Wenshan Baochong Oolong

I suppose last night was the last time I will ever have this particular tea, because it appears that Tea Avenue has closed. It was paired with Humboldt Fog goat cheese, which is delicious, but this is one time that the cheese really was not a good pairing for the tea, as this tea is delicate and floral and I was eating the strongest parts of the cheese since those are my husband’s least favroite parts.

A long time ago I got a Yixing pot and seasoned it with Harney and Son’s Wenshan Baozhong. Once I ran out of that tea, I just didn’t use the pot. It may even have been a couple of years.

I decided to test the pot as I had read, leaving some water in overnight to see if the taste of the water had changed. This is really for testing an unseasoned pot, but I didn’t think I had used this pot enough for there to be a real difference. Wow! Was the taste ever changed! At first I thought the water tasted soapy. I rinsed the pot and tried again. Still a flavor. Not unpleasant. Floral.

So I went ahead and made this tea sample in it, and it tasted so much like the ghost tea!

The tea was very floral with no astringency. We had quite a few steeps from it, and my husband said he was getting lots of flavor even after I felt it was all steeped out. That may have been the rind and mold stripe overpowering the tea for me.

We finished the session with a tiny bit of Godiva salted caramel chocolate bar.

Now…since I obviously don’t keep this tea on hand all the time, do you guys think it would be okay to use it for green oolongs in general? It obviously kept its seasoning, so I am thinking it may not work and I need to either keep buying WB or re-season the pot for another tea.

It is a middling quality pot with good heat retention, good porousness to season, decent pour, and it held a vacuum last night with hot water, which it did not do with cold. My best pot holds a vaccum even with cold water.

Gongfu cha brewing style in a gaiwan:

This tea has a beautiful floral scent like Easter lilies, and the taste also carries a similar floral note. There’s also a nice buttery quality to this flavor. You can taste fresh herbal and evergreen notes that remind me of the mountains.

Not feeling the need to explore and review as deeply as usual tonight, but I think this is a good tea for its type, at the same time not knocking my socks off. I’m enjoying the sample they sent me, but would definitely shop around if I was looking to buy some Baozhong.

A gorgeous light, fragrant, somewhat sweet tea whose flavor is a dance of orchid and soft vegetal notes, both always present regardless of which one’s leading. Compared to similar teas I’ve had, I’m surprised by how long the aftertaste of this one lingers on the palate and how the floral notes last clear into six steeps (first steep at 30 seconds and adding 10 seconds to each subsequent steep).

Sipdown (217)!

Final sample from my Tea Ave order!

- Teabag/Western
- Quite floral
- Even though they’re strong, it’s a little hard placing/identifying the floral notes
- Light to medium body
- Different from Oriental Beauty because I didn’t register roastiness from this one
- Sweet honeyed peach/stonefruit, especially in the finish
- A little buttery

I’d say this was the most complex of the three samples they sent and probably also my favourite of the three.

So, so good. A highly perfumed and delicate oolong with a scent that lingers a foot away. As others have noted: butter, honeysuckle, jasmine. The brew was subtle but durable and held up to multiple steepings without getting bitter. A really lovely tea.

Trying this tea from my recent TeaAve haul. I don’t really have the capacity (or time) to gong fu things at work so I made this Western style in my glass tea tumbler this morning.

First of all, this tea smells absolutely amazing. It is worth it for the smell alone, I think. It’s definitely honeysuckle and very intense! If you don’t like floral smelling teas, this may not be the one for you. The taste is really nice, buttery with macadamia nut, a hint of fresh greens and flowers. And maybe a bit of coconut? le sigh

I will have to gong fu this soon because I’m most likely missing out on some really subtle flavor variations by steeping it once Western style. Still I’m pretty impressed with this so far. Glad I bought some!

I also like how TeaAve has such informative packaging, For instance this tea has a roasting level of: 01, An oxidation level of: 1.2, a mountain altitude of 400-800m, an Origin of PingLing District in New TaiPei City and a Cultivar of Quixin. Plus you get steeping insructions — that’s a lot of cool information about your tea. ;)

Baozhong (AKA baochong, baochung or pouchong) is one of the staple Taiwanese oolongs. I must admit that I’m not generally a huge fan of this style of oolong. Baozhong is usually a little light and subtle for my palate. However, this sample from Tea Ave smelled so incredible that I couldn’t wait to dive in.

Baozhong (包種茶) translates to the “the wrapped kind.” This name comes from the production process, in which the leaves are wrapped in paper during drying. Baozhong style teas tend to be very floral and fragrant, with a mild taste. Some of the baozhongs I have tasted had a very notable fruity and grassy character as well.

Drinking baozhong oolong brings back a lot of good memories for me. Baozhong tea is almost exclusively grown in a small region called Pinglin, about an hour and a half outside of Taipei, Taiwan. I visited Pinglin in January, hoping that my trip to the world’s largest tea museum would be one of the major highlights of my adventures in Taiwan. Alas, my enthusiasm was crushed when I noticed that the tea museum was closed for reconstruction.

Luckily, I was joined by my travel buddy Ben, the eternal optimist and baozhong enthusiast. Ben made sure that we still had a fun time wandering around the tea fields and taking photos with the tea themed statues. Busloads of travelers from Mainland China and Korea dominated the landscape, just like everywhere else in Taiwan. We saw some old Chinese ladies picking tea off the bushes and putting them into hot water to make fresh tea. I wish I had thought of that!

We managed to taste a lot of lovely teas in Pinglin. Each shop offered several grades of baozhong to try. We sat down and had tea at a few different shops. This place also served some nice baