2003 Reserve Four Season Oolong

ETA: since I wrote this review a few months ago, I have almost gone through the 2oz I bought…Today, I lost count of all the gongfu infusions I made. I’M IN LOVE WITH THIS OOLONG!!
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Major backlog:

Last Thanksgiving, I won Stacy’s contest for a Gaiwan of my choice. I was super excited and chose one especially for oolongs cause it’s 8oz and it leaves plenty of room the leaves to expend. She knows how happy I was, thanks to her, I am no longer part of those whiny people who “never win anything”! I also bought from her a clear glass cup and saucer that I enjoy using almost everyday, here’s a few pics of both:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laafeevertee/8544559687/lightbox/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laafeevertee/8545714720/lightbox/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laafeevertee/8544559785/lightbox/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laafeevertee/8544559745/lightbox/

Thanks again Stacy, love the Gaiwan, excellent quality and so pretty!

Now the tea. First aged oolong for me. Tommy the Toad’s raving reviews made it impossible for me not to buy it. Thanks Tommy, this is now one of my favorite tea and has helped me relax and focus lately.

Smoky ink black lustrous nuggets, they look like magic pebbles!

The rinse is super caramel and honey sweet with a faint mineral taste. ( yeah, I can help tasting my rinse, sometimes it turns out yummy like this one and it would be such a waste to just throw it!)

1rst steep: OMG! What? Really? Ahhh. I need more, this is so potent!

Fruity, slightly smoky, strong burnt caramel. I also get buttery macadamia nuts, I get coffee, there’s so much going on, wow!

There’s also a very interesting texture to it, it feels like a silk ribbon in my mouth.

The smell of the wet leaf is very pungent, an acre smokiness that doesn’t reflect in the taste being so smooth.

The 2nd steep is still honey like, but loosing a bit of its sweet intensity, leaving room for those burnt roasted notes that are trying to emerge more strongly.

What is that “je ne sais quoi” everyone is trying to describe? It reminds me of that honeycomb crunchy toffee my mom used to make out of corn syrup and baking soda. It had a strong taste of sweet burnt caramel and a mineral aftertaste that came from the baking soda, put in there for one reason: create a chemical reaction that made the preparation look like a volcano in eruption! A pan full of lava, how cool was that?

Funny, cause in my adult life, I’m not a huge fan of sugar and desserts, but I have so many vivid childhood memories related to them! Maybe some shrink could explain that?

3 tsp Gungfu style will render about 10 steeps, all better than one another. Just like Tommy says, this tea is “Liquid Love” and is good which ever way you decide to brew it!

Because it is equally as good as it makes me feel, it well deserves a 100 rating!
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Story:

When I was 7, a bad thing happened to me: I had a close encounter with child abduction. What saved me was that little voice we all have inside. Some choose to ignore it, I listen to it. It was a close call, but I acted on it at the right moment. I’m probably more in touch with it than most people are. It’s called intuition. Women in my family have lots of it.

It was also at the age of 7 that my Grandma introduced me to loose leaf tea.

When things get tough in my life, tea and music are my drugs of choice.

Elliott smith, a favorite artist of mine, wrote these lyrics:

«I’ll fake it through the day,
With some help from Johnny Walker red,
Send the poison rain down the drain,
To put bad thoughts in my head»

If I was a hard liquor drinker…but I’m not, so my take on this song is:

«I’ll fake it through the day
With some help from Four Season Oolong…»

Yep, this tea is really helps…

(If you don’t already know him and you’re interested, here’s a link to the beautiful poetry of Elliott Smith:)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH8-lQ9CeyI

Happy anniversary to me! I’ve been on Steepster one month now. I know, I know…it feels like ages since you’ve first started seeing my posts make my way onto your computer screen…kinda like when I’m talking to my wife about one of my many aches and pains and she says “you’ve been complaining about that for ages” or “it’s been ages since you’ve done something romantic for me”. Hopefully not too many of you associate me with a negative overtone but either way I’ll keep writing until I hear otherwise.

Again I had an errant expectation about today’s tea. I hadn’t read the maker’s description and was unaware that this was a greener oolong. I’m still in an inexperienced state so I’m not sure if the spring picking is why it is that way, but can only assume it to be. The liquor was somewhat a darker brown. Dry leaf was floral and once infuzed it took on a wood/dry grass aroma.

