Alishan High Mountain Oolong

I realized last night that it’s been forever since I last had a gong fu oolong session. I love my green oolongs and they have been sadly neglected while I dallied about with dazzling new flavors and alluring Japanese greens. I’m sorry oolong. You deserve better. This Sunday morning is all yours.

I snipped open my sample pack of Alishan from Canton Tea and was greeted with the most seductive aroma. Honey and green and flowers. Oh yum.

First steep: This was pretty light, as is normal. The color was a lovely bright yellow and the taste was sweet and vegetal. The honey note is making a shy appearance here. Not too floral.

Steep two: This steep! Mmmm… The leaves are smelling like cooked bok choy and the tea so honey sweet and brothy. It’s lightly vegetal but mostly floral honey. The after taste reminds me of a juicy ripe plum. Did I really abandon my green oolongs for the savory oceanic flavors of Japanese greens? I guess they both have their merits… but nothing beats the complexity of a good oolong.

Steep three: Oh my! How that small handful of leaves has grown! I’m surprised every time. The smell is so intoxicating. Forget those fancy designer perfumes. Just dab some of this on your wrists and you’re ready to go. This steeping is, at the same time, honey sweet yet fruity and crisp. This might be the honey-like green oolong I’ve ever had. I love how the vegetal flavors are staying the in background for now. By the third steep, many oolongs are mostly vegetal and only barely floral and fruity. So delicious.

Steep four: This steep is possibly my favorite thus far. It’s more balanced and the flavors are more subtle. It’s still floral and sweet. Less honey. vegetal only in the after taste. It’s got a very crisp finish, yet a lovely flavor lingers in your mouth. Like apple skin. Very fresh.

Last cup for now. I’m getting quite hungry, and I’ll be needing more than tea to sustain me, I think. What a shame. :) I am very pleased with this oolong though. It’s invigorating, yet also calming. Gong fu brewing and tasting often puts me in a meditative frame of mind.

This is really awesome! Has been on my list for a long time! I did both ICED and HOT.

HOT is crisp and clean and truly Ali Shan! Beautiful and happy…bright and sweet! Oddly…but fabulously-so CREAMY for an Oolong!!! It’s a gem of an Oolong and I just LOVE it!

COLD…it’s juicer, it seems! Still very creamy and quenches thirst! Excellent either way!!! REALLY LIKE THIS!!!!!

OH GOD!
This is AWESOME. I have to get more of this!!!

I remember smelling the leafs before steeping and going HMF. It smells so green and seaweedy – I was really not in the mood for green. But I went with it…
Threw a lot of leafs into the mug. Thought for a second that I may have overdone it, but Eh, didn’t have a lot of time. After steeping my mug was full of leafs. Literally – there was a jungle of tea in my mug. Pretty!

Was bracing myself for the seaweed when I took the first sip.
Imagine my face freeze for a second, my eyes go reaally big and looking dumbfounded to the mug. (Worth to notice : I never tried a alishan oolong) Had I forgotten to clean the mug before use? No, I just took it out. I am sure of it!

I.Love.this.
Yum… It so spicey. A warm spice… Kardemomme?
What’s that in english. sigh I love this.

My husband accused me of huffing this tea. I don’t know I’d go that far, but oh my goodness, the olfactory treat when I opened the package! This tea smells amazing. Hints of apricots smothered in cream in a sea of oolong-y goodness. I couldn’t wait to get it steeping.

The flavor of this tea is a little more delicate than the scent would suggest. It has a bright, clean taste. The product description said it would be floral – I didn’t getting flowers, but rather almost a spicy afterglow that lingered on my tongue, post swallow. It also has a very silky, smooth texture to the liquid, making it a joy to sip.

And this tea doesn’t disappoint in the visual aspect either. It’s a lovely pale light green. During my first steeping, it was a joy to watch the leaves dance around in the water, unfurling and transforming the water into something special.

