168 Tasting Notes

80

This Chinese green tea is best identified by its light, sweet, and slightly roasted vegetal aromas that are semi-reminiscent of steamed green beans; coupled with faint citrus (particularly orange blossom) hints. Bi Lo Chun possesses a pale green liquor that is often cloudy from the down and is fixed and fired over raging hot woks with final production resembling tiny snail shells, as they are very tightly wound.

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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87

Top Panyang Gold, in my opinion, is the best Chinese black tea we have here at the shop. It is malty and sweet with some honey undertones. The word “Gold” refers to the abundance of golden tips that the tea is made of. Golden tips give the tea its sweet, honey like flavor. If you like Chinese black teas you will absolutely love Top Panyang Gold. It is smooth and soo delicious.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec

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85

Malachi McCormick vented frequently about the difficult of finding a decent cup of tea, and I really feel that this tea would make him proud. The sweet, malty notes typical of Assams waft airily from the cup. The strong liquor boasts flavors of honeyed toast supported by boldness familiar with low grade Keemuns.

A little excerpt from Malachi’s book:

“Tea?” inquired my host. “Lovely idea,” I said. Then came the bad news: “Rose Hip or Sleepy Time?” My darkened countenance went unnoticed: “Oh, I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

A venerable old black cast iron teapot caught my eye. Like a ‘senior citizen’ to a nursing home, it had long been retired, and now stood mute on a shelf, its mouth stuffed with dyed dried flowers. We both – the pot and I – looked on helplessly as my host poured hot (hot boiling) water onto herbal teabags placed in (unscalded) mugs.

I ran screaming from the house! Well, actually, no, I didn’t: I stood my ground, but hoping that this mug would pass. Later, while visiting my mother in Ireland, she told me things were pretty bad on her side of the Atlantic as well.

To cut a long long story short, the Decent Cup of Tea movement was born soon after. (By the way, ownership of this book automatically puts you on Active Reserve: we will be in touch.)

“The best thing to do, when you’ve got a dead body and it’s your husband’s on the kitchen floor and you don’t know what to do about it, is to make yourself a good strong cup of tea.” -Anthony Burgess

Stay tuned for more from the book next time we drink a decent cup of tea!

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec
Stoo

Excellent! Thanks!

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91

Also known as Yin Zhen, this tea smells of wet, sweet hay with a glaze of sugar, sweet like cotton candy. Light floral high notes of honeysuckle and jasmine add quite the finish. Though it sometimes begins tasting only of water, it quickly blooms in the mouth to show a light sugar sweetness, dulled with gentle vegetal flavors of steamed bok choy (mmm).

Yin Zhen is widely considered the best white tea in the world. Although it is expensive, it merits its price. It comes from a beautiful corner of the Fujian province whose hills and valleys are carpeted with gorgeous tea gardens. The best Yin hen comes form the coastal counties of Fuding and neighborng Zheng He, whose mountains are steep but not high. Yin Zhen’s silver tips grow on the Da Bai (big white) tea tree, whose name aptly describes the plant’s large buds. The Da Bai plant forms fat buds, thickly coated with down. The plants need time to create these big buds, so the Yin Zhen harvest starts later than in adjacent green tea areas.

The buds are painstakingly picked by hand. In the spring, int he mornings after the dew has dried, the hills can be seen dotted with harvesters. Typical of the variation within many Chinese teas, every Yin Zhen maker makes this tea a little differently. Some tea makers dry the buds on tarps in the sun, others dry them on wooden slats in the shade, and still others lay them out on racks in temperature controlled rooms. A few Yin Zhen makers lightly fire the teas after drying them, giving their teas the faint “heat” flavors of lightly toasted white bread.

Yin Zhen is just as charming for the way it brews. It’s worth steeping this tea in a glass vessel to watch the steeping process. Instead of pouring the water of the buds, scatter the buds over the surface of the water. Sometimes the buds will fall right to the bottom, but in the best of times they will float a few moments on the surface, then tip their noses to hang vertically in the water. There they will sway gently before falling to the bottom of the glass. As they unleashed a pale green liquor, the buds themselves will slowly tunr a dark sage green.

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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96

Also known as Bai Hao, steeping this delightful tea releases a wonderfully sparkly aroma with notes of tropical fruits like guava and stone fruits like peaches and apricots. Its medium bodied, copper colored liquor has exuberant flavors of orange flower water, spring honey, fresh white peaches and a buttery toast finish.

Bai Hao is extraordinary not only for its flavors, but for the way its made. Most teas rely on human manipulations to develop their flavors. These manipulations imitate the actions of tiny herbivores called green leaf hoppers (Jacobiasca formosana), which would ordinarily feast on the leaves. In nature, the bites of tea leaf hoppers trigger the plant’s defenses, provoking their flavors. Bai Hao is one of only a very few teas whose flavors are still provoked by the bugs themselves. Unlike other Oolongs which are harvest in April and May, Bai Hao is harvested in June, after the leaf hoppers have emerged from winter dormancy. The leaf hoppers feast on the tea’s sweet young leaves, puncturing them slightly. Their munching breaks down the plants’ cells in the same way rolling does, releasing various bug-repelling, flavor-filled compounds. After a weak of this, the faintly perforated, fragile leaf sets are nimbly harvested, with special care to keep them intact. The withered leaves – by now bug free ;-) – are gently rolled into loose, small spheres, then oxidized for a relatively long time, before being light fire to preserve the flavors.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 15 sec
Jillian

Cool, so do the leaf-hoppers damage the plants at all?

Harney & Sons The Store

They do, but in a good way!

