the_skua

My original tasting of this tea was apparently good enough to convince me that I should buy a bing, especially since it was a very reasonable price. Revisiting the last of the sample, I now look at this tea with a bit more skeptical eye and treat it more like the factory material it is.

How did I miss the insane smokiness of this sample the last time around? The first rinse of this tea explodes campfire, smoked pine, and incense all over the place. Bacony. As the well-chopped leaves agonize, it’s apparent that this is an even blend of three kinds of leaves: ruddied stems and medium sized leaves, dark green larger leaves, and paler small buds. Mostly red stuff though, as this tea pours out a dark orange. Accordingly, there’s a flatness and lack of bitterness throughout this tea.

On the other hand, however, this tea is a wild mangy beast. At a distance, the wet leaves smell like the funkiest french cheese you can encounter (think Époisses). Closer up the pine smoke intensifies and the finally, in the mouth it really pulls through on the mushroom, sesame, and herbal qualities. I think this tea demands using a large quality of leaf. Finally, it has some headache inducing potency, unfortunately. It will be very interesting to see where this tea heads in the next 5-10 years and how I think differently of it then.

These leaves edged smaller, with more variety in color, but the same healthy sheen. Unlike the Manmai, the aroma wasn’t a bellowing tropical fruit, but instead a mellow, more typical dry sheng smell. Rinsing the leaves, classic woodsy characters emerged: damp moss, birch bark, and distant cedar shavings. The color of the soup was an opaline scallop-color, speckled with bud fur.

Despite the pale moon-colored soup, this tea had a great thick, gloopy texture early on. I found the overal flavor profile fleeting: light-colored uncooked mushrooms, maple wood, and cotton candy. In the gaiwan, the leaves looked larger, darker green, and more mature than the last two Essence of Tea samples, giving me pause that older leaves may have less immediate potency to them.

The middle and later steeps got a touch soapy and thinly astringent for me. And, despite what I consider to be another light tea, this had less quick bitterness, and a better texture and structure than both the Manmai and the Bangwai, hinting at a potentially bright future for this tea.

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Of all aspects of this tea, the most stunning was the initial wet-leaf aroma. Goodness. A rich, intoxicating push of licorice root and star anise, following by a bundle of tropical fruit: persimmion, jack-fruit, rambutan, and banana. Absolutely illustrious. A lot of aroma came out of a small amount of dark, large, well-dressed leaves that were dark and had an excellent sheen.

Hot steeps and long ones produced surprisingly light tea. I kept my chubby yixing only partially filled in an attempt to concentrate the flavors, but for the first few steeps of treating this tea like other young sheng pu’er, I felt as though I could taste the minerals of the water and the clay more than anything from the tea. An ephemeral and ethereal gauze of apricot, straw, and honeydew made brief appearances. Otherwise, the water extracted light green bitterness, a not so subtle reminder that pu’er, in its early days, is really a form of green tea. Maybe I should have treated this sample as such.

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Cleaning out the sample closet, I polished off this example recently. My opinion of this tea has declined even further. The interior of the cake is really rough and finely chopped. The first few steeps are cloudy! A touch sour, with a bit of ash, and some aged mesquite bark. A yellow color, thankfully, but heavy on the forward and back bitterness. The more pu’er I drink, the less interested I become in these heavily cut, strongly processed big factory names.

Finally, I may have used enough leaf to find this tea enjoyable. Packing my small gaiwan near to the top with these big twisted wires, I was able to get some really fun flavors out of this tea. The initial steep was a fruit and blossom bomb, with tons of white peach, papaya, and nectarine, all backed with subtle hints of cocoa powder, sandalwood, and white pepper. Underlying all of this was a subtle, silky texture and flavor of fresh, perfectly-cooked scallop meat, reminiscent of the really enjoyable pink shrimp flesh I found in a younger Hou De dan cong. Ramping up the amount of leaf and following Tea Habitat’s brewing guidelines (http://tea-obsession.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-brew-dan-cong.html) really produced a nice session this morning.

