1548 Tasting Notes
November 2023 Sipdown Challenge – Nov 21 – National Gingerbread Cookie Day
A tea with a ginger note rather than a gingerbread tea.
No sipdown yet but I’m plugging away at the last of the 100g bag I bought a few years ago. This is more of a medium-spicy ginger-lime (awesome slightly tart lime flavor!) green tea now compared to it being balanced with passionfruit when fresh. The green tea is on its way out but still holding up flavor-wise and gives a nice body. It stands up to very hot water which is a plus. Glad I’m drinking this down before it’s too late!
Flavors: Butter, Dry Grass, Ginger, Lime, Spicy, Tart, Toast
from mrmopar several years ago
Two rinses with long rests. Good tea. Very clear, flavorful, smooth, mellow, alkaline turning slightly acidic. Wet pile fish broth on the nose but not in taste. Getting some aged TCM peppery notes to go with the tobacco, dark wood, bread dough, wet autumn leaves and root beer; hints of camphor and eggplant. So compressed I’ll probably be nursing the pot for 3 days.
Neutralizing feeling in the body. Not particularly warming or cooling or caffeinated. Balanced.
Flavors: Alkaline, Autumn Leaf Pile, Bread Dough, Camphor, Clear, Dark Wood, Eggplant, Fish Broth, Geosmin, Root Beer, Smooth, Tobacco, Traditional Chinese Medicine, White Pepper
Preparation
When I feel I have nothing left to give, when every cell in my being has been depleted, I turn to tea and music and prayer.
Meditation is the practice of death. And as I die, I am reborn.
Flavors: Cardamom, Grass, Honeysuckle, Incense, Mineral, Mulberry, Resin, Sandalwood, Star Anise, Sweet, Wood
November 2023 Sipdown Challenge – a smokey tea
This heicha is definitely growing on me but needs much more proper aging (which I don’t think I can accomplish) to be a truly pleasurable drink. There’s a big scotch vibe but the burnt rubber and ashy cigarette tastes overpower during the first several steeps after the wash. Mildly sweet like thin licorice root infusion and dried golden apple. Nice cooling bay leaf. Add to the above a dry, strawlike character with roasted pumpkin seed and bitter green olive. Returning sweetness stays in depths of the throat. Very masculine profile. Love the energy. First cooling, then warming and narcotic. Once that clears up, I notice how caffeinating it is. No golden flowers to be found in my sample of this fuzhuan.
Flavors: Apple, Ash, Bay Leaf, Biting, Drying, Licorice Root, Olives, Pumpkin Seed, Rubber, Scotch, Smoke, Straw, Tangy, Wet Rocks
Preparation
November 2023 Sipdown Challenge – an herbal tisane
Last of the teas my aunt brought back from Istanbul last year. This is Pomegranate Tea – granulated fruit and seed. I think I did 1 tablespoon to 8oz boiling.
Came out very sour with a rich, juicy pomegranate taste and strong florality that I don’t get in either the fresh fruit or the juice. It’s almost like roses crossed with plumeria – a dry but fleshy scent at the same time. I can breathe it out of my nose. Quite nice. We do have a pomegranate tree in our yard but I don’t recall ever sniffing the flowers. Tastes better luke warm than hot.
Flavors: Berries, Floral, Fruity, Hibiscus, Juicy, Plumeria, Pomegranate, Rich, Rose, Sour
Preparation
November 2023 Sipdown Challenge – an oolong tea
Spring 2022 harvest
In China, we processed some tea leaves we picked one morning into red tea. I was surprised at how many tea leaves were discarded after the hand-rolling and oven-drying phases due to malformation, or simply that many of the leaves we picked were too old/leathery to wilt and bruise properly. Taking a look at this tea, it could’ve used some of that attention. It’s very rudimentary looking in hand, lots of misshapen and discolored leaf. In the wet leaf, there are multiple long stems that are denuded.
The dry leaf aroma impresses me more than the taste, and so does preparing in a steeper basket than in a tiny teapot. It’s sweet and woody (also papery) much like the Manipuri black teas and with a strong, sweet finish but it possesses a tangier taste and more brisk body. Something about the dryness combines with the sweetness to create a sticky texture after the swallow and a taste reminiscent of caramel. I do get well integrated fruity notes like dried mango, gooseberry and strawberry jam. A bare hint of agarwood incense in the distance. Also, some kind of humid taste that seems to be a hallmark of oxidized Manipuri teas. I can’t tell much difference between the oolong, red and sheng puerh styles I’ve sampled from Ketlee. Despite the similarities in profile, these teas all have a certain sense of place. This oolong isn’t quite doing it for me, though. Can’t pinpoint why.
Flavors: Brisk, Caramel, Dates, Dried Fruit, Drying, Gooseberry, Honey, Incense, Jam, Mango, Paper, Petrichor, Rainforest, Strawberry, Sweet, Tangy, Wet Wood, Woody
Preparation
This cake has been in my shou puerh cookie jar for 5 or 6 years now. First taste. Figured I’d pair it with the silver-lined cup bought from Crimson Lotus back in the day. One wash of 15-20 seconds.
What an amazing shou. Elegant and refined, smooth taste, nothing stands out in particular. Full body, oily but like silk. Some nice astringency and prickly bitterness in later steeps. Disappears down the throat, lubricating and cleansing at the same time. Clean and clear, glowing red mahogany liquor. Instant warmth and calm, orange gaze, cheeks on fire. A certain cool. So comfortable. Bracing and refreshing, energizing, strengthening. Short for words. The taste of rain… why kneel.
Might be too fancy for the Muddy Mudskippers of the shou world but gosh do I recommend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAQuoH_fOWM
This dirty sound could be a bridge for the Mudskippers to Storm Breaker’s flow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYuNlLMYK34
Flavors: Autumn Leaf Pile, Bread Dough, Bright, Cherry Wood, Clean, Clear, Flowers, Iron, Medicinal, Metallic, Mineral, Mint, Oily, Pepper, Saline, Silky, Smooth, Spicy, Tobacco, Viscous
Preparation
November 2023 Sipdown Challenge – a tea that disappointed
Herbaceous, thistly and a little plant latex milky. It suits the craving for milk thistle but not quite like Republic of Tea’s Organic Milk Thistle SuperHerb. This one has leaf and seed with no flavorings; RoT’s has seed only – which makes it milkier – plus grapefruit flavor and orange peel. Worth the drive to the market across town for RoT’s milk thistle.
2 bags to 16oz boiling
Flavors: Herbaceous, Milky, Thistle
