white2tea

Gongfu!

Drank this with some dark chocolate in between steeps! I used to buy a greener and more ball-rolled style of oolong from a now defunct company called Ginger Lily Oolong, and I’m finding this tea reminds me of it in a lot of ways. It’s light to medium bodied with a very mild, gentle sweetness that compliments the subtle spice notes and overall fresh, crisp profile. In particular, I love how the aromatics are so floral and soft, while the finish has such a clean earthiness and mineral quality. Maybe even a touch of petrichor. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this tea quote as much as I have, but it turns out that it’s actually pretty nostalgic, and the subtle sweet earthy notes of ginger are really soothing and cozy!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C300b4XO_nS/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJpYzxEvWDM

Gongfu!

Enjoyed this shou paired with a delicious soft boiled duck egg (with a splash of maple hot sauce) for a delicious breakfast tea session. Apologies in advance to the anti-runny yolk crowd. This was such a rich and unctuous way to start the day, though!! This shou in particular has a robust earthiness with a smooth woody character and sweeter dark undertones of molasses and brown sugar with just a hint of brothy umami weaved throughout everything else already going on in this complex blend of different ripe pu’erhs. The egg, with its golden and delicious yolk, is just as rich as the tea with a deeply creamy taste and texture alongside its own distinct umami character. So fatty and luxurious!! And of course, a hint of sweet and fiery hotsauce to break up the indulgence just a bit…

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3qmElmuu1U/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWk4IjZHsb4

Sipdown

I really want to write a lot about this tea, but I didn’t take too many notes. I promised IG that I would add something, but I was too into this tea at the time. I wrote “buttered toast” a few times. The only other notes on my scrap paper were the following: whipped cream, milk, butter, & toast/bread. 6 infusions noted, too.

Feel like you want to brew some longjing but you don’t have any? Love a few funky mushroomy notes here and there? This tea is for you! Good energy and duration. It brews like a sheng, tastes most like a green, and smells like oolong. Weird combination but it’s great. It has a tendency to go astringent, so dont brew too hard…unless you like it that way. I ain’t your mother.

Gongfu!

This is a very soft and gentle tasting tea with a lot of the more delicate and finer characteristics that I love so much about Yiwu productions alongside such a rich, thick and creamy mouthfeel. It isn’t until a few steeps in that the tasting notes begin to paint a clearer picture: dried apricots, apple blossoms, and the smell of simmering brown sugars. It warming, cozy and very peaceful – I definitely felt, as I sipped on the latter infusions, like I’d slipped back into memories of late summer evenings back home in the Prairies. Almost like a merger of summer breaks spent at my Grandparent’s house and the night markets I used to frequent before moving to Montreal. Just a simplicity and easiness saturated in a glowy feeling sense of nostalgia.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3fyO3PuKqS/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viBbRfstO84

If you are at all a fan of smoked teas, this is a pretty good one. The smoke is there but not acrid, and there are still some interesting tea scents around. Good texture and overall balance for a pine-smoked tea. I like this better than most lapsangs, and this might the one smoked tea I keep in my collection for those cold nights.

Late last evening, I opened the second tea from the White2Tea Tea Club. Had I known this was a prized tea, I’d’ve saved it for last. Alas, I didn’t until finally reading the full letter.

I brewed this up to 6 times. Each sip I drank, with the exception of a single (sake) cup. I wanted to dive into it layer by layer, with a proper boiling water palate cleanse.

Cup One: cocoa & sweeten milk
Cup Two: tobacco, darker chocolate, buttery, nutty
Cup Three: Surprisingly less notes than cup two, but mostly the same.
Cup Four: Steeped way longer than expected. Add cannabis and “cooked florals” (whatever I meant by that).
Cup Five: No, no. Please don’t fade out on me, you beautiful beautiful tea.
Cup Six: End Scene.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3iCnExOGFF/?img_index=1

Sipdown?