First sip I found to be pretty grassy with a bit of nutty notes and it left a faint sweetness I noticed when I licked my lips. A few drinks later and the nutty had transformed into a wood/acorn note while the grassy notes had increased. More and more I’m seeing the greener tastes phasing out of my personal selections, though this being an oolong and not a straight green tea has made it much more tolerable. I can definitely say that there is little to no astringency.

All in all it’s a fine cup that I could keep on drinking but won’t steep past the second steeping because I have darker oolongs to drink instead. I’ve read online a little about oolongs trying to decipher the greener from darker ones but haven’t seen a formula yet.

Wife was going through her old college CD’s, so the selection of music hinged on that.
tunes-Dave Mathew’s Band=Captain/Grey Street/Two Step/The Stone/ Granny/Minarets

mmmmm now this? this is an oolong i can get behind. This is dark and beautiful and there’s a woody, almost smokey but not quite flavour going on here. Yep, this is not your every day oolong, this is one for me! :)

I’ve been drinking almost exclusively green and herbal teas for the last three weeks due to cold turned flu turned cold and lingering crud. No fancy oolongs or pu-erh for me until today. This is nice, smokey, roasty, sweet with a parchment-like quality. I did three short infusions, mostly offered at our kitchen shrine, but I got a few sips of each.

I’m a little shaken at the moment, my dad is going to be having quadruple bypass surgery sometime this week, they just did the analysis this morning, he did not have any sort of cardiac episode, just some tightness in the chest which led him to take a stress test and another test which showed some blockage, turns out its 80% in two areas. So he’s fine and in good spirits and hopefully it will all go smoothly, though he will have to rest for 4-6 weeks and not travel for his work. I’ve had two uncles who have had stints put in, my dad’s brother has had more than one heart attack, their father survived several though he had some very debilitating strokes, but I’m trying not to think about that as a possibility.

Any positive thoughts or prayers for our family would be appreciated, though no worrying please. Hope you and yours are all well.

I’ve had this one for a little while now ran out of it bought more and now that’s going to be a repeated cycle over and over with a bigger amount each time most likely, it’s taking me long this long to post about it really because I don’t know what to say about it really but I may have mentioned it in another post at some time I don’t remember honestly, you know how some oolongs (like a four seasons to me) can have that buttery yummy creamy mouthfeel and goodness that’s how this tea is to me so buttery smooth and delicious That much I can tell you and then you just really just got to get ya some and try it for yourself because I just can’t find the words to describe the flavor profile of this tea or the wonderful way that it smells or what the leaves taste and feel like when you put one in your mouth or the way it makes me feel, I just can’t find the right words. My cousin Kermit said this tea is like “Liquid Love” and I couldn’t agree more and I know that Kermit the Frog is not a Liar , So there you have it “Liquid Love” in a cup, please Love yourself and go buy you some of this tea. Oh yeah I have to mention also this tea has been fighting with DMS Shi Er Black Pearls tea over who is going to be my current fav now Pearl is out for the time being so she can’t defend herself but She Is on her way here right now and when She returns the fight starts back and I have to keep them separated far from each other on the shelves or else I may come in one day and find one of them spilled out all over the floor lol.

Thanks Stacy for this tea sample

I’ve come to the realization that I am a person who loves the flavors associated with Autumn.
I love to oven roast Apples and Root Vegetables.
Caramelized Brussel Sprouts in garlic butter, tossed in seasoned bread crumbs.
Short ribs slow cooked in wheat beer (New Belgium) with caramelized onions, beef broth and buckwheat honey.
RIBS! My family has RIBS for our Christmas Feast!

Somewhere mixed up in all these thoughts of favorite foods and feasting I can see a preference for roasty flavors.

I evidently associate flavor and family. Well being with a log on the hearth, a cup of a warm beverage, and lots of cooking going on in the kitchen.
And noise. Lots of talking and noise. Scrabble games, Boggle and Football.

At this time a year ago, I was still mug deep in coffee living my one dimensional life. Every 4 months a box of coffee came from my coffee club in New Orleans and I was thrilled. I had 3 kinds of coffee. WOW! (This makes me laugh!)
I used to think of tea as a flowery drink, a sweet thing in a flowery cup. I had no idea how varied and complex tea was.

Now I know better and I’m learning that Oolongs are much more complex and varied than I assumed at first.

