Shan First Flush Green Tea

Tea type
Green Tea
Ingredients
Green Tea Leaves
Flavors
Bitter, Drying, Grass, Sour, Earth, Green Beans, Nutty, Pepper, Mushrooms, Kale, Seaweed, Cloves, Lemon Zest
Sold in
Bulk, Loose Leaf, Sachet, Tea Bag
Caffeine
Low
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Sonofabrat
Average preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 2 min, 15 sec 2 g 10 oz / 288 ml

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25 Tasting Notes View all

  • “This is a really lovely cup of tea. While most green teas tend to have a “buttery” sort of flavor to accent the “veggie” taste, I find that the vegetative notes here are less “buttery” and taste...” Read full tasting note
    90
  • “Vegetal greens aren’t really my thing, but I really enjoyed the citrus notes in this. The whole flavour profile reminds me of eating lobster (or insert your preferred seafood), with a good...” Read full tasting note
  • “Thank you Shan Valley for supplying these at such a reasonable price. This a mild, thoughtful kind of tea. It is slightly vegetal with just a hint of citrus. For me, it’s the kind of tea I want to...” Read full tasting note
    80
  • “Similarly to the Valley Green, this tea was mellow and vegetal with a mild fruitiness. The smokiness that I had detected in the Valley Green was just barely present here. No sweeteners are...” Read full tasting note
    90

From Shan Valley

This tea is considered to be the freshest and most sought after tea. Shan First Flush Reserve tea is the first harvest in the year and only occurs once a year, usually in early April. Shan First Flush is subtle yet has a rich and distinct taste. Because it comes in limited quantities, it is considered a reserve tea.
www.shanvalley.com

About Shan Valley View company

Company description not available.

25 Tasting Notes

661 tasting notes

GCTTB

This certainly is an unusual green tea! If someone had made this tea for me without me seeing the package, I would say it was a sheng. Even the dry leaves look like sheng. Very dark and grey.

Brewed up it’s a bit smokey & earthy. There’s a bit of nutty in the notes along with black pepper that hits the tongue on the finish.

There’s only one tsp left of this so I’m putting it back in the box to let someone else try it out. Definitely an unusual tea!

This tea is all sheng to me.

TheTeaFairy

Lol, it does sound like sheng!

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50
306 tasting notes

This green tea struck me as interesting because if it hadn’t been labeled I probably would not have known it was a green tea just by looking at it. It looks more like a raw loose Puer or some other dark tea. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it tastes more like a raw Puer than a green tea. It’s rather on the dark and earthy side for a green tea. The notes are very nutty, with green bean and a bit of black pepper. This doesn’t have the brighter vegetal notes of most green teas and I was almost expecting a roasted flavor to accompany it, but it didn’t exactly. This tea is not suited to my tastes in green tea. I am sure others will find it more interesting.

Flavors: Earth, Green Beans, Nutty, Pepper

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 0 min, 45 sec 2 g 3 OZ / 100 ML

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85
45 tasting notes

Very smooth, light green tea. Really enjoying this :)

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70
630 tasting notes

A very unique and pleasant green – it has smokey notes, and ocean-y flavors, and citrus. I love how it isn’t astringent at all, because it helps these strong flavors from being overwhelming. I am not the biggest smokey tea fan, but I did enjoy this.

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 3 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML

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50
172 tasting notes

Really did not get anything from this. it did not really have any flavor. I tried to make it a few different ways.

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84
1737 tasting notes

The folks at Shan Valley graced me with an incredibly magnanimous sample package, including a large envelope of this tea, Shan Valley First Flush Green, which has a very intriguing dried leaf form. The leaves are large and dark and hardened almost to the point of looking petrified. The scent of the dried leaves is quite assertive and almost spinachy—but more smoky than sencha—so I had no idea what to expect! In fact, I’d say that the scent of the dried tea is like a cross between sencha and Lapsang Souchong, believe it or not!

In fact, the taste reminds me a bit of the Teavivre Mao Feng (though I actually prefer this Shan Valley First Flush Green). There is definitely a darker cooked vegetable taste in the background but with some real complexity and depth and a lighter side as well. The liquor is yellowish brown—not green—and perhaps that should be expected from the dark color of the leaves. In fact, the leaves are so dark that without reading the label, I’d have guessed it was black! Only upon infusion of this tea does it become obvious that this is not a black but a green variety. I kept the steep time short and used cooler water to ensure the best possible result.