This was the first tea to be had during the February Tea Club. It was a terribly windy day. I wanted to drink some tea after waking too early on little sleep.. It was a rough morning and a rough evening, as nobody could sleep last night – the wife sick and I worried. She currently has a fairly high fever, but the doctor advised that if it remains in the morning, it’s recommended we take a trip to Statcare. Poor dear.

Notes: This was a warming tea – both in smell and flavor. I’m a sucker for a yancha and this was the type that really hits the spot. There were ‘soft’ mineral notes and a nice lingering sweet citrus aftertaste.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3YfaYAu3Rg/?img_index=1

Occasionally I want the elevated Lipton experience which this offers pretty well. This is the kind of tea I’d drink iced laying out in the sun beside the pool, or after pulling weeds in the garden all day. Naturally bright and sweet. The description on W2T says it’s somewhere between an Oolong and a Hong, but I put it squarely in honcha territory. Solid ‘tea aroma’, but there’s not really any frills here—not a lot of fruit, flower, leather, or any particularly interesting characteristics. Good body and makes a great iced tea, but a gongfu sessionable tea it is not, at least to me.

Bamboo is a weird grass. Who thought to shove tea inside and then roast it I guess really liked the flavor. The prominent flavor here is Chinese-takeout chopsticks. I kind of like it—much more than some of the dank lumbery pu`erhs I’ve had. The bamboo is well, woody, but in a tannic-but-not-resinous kind of way. Somewhere past the bamboo there’s a vegetal brightness akin of bean sprouts, and then lingering still there’s a touch of cocoa dust drying the tongue. No dusty basement here. Just thick, well-incorporated, warming, and enduring bamboo. Pretty approachable and something I’d share with friends. Overall I don’t regret buying the full 200g before trying it. The value is good to boot.

Sometimes you read a description and decide you need to buy the item described. I wanted to love this. It’s white. It’s black. A mysterious experiment.
However for me, tasting this tea in 2024, it misses the mark. It’s not bad, just not notable. The oxidation is too high and sends the expensive bud material into hongcha territory. The result is strawberry flavored water with an awkward dryness. It’s not a tea to collect nor worthy of serving to guests. It leaves me irritated that it’s not at least the sum of its parts, but instead less than.
I’ve got another 14 grams to get through but I’m just going to give it away and hope someone else finds it to be their cup of tea.

Have you ever found a perfect tea? This might be it for me. It’s loaded with ripe papaya and rose, silky in texture, and lingers without being soapy. It’s not a red, white, or black tea distinctly, but what it is, is nothing short of amazing. Did I mention this tea is just 20 cents a gram?

This tea is like looking at a flower garden from behind a pane of glass. It wants to be floral, and you can see the flowers, but the aroma and taste are never right in front of your nose. A little more roast could have done it some good as well. It’s almost like it’s a few years old and has faded a bit. The melon flavor is there though—lingering like a candy. That, combined with the low price of this one makes it very worth it. It could be better, but it’s good enough to collect as is.

You’re hiking along and kicked over a decaying log and you’re hit with the scent of fresh earth. You pick up a chunk of decaying wood and bite into it. You’re either supremely weird or related to a termite—who knows?
This one brews dark and thick. Excellent balance and incorporation of flavor, but the wood is still quite prominent. A subtle touch of warm spice gives a slight amount of intrigue, but otherwise it’s wood and wet moss.

Aroma of rice husk, forest floor, campfire.
The deep age of this tea results in a flavor profile that’s so deeply incorporated that it’s hard to pick out specifics. There’s some wood in there, but it’s mellow and lingers almost imperceptibly. There’s a touch of camphor somewhere in the woods, near the campfire where you hung up your soaking leather boots to dry. You’re drinking tea still—which some shou pu`erhs forget. The bush is still there in this one though, with a slight astringency after the rest of the warm camp fades from mind. Relaxed feelings devoid of urgency. Overall this is maybe my favorite Shu to date. Who knows where it comes from? I don’t care. Give me more.

Sipdown 15 – 2024

SO floral, and so tasty. Lots of honey melding in with the floral notes as well.

