So I’ll preface this by saying a few things…
1) I was at work when I first tried this and,
2) I’m not terribly good at describing the subtle tastes of things like wine or coffee or tea and,
3) I’ve been more a Japanese green tea drinker in the last few years than a Chinese one.
With that said, I did delve into this green tea, one of three that Angel from Teavivre sent. I picked this one because of the reference to chestnut flavours…though I’m fairly uncertain what chestnut actually tastes like.
The dry leaf is dark green in colour, and sort of thin spindly leaves. The smell is clean and earthy and a little roasty toasty. Brewed, they expand and turn into a mossy green colour. The liquor was pretty pale and yellow, and still smelled much like the dry leaf. The taste was crisp and clean, and reminded me a bit of a green oolong. There was a little roasty toasty flavours though. There was a barely noticeable astringency, but I wouldn’t say bitter by any means. I think that the main flavours I picked up were vegetal, and reading about asparagus as a flavours, as odd as it is, I think I can make that out, but I’d never know it unless I read others saying that.
My preparation was electric kettle boiled water, left to rest about 3-5 minutes before adding thee strainer with he tea leaves, of which I used about two bamboo spoons wort. The tea is so lightweight and thin that it was a little difficult to get a good measure. Steeped about 2 minutes in between running back and forth from customers.
Overall, I like it and will be interested to see how it compares to the other greens and oolongs I got from Teavivre. I’ll be interested to see if I can discern any subtleties in them.