Lately I’ve discovered Roasty Oolongs like this one that I’ve been drinking today. Not just a little roasty either, but VERY ROASTY!

When I saw the dark color of the leaves, I knew I was in for a treat.
I had tasted another Oolong recently called Strong Fire that had a cinder taste and I liked it. I was hoping for a similar experience.

The liquor brewed to a clear Rootbeer color and had an amber honey scent.
The flavor was sweet and woody. It was clear that the leaves had been roasted many times because you could taste the roasting and a cinder flavor that was like ancient trees.
I imagined myself in a log cabin around a very small stove after a storm sipping on this tea. The scent of oak and cedar wood from the woodbox and me shuddering off the dampness. A pan of onions, potatoes and bacon sizzling on the stove.

The sweetness of this tea was extraordinary. There’s woody sweetness that you might get from chewing on sugar cane.
The sooty fire roasted flavor is what I loved the best.

So wild.

Thinking back, I remember melting some butter in a little of the previous Fire Oolong, making a sauce to drizzle over some yams.
Experimentation pays off. This Oolong would be good the same way.

If you like savory roasty flavors, this would be your kind of tea.
It’s not full of flowers or delicate nuance. This isn’t smoky either. Roasty.

Delicious!

So happy I grabbed some of this! I LOVE Dong Ding – one of my favorite Oolongs if not my #1 favorite!
This does not disappoint! My only regret is I didn’t get more!

I prepared this gongfu style. Two teaspoons of leaf in a four-ounce gaiwan, with boiling water. First steep twenty seconds, and subsequent steeps of fifteen seconds. One of the reasons I love preparing tea this way is that the aroma present in the wet leaf of a gaiwan is so much more concentrated and wonderful, and the aroma is a huge part of the experience of tea in my opinion. When a lot of leaf is steeped in a small brewing vessel, the aroma becomes a completely immersive experience.

The aromas personally I picked up in the steeped leaf were those of tree bark, caramelized sugar, light notes of dark chocolate and faint remnants of what once was a floral smelling tea before years of aging. Time has really turned this into an incredibly interesting and sensory tea.

The aromas matched the taste, except for the taste was more mellow and refined than the aroma. The flavors blended together completely in harmony. It was smooth and silky, musty yet refreshing. The flavor was heavy and deep, yet light and fresh.

Very interesting tea, I enjoyed it a lot.

Thanks to tunes&tea for sharing this special sample!

This is one crazy complex aged tea. There is certainly noticeable Dong Ding characteristics, however this one brings much more to the cup. The roasty notes are darker, even a touch of char-like quality – not burnt though. There is a mixture of barley and a pleasant hardwood bark flavor – a woodsy roasted tea, with a malty shu-like (puerh) character. There is no detectable astringency, all that is found is a full bodied brew with a silky smooth sip. It slightly sweet, then it not. Very strange – in a very good way. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

The midnight colored leaves remain their darkness, even after several infusions. I found this tea a little tricky to completely unfurl. It’s a very shy tea, that needs great patience and plenty of time to allow it to fully develop and it’s complete personality to unfold. After around 3 or 4 infusions, finally it decides to really come alive!

I personally would not recommend this tea if you are rushed and in a hurry. You simply would only see it as a good tea, and completely miss its greatness. Very nice aged oolong. Another fine job done by Stacy and the Butiki team!

In spite of the burned smell of the wet leaves, this oolong is surprisingly mild! The flavour is almost of a toasted nut, with a bit of a woody aftertaste. Not like too many oolongs I’ve tried, yet! I might try infusing this one a bit longer next time, just to see what happens (especially since it’s not at all astringent or bitter, and I had such great success with the Gui Fei Oolong!) Although this one’s pretty good, I think my heart remains with the Gui Fei Oolong for that incomparable sweetness!

Backlog from the beginning of last week! Whew am I behind. Luckily I found these notes! This was my first aged oolong – and it was a WIN!

I put this one in my gaiwan and shared with my Dad, my twin sister (who was home last week) and my little sister. We had a nice, relaxing ceremony. It was a lot of fun.

Wash – I did about a 10sec wash on this one, and of course I tasted it. It was buttery and slightly roasty. I poured the rest of the wash into the cups to warm them, then onto my tea pet.

Now for the real deal!

