Teavivre

It’s finally my birthdaaay! And what tea could be better at celebrating it than my favourite one, Longjing.
Only sad thing is, we still don’t have snow and it’s christmas soon, naaay.

Ooh yes, this is still my favourite one. I really like that zen -feeling that it gives to me every time. This also fits quite well with roasted and salted almonds. My first tea that I reviewed on steepster, I should redo that review sometime.

The aroma of dry tea leaves is really fresh and sweet, leaves are not crumbled and are still whole which is really nice, their color is light green with yellowness. I have another bag of Longjing tea that I bought from local shop but it doesn’t get even near this, this smells like TEA not just tea. Also organic quality gets a plus.
1st steep: The color of 2min steep is clear light yellow and it doesn’t smell as strong as the leaves it still smells really fresh and slightly nutty. Maybe there is bit of creaminess too.
Taste is a bit mild, but soft (I think it my fault, too few leaves or too short steeping time). It’s sweet, creamy, flowery with hint on vegetables. This isn’t that toasty than my another Longjing which is lower quality.
2nd steep: I used 3,5mins for this infusion and see if it would modify the flavor. Yup, the flavor is bit stronger it tastes still as delicious as before, a bit richer maybe. I will steep it one more time after this.
Thank you Teavivre for this sample! I would definitely buy whole bag of this if I wouldn’t be a poor student.

It’s been a long & busy day, & so much still to do before I go to bed.
I’ve been drinking this tea all evening. The dry leaf, in shades of green & gray, has a fresh & sweet kind of aroma that brings to mind a spring rain. Although I was expecting a potent brash raw taste, the early steepings were very mild & creamy, & the flavor gradually built to an almost fruity taste. This is a lovely sheng, with potent energy.

Thank you to Angel & Teavivre for the generous sample!

I had pulled this out of my cupboard as a sipdown, but I knew the chunk would get used a great deal before it actually gets discarded. We had started by making a 35 ounce pot of hot tea. Then I made a gallon of iced tea from tea that is so delicious I can hardly stand it. Iced puerh just doesn’t need sugar to me, ever, at all. It is so clean and beautiful all on its own. Late last night, another 35 ounce pot was made hot. (It was a pretty big chunk as you have guessed by now!) I will steep it at least one more time for another pot of hot tea. Youngest daughter is fairly guzzling it down.

Removed from cupboard. With a pu cake as big as this one, that doesn’t happen often. We used the last chunk tonight and will be resteeping it all day tomorrow in our biggest pot because we are gathering to celebrate hubby’s birthday.

I have enjoyed this one. It was especially rich, dark, and earthy smelling on the rinse tonight but we went light on the steep, so it was just a little woodsy and coated the mouth for a lingering reminder. Lightly creamy.

This is a great daily drinker and an excellent re-steeper. While it isn’t a puerh that I stop everything for and light candles and put on music, it is really great for gatherings and game nights and parties. And I am almost out of this huge cake! One little chunk still rests in the wrapper.

The dry leaf has a definite barn yard vibe. I like that aroma. It isn’t enough to turn off puerh newbies, though.

I served this a week ago as a cold steeped ice tea, unsweetened. My neighbor isn’t a big tea drinker but I asked her to try it after our walk in the sweltering heat since she didn’t take a water bottle and I wanted her to hydrate before doing yoga with me. She was shocked to find that she liked this even though it was unsweetened. She said she braced herself for the bitterness of unsweetened black tea and was immediately captured by the smooth and refreshing taste. Since she is trying to improve her health – hence the walk – she wants to get some puerh of her own to replace sweet tea and cut sugar in her diet.

I love sharing tea with people. I love watching them discover that there is a lot of tea out there that is nothing like what they have tried before.

Last night was okay, but not particularly festive. We are pretty much stay at home folks for New Year’s but I got bored watching tv and listened to some music by myself. So tonight when we played Ticket to Ride and feasted on some great champignon brie and um…M&M’s (weird combo?), I really felt like we were having a party! Pathetic? I think not!

This has been our go-to puerh when we have big crowds, and we drank it a lot through Christmas when everyone was here and we are continuing to plow through it now. I actually felt I understeeped it a bit on the first steep in my big tetsubin, but hubby was thrilled with it. He thought it was excellent just as it was. The color was really light compared to how strong I usually make my puerh tea. I still liked it and it wasn’t too weak tasting. It went really well with the mushroomy flavor of the brie, too. And this tea is such a great resteeper we will probably have a couple of liters off of these leaves tomorrow!

