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Juicy, tangy and mineral. Rather buoyant feeling for something so dark.

Like sour cherry juice from the halal markets. A room of antique woods. A hint of clean must. Dark sweetness of dried fruits. Deep tang of stewed fruits. Rich florals of fruit skins. Cooling finish with first few steeps.

Aromatic, drinks very easily and leaves the mouth watering.

Thank you for sharing, Leafhopper :)

A third iteration of this pomelo flower scented oolong and the best of the three years!

Previous harvests were unbalanced in retrospect — more drying, bitter and/or yeasty. The March 2022 harvest is more delicate and well balanced without a trace of bitterness unless left to stew in shallow waters grandpa style.

The oolong strikes me as a Cui Yu jade oolong rather than a Jin Xuan milk oolong. I get not a hint of milky mouthfeel or taste. The mouthfeel is glassy, oily and crisp with a papery drying quality after swallowing. Overall character is much like a Sauvignon Blanc wine. The main body is a mix of citrusy tangy-sweet pomelo with black grapes and white grape juice, green plums, pear and sweetgrass. Top notes of faintly yeasty pomelo blossom with fruity jasmine; light bottom notes of sweet lettuce, bitter greens, parsley, tarragon, lavender, warm celery root and buttermilk biscuit. The aftertaste doesn’t last long but it’s fruity like the main body of the tea. Steeps out after many infusions with a balanced astringency and juicy swallow. Light bitterness creeps in, a cool spearmint mouthfeel is noticed.

I like this better with short steeps gongfu than grandpa style – but not by much – and leafed a little more than my usual.

This is the first harvest I can recommend!

I’ve prepared this heicha differently tonight by pretty much halving the amount of leaf, so ~5g in the 200mL duanni clay pot. This way has brought out more of a sweet varnished wood taste with something else… the closest I can guess is golden apple and tonka bean with its nuances of grass, almond, vanilla, tobacco and cocoa… mixed with a hint of goji and a sort of dried flower potpourri overlay that is unlike a typical American mixture, or at least what I remember that stuff smelling like in 1980s early childhood.

It’s a comforting elixir, grounding, balancing — one that induces relaxed contemplation and a sense of nostalgia for a time when things were dusty and unsanitized, when wood paneling and carpet ruled midwestern home interiors. I do think I like it better with much more leaf as the flavor is both more saturated and complex, and I notice more of this tea’s inherent gentle narcotic effect on the mind and body. Once that peaks, however, the caffeine extracted from that amount of leaf becomes very apparent even though the stimulation of such a high dose is softened by the tea’s energy. To characterize this tea, I’d call it The Introvert’s Shadow.

Grateful to have acquired another bag, this time 250g. I’d love the 3kg brick but it’s such a daunting purchase.

This was a freebie so fresh it wasn’t even on Mountain Stream Tea’s website when I received my latest order. Thank you :)

The leaf aromas are fresh and floral, cool grassy and creamy, blue-green in scent-color, scalded milk and millet. Warmed leaf smells more like a nutmilk with fruity pineapple-guava tone and some plumeria.

The liquor is glassy-viscous. Squeaky clean young grass and gentle sweetness mix seamlessly with a jackfruit and unripe tropical fruit taste that holds a savory undertone of orange-flesh squash and cooked peaches, carrying through into the aftertaste. Slightly creamy floral perfume of moderate intensity sits above and settles into all the spaces. The floral quality interestingly expresses itself most fully in the later infusions where I can differentiate plumeria, honeysuckle and jasmine.

It does very well grandpa style and also with very hot water.

Overall, it’s an wulong of moderate intensity and well done. More perfumey floral and grassy than fruity and creamy. As long as you’re not expecting a ‘scented’ flavor bomb, can we agree that this is a nice Jin Xuan?

From the depths of the Tea Museum curated by Leafhopper, comes this 2016 Taiwanese Wuyi black tea.

Dry leaf base aroma is earthy-woody and sweet like wood buried within damp humus. The mid- to high notes are of red sweet potatoes baked with honey and nutmeg, a hint of dried and sweetened papaya.

First whiffs of the warmed leaf smell like pure honey soaking with nutmeg and golden raisins. Beneath that is “tea”, nectairine, passionfruit and plums. Overall, It’s a very intense woody-earthy, spicy-sweet aroma.

When I finally get around to drinking the tea instead of burying my nose in the leaf, it comes across first with the impressions of “tea”, a flattened malty-suede effect. Honeyed spring water follows and is chased by nutmeg, leather, plum and rosewood with barky tannins. A decadent apricot-squash-cream aftertaste comes out, dessert-like yet dense and savory. It is quick to present but morphs at the pace of poured molasses. and sticks to every surface before giving way to something more earthy. Infusions beyond the third hit me with sweet nutmeg and allspice top notes, while hanging on to the tea-malt-suede flat character. it takes 7 infusions for the tea to fade into something woody.