15 sec 1st Steep – The smell of this cup kind of reminds me of hazelnut coffee…interesting. It’s roasty and sweet. Taste wise, the cup is nice and creamy/smooth, roasty, with a slight green bean flavor. Interesting.

25 sec 2nd Steep – This brew smelled like straight up roasted coffee beans to me and my twin. My little sister thought it still smelled like hazelnut, and my dad thought it smelled “nutty” in general. Taste wise we all picked up the green bean taste again, though it was a bit morphed this time around in that it also resembled snap peas. The roasty flavor was still present, and there was a nutty flavor this time around, too. The creaminess I got in the first steep was very subtle in this one, but the brew itself was still very smooth.

35 sec 3rd Steep – This one tasted more like straight up snap pea. The roasty/nutty flavor is still present, but not as strong. This one also sees a reemergence of the thick cream taste/mouthfeel, and has some nice buttery notes at the end of the sip. Yum! This one is my favorite steep so far.

50 sec 4th Steep – This one has a nice, strong cream/butter scent mixed in with the vegetal and roasted aspects. Cool. This translates in the taste as well – very creamy/buttery taste with roasted green bean notes. Very smooth and velvety. There is also a nutty and slightly coffee-like taste at the end of the sip. Yummy.

1 min 5th Steep – Butter and green beans in both taste and smell. What all four of us got was the taste of buttered roasted green beans… seriously. I didn’t even know a tea could naturally taste so much like food. Everyone enjoyed this smooth, creamy steep, but I still think the 3rd steep was my favorite.

We stopped there, but I suspect I could’ve gotten a few more steeps from this one. It was sure an interesting tea. I’m glad I have more to mess around with and enjoy. I can’t wait to compare this one to the 1991 Aged Oolong from Butiki.

Sipdown #3 (of the day) from Azzrian’s box of goodies. Thanks Lady!
For some reason that I cannot fathom, I was avoiding this one. I honestly don’t know why. In the world of Oolongs, I tend to enjoy the roasted ones the most, & this is really quite nice! It has a boldness that I enjoy, & the flavor is a mix of roasted carrots, sweet potato, greenbeans, & acorns. It’s been a long time since I tasted acorns! I grew up in San Diego, & in 6th grade we went to camp palomar for a week. We did all kinds of things there, including making acorn cakes, which required us to collect acorns, find a good smooth rock, pound them into flour in the indentations on the rocks made by native americans pounding acorns over time, rinse the flour repeatedly to remove the tannins, make a batter & shape the acorns into patties, & fry them. They were terrible, LOL. I was the only one who liked them. The flavor was unique, although they were still rather bitter. I guess we didn’t rinse the flour enough!

This is an interesting tea, mildly sweet, unique, & I like the flavors.

Wow, this tea was a very interesting experience for me. I never had an oolong like this. I’m going to have to experiment with more different kinds of oolong in order to figure out what’s what.

The dry leaf smelled like chocolate to me, and the tea tasted like coffee. I mean, really like coffee! At least to me. Sometimes I wonder if I have a VERY unsophisticated palate because I am in awe of other people’s tasting notes. Honestly, I was so overwhelmed by the coffee taste that I didn’t really notice anything else about it!

I’m glad I have more of this so I can keep trying it to see if it grows on me. I wonder if it’s the aging or the roasting or what that makes it taste so coffee-ish. Like I said, when I get more experience with oolongs, I guess I’ll know!

No rating because I really don’t know what to think!

I had been searching for a good aged Oolong and I’m glad I found this excellent tea. Like a great roasted fruit compote, this tea has a great depth of peach and plum flavors. The roasting burnishes the sweetness with a nice bit of autmunal smoke, perfect for this crisp fall day. By the way, Stacy is a pleasure to do business with and added some great samples to my order, including a rarefied Keemun that wasn’t even on the web site yet. I’m giving the other teas I ordered from her a few tries before reviewing them, but they are all quality teas.

I’ve never tried an aged oolong before. When I first opened the bag I was surprised at how dark the leaves are. They’re almost black. It had an unidentifiable smell. It didn’t smell particularly good or bad. I’m very sorry to say that I didnt enjoy this tea. I just didn’t care for the taste. I mean no disrespect to Butiki Teas. Maybe I don’t like aged oolongs? I think I’ll see if somebody that would appreciate this tea would be interested in a swap.