Oh, and if any of you are following ChelseaR here on Steepster, my son proposed to her last night in New Hampshire where they are skiing with her parents as the fireworks exploded overhead and she said “Yes!” So congrats to my Sandtrooper and ChelseaR!

My hubby made me very, very happy last night. We had a pot of this tea and a pot of another Teavivre puerh, and as we were drinking he told me that he needed a way to have tea at work. I said, “You mean, you want me to make you a JoeMo to take with you? Or a Thermos, or something?”

But no. He wants the paraphernalia to make it himself. I squealed. I squee’d. I get to buy him an electric kettle, a pot (probably the Kamjove that Teavivre sells), some puerh, and I told him he needs a special cup. He mustn’t drink it out of a Valvoline mug or something. I told him he needs a special cup that will mean something to him, a “little cup of calm” if you will, for all Black Books fans out there.

As for this puerh, it is good. But the second one we had was even better and so very beautiful.

This one is pretty tightly compressed but I only needed a puerh knife, not a pick. We drank one steep which was pretty earthy, and I put the leaves in the fridge to make a cold steep of it for today.

Well! this was a bold move, but one I have made successfully before!

A lady was coming over whom I met over 25 years ago, but our interaction has been a once a year email to confirm her address and the occasional “Hi! How are you?” in the grocery store.

I invited her for tea and she accepted. I asked about preferences and she said she liked hot tea but drinks a few herbals and some things from the grocery in bags that she wasn’t really sure what exactly they were. She described a bitter black tea that someone gave her and she hated.

I chose to open with a second steep pot of this puerh! So many people, including myself and some of my friends here, were afraid of puerh at first. I am finding it to be a great opening tea for newbies, though.

Bottom line – we sniffed it, commented on the aroma, I said barn, she said horse manure, we laughed, she drank, she…..LIKED it! A LOT!

It was paired with toasted bread, crusts off, topped with diced German Johnson tomatoes from my garden with Brie melted on top and Sunny Paris seasoning which has the most delicious bits of purple shallots. It was really nice together because the pu held its own with the food. She refilled her cup several times before moving on to the next two teas. One of which totally won her heart….

This is a fabulous shu. It is so smooth and creamy, with a thick mouthfeel. There are rich aromas of dark, fertile earth and barn, with a high note of dark cedar, and the taste is sweet and full. I had several cups today, I will be resteeping this tomorrow, and I have a feeling that I will be ordering more very soon. This is one of my favorite flavor profiles in a shu puerh.

This sample came to me from caile – thank you so much
The leaves are very thin, slightly curly. i wanted to “pet” them,haha
Western method Teavivre’s parameters
2tsp 8oz 195F 4 min (Teavivre recommends 3-5)
dark, wine notes along with some bread cake, no smoke.
decided to add1tsp of maple syrup to see if it would make it bread cake. and it did. like raisin bread cake. so good. delicious.
Resteep @6min was a little weak. I wouldnt bother. I have enough to try gongfu.
Thank you for sending me sample , i truly enjoyed it. Will pick up on BF sale(OMG i already planning BF sales)

Method: gongfu-style with gaiwan. 5 second rinse. Steeping times: 5, 5, 10, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 45, 60

Dry leaf aroma has notes of cooked mushrooms and various spices (I could make out cumin, paprika, cloves, and coriander). Wet leaf smells like green beans. First infusion is light, tastes of sweet grass with a peppercorn finish. Second infusion is similar, though the aroma of the wet leaf at this point has changed to peppersteak. Third infusion is sweeter and grassier, very sheng-like.

I can’t discern any change in taste in the fourth and later infusions. I do know for certain that I like this one more than the other shengs I’ve had from Teavivre.

I actually have no idea how I got a sample.

So I agreed to play grandpa style tea trial today. And in my hurry this morning, I picked this one because it was already measured out. I just dumped the whole sample packet into my carry mug, added some water, and out the door I went.

I probably should have rinsed this one first, but oh well.

The first bit was a little strong, but after I added more water, and more water, and more water, and more water, and more water, and more water, every time I got to about 2/3 or half full of tea and leaves, it was delicious.

I can see doing this a lot more often.

It’s a nice, easy way to enjoy tea, and it’s tasty.

I wish I’d tried this oolong a different way since it was my only sample of it, but c’est la vie. I would drink this again, for sure.

Oh, I decided to keep my water temperature lower, under 170°F because I wanted it at a temperature I would never have a problem drinking. (Especially since I did this in the carry mug and it doesn’t cool off.)