Incredibly fresh bright fruity aromas leap off the leaves. They smell just like every in-season fresh fruit skin all at once…grapes, apples, pears, peaches, cherries. All wrapped up in that delightful woodsy and mossy musk. The leaves are large and tightly folded into both broad and twisted shapes. They all have a nice even green-brown sheen with a many edges of white fur.

This tea starts off with a fairly thin, relatively bland and textureless soup, despite the leaves appearing to go through agony early and quickly. The third and fourth steeps really start to pop with fresh apricot flesh, aspen boughs, and pleasant balancing bitterness. While the product description at Essence of Tea include “goopy” as a property, I find the texture never gets there – maybe I did not use enough leaf to elicit that character.

Evident that this is a “green” tea, it is also the youngest pu’er I have tried. It doesn’t have that raw, fresh gum-numbing youthfulness that others have, but instead, it reveals its roots as a green tea, feeling more like fresh bi lo chun than musky, wild, funky pu’er. Such youth might allow me to more readily detect the near-Jingmai essence from this tea, as I think that particular terroir has a fresh, juicy lychee or apricot sensation to it.

The most enjoyable sensation this tea provides is after it has been swallowed. Big cooling mintiness rises and a long lingering herbal licorice flavor spreads across the palate.
Not unexpected for a tea lacking the wisdom of a much older one and having opened its bright green leaves so early, it empties itself by steep seven or eight and collapses into dry minerals and bark. That being said, such vibrant, high-quality leaves will likely prove to be quite outstanding in many years time.

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I think perhaps I overrated this tea initially. However, I’m still very fond of it and this style of moderately roasted oolongs. The gently opening teas begin with cocoa, burnt butter, and toasted walnuts, but generally yield more and more “green” character, with warmed bamboo, steeped mint, and black currant juice. The texture does get a little medicinal and dusty at times, but I still believe in this as a solid and delicious tea, with wonderful warming properties.

I found the compression and composition of the sample quite enjoyable. The leaves were relatively even in size, moderately long, pleasantly colored, and fresh-looking. It was nice to get a cake sample that wasn’t just the iron-fist tight and all-dust core of the beeng. The tea opened slowly and quietly. The dry leaf aroma was low and lightly sweet. The first two steeps were rather quiet, especially clean, and a little plain.

The fourth steep really shined. Lacking any coarseness and feeling smooth and velvety, this tea glided pleasingly across the palate. Bits of sweetness, distant stone-fruit, and some moss glowed in the finish. Confident dryness and back-of-the-throat bitterness rounded out the presentation. I longed for more earth, tree bark, lichen, and wet forest, but was happy with the balance, smoothness, and robustness of this tea’s texture. It was solid tea, but it wasn’t so exemplary that I would ignore my ethical concerns and buy tongs of Lao Ban Zhang tomorrow. There are other teas, with better provenance and less cost.

Finally, I’ll say that I didn’t find the chaqi particularly notable, in fact it seemed a little soft to me. I feel pleasant, calm, and peaceful, not electrically charged or overwhelmed.

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I absolutely adore the appearance of this tea as dry leaf. The balled leaves look like small rough emeralds, with dazzling bright green edges and veins and dark black green leaves, all neatly curled and tucked into compact forms, true tea gems. It’s a vivid example and while I know that my brewing of the tea was not on par with Tim’s, I still found it delectable, full of warm floral-scented breath and a creamy, rich custard-like texture. In my own brewing, I found a delicious foible for morning brain fog and a light, airy blossom scent in the gaiwan and from the top of the cup.

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Farewell, Zi Yun Shan, this is my last cup with you. A fitting tea for a “green” spirit of freshness, backed with a blend of light creaminess and sweet, lifting floral lilac.

No notes yet.

In search of a sheng pu’er to drink at work this morning, I combed through my catalogue and decided to weed out some of my least favorite lingering samples. This was at the bottom and became today’s tea.

