. Fortunately there are far better Taiwanese oolongs out there that don’t cost an arm and a leg.

Spring 2022.

This was a fantastic Shan Lin Xi teeming with succulent flowers and juicy tropical fruit. It starts off with an alphonso mango fruitiness before shifting to pina colada. After a couple more steeps, flowers and stonefruit emerge and the tea develops a thick, nectar-like mouthfeel. The flavor starts to drop off after the 5th yet still remaining smooth and having a pleasant light fruitiness with floral undertones and additional notes of citrus, bergamot, and pear.

This was a very enjoyable tea with many layers of complex flavors that evolved over steeps. Couldn’t rate this as a 100 however due to the intense but short lived flavor and lack of longevity.

I love straight teas that taste flavored. This one smells and tastes very tropical and fruity. The wet leaf has an strong aroma of juicy fruit and honeycomb. The tea starts off with white peach and coconut, gentle florals and a soft body. Steeped further, pineapple and a little creaminess develops. There’s a bit of minerality and a delicious lingering fruitiness. The pina-colada flavors remind me a lot of WP’s Golden Lily. Come to think of it, it has some milky tones too.

Only negatives are some rather large twigs and the flavor runs out pretty quickly. By the 4th steep, most of the flavor had been wringed out. All in all, a very pleasant and satisfying tea!

I was quite happily surprised by the quality and intense flavor of the brew from this lightly oxidized and lightly toasted tea. Very refreshing and yet lush with buttery tones and a natural floral green-ness that is very uplifting and a pleasure to drink. Generally I have not been a fan of most Milk Oolongs, but this one could become quite addictive. And the number of re-steeps from the leaves was phenomenal, making it quite economical as I savored cup after cup.

“Light” really describes this one best. It tastes a bit like a light Oriental Beauty. I noticed some strawberry notes and many lemon juice notes. Unfortunately, this didn’t endure very many infusions. Refreshing and nice, but not as Oolong-long-lasting as I expected.

EDIT: A Retry with some more leaves got it fixed up to 7 infusions now.

Read the whole thing on my blog:
http://chazichaxi.blogspot.de/2016/02/tea-tasting-organic-spring-2015-light.html