Sipdown! (55 | 185)

For some reason, I don’t remember this one, even though I know I’ve tried it before. The only Yunnan tea that sticks in my mind from Teavivre is the golden tip version, and maybe that’s just because I remember that one being my favorite.

But wow, this one is really good! And I previously rated it a 90, so clearly I enjoyed it before as well. It’s satisfying, malty, and sweet potato-y, as I would expect a Yunnan tea to be, but it also has some really nice deep and dark caramelized brown sugar and molasses notes to it. It almost reminds me of black sugar (one of my favorite boba flavors) without the sweetness. There’s also a bit of dark and syrupy dried fruit here, maybe some prune in addition to something sweeter and richer, like fig. And underneath all these other notes is a soft foundation of earthy maltiness. In the aftertaste, a little wisp of apricot appears along with a hint of fuzzy astringency and a clear mineral note.

Yummy. Definitely a good one to start the morning with, strong in flavor but smooth in character!

Sipdown! (156)

So I have officially put myself on tea-buying hiatus. I have way too many teas, and since all the sales I was planning to order from have passed, I should be well stocked on my favorites for a while (Butiki, TeaVivre, WP). A lot of my collection is samples from swaps, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to reduce the number pretty quickly.

So, this tea. I chose it as one of my samples in the 3rd Anniversary sampler from TeaVivre, and I was really surprised by its flavor. As much as I enjoyed this tea, I’m not too terribly sad to see it go since I have a lot of Yunnans right now. I would consider reordering this when I get my cupboard under control. It really is a different tea from my beloved Golden Tip. :)

Another lovely Yunnan tea from TeaVivre! I’ve learned to have very high expectations for their teas, whether they’re premium, superfine, nonpareil, or just regular. They’ve definitely become one of my top 5 favorite companies for tea. I’ve tried three of their other Dian Hong teas, and I have a sample of the last one on the way. So I was curious to see how this compared, and where it fell between the Gold Tip and “regular” Dian Hong versions. The leaves are long and straight, and quite thin. I would estimate the golden bud content to be about 40%. Dry, the leaves smell quite sweet with lots of honey and apricot, and some mild malt in the background. Did the usual 3 minute steep. :D

Wow, the aroma! This is definitely the strongest honey scent I’ve ever found in a tea, and it’s accompanied by lovely apricot and raisin notes, and the ubiquitous malt.

I was so surprised by the taste that it deserves a new paragraph… Lol. It has the lovely bread flavor that I’ve come to expect from good Yunnans, but it also tastes like creamy oatmeal and chewy raw grains. This is reminding me a lot of Shang’s red teas with their combination of white and black tea flavors. It has that grain note that borders on being a white tea-like sweet hay flavor. The honey really starts to come out near the end, along with the apricot, and these two form a lovely aftertaste with a bit of graininess still present.

I have to say, this is not at all what I expected! I was prepared for this to fall somewhere between the bready/honey/stonefruit of the Golden Tip and the earthier and more robust “regular” Dian Hong. But this definitely has a flavor profile all its own, and it’s very delicious.

Thanks Angel and Mary at Teavivre for giving me to opportunity to try so many of your teas at little to no cost to me! You have an amazing company and your service is always fantastic!

Edit: Totally forgot to mention that I took a huge mouthful of this, and then there was this pesky tingling in my throat. Of course, I ended up coughing and spewing tea everywhere… Luckily, it was mostly just all over my pajamas and not my laptop. Such a graceful moment.

I am really determined to be a pu person. It reminds me a lot of when I started drinking wine, and I thought the Moscatos and Masvasias were the end-all, be-all of wines. Then as I got further along my wine spectrum, I started appreciating the heartier, heavier ones that tasted awful to me at the beginning. Instinct tells me that that will happen with tea too, and I’m pushing ahead to get there.

So, this tea. I used all of the envelope, because it looked like a single serving. Now I know it was probably WAY overleafed, which explains a lot. It was crazy dark. I didn’t even let it steep, because as soon as I put the water in, it was dark like tobacco juice (ever have a grasshopper spit on you?)

I remember back when I was just getting weaned from tea bags, the thought of a tea tasting like sweet potatoes made me go “yeah, right” – and now I drink teas like that just about daily. So I was a bit “yeah right”-y about the whole leather, barnyard, tobacco, etc. profile. But it’s there. No fishy smell or flavor, which was nice.

