17634 Tasting Notes
Two coworkers of mine were recently in Japan visiting the gardens where DAVIDsTEA gets our matcha from, but as part of their trip they visited quite a few other places in Japan. Mostly within Tokyo, including this tea house that they really fell in love with.
They’ve been back for a couple days now, and of course they brought SO MUCH tea home with them that they’ve graciously let me peck at while working in the office. I absolutely loved living vicariously through them for the last week or so, and hearing the stories about all the tea (and non-tea) related things they did.
This is actually the first tea from their Japan haul that my worked brewed up upon getting back, and she actually brewed it up gongfu at her desk which is the first time I’ve ever seen her make tea gongfu within the office. I actually had to help her find an appropriate easy gaiwan (we have no shortage of teaware lying around), and measure everything out water and tea leaf wise. My reward was the first steep of the session after the initial rinse which was very good.
This black tea was quite sweet off the get go, with a very syrupy mouthfeel and strong notes of honey and dark woods alongside a more mineral finish and some undertones of sweet potato and red fruit. Complex, and very mouth watering. It would, of course, have been interesting to see the evolution throughout the session, but this was her tea session that I was graciously invited to share in this early moment.
They did bring a lot of tea back from this company though so I’m hoping to get to explore a little more in the future!
There’s something so soul soothing about this tea. Though the smell of it steeping does have a faint bit of a pot smoke skunkiness (from the white spruce maybe), the taste of the steeped tea is like instant aromatherapy in liquid form. It’s very woodsy with strong notes of cedar and sage that really just encourage the release of pent up tension/stress. So smooth and aromatic!
Gongfu!
This tea is so different from what I might have assumed it to be like based on name alone, but it’s really fantastic with a sweet and medium-bodied composition that just feels, well, golden tasting. A little nutty, a little caramelized, and just a bit pastry like as well. The more I think about it, the more brown butter just feels an increasingly spot on descriptor, though some steeps had a beautiful stonefruit rich undertone and some silky smooth florals. Grilled peaches, at times, dressed with orchids and lilac. Still, it’s so much less of the intense and aromatic floral notes than “flowerbomb” channels. Mostly that praline-like sweet nuttiness, touch of toastiness, and baked good warmth.
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ7eKUFyUYv/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D3qm4KENGg&ab_channel=almostmonday-Topic
Gongfu!
This huangpian from Yiwi is such a reliable favourite. Though I feel it has gotten smoother with age, it’s still quite bright and fruity with a really lovely lemony and sherbet-like top note and a deeper, more jammy mix of apricot and peach in the mid sip. The finish is soft and slightly more green in nature, but it feels very at place with the rest of the sip. I should probably revisit this tea more often because I always have such a great time sitting down with it!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ-H_WByq0f/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buJvUq0uj00&ab_channel=BloodWizard
Gongfu!
This is a very smooth, clean tasting shou pu’erh with a more creamy mouthfeel and taste alongside a rather refined feeling and fruity profile. Notes of stewed stonefruits (plum in particular), raisins, and elderberries – all on the deeper, more dense, and jammy side without a lot of front-loaded brightness. It’s a flavour that sits with you long after each sip while inviting the next one. Even though this is smooth and mellow, it doesn’t feel overly “polished” or flat tasting, and the tea seems to really build in both taste and body feel steep over steep.
Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/DKAwSMzS0b6/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5RxB0N52aU&ab_channel=DUUNES
Gongfu!
This session was actually crashed by a very curious squirrel who seemed to have no issues with getting up and close on the same ledge I was brewing the tea on. However, before being forced to relocate to elsewhere in the park, this was such a fresh and fragrant brew with really intense and naturally sweet floral notes of lilac, geranium, and gardenia. Especially the lilac though, which was kind of perfect because all the lilac bushes in the area surrounding the park are in full bloom right now. The liquor of the tea was also very soft and buttery, with a slightly green snap to the taste alongside a really silky note of coconut cream.
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DKDP8esSfir/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TipZ9_-RJ-w&ab_channel=Release-Topic
A relatively new addition to Epices de Cru’s tea assortment!
