This one was included as a free sample with my Teavivre order and it’s been poking about on a shelf ever since I found out what sort of tea it was. I’m not really the keenest white tea drinker in the world, to be entirely honest. I tend to get along with added flavour better than without.
The funny thing is that not that many years ago, so recent in fact that it’s documented here on Steepster, I thought BMD was the bestest thing ever. Ever! And then… I just kinda fell out of love with it without even realising it. I even went so far as to toss almost an entire tin of it the other day when I realised that I hadn’t even touched it in years, and that it was so old by now that I wouldn’t even be able to make myself give it away.
Honestly? I felt better for having just taken that particular bull by the horns and cleared out something that would otherwise just have stood there for ever. I even managed to use that same momentum to toss a couple of other things in that same sort of category. One of these days I really have to go through the tea corner and make some tough decisions on what is likely to get used up and what is likely to simply gather dust. I have to say it’s not a job I’m looking forward to, even though I know I’ll feel good about having done it afterwards.
Now, back to this tea. I debated with myself for a bit about whether to brew it western style or whether to attempt to semi-gong-fu it, but eventually decided on western style. As I discussed previously, I often feel that western style gives me a better, deeper sort of idea of the flavour profile at hand, not to mention the fact that drinking seven cups of a tea I felt a little dubious about from the beginning didn’t really sound super appealing.
I patted myself on the back when I saw that the brewing guidelines from Teavivre are actually for a western style cup.
When I opened the little envelope, I was struck by how brightly light green the leaves were. Green tea is usually bright green as well, but this was even brighter, and it was the same thing when they were wet after steeping and a few of them landed in the strainer. I recall a much more sort of brownish and greyish sort of green.
They had a vegetal aroma, rather spicy like Darjeelings and for some reason reminded me or pea pods, in spite of the fact that they smelled nothing like any part of the pea plant at all.
After steeping the tea has a darker sort of aroma, kind of vegetal and grassy. There’s also a strong aroma of something familiar that I couldn’t quite place. This is where I cheated and looked at what other people had noted there. I normally try to avoid this, as I feel it adds a bias to my own experience. If someone says they’ve found for example notes of melons in whatever it is I’m writing about, I end up sitting here trying my damndest to find those melons too. And if I then do find them, I’m never quite certain if I really think there is a note of melons or if I’ve been affected by someone else’s experience. But this time I needed some help with identifying that note.
So I used a lifeline and asked the audience.
A couple of people mentioned cucumber and that rang a bell. For me, though, it’s more along the lines of courgettes, but there isn’t really a very large difference there. Whether it’s cucumbers or courgettes I think is a question of association.
This note is enormous in the flavour as well. Courgette all over the place. Along with those there is definitely a grassy note again, but it’s not as spicy as in the arome and it’s staying in the background.
This cup of liquid courgette tea is probably not going to bring me back into the white tea fold. I just think that the black teas and the dark oolongs have a so much more interesting flavour than the green and whites. 7 out of 10 cups, I reach for a black tea and I don’t really expect that to change any time soon. The remaining three are typically oolongs.
It does however make me curious about a couple of other BMD samples I’ve got standing around. I’ve mostly found walnutty flavours in BMD in the past and I’m interested to see if this courgette business might happen in others as well.
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Run into the problem of implanted suggestion in flavors all the time when doing cup pings of both tea and coffee with people. General courtesy holds that everyone slurp and spit without saying a word and even trying to hide facial reactions, but there’s always a few inexperienced tasters in the mix that go and jam a tasting note into your psyche before you’re done evaluating everything.
Fortunately, I’ve never had a courgette, so hopefully I won’t be tasting nothing but that in the white tea I’m working on ;P
By the by, did you know you can age Bai Mu Dan? Takes work – aged does not equal old – but it works better than a Qing Bing in my mind.
I have had the suggestion before now that you mention it. Perhaps it was even from you. I don’t think this was stored properly for it though. Too sloppy with tinning still back when it was new.
Run into the problem of implanted suggestion in flavors all the time when doing cup pings of both tea and coffee with people. General courtesy holds that everyone slurp and spit without saying a word and even trying to hide facial reactions, but there’s always a few inexperienced tasters in the mix that go and jam a tasting note into your psyche before you’re done evaluating everything.
Fortunately, I’ve never had a courgette, so hopefully I won’t be tasting nothing but that in the white tea I’m working on ;P
By the by, did you know you can age Bai Mu Dan? Takes work – aged does not equal old – but it works better than a Qing Bing in my mind.
I have had the suggestion before now that you mention it. Perhaps it was even from you. I don’t think this was stored properly for it though. Too sloppy with tinning still back when it was new.