This is an incredibly aromatic tea with gorgeous spice and sweet taste and accompanying deeply warming energy. I’m not sure I’ve had a tea with those notes so prominent. Most bug-bitten Taiwanese blacks have a similar profile but this one is truly at another level of spice and sweet. It does suffer from that flat, suedey effect, though. Regardless, this tea is a treat! A tea I could devote to the month of November.

I think this is now the third harvest (March 2022) I’ve had of this tea (others’ notes listed here: https://steepster.com/teas/mountain-stream-teas/85471-orange-blossom-oolong ).

This has been pleasant steeped up western style during the workday. Not complex by any means, just an upfront sweet and zesty orange blossom note atop a mildly milky, muted vegetal taste. It’s a surprisingly substantial brew, chewy and sometimes heavy.

This morning’s gongfu brew caught me off guard. The first several infusions, in retrospect, should’ve been used to water the garden. Due to the amount of orange blossom petals, my mouth was overtaken with floral bitterness. The 8 infusions or so after, though, have been pleasant. Reminiscent of western brews but with less intensity and with a more pronounced yeasty-biscuit note.

I’ve never been sure what to make of this tea but I keep buying it so that must mean something — perhaps it’s only that I’m hopeful one of these harvests will truly impress.

2020 harvest

I find more of a papery taste upfront while the second flush characteristics come out right behind it with smooth, indulgent notes of honey, citrus, cocoa, muscatel, malt and rosewood. The citrusy, orange blossom note rises slightly. Earthy, dill undercurrent.

There are some great flavors here within the smooth mouthfeel. It’s like a ribbon of flavor, like a lot of Darjeeling teas, without a lot of structure. Easy to drink.

Thanks for sharing Leafhopper :)

Autumn 2021 harvest, thank you Ketlee for the sample :)

Lots of low tones here, almost everything sits low. Milky and earthy-nutty pistachio butter notes do stand out above a tangy cut grass base taste with herbal chocolate mint and chrysanthemum nuances. There’s also something like sun-warmed skin, so maybe a hint of clean muskiness that joins a generic stonefruit tone.

Along with the milky taste comes a milky texture upfront that turns into viscous and sweet spring water. Juicy swallow can turn dry if oversteeped.

The warmed leaf smells entirely like Captain Crunch Berries cereal in milk, just like a Japanese oolong had earlier this year: https://steepster.com/teas/thes-du-japon/99408-oolong-tea-from-hon-dot-yama-koju-cultivar

Very similar to the Sikkim Autumn Green of the same harvest season: https://steepster.com/teas/ketlee-dot-in/100158-sikkim-autumn-green-tea I don’t know if I could tell much difference. Does this behave more like an oolong or a green tea? I don’t know. I guess it is smoother than the green. The oolong processing experiment could use some tweaking to make some notes pop. Not a bad tea by any means for being organic and sold at $3.50/25g, I’m just more into well defined flavors and those that aren’t milky, nutty, sweet.

January 2022 harvest

A mild and unassuming white tea like many silver needles, though with plenty of nuance if that’s your thing. Nice structure — modest yet full aroma, very fluid viscosity upfront moves to spring water sweetness mid-mouth and finishes clean with mouth-watering minerality and quiet sweetness. Neutral energy.

I’ve tried water temperatures higher than 185F for these needles, but doing so only kills the numerous soft nuances and brings about an astringency that need not be there with a first steep. Because of this, I can’t say I’d recommend the tea to those newer to brewing. I’d stick to 185F, maybe lower but I haven’t tried.

Book pairing
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
The superfluous language makes me feel sick but maybe I’ll be able to slog through it.

Prepared in a glass gaiwan, this is all spicy pastoral. Animalic muskiness that’s not contained within a barnyard, rolling dry pastures, parchment, sun-warmed earth and a soft savory quality reminiscent of tempered hing (which smells like sweated onions to me) and fresh mushrooms or aquafaba. These all present within a silky, unctuous mouthfeel that gives way to mouthwatering quartz-like minerality before finishing with an astringency that is most noticeable after the first few infusions.

There are delicate white rose and maybe geranium florals; fruity nuances such as apricot and papaya and tiny sparkles of muscatel; a quiet caramel note; white pepper, orange blossom, sugared lemon, rose leaf and wintergreen aromatics that elevate this tea from one that could be overly rustic into a tea that is rather refined. I’m sure there’s more.

The feeling is drying-warming, also masculine in a way that only a white tea could be. I wish I had more to play with — Nepali teas, while often exceedingly beautiful, can require some attention to avoid astringency.

Quite the difference between western steeping and gongfu. Western presents still with those spicy warm straw and earth tones, sweeter and even a little chewy honey-malt, not animalic or savory, while the fruit is more pronounced, sitting in the midtones and reaching higher into the olfactories. A distinct watermelon note comes out on the backend.