This was the last tea of the evening that Marika and I drank, and also the only flavoured/blended tea of the night. We also made it in a very large Western teapot, and she actually didn’t tell me what it was before trying it and had me try to guess the flavour. I do very much love that game, though when it comes to teas with spices in them I always feel so much pressure to guess them correctly given how much of a spice genius she is.
I was very proud of myself though! I tasted a lot of malt and cocoa from the black tea itself, though admittedly I was getting enough cocoa that I wasn’t 100% sure if it was only the black tea or if there was maybe a small amount of cocoa shell or nib in the blend tea. There is not though, it’s just a really pleasant bittersweet and dark cacao note.
In terms of spices, the big ones I tasted were cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice – all of which are present. There’s also ginger, and eventually I named that one too but it was really the very strong autumnal and wintery vibe of the nutmeg and allspice combination that was sticking out to me. Because those are spices we’re so conditioned to think of as linked to holidays, I was really interpreting the overall profile as a sort of gingerbread hot cocoa flavour – and I actually loved it. It’s a very, very smooth and tasty tea.
Welp, turns out it’s pumpkin spice. Except, respectfully, no it’s not. It’s delicious, truly! But I honestly don’t think that I’d have named the flavour direction as tasting like pumpkin pie even if I’d gone into my first sips with that context. The allspice is present, but where are the rest of the pumpkin spices like the clove? And the ratio just feels all wrong. But more than anything else I think the actual black tea base is working against the concept. It’s too naturally molasses-y and cocoa tasting. It gets the job done putting me in a seasonal mood, but it’s just the wrong season…
So conflicting because I drank a lot of this tea. Like, it’s tasty. It was just challenging to reconcile in my brain that I wasn’t drinking a gingerbread blend.
Another that I drank with Marika this past weekend! After all of our gongfu sessions we moved to the big ass teapot portion of the evening, and this was first up. It was definitely a nice darjeeling with a lot of delicate, refined feeling malt and honey notes and a sort of autumnal “crunchy leaves” kind of undertone. Medium bodied, but crisper in the finishes. Certainly a type of tea I can see hitting it off really well with a more British style high or afternoon teas with little finger sandwiches and pastries.
However, and I’ve said this time and time again, I think living in Montreal I really am incredibly spoiled by my proximity to Camellia Sinensis. Kevin’s expertise in Darjeeling is just exceptional, and what he sources every year is so fresh and unparalleled compared with other Darjeeling I’ve experienced. So this is fine, but maybe less impactful feeling that just going to the shop and asking for whatever his favourite thing of the season is.
Gongfu!
Another tea that I was excited to brew up and share with Marika because it was one of my favourites that I brought home this year from the Toronto Tea Festival. We both really loved it, but I actually think it was her husband who liked it the most. I always feel really satisfied when I find a tea that Steve likes because he’s not quite as big a tea drinker as either of us are, but more just in the sense that his palate is much more particular.
It was the oaky, malty sort of smoothness of the tea that resonated with us all. I also really like the red fruit and vanilla sort of undertones, too. Sometimes the sips made me think of walnuts, and I enjoyed that a lot especially with the woodiness. Just a gentle fuzz of astringency as well. It’s distinct, for sure, and also probably my last session with it because the amount of leaf I left in the bag is really awkward. I’m thinking one last Western style cup after this…
Gongfu!
I had a fantastic catch up and tea hangout with Marika yesterday since it was a long weekend here in Canada. Patriot’s Day in Quebec, and Victoria Day everywhere else. It was very overdo, though!
We drank a lot of teas, of course. For the most part stuff that I wanted to share with her since I don’t get to do that on a daily basis anymore, and this was one that I really wanted her opinion on because it’s one of my fanciest smoked teas. It was very, very good. Lots of longevity to the smoke notes, but also buttery smooth with these really fantastic honey and red fruit undertones to it. I’ll have to do another tasting notes in the future that does a better job explaining the tasting notes, but for now suffice to say that I was so satisfied sipping on this one and just really happy that I’d got to share it with her.
We don’t always love the same teas, but smoke is definitely a BIG area of overlap for us.