Working on sipping through a bag, and while the first couple cups were super fruity this one is all floral and honey. Really delicious, as I love this flavor profile, but unexpected!

I’m drinking this tonight. I’m currently on a late “lunch” to add in some reviews. What else is there to do at 22:40? Haha.

I started sipping this earlier in the night, drinking it on and off. I’m brewing it in a new teapot I acquired from Yunnan Sourcing, and the clay pot really amplifies the puerh notes. This is a brightly flavored tea – it has a lot of energy, florals, and sweetness – all for an affordable price. I have a cake stored away, but I’ve somehow obtained 6 minis. I know for certain one came with the Shou-O-Ween haul, but the other 5…a mystery.

I’d go as far to say that this is one of those affordable teas that fall under my top 5-10 teas to own. I’d have to figure out the Top List, but it’s up there as one of those pu’s that’ll always be a good sesh and I can’t complain having sat down with the tea. I’d also say it’s a good starter puerh, as well as one good enough for the typical pu-head.

Brewed gongfu style. The dry leaf aroma leans toward hay, camphor, and mineral, with a finish of honey. Initial tasting notes of radish, citrus peel, honeysuckle give way to cream, vanilla, and peach. Very approachable.

*Backlog from Advent

This was the first tea I brewed today. It was late in the afternoon and the rain was really making me unmotivated to get anything done. I did manage to spend the necessary hour or so to clean, but it took a lot out of me.

I randomly pulled this from the leftover pile from the Advent season. A white tea sounded like potential. I have to be in a VERY specific mood for a white tea, and I was sure I was ready for it. This one took a lot of hits to open and really shine, but it did shine. It had a thicker mouthfeel than I anticipated and it was a refreshing, sweet, & apricot or peach (?) kinda tea. I’d image grabbing a cake of this, boiling the heck out of it, cooling it off in the fridge, and making this as an iced tea. It worked in a gaiwan, but it’s definitely work in that manner, too.

TeaTiff TTB
The leaf is a bit broken due to travel and the aroma is very minimal but when I first opened the bag I did sense something nice. The charcoal notes come out pretty well on this one. But… I don’t know.. I guess I feel like this one is different than other duck shit I’ve had. The roast notes are stronger than expected. Which I like but not in this type of oolong.

this is simple ripe puer, very thick but good price tag.
Gonfu all the way starting at 10 sec, and increasing by 5 sec each time, managed to do about 10-12 steep

I’m back! My absence has mostly been due to having all access to the internet by way of a cellphone. I’ve been longing to get back onto Steepster and finding the communiTEA here, again. IG and Youtube pay off, but this is where I found the tea community and my own personal willingness to take the deeper dive into tea exploration. :)

Anyway, hi. I’m back.

I’ve been drinking the cake version of the 2023 Lumber Slut for the most part of the day. I’m on my second session since 13:30, after taking a brisk walk and facing the cold. This is a warming, rich woody, and viscous shou. It’s good to drink after taking a walk in the cold or whenever you’re faced with the dread of work (from home).

Cheers and happy sipping!
Catch you again on the next one.

Gongfu!

Had a session of this now that I’m past the worst part of a pretty awful cold. It’s my first session in a few days, so I picked something a little bit sweeter and softer to ease back into things. Tea is something that so many people drink when they’re sick, but I tend to do the opposite. Since the joy of tea (for me, anyway) is so centered around taste, I just find the muted flavours I experience when I’m sick make me feel even more dejected and that negative mental headspace certainly doesn’t help in pushing through the physical ailments of a cold…

Today I can taste the nuanced and delicately sweet notes of spun sugar that sort of define this sheng, as well as the lingering and mouth coating notes of ripe and sugary green melon that come at the end of each sip. I feel lighter and more awake than I have in several days. Though I was mostly already there before this session, I do feel like it sort of pushed me back over the edge. I think by tomorrow I’ll be right back to my regular tea drinking schedule.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C2VXoTwOEK8/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGl3GlrnMCQ