One of my favourite things about my Dad is how supportive he’s been about my getting heavily interested in tea. More so than any other family member.
When my interest went from more casual to quite serious he was certainly surprised but also very on board. He’s the one who suggested seeing if my education fund (which had just been sitting unused) would apply towards Sommelier classes, and when it comes to my birthday and major gift giving holidays he’s really enabled me to taste teas I wouldn’t normally be able to afford/and get better, more expensive/traditional teaware because he’ll ask what I need to upgrade or what I’m missing and will then not only buy me that specifically but let me pick it out as well. That’s how I first got into yellow teas, and how I got my fancy chawan!
All this is basically to say that the other night he actually suggested my coming over to his house for supper and bringing over some nicer teaware and a fancier tea and actually showing him how to brew Gong Fu and doing a nice, longer sit down tasting with him! Since I’ve been meaning to dig into this sample for a while, and I thought he might like the described flavour profile I brought this along and we brewed out half of the sample (5g) until the leaf was spent. Probably around nine or ten infusions? Not counting the first one which we fed to Zak, though.
This was a very smooth, light bodied black tea with no astringency or bitterness. I almost feel, looking back, like I was perhaps even a little too conservative with the steep time I allowed each infusion to have? I think I could have likely pushed out/drawn out more flavour if I’d even tacked on an extra 5-10 seconds with each infusion. The liquor was a really lovely gold colour as well; I wish I’d brought along my glass gaiwan but instead we used one of my tea celadon ones. We still got to enjoy the appearance of the liquor in the cups, but watching this leaf brew would have been even more gorgeous.
As for the taste; I found it fairly simple and straight forward. Sometimes I love really overly complex and nuanced teas but something like this which wasn’t “plain” but more easy to decipher is appreciated just as much! I was definitely expecting honeydew as that’s the flavour that What-Cha kind of drove home would be apparent, but this definitely didn’t taste like any sort of melon to me. However, it was very fruity in a light, refreshing way. Kind of a “summer fruit” type flavour? Nothing very prominent though: certainly not a tropical fruity note or anything stonefruit like. Some sort of light red berry maybe? It’s so hard to pinpoint and I don’t feel like you need to in order to enjoy the tea itself. This is also very floral and malty, which makes sense as those are flavours typical of the Ceylon growing region in Sri Lanka.
A very lovely tea overall.
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Mmm… this was on my last imaginary order with What-Cha that I talked myself out of. I’ll go through with one eventually and reviews like this just edge that day closer. :)
Imaginary order. I thought I was the only one who does that.
Delighted that your father supports you in this and wants to share tea moments with you. This made me happy.
Mmm… this was on my last imaginary order with What-Cha that I talked myself out of. I’ll go through with one eventually and reviews like this just edge that day closer. :)
Imaginary order. I thought I was the only one who does that.
Delighted that your father supports you in this and wants to share tea moments with you. This made me happy.