Like almost all oolongs, this tea is good for multiple infusions. Perfect for sitting at your desk at work, or relaxing on a lazy afternoon. I also, in deference to the season, tried something which may horrify some purists – I tried this iced. It’s very cooling, and tasty but doesn’t take the ice as well as other oolongs. But all in all – this is a pretty darn good oolong.

Also reviewed at http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/649/tea-review-canton-tea-co-ali-shan-oolong-tea/

Ali Shan! My favorite Oolong!

I even purchased a Yixing mug from Jade Teapots (ebay seller 11sbaumann) JUST for my Ali Shan consumption! And I am christening my mug with THIS Ali Shan.

And THIS… IS… SO… GOOD! But then, I have yet to find an Ali Shan I did not like.

Now… I’m thinking… shall I get a NEW Yixing mug for Yellow Teas? Because… about the only tea that I like better than Ali Shan is Yellow Tea.

The labels on the foil packets are hand-written (weight and type of tea) on a Canton Tea Co. sticker, which is a really nice personal touch…but also a bit difficult to puzzle out when the handwriting gets difficult to read. My packet says something before Ali shan, and it looks a great deal like ‘Odony’. What is Odony? I thought to myself.

But it’s not ‘Odony’, it’s oolong.

The amount of time that it took me to figure that out (because it really does look like Odony, in my defense) might suggest that I’d be better-served drinking a black tea right now than an oolong, but whatever. ;)

I love this tea.

I should say —

I love this type of tea.

It’s creamy and cozy and slightly floral, sweet and always reminds me a very little bit of baked potato, for some reason. They mention ‘fruity’ in the description and I don’t get that, really, unless you count the sweetness as fruit. It’s a savory, comforting cup.

It also withstands a lot of abuse. Two heaping teaspoons of it (I like that people are calling them ‘nuggets’ — if I ever change my steepster name, it’ll probably be to TeaNuggets, because, lol) in my zorapot gave me three flavorful 16oz infusions, and they could probably go longer. Not only that, but my temperature was bouncing around — 190 for the first (for about two minutes, just long enough for the leaves to begin relaxing), 175 for the second and third (at just about a minute and a half for the second since the leaves were closer to open, and two and a half for the third).

Not exactly systematic, but my Zoji was switching temps and I was caught up in my writing. Sometimes just drinking the tea is enough. Will leave a rating off until I do things more properly though, I guess.

I received this in my first week of Canton Tea Club, but have not tried it before now. How bad am I? In my defence, I was not up to tea tasting that week or indeed for a week or so after due to colds and being run down. So, today I decided I needed to catch up a bit on my tasting notes and this appealed.

It smells really sweet when you pour the hot water on it and the first taste is all buttery sweetness with a strong floral element to it. I brewed it western style in my small glass teapot and the whole first steeping was like this. Then the butteriness settled down a bit in the second steeping but the sweetness remained. By the third steeping it has settled down to a mellow, sweetly floral drink with undertones of butteriness. It is very nice and I reckon I could probably drink rather a lot of this.

This offered some pleasant surprises.

The tea starts as very bright green “nuggets” with a literally sweet, mouthwatering fragrance of honeydew, cucumber and very subtle sweet hay.

After brewing, the leaves were completely unfurled and had expanded to fairly impressive proportions. (My gaiwan runneth over.) The tea was more golden than I’ve seen in other oolongs and was subtly floral and grassy in fragrance.

In taste, it was very light and I picked up buttered squash and a touch of vanilla. The first infusion had a slight tartness, but I think I went too long. Next time, I’d probably start with only a minute or so and work back up.

I liked this one. It had a lot to offer and was really enjoyable. I seem to be building quite an affinity for Taiwanese teas as I haven’t really found a bad one yet.

Creamy and substantial, pushing into a sweet milkiness spiked with a heavy “green” taste that anchors the liquor and keeps it from floating off into marshmallow land. The leaves unfurl wonderfully and appear thick and healthy. Good for quite a few infusions.

Very clean and rich, a good everyday “greener” style oolong that teeters on the sweet side.