Jillian

I meant do they weaken/kill the tea plant?

Harney & Sons The Store

Nope, the plant releases the bug repellent, keeping them away. :)

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85

Even with the Mother Nature’s inconsistencies, this is always a special tea. Cocoa, creamy and buttery caramel, papaya, mango, yes you may taste all of these qualities and yes you will be happy.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec

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92

When you take in the aroma of this delightful tea, you are met with the gentlest notes of oranges and cloves; this citrus-spice combination gives the tea its subtly sweet aroma. The light bodied tea’s pale yellow liquor has a beautiful medley of flavors, with hints of oranges, cloves, green and honeycrisp apples, and finally, a finishing note of jasmine.
This Sri Lankan tea is one of the few exquisite white teas available outside of China. Contrasted with the vegetal undertones of the Chinese white teas, the Ceylon Silver Tips boasts sweet flavors of nearly all fruit and flowers.
This tea has made a relatively recent appearance, only within the last few decades. The gardens where Ceylons are grown are much smaller than the larger tea operations in the Fujian Province, and only some of the plants yield the necessary large tip. Thus, the tea is produced in very small quantities and buying more than a dozen boxes is extremely difficult. The delicious blend of the citrus, fruit and spice flavors are great motivation for the sometimes arduous task of acquiring this magnificent tea.

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Ricky

Oh Harney, before I know it I’ll be placing another order at this rate. Stop with the tasting notes! =P

LENA

…and with that review, I add this to my shopping cart. Mmm!

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96

New Vithanakande is a staff favorite ceylon. It smells of honey, unsweetened chocolate and lofty apricot notes. When steeped, the cup becomes a bit more intense rather than sweet with a lemony astringency backing the raw cocoa notes.

Sri Lanka’s low-grown teas are generally poor; the region lies only three hundred feet above sea level, and in the tropical heat and humidity, the teas become dark and unremarkable. Most are sold for negligible amounts as bulk teas. To make any money, the low-altitude Ratnapura district tea gardens had to innovate. Some entrepreneurs figured out a way to keep the tips white, and now the district is famous for its silver tippy teas. New Vithanakande is the best of the bunch, with small leaves like most Broken Orange Pekoe teas, yet flowery with the most unlikely of black tea components; silver tips. Ordinarily, tea tips turn golden yellow during black tea production. New Vithanakande preserves the tips’ silver hue.

The tea makers begin by withering the leaves very briefly, then rolling them for just fifteen minute, using hardly any pressure on the leaves. Instead of rolling them on a table between pressurized disks, they pour the leaves into a vertical cylinder with a sieve at the base. As the cylinder slowly spins, the leaves rub up against and lightly macerate one another. Kept whole and undamaged, the tips don’t oxidize while the rest of the leaves do. Thus the tips stay a shiny silver.

As the leaves jostle about, the finest, smallest and most delicate ones fall through the sieve. The rest of the leaves – about 99.5% – are transferred to a rolling machine to become ordinary bulk low-grown tea. The smallest and most delicate leaves are left to oxidize for about two hours, much more than most Ceylon teas. They are also blasted with moist air of the sort that jets from a humidifier. This moist air may provoke the leaves to form their characteristic cocoa and chocolate flavors. Like Keemuns, the New Vithanakande teas are fired at a hotter temperature than other Ceylon teas, which likely creates a Maillird reaction to reinforce the cocoa flavors.

After firing, the tea makers spread out the leaves on a fine-mesh strainer and sort through them by hand! Every other BLT (British Legacy Tea) is processed entirely by machine but the makers of New Vithanakande sift the leaves, gently working the smallest particles through the strainer. The silver tips are larger and remain with the tea; the smaller golden tips fall through to the floor. The result is a delicious, surprisingly engaging low-grown tea, as beautiful to look at as it is to drink.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec
JacquelineM

Interesting to hear that this one still gets hand processing. I must try it!

Heyes

Thank you for this deeply informative and very enjoyable review!

LENA

Oh man, the more reviews I read, the longer my shopping list gets.
I love all of the H&S reviews. I’m very happy to have you on Steepster.

Dan

I have to agree, please keep all of the information coming.

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87

This Yunnan of ours evokes an earthiness characteristic of most Yunnan teas, with some sweetness, edging toward maple syrup. The Dark caramel looking liquor carries through in flavors matching with the aromas.

One could say that if Keemuns are the aristocrats of Chinese black teas, Yunnan teas are the poor, but happy cousins. Earthy, almost gutty and assertive, the teas also have a sociable maple sweetness to give them accessible charm. This sugared note makes for an instructive contrast to the sophisticated, subdued chocolate flavors of Keemuns. The maple and chocolate notes are both products of the Maillard reaction that occurs during firing, when amino acids and glucosides in the leaves combine to form compound called “pyrroles” and “pyrazines”, chemicals that have sweet roasted flavors.

Yunnan black teas come from a remote region of China on the border of Laos and Burma, where tea is argued to have originated. Most teas from this region are aged to make Pu-Erhs. Pu-Erhs have become so popular, it’s geting harder to find unaged, ordinary Yunnan black tea, but it is definitely worth the search!

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 4 min, 0 sec

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75

A blend of three Chinese black teas: Keemun, Yunnan, and Panyang Congou. A great afternoon blend.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec
Harney & Sons The Store

This blend is actually on display at the Chinese National Tea Museum in Hangzhou!

Tamara Fox

I love your Queen Catherine tea :) One of my favorite black teas.

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The tasting room and retail staff of Harney & Sons love sharing their thoughts about tea. Join us at the shop sometime for a cup, or post a comment!

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Millerton, NY

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