Verdant Tea (Special)

I’m having a ‘tea comparison’ day. This morning it was Keemuns, this afternoon it’s been Jin Jun Mei. I have 2, but I’m only actually writing a review about this one. The other way (which will remain nameless) is there for me to have a way to see how this Jin Jun Mei stands.

Both teas were steeped identically, with equal amounts of tea @ 1min, 2min, 3min. Then I sat & sipped them side by side to see how they differed. The ‘other’ Jin jun mei was & is delicious, just for the record, with a thick feel & flavors of honey, malt, & butter, liked butter & honey on toast. There’s also some roasted sweet potato in there.

Wang Yanxin’s Jin Jun Mei is perhaps not as malty/toasty, but sweeter, without a doubt, & with a chocolate taste to it as well. It also presents as a more refined cup, although I’m having trouble defining exactly what I mean by that.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed them both, & on any given day would be very happy with either one. I have just enough of this one to drink it one more time, & I have some other Jin Jun Mei’s coming, so I may do a Jin Jun Mei Marathon at so point in the future, LOL.

If I ever meet Wang Yanxin, I’d like to give her a big hug.
Her Jin Jun Mei is wonderful. I also have a secret stash of Yanxin’s Reserve Shu, which is lovely. I think she has excellent taste in tea, & have loved every tea that she’s been connected with (Golden Fleece immediately comes to mind). OK, I admit my relationship with Yu Lu Yan Cha was a little rocky at first, but I’m over that. It’s delicious.

This tea is everything I want it to be. A rich thick mouth, sweet honey that lingers, & a little tangy pepper in the later steepings. I’ve been drinking it most of the day.

Hmmmmmm….too strong for me. Its an expertly crafted blend but just not for me. I could see myself cooking with this type of tea.
Thank you Stephanie for the sample.

0.75 tbsp for 255 ml

Brewed tea has very strong floral aroma. The tea flavour tastes like a white. Jasmine flavour fairly faint. Smooth mouth-feel. Jasmine flavor blooms close to the end of the sip.

Rating: 77
Thanks to Sil for sharing with me!

Sipdown, 130. I looked at my pile of Verdant reserve teas, and even though I have a large amount of shengs sitting around, I really didn’t feel like a sheng. But I also happened to have a single serving of this left, so I went for it.

I really do like the beany, sweet, slightly buttery flavor of this one. I feel like it is pretty consistent steep to steep. Such a lovely green tea and I would consider keeping its non-reserve sibling around once I trim my cupboard some more.

I did a bunch of gongfu steeps of this one in my gaiwan but combined them into one big glass. It was essentially the same tea:water ratio, but instead of one long steep it was multiple 10 second steeps, so it would be interesting to know how it would taste different from a western steep of it. But of course teas like this seem to beg to be short steeped, even if you are just going to combine them.

This was fresh and lovely. Green, sweet, like sugar snap peas. I rarely crave a straight green, but I like having them around. Obviously this is not one I will keep around longterm, but it is a pleasure to drink.

Holy $#|+! This tea just took me by the ankles, flipped me upside down, and shook me out of my tea blahs. This is rich black tea at is finest. And I’m only on my 2nd steep. Ahhhh… Good to be back.

Wow, I was bad about logging teas yesterday. Anyway, I drank this one, sipdown, 118.

As I have mentioned before, this one is a really lovely dragonwell-style green tea. Very buttery, sweet, nutty, and some interesting vegetal notes that are far from a generic green tea. Very very enjoyable.

Funny that I just had a flavored dragonwell and I chose this dragonwell-style laoshan green for lunch. Totally unintentional.

This is so so good. Buttery, sweet, nutty, lovely. It somehow totally lacks the generic green tea vegetal-ness. That’s not to say that there aren’t notes of vegetables, but they are things like peppery arugula and sauteed fiddlehead ferns in butter. Yum.

Finally getting around to trying this one with my new gaiwan that came in the mail today.
http://flickr.com/gp/44202767@N00/s4xb00

I did a bunch of short steeps with 190°F water, combining two steeps at once because my cha hai (serving vessel) is 6oz and the gaiwan yields about 3oz of tea. I definitely enjoyed my session with this tea. I also was just enjoying it while I drank it and wasn’t thinking about it too hard, so I’m afraid this tasting note won’t be too detailed. It was nice and buttery and a touch nutty, perhaps a little less savory than some dragonwells that I’ve tried. Not as much sugar snap peas as the non-flattened Laoshan Green that I’ve tried. My steeps were pretty consistent, perhaps because of the averaging, but it was a nice session.