This is a solid offering from Shan Valley, and I’m looking forward to the second infusion later today, in addition to trying the other intriguing teas from this producer.

Many thanks for your generosity!!!!!

second infusion: this round was better than the first. It’s more smoky, but with lots of undulating waves of clarity and smoothness. This might be a good green tea choice for Lapsang aficionados…

third infusion: quite decent

Preparation
170 °F / 76 °C 2 min, 45 sec 2 tsp 10 OZ / 295 ML

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78
921 tasting notes

I inherited a very interesting trait from the women in my family, the desire to redecorate and reorganize our living space every few weeks. I placed my new shelves in their home and moved the items that were going on said shelves onto said shelves, and then promptly decided that my entire Tea Lair and most of my bedroom need reorganizing. Maybe that is the real reason I love Minecraft so much, I can reshape my surroundings as often as I want without having to do all the work.

Time for a break from reorganzing for a bit of tea and writing! Today’s tea is the last of the samples from Shan Valley, Shan First Flush Green Tea, this tea is from the first harvest (usually in April, according to the description) and is considered a reserve tea, fancy. The aroma is very fresh and very vegetal, mixing the notes of vegetation, fresh lettuce, spinach, and a bit of kelp. It reminds me of a salad, specifically a salad being eaten al fresco in a lush garden. These leaves smell like nature and food.

The steeped leaves retain their vegetal tones but also gain a sharpness that reminds me of fresh kale, there is a spritz of citrus and slight hint of kelp. The more I sniff the wet leaves the more I am picking out, a bit of lettuce and a hint of smokiness, and a finish of teaberry. The teaberry finish gave me a surprise, I have not smelled that plant (and by extension ice cream flavor) in years, so serious points on the nostalgia chart. The liquid without the leaves is a blend of lettuce and kelp with a finish of copper.

The taste is sharp and vegetal, mixing the taste of lettuce and kelp with a bit of bitter green, like kale. There is a bit of a citrus taste as well and an aftertaste of smokiness. Out of curiosity I decided to brew some in my gaiwan, uncovered for one minute, just to see how much of a difference there is. The taste of the gaiwan brewed leaves is very similar, less of the kale taste and more kelp, there is a finish of smokiness and it leaves a slightly sage like herbal taste in the mouth. This is a tea for someone who loves the strong vegetal greens with a hint of ocean flavors, I like this one. I was not wowed or blown away by it, but I did certainly enjoy it.

For photos and blog: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/03/shan-valley-shan-first-flush-green-tea.html

Flavors: Kale, Seaweed

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 2 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML

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90
1271 tasting notes

A very nice, affordable first flush green! Hands down favorite out of the Shan Valley tea lineup! I found Shan First Flush to also have a unique earthy, forest floor, vegetal without being grassy flavor, with a good lingering aftertaste of nuts, floral and fruit. There is a light hint of astringency, just to keep the aftertaste going. Actually, I found this tea to be similar to a mid to late steeping of a green raw pu’er.

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/shan-first-flush-green-tea-shan-valley-oolong-owl-tea-review/

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 3 min, 30 sec 2 g 6 OZ / 177 ML

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78
592 tasting notes

I’ve been finding a trend with Shan Valley’s green teas. They have been nice, but not great. This green tea was not bitter, which was very nice. However, the flavor was pretty weak and unmemorable. I’m finding it hard to describe this further because it was just a standard cup of weak-ish green tea. Perhaps next time I will add more leaf and see what happens.

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80
29 tasting notes

This tea is very similar to the Valley Green which Shan Valley also offers. This tea keeps the hay like quality of its sibling, but ditches the fruity taste it had. This flavour is much more vegetal, similar to the taste you would get from zucchini, with the spicy afternotes you might expect from a phoenix dancong. As mentioned in my review of Valley Green, this tea is reminiscent of a young sheng, and I feel should be judged similarly to one.

Be careful when steeping this tea because it is prone to going bitter if oversteeped. 15 seconds seems good, 30 seconds is too much for this tea.

Overall, I found this tea more enjoyable than the Valley Green, whether it be it has a slightly less hay like taste, or that I am more so thinking of this tea as a puer.

Flavors: Cloves

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 0 min, 15 sec 2 tsp 3 OZ / 100 ML

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