This week’s Canton Tea Club offering had participants trying to decide a victor between Li Shan and Ali Shan oolongs. For an indecisive Libran like me, this was going to be difficult. Why? They look, smell, and (from what I recalled) tasted the same!

So, I subjected both to a Western-style pinting to determine a victor. Ali Shan won by a hair, thanks to appeasing my sweet-tooth. However, the best results came when I combined the two. I was downing the mixture by the pot as a wrote this: http://steepstories.com/2012/11/27/throwing-in-the-towel-after-a-tea-fight/

While listening to M.C. Hammer.

No, really.

Another of the Canton Tea Co sample packs to try out! Once I opened this up, I was immediately reminded of the Tie Guan Yin from Chicago Tea Garden – it has a similar look: glossy dark green chunklets, and scent: fresh and grassy. I’d say this particular tea has more in the way of vegetal in the scent however; it’s reminding me more of sencha in that way.

The first steep at one minute, 190 degrees: the leaves have started to expand, and I’m left with a clear, light golden liquor with just a hint of green in there. The aroma is very light, encompassing fresh mown grass and something just a little savory/buttery. The flavor is very nice; there’s some of the sweetness I associated with the Tie Guan Yin, though not to such an outstanding degree. There’s also a degree of rich mouth feel to it, which may be what others characterize as milkyness (that’s one descriptor I don’t think I would have come upon on my own).

2nd steep, 190 degrees and 1.5 minutes: The liquor comes out a little more greenish yellow this time, and the leaves have mostly all unfurled now. The aroma and flavor are more vegetal, but there is still some of the overall sweetness that I like so much. I’m also getting a little fruitiness in the background, which is quite yummy.

3rd steep, 190 degrees and 2 minutes: Still a strong golden/green color, but the flavor is markedly more subdued now. Still getting vegetal and small sweet tones. Pleasant enough, but it’s lost most of its shine by now.

Very light, clean and delicious. Starts out floral, but takes on a savory note in the finish. Intriguing.

When I opened the package on this tea, I noticed that the smell was wonderful. It was light and sweet in harmony with a flowery oolong smell.
The tightly rolled leaves ranged in colour from mid-green to dark greenish brown. I steeped two cups of this tea first, and as it steeped, this tea smelled just as sweet, if not sweeter, than when the leaves were yet dry. In my small teapot, they began to quickly open and expand. The aroma became a bit deeper as it steeped longer, and after a few minutes, I poured the first cup.
The liquor was a lot lighter green than most oolongs I have had recently, which surprised me. Also, there was something now unique about the aroma. It smelled a bit like green tea mochi ice cream to me. The taste of the first cup was full, not very heavy, and definitely still carried those sweet tones with it. There was a playful deliciousness to this tea that made it somehow fun to drink and very enjoyable.
The second pot was just as delicious as the first, and the flavours began to mellow out the longer I drank this tea.
I would rate this tea an 80/100 on my personal enjoyment scale.

This is awesome.
The smell of the leafs before steeping is amazing.
The second infusion is the one I like more; the most balanced one. I’ll review it.

The color is quite limpid with emerald green shades.
The smell is full of floral notes; but it is not aggressive.
It tastes gentle with floral and some spicy notes in the end.
The persistence is really long. This oolong will leave your mouth with a really soft aroma and you will not want to drink (or eat) anything for at least an hour.

In conclusion this is my favorite oolong; and one of the few that I would replace with water.

WTR score of 88. Lighter in aftertaste (sweetness). Norbu has generally performed better in consistently sourcing ali shans.

compare to other ali shans on Walker Tea Review: http://walkerteareview.com/http:/walkerteareview.com/tag/ali-shan

An oolong that makes for the nicest of green teas! vegetal – almost spinach – but also sweet and most refreshing… another winner from Canton Tea Co.

I bought an extra for work! Essential

How is the processing different for Alishan vs. a Chinese lightly oxidized oolong, like TGY?

One of my best ever teas, I order it directly from a guy in Taiwan on eBay. Bewwed just right it has a melon-ish taste and sweetness, very little earthyness.