The is from the July Reserve TOMC, & it is a sipdown.
I’ve been sipping on this one for awhile, probably about an hour or so. It has good energy to it, but I’m probably about done with it. How to describe it? Kind of woody, kind of sweet, kind of bland. I think the last time I drank this, the steeped leaf ended up in a jar of water in the frig, to become an refreshing Ent’s-draught, & I think this one is headed in the same direction.
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We’ve been having problems with our internet for a few days, & today especially. I don’t know if it’s due to the polarity shift that the Sun is going through, or what, but I haven’t been online much, & when I have been it seems to get interrupted about the time I start to do something, so this will be short (plus I’m feeling a little grumpy & little Terri needs a nap, although there won’t be time for that either).

I have to admit it. I’m just not really into Yabao. I have a bunch of it here too. I’ll pull some out once in awhile, run through a few steepings, but it doesn’t really hold my attention for very long. It’s just not that interesting. Master Han’s Yabao is at least more interesting than the others, it’s got an amazing dark lacquered look to it, & more flavor, but it’s just not really what I want right now. I only drank it because it’s the last selection from the tea club for July, and the Aug club package is on it’s way. I did make it through 6 Gaiwan steepings I think, & then dumped it into a larger cup, filled it with hot water, & put it in the frig. I’ll leave it there until later & see how that comes out.

Sipdown, 126. Gongfu session earlier today.

Call me a heathen, but I prefer this one western style. It was sweeter, and I liked the layers of flavor then instead of each layer individually. I was tasting each steep individually and then pouring the remainder into a larger cup to drink a bit later, and I have to say that enjoyed the cup more than the individual steeps. But, the point is that I did really enjoy this tea! Of all the teas I’ve experienced through the reserve club, wuyi oolongs are growing on me most.

As I was going through my teas, I discovered this one had just enough for one western session and one gongfu session. Today, the western brew!

This is quite lovely. It has the bready, toasty flavors that I usually associate with a wuyi oolong, but it’s also fruitier than most I have tried before. The mineral qualities are lighter and not quite as rocky. I really did enjoy this tea, although I don’t think it has quite made me a wuyi fan. A nice one to have this morning, though.

Drank this one yesterday while Steepster was not behaving. One of my favorite things about the Verdant reserve club is the oddities we get… like this one. Wuyi oolongs are always roasted, so one that’s not is really interesting.

I have to say from the dry leaf this smelled to me like a fairly standard wuyi oolong, including some roasty-toastiness. And that’s what I get from the early steeps too… Don’t get me wrong, it comes off like a very nice wuyi oolong, but to me it seems like the others I’ve had. It’s rocky, it’s sweet, and it’s a bit like fall leaves, brown and crackly. It is perhaps not quite as roasty as some others I’ve had, but green and floral like a TGY? Not really. I certainly have an unrefined palate when it comes to these teas, so there is probably some of that coming into play as well. But whether it comes across as unroasted or not, it was definitely a nice oolong.

I’ve been practicing for a few hours. This is another weekend with a bunch of pieces that brides have requested, some that I know, some that I’ve never played, selections by:
Dave Matthews (crash, of course, I love that song & have played it before)
Tom Petty, Van Morrison, Adele, etc…
And another sipdown! This is from the July Reserve TOMC. It feels good to be letting go of so many teas, freeing really. I’ve written a pretty decent review of this one before, so that’s all I got.
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Hmmmmm….am I the only member of the Verdant Reserve TOMC?
Somebody else write a review, please!

This is one of the selections for July, which I’m just now getting around to trying. I concluded awhile back that although I enjoy all oolongs, even the floral ones, my favorites are without a doubt the roasted Wuyi varieties. There is just something very sensual about them. I love them so much that I recently got a Yixing just for them.

However, this Wuyi is not roasted, so I’m steeping it in my blue lotus porcelain pot, which is a teeny tiny bit bigger than my yixing, but still tiny & adorable. More & more I find myself wanting to drink certain kinds of teas from specific vessels. It just seems to enhance the whole experience (or maybe it’s just my obsessive compulsive nature?).

So…the dry leaf is twisted & lovely & long, like the roasted wuyis that I swoon over, but the coloring is lighter, without the deep reds & blacks that roasted leaves have. The aroma is a gently sweet & floral incense.

The tea brews to a lovely honey colored cup. It’s sweet, with layers of flavors: honey, some kind of greens (I want to say edible chrysanthemums, but I’ve never actually eaten them), & there is a floral taste & aroma that rise into the sinuses like a fine incense. That’s one of the things I love about Wuyi’s…that incense-like sensation. At first it freaked me out a little, but now I love it.

I’ve been sipping cup after cup of this, while cutting & filing my nails in preparation to practice for a few hours. I have no idea how many cups I’ve drank…maybe 6? The taste is still sweet, not as floral, & my tongue is tingling as if I were drinking a lightly peach flavored sparkling mineral water, making me think of a really fresh & pure artesian spring, bubbling up through the rocky earth, somewhere in the Wuyi Mountains. Now I want to go there, to sit & drink from this spring & just breath. I think I’m tea-drunk, LOL.

The month is over, & nobody has reviewed this tea yet? Sometimes I feel like I’m the only actual member of the TOMC. This is one of the Reserve TOMC selections for July.

