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One lotus flower was what the sunny day requested.

From a bakery in Tiburon called Sweet Things. Brewed with entirely way too hot water, ouch!

The tea, once cooled enough to sip, was perfect for the day. The jasmine was natural and allowed the flavor of the tea to come through – fruity, buttery and soft. There was a little bitterness due to the near-boiling water used. The tea was not at all diluted with one sachet to a 12oz paper cup.

I realized I’m missing a jasmine tea from my cupboard. This won’t be the one that finds it way in, but it is a good tea to have when out and about.

2020 harvest

Wow, this has an intense taste! I imagine it as rum balls filled with a blueberry-raspberry-vanilla bean-dark chocolate liqueur. The Wuyi ‘wet rock’ character is at a good level, letting the sweet and rich aromatics take center stage. There’s a playful oaky tannic-bitter feeling that gives some extra textural taste; later, that turns more prominent along with an astringent-drying quality but still with plenty of flavor. Not until 5 or 6 steeps in do I notice a vibrant osmanthus-brown sugar-vanilla aftertaste. The tea’s a slow bloomer in that regard. Very nice blended tea that I can see aging well!

I started working on my tea tray project again. After a year on the back burner. Bunch of salvaged white oak. Looks like I can make at least 5+ trays once I rip all the pieces. Hoping to have everything sanded this weekend :)

Not gonna go in depth with this note since I’ve had several harvests of this tea by now.

The April 2020 harvest I currently have produces variable results. In general, this is a light-bodied tea without much structure in the mouth but it has some great aromatic nuances.

One day this past week made a perfect cup. Cocoa, vanilla and roasted pears. That was really nice.

I’d give this harvest an 75, previous harvests 94 and 90, average 86.

September 2019 harvest

The tea is so smooth. Too smooth for me, too smooth for western brews. But it’s strong! The profile and caffeine remind me of some Assam or Japanese black tea profiles. Dried cherries, tobacco and cherrywood are the most prominent flavors and they feel like they were sitting out in frosty evergreen forest air. It’s a cooling tea despite the warm flavor profile.

Check out the old note because I feel like so much of what I have to say is redundant. https://steepster.com/derk/posts/391280

Strange how I fell hard for a June 2018 harvest but this one has left me feeling ambivalent enough that I used most of it to make weekly pitchers of cold-brew for Kiki (which she loved and I never tasted). Looking at the wet leaf, I think this is more highly oxidized such that it presents as simpler and more straightforward.

93 for June 2018 harvest, 72 for September 2019, average 83

I think this might have been a freebie included a few orders ago but I’m uncertain. EIther way, thank you Old Ways Tea :) 2020 harvest.

The aroma is moderate, the taste is full and the body of the tea is delightfully creamy and oily. I suppose that means it also lacks the typical astringency or drying character of many Wuyi oolong. It possesses less mineral character than I prefer, so this might be a good introduction to rock oolong — enough minerality that it defines the style but perhaps not so much as to turn people away.

The taste is round and full, nutty-sweet and chocolatey with an orchid top note, and at times expressing a note of pleasant sourness but I can’t nail down which flavor profile matches it. A pithy bitterness arises here and there, giving a hint of edginess. The aftertaste quickly develops after the swallow and blooms into a fruity, airy, rich and sweet combination of white peach, orchid, brown sugar and semisweet chocolate. The throat feels cool.

Between the mouthfeel, tastes and aftertastes, it is a satiating tea that doesn’t have me wanting to drink cup after cup, but rather has me wanting to savor it over the course of a few days. It’s not a tea that was immediately appealing to me because I like more ‘edge’ but it is nonetheless good quality. I could see someone falling hard for this Shui Xian.

April 18/25 2021 harvest

With only a few servings left of the 50g bag, it’s time to attempt some kind of description of this sencha. My multiple notes literally got scattered all over the place and I can only find this one now.

Dry leaf has a lush, deep green aroma. Very fruity, strawberry-pineapple-sakura-pine, sometimes mandarin orange-Asian pear attached to that hyphenation.

Wet leaf smells very meaty, can’t get the idea of Vienna sausages out of my head. I guess that’s the umami revealing itself, much moreso in the wet leaf than in the taste. Dark green wet grass, subdued flowers.

The tea is such a moving mix of flavors and sensations. I find it difficult to sit with the tea but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy drinking it. Active tea means activity. Rich, persimmonsweet flavor. Rather smooth, fruity with a bitter-bright vegetal taste, piney backdrop. Fairly light rounded umami that is not a distinct note or aftertaste. Floral-fruity-bitter-brightgrassy finish. Fruity aftertaste later turns piney-fruity.

There is some bitterness-astringency in the throat that quickly brings about returning sweetness. Cool inhalations, a light chill lines the inner perimeter of my lips. Feels like my body is breathing. Bottom of the cup smells like sakura. Only in later steeps do I notice the cinnamon and vanilla described by Thés du Japon, mostly in the aroma.

I also really like this western brewed. Probably around 1g:100mL, 2-3 min?, 2-3 steeps. It’s so refreshing. Good astringency mixed with gentle cooked white bean and seaweed overtone, butter. Not fruity as prepared in my small clay teapot but I feel like I get hints of it all here and there. Returning sweetness.

This ‘high mountain old bush’ Shui Xian is a subtle and refined rock oolong. My impression after drinking it is of horchata, like if you took the essences of fresh rice milk, floral-woody cinnamon, floral-sweet vanilla and sugar then combined those with the characteristic minerality of yancha in a spring water-like body, you’d almost have this tea.

I say almost because there is also a prominent orchid florality, a note of dry-roasted almonds skins, some delicate berry tones, and a hint of custard. A feeling of wet moss and mushrooms.

The tea feels good, smells spectacular and drinks with ease. A lingering vanilla-orchid aftertaste completes the experience.

Unusually fragrant when opening the bag, it smells so much like hot cross buns, which is what I’ve experienced in a few other aging whites, but the intensity here is striking. Yeasty rolls, red fruits, icing sugar, citrus; cinnamon undertone but definitely not a distinct note.

Warming a rinsing brings in full force a potpourri of flowers both fresh and dried, more differentiated citrus notes, honey and whiffs of something like myrrh.

The tea does well with shorter and longer steeps in a gaiwan, my preference lying in the latter. Very hot water is needed to reveal the depth of aromas and flavors. The floral aroma slips underneath the first sips which are at first sweet with nectar and tangy with citrus. A full, underlying woody and dried autumn leaf character mingles with red fruits and apricot. A muted caramelized sugar note keeps the tea from going too woody or leafy. Citrus zest notes are prominent in the finish and continue to grow. The bottom of the cup smells so rich and sweet, like molten, bubbling sugar just beginning to brown.

I’ve also brewed this western a few times with pretty long steeps, 5, sometimes 10 minutes. The redfruits and citrus become muted and the tea becomes very syrupy sweet and woody. The syrupy sweetness reminds me of Costa Rican agua dulce.

It’s a good aging white with no flaws. Long-lasting tea, high energy but not too strong. A tea I could see myself buying another sample of but not a whole cake.

what was i thinking.

haha.

it’s like kool-aid but nasty.

won’t bother ordering from august uncommon again. we don’t play nice together.

on a more positive note, chinese and spanish classes are done. i’m freeee!