Organizing a tea tasting - need help
(Edited to update tea choices.)
I am going to be visiting some friends next month and I would like to take the opportunity to share with them my love of tea. We wont have a lot of time so I was thinking of organizing a tea tasting session with maybe 5-6 different teas. Ideally this would be 5 different gongfu sessions but that just isn’t realistic. I would love any input on this. The idea isn’t to expose them to the best or my favorite teas, but rather to give them an idea of what good tea can be like and maybe help them find a starting point for further exploration (red, green, wulong, sheng etc). Here is what I currently have in mind:
Choice and order of teas:
1) White – Silver needle from YS
2) Green – Dragon well from YS
3) Wulong – Da Hong Pao. I’ll admit to being a wulong newbie. Is there a different wulong that would be better as an introduction to wulongs? I chose this because I have it on hand. Considering to swap this out for a Tie guan yin.
4) Aged sheng – 1990s green mark, HK dry storage
5) Red tea – Dian Hong pure bud from YS
I probably need to narrow this down to 5 or max 6 teas so will likely drop these:
6) Young sheng – I need a suggestion for a young sheng that isn’t bitter, something floral and easy to drink. (Asia/EU vendors only)
7) Aged shou – Need a recommendation for a shou that is earthy and has lost the fermentation funk completely. (Asia/EU vendors only)
Preparing the tea:
Since we wont have time for full gongfu sessions, I am considering using a small 80ml gaiwan and stacking 2 steeps at a time, to share between 4 people. This way we can try a few steeps of each tea before moving on. Any thoughts on a better way to do this that doesn’t involve a lot more time or volume of tea per person?
I don’t think Da Hong Pao is a bad selection, though I will offer that in my personal experience tea newbies seem to generally be a little more receptive to greener/more lightly oxidized oolongs such as, just as an example, Tieguanyin. That’ll totally just depend on the tastes of your friends group, though.
As for preparation, one option would be to do it more in a cupping style like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDtRinW1QVM Albeit, that would be a very different option.
@Roswell Strange: Thanks for the input! you may be right about the Tieguanyin, greener and a bit more floral might be a better choice. I do happen to have some as well (that I haven’t gotten around to trying) so that might work out.
I considered cupping style. I do love the social aspect of a gongfu session though, so the temptation is to give them a taste of that as well.
For tea newbies, I would consider a jade oolong instead of so many puerhs. Newcomers usually don’t have a taste for funky fermented teas right away. Some do, but many enjoy lighter teas more. May I recommend YS Hairy crab oolong or a tie guan yin. I’m biased because Anxi oolongs are my favourite, but I think they are good starting teas because they can offer creamy/buttery , floral, or fruity. What-cha also offers fruity and floral caked oolongs as well as milk oolong and a killer sticky rice oolong.
Another excellent starter tea is YS Laoshan black. It has cocoa notes and is fairly sweet and very palatable. Anything that smells like hot chocolate will be a good ambassador.
Thanks Arby. I’m going to look into oolongs a bit more. I do have a Fancy Tie Guan Yin from Anxi that came free with my last YS order, will try that myself and see how I like it and then take it from there.
I will probably drop the shou puerh and maybe the young sheng. I’d like to keep the aged sheng in there just because I think this might be only time they ever get around to trying such a tea. And this particular one is quite approachable.
I’m no expert, but I’m a big fan of milk oolongs. I think they are flavorful enough without being actually flavored and thus are good for newbies.
Also, what kind of beverages do the people you are doing the tasting with usually drink? For instance, if they drink a lot of coffee I would definitely include a puerh since it’s reminiscent of coffee. If they like wine I might go with more of something on the lighter side and scrap the puerhs.
Good point about the correlation between coffee and puerh, I’ve heard from several coffee drinkers that they found shou appealing. The issue of course is what to leave out to fit that in.
The friends I will be doing the tasting with are coffee, beer and white sparkling wine drinkers… so a little all over the place!
A young sweet puerh like a Bang Dong or Mengsong could be a way into puerh. If you don’t gong fu use a fair cup so the tea is more even if you stack infusions.
My advice is that you make this something you continue doing! First time I wouldn’t introduce any puerh due to it being pretty much a whole different thing.
Dian Hong is a perfect tea to explain how full leaf can change the taste of tea since most bagged teas are black tea.
Any quality green tea works to give example of the whole idea of fresh green tea.
Silver needles are nice and delicate which will be something to let everyone experience.
For oolong… there’s so many different kind that it’s hard to recommend one, but if I was to make a suggestion I would choose something sweet since like a phoenix dancong because you have malt/bread/grass… something fruity would be an awesome mixture to throw in.
The next time you meet you could show a smoked tea, a tea that is ‘ripened’, jasmine pearls, and a raw puerh to showcase some of the more unique types of tea that are not really daily drinkers at first when it comes to discovering tea.
Again, any approach is correct if you are passionate about it; just keep in mind that not everyone will like all types of tea and it’s always possible they may not ever.
Go into it with joy and there will be no issues; even if you showcase 5 different puerhs
Hi LP! Thanks for taking the time to provide some input. I imagine you have a fair bit of experience in introducing people to tea!
I’ve recently started hosting semi-regular tea tastings for friends that live in the same city, so some of this will be useful for that as well. I can imagine starting off with a tea list similar to the one mentioned here, and then following up with later sessions that introduce some of the more uncommon tea types as well as dig deeper into specific categories that they are interested in.
However, for the friends in question here I only see them once a year at most as they live in another country, so a bit harder to do regular or repeat tastings with them. What I might do is to take along some samples of other teas to leave them with them – if they are interested – in addition to the tasting session.Your arguments for a fruity oolong makes sense. I think I need to order some oolongs to try myself and then choose one to take along. Will include a phoenix dancong.
Thanks again!
One of the nice things about Phoenix Dancong is that it is close enough to a black tea that people who like black tea can easily accept it but it is so far from typical blacks that it will really open people’s eyes to the potential for tea.
Any specific recommendations for a Phoenix Dancong from YS or a different asia/europe based vendor?
I am currently looking at this one:
https://yunnansourcing.com/products/huang-zhi-xiang-dan-cong-from-phoenix-village-spring-2017?variant=43097892053
Which types of tea you represent doesnt matter too much in my opinion. Each individual has a different taste and prefer different tea’s anyway so you will never hit with all tea being great tastes for everyone.
Instead I think its more important that you are enthusiastic about your apporach to making and drinking this tea with your new teafriends. Make them excited about the tea and the brewing style as well, talk about the process of making the tea, why use gaiwan, yixing or whatever etc. At least that is what makes a bigger impact in my experience. Make it the special thing that it is, its a lot more than grabbing a coffee at starbucks :D
Bare et lite hint ang. da hong pao – det funker ypperlig på nordmenn som er veldig glad i svart kaffe!
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