When I initially opened the packet, there was initially a stale aroma, like grains that have been sealed in a jar for awhile, but that quickly subsided & was replaced by the smell of sweet lightly roasted stone fruit & a light incense.

Following the suggested steeping parameters, I put 4 Grams in my porcelain jingdezhen wide lotus Gaiwan,
com/teas/jingdezhen-wide-lotus-gaiwan/
steeped it 5 seconds & strained it into my glass test tube steeper (because my Rishi glass pitcher has a crack in it, whine),
and I’m sipping the tea from a Jingdeshen Red Lotus cup
http://verdanttea.com/teas/jingdezhen-red-lotus-tea-cup/
BTW, verdant has their teaware on sale this week, for those who are interested.

Since this Gaiwan & cup are porcelain, I can drink any teas from them, but I’ve officially dedicated them to Tieguanyins because… well… because I can! It just seems right. The shorter wide Gaiwan gives lots of room for the leaves to expand & they look so pretty & happy swimming around in there.

So this tea is a little incense-like, very savory, but also a little sweet & slightly roasty. There is a fruitiness to it of dried peaches, a little bit of a grassiness to it, & a nice tongue tingling sensation as well. After several steepings the incense taste became a gentle floral, & the sweetness continued, with a creamy texture.

Had a sample of this tea hiding in my cupboard so I made the first steep last night and the second this morning. Western style in a teapot for 2 and 3 minutes.

First steep was very very vegetal. Green beans and peas and a bit grassy but not much. Very much what I expect a good Chinese green tea to taste like.

Second steep was still quite strong despite its age though there was less green beans and more grass. Good tea, would buy again.

This tasting note is for the first infusion, Western style, of this tea. Sweetened slightly, don’t hurt me. It tastes slightly beany, as I’ve noticed that Laoshan green teas do, but less than I expected. It still tastes very vegetal but less bean and more other vegetables. I taste some of the milder ‘greens’ but mostly it’s all muddled up.

In other news I am SO BORED. I signed up for a class on aeroelasticity on my Saturday (off-hours) and we spent 2 hours going over linear algebra, which was a complete waste of my time. Using Excel of all things. Awful. I used my lunch break to go over to my own building, which is conveniently within walking distance, and made myself a cup of this tea and carried it back with me. So it looks a little weird because I’m the only one in the whole room with a mug.

Go go gadget airplane flutter.

I used my new test tube steeper for this one. Works really well!
The dry leaf is beautiful with the pressed small leaves.
I did 8 short steepings using 175 degree water. Definitely deep vegetal taste throughout my steepings. They went from a tender baby spinach to lightly blanched asparagus and then peppery arugula. Middle steepings became astringent, but not strikingly so.
I really enjoyed this tea! Tomorrow I am going to try the regular He family 1st Laoshan green.

Congratulations to David and Lily Duckler on the opening of the new Verdant Tea House!

I’ve been saving this tea for a special occasion.

Today was this special occasion! The dream of a proper Tea House in Minneapolis came true today!

This was the right time for tasting but I couldn’t keep this tea all to myself. This was the Duckler’s Wedding Tea and they had served it to everyone who attended on their special day. (Some of the Wedding Beeng was saved for annual Anniversary celebrations, which I think is very romantic!)

I decided to take my packet of tea to share at Happy Lucky’s Tea House. (For anyone who is new, this is my local tea pub in Fort Collins, and I take tea to share. They drink my tea and I drink theirs)

Celebrating is best shared with others!

I arrived early enough for the shop to be quiet (before the afternoon rush).
Preston set up a gongfu tray for shop owner George, manager Andy and the staff to enjoy many steepings of tea.

Because the shape of the tea leaves are somewhat like wheat, the flavor opened up quickly when exposed to water during the first steep.

One quick rinse, and the first pour was lightly smoky…smooth textured with the aroma of sweet straw hay.

The second pour was more developed and sweeter. Andy said the tea reminded him of an olive tree that had been cut down by his house which smelled sweet when the wood slowly burned (although I didn’t taste or smell smokiness any longer).

I sat quietly at the tea bar, and thought about Lily and David’s wedding day. I imagined how this particular tea fit into their plans, knowing that tea is an important consideration!
Many guests would be served this tea outdoors, the scent of flowers in the air mingled like invisable bubbles with much joy. Lily a beautiful bride and David happy. (What a vision!)

Everything fit. The tea, the scene…all blended with elegance.

The sweet, buttery tea would weave a silky thread uniting everyone in joyous celebration, lifting the spirit.

Eric commented that he had tasted a young Yabao before but he wasn’t fond of it. This aged Yabao however, was “really special”! (All agreed!)

Excellent tea to celebrate an excellent friendship on a special occasion. What an honor!

To have dear friends who care so much for others is a great treasure.

I lift my cup with my friends to David and Lily, and all the people at Verdant Tea House!