I had not remembered how small the leaves were, tiny. I unleashed the remainder of my sample on my larger gaiwan and have now worked through about seven steeps. It isn’t as bad as I remember. It’s not good or great, just not atrocious. Less cigarette butt, less sourness. Still, fairly orange, fairly plain, and fairly ho-hum. It’s got some enjoyable campfire and moss on the frontend of the aroma, but it doesn’t have much complexity to give in the flavor. And while I think I’ve done a better job of brewing this time around, I have no intentions of revisiting this example from Xiaguan.

Unlike the previous two Green Tea Lovers examples from Sri Lanka and Kenya, this tea does not outpour a majority of its aroma in the first steep. Instead, it takes some warming agony of the leaves to breathe. Once open, the aromas are delicate but full of warm dew, honeydew melon, steamed straw, and carrot juice. There are lots of savory herbal elements to the flavor, rosemary stalks and sweet mint. It has an impeccable body of natural sweetness balanced with dry, parched grasses. A long lingerer, this tea was giving solid infusions at the 7th steep. It could have continued on.

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Immediately apparent was the consistency of the dry leaves, with a nice pale golden hue on delightfully fuzzy, even needles of great length, a bit sinuous. The warm gaiwan full of leaves gave a delightful fresh glow of jack fruit, almonds, palomino fino jerez and nips of banana. Again, the aroma was strongest in the first wet leaves, but it was very pleasurable. Flavors opened bright and strong with pulled white sugars, light green olive, and bits of cooked yellow plum. Mostly white sugar, though. Fresh and clean, extra-light and super-bright. A really thirst-quenching summer tea. It leaves me with a dry grass and hot savanna summer feeling.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=176

The needles of this tea were incredibly varied. A large portion were broken significantly and the color spectrum ranged from punishingly pale to a deeply hued golden to a near black. This was even more evident in the cup after a few steeps. The variance in processing showed through in the flavor and texture of the tea. The brief glimmering moments of delight came in the first wetting of the leaves, as they breathed out some apricot, muscatel, and white fig jam. After that it was all down hill, with an over-oxidized, weak black tea, and papery character. No pale fruits, little straw, and vanishing to non-existent sweetness.

I am honestly excited that regions are exploring tea styles that they have not historically produced, but as this example shows, some refinement is needed in the production process before these style-newcomers can create tea in the style that comes even close to holding a candle to the traditional producers. I look forward to that day, it will be a new dawn of tea terroir.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=167

This tea is another good example of a daily-drinker that has moderately above-average complexity and yet is easy to brew, with satisfying simplicity and flavor. Crisp, chestnut-laden vapors, warm mint, and some long lasting bright open-field greenness. Also works well as a cold-brewed summer tea.

At first, I thought that this tea was overly subtle, punishingly delicate, and fleeting. The first steeps didn’t have that punchy strong glowing pale fruit juiciness, the hay and straw scents restrained, a faint bit of starchy squash lingering in the background. But as the leaves warmed and steeped, the soup settled into what I can only call a graceful, complex maturity. This tea has a very refined air to it, with quiet, but complex, soft notes of fresh garden herbs, warm dawn earth, and just-peeled tree bark.

Sometimes it takes a quiet mind and a patient palate to pull from tea what it has to give. I think this one requires that level of detail, as it has not been processed to beat you over the head with that full-of-juice, spring-like, dewy sweetness and flavor that comes on strong in the first steeps of so many silver needles, only to evaporate quickly and leave you with something grassy and plain. No, this tea has stamina and grace out in the seventh and eight steeps. A truly notable and sophisticated example.

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Nice fuzzy crisp needles opened up with a tropical rainforest, dewy, wet, and damp. Honestly, the wet leaves in the cup after the first steep smell as how I imagine dark subtropical forests to smell. Rich, earthy, and floral. The flavors expound on the aroma, with intense juiciness (a la stone-fruit), straw, and detectable fresh and raw zucchini flesh, very clean. Later steeps elicit a more restrained arboreal character, bringing back memories of humid, indoor botanical gardens, a collection of plant pheromones.