Anyway, I drank it until I gave out. It didn’t. So I set the gaiwan in the fridge and will play with it again today.

The funny part was, my 18-year-old daughter came by and tried it, and liked it right away.

First of all, I started a session with this at 2am. I might not be easily affected by caffeine, but even I have a feeling that this was a bad idea. Plus, I really don’t like being the first to write a tasting note on a tea, even though I seem to be in this position a lot lately. But, I really wanted to try this pu.

So, this smells similar to most other puerhs do to me, musty earthy pond watery. But, I still go mmm when I smell it, because I know what that smell means. Yummy pu! I used the whole 7g sample, to 8oz of boiling water. 2 15 second rinses, and then 20,30,45 second steeps. The color is dark red tinted brown, but not totally opaque and inky. It’s light enough that it looks more brown than black.

This is soft smooth mellow. Not as intense as many other puerhs I’ve had, this is like the quiet cousin. Earthy caramel, maybe some mushrooms. It’s gentle, it takes you by the hand and says follow me, while it carefully pulls you out in a current of puerh tranquility. Shh no worries, no problems, just bob along in the ebbs of the puerh sea.

Tangent time
Have you guys ever just stopped. Stopped and really thought about how vast our universe is.

There’s you, you’re in your home, in your neighborhood, in your city, in your country, on earth, and then the earth is in our solar system and every which way is the Milky Way, and then Milky Way is surrounded by other entire galaxy’s in our local group, and then our local group is just a drop of water in an entire ocean of other galaxy cluster within the observable universe.

You’re you, you’re a person with an entire complex life that collides with so many other complex lives, and yet in the scale of the universe, you’re so insignificant that it’s almost impossible to fathom how small of part you are of the whole.

Sorry, it’s late so my minds already running rampant, and combined with the tranquil feeling I’m getting from this puerh, I’m getting a little philosophical.

Looks like tonight is a night of pu. This has the typical wet earth/pond water smell that I associate with puerh. I used the big chunk (maybe 8-9g) with 7-8 oz of boiling water. I started with 2 20 second rinses, and then did 20,20,25,25,30,35 second steeps. The tea liquor is the deepest darkest red tinged brown, it almost looks squishy and inky.

Taste wise, this is earthy but sort of nutty and caramel like. Deep and dark and mysterious, but smooth and creamy and sweet. I don’t get the cocoa notes that I sometimes get from puerh, but it’s still good.

My anniversary sampler finally can in and I decided to start with this since I’ve never tried raw puerh before. The dry leaf smells sweet and vegetal. I did 2 15 second rinses and then 20,25,30,25,30,30,40,40,45 second steeps. If other raw puerhs are like this, I don’t understand why so many people fear them. It reminds me a lot of a dark green tea. The first steep tasted exactly like spinach. Pure spinach. The second steep was a but bitter and astringent. As was the third, which is why I backed up the steeping times. But the tea remained very spinachy, taking on a (chest?)nut background note in the later steepings and as it cooled. The last few steep were also pretty green bean and kale like. There’s also the astringency and bitterness popping in and out at random times.

Definitely not as scary as I thought.

Finally got to try all five. This smells malty with citrus notes. The flavour is on the smoky side, which I don’t mind. Since I normally dislike that strongly, it just makes me like Teavivre more. There are also some malty orange flavours.

This was one of the teas waiting for me when I came back from trying tea in SF Chinatown. Since I still don’t have a gaiwan, I brewed this in the Western electric kettle method.

Leaf aroma: Pungent earthy vegetal
Flavor: Very green tea like, strong liquor with noticeable sweetness resembling almost-overripe fruit. There is mild astringent aftertaste.
Wet Leaf Aroma: A bit like ripe fruit, much like the flavor of the tea

Initial thoughts on first steeping: My first thought was an oversteeped green tea, when it becomes overpowering and astringent at the end. However, did not reach such an undrinkable flavor. One can taste many complex flavors resulting in thinking it is oversteeped. Assuming this is very young, flavors would develop well I think.

Second steeping thoughts: More fruit-green-vegetal that suddenly drops off to a significantly sharper almost-but-not-quite bitterness mid-flavor mid-sip, with an odd dry feeling in the mouth afterwards. Very intriguing. From research on puerh, this sharpness would fade with appropriate aging. I have noticed about this time as I savor the tea, there is a strong warmth in my stomach after a little while of drinking. I’m unsure if this is from the tea itself.

Third steep: The sharpness is more pronounced but significantly shorter, but the overwhelming flavor has lessened a bit.