Finally, as the leaves begin to breathe out their last bit of energy, the soup fills with pea tendrils and pumpkin seed. Ah, delightfully enjoyable tea once again fills me with a bright new-day spirit. No wonder this tea has won multiple awards.

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This morning, this tea has more sourness and harshness than I remember. It’s interesting how the palate morphs based on extraneous conditions. Today, perhaps, the overwhelming heat and humidity have had an impact. It’s still delightfully sweet, supple, and flavorful.

The dry leaves had little to no aroma, which, for this style, I find unfortunate. Lifting the gaiwan to my nose after the first steep, a distinct rush of jasmine and cooked spinach come on strong. The jasmine is detectable to the point that, if I didn’t know better, I would say that this tea either had jasmine added to it, or was stored in very close proximity to jasmine tea. Unfortunately, I really, really dislike jasmine-scented anything. In the end, I feel two ways about the jasmine character: (a) if it is not an added character (highly unlikely), it has to be the strongest non-flavored character I’ve ever experienced in any tea, (b) the jasmine character is fleetingly light enough that if one were looking for a jasmine experience, they would likely be disappointed.

Pressing through the hazy cloud of jasmine occlusion, the green spinach character is noticeable again in steeps two and three. Hay-like grassiness picks up, but stays rather minimal. The sweetness is moderate to low and I find the overall complexity rather minimal. By the fourth and fifth steeps, the wet leaves smell of dry clay, a sign that they are exhausted, the soup singing a similar note of thinned out tiredness. Sadly, this may be the the least enjoyable silver needle experience I’ve ever had.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=134

Fairwell dear tea, this is the last of my sample from the PuerhShop.com. You were one of my first sheng pu’er samples. I treated you harshly, reviewed you poorly and then ignored you until now, when I gave you a more proper treatment, but still decided that you weren’t really worth chasing down any more of. I still yet do not know who you come from (is Bing Hao really a production company?) and, based on the chop and size of the leaf, am dubious about the composition of “big leaf” in your mix. You bleed a slightly orange cup, with solid bright bitterness, lots of honey, and some pale fruit sugars. Otherwise, you leave me wanting, for a little more complexity, a little more body, and a little less harshness. Onward, to other, better, teas.

This is always my “repair” or “energy” cup. If I’ve had a poor night’s sleep, or the weather is wearing on me, or I’m a little sluggish, I work through six or seven steeps of this at work and usually feel better. But, tea always makes me feel better. So who knows if this actually has any added effect. It’s also a nice break from my usually “green” streak of other tea flavors.

What a soft, sweet and pleasing cup of tea. I was honestly quite surprised. I had assumed that it may just have too much going on for it, but really it melds together with nice softness and sweetness. The rice is not overbearing, but well-balanced in the profile, adding a delightful toasty note to the green sweetness from the matcha and the extra kick of kombu, which acts to deepen the kelpier flavors of the green tea beneath, which alone, I think might come across as quite and understated in this example.

Satisfying, hearty and fun and seemingly versatile. I think this would pair very well with a lot of umami-forward foods and fish fat. Thanks Chip for throwing this in!

Having brewed this the first time with probably too much leaf and maybe too much water temperature, I pulled out my bag of this tea and brewed it the way I brewed the other five shinchas in the tasting set. I found it much more palatable.

The aroma was light, but quite briny when it made it’s way through my nostrils. Flavors in the first steep were bright, clean and had strong doses of kelp, spinach, and watermelon rind. It wasn’t as sweet as most of the other samples I’ve had, but was up there. The best part of the first steep was that it a fantastic minty cooling sensation on the lips, tongue, and back of the throat that lingered long after the soup disappeared, making me want to return to my cup for more.

I even took this tea out to a fourth steep since it was my only session this morning and was amused to find that it looked much like the first steep, but tasted like thin tea-water. The second and third steeps gave full-flavored and rich cups, but they held the more classic profile of ocean vegetables, salty brine, and melon pith. I think this is an exemplary and clean example of the classic profile of flavors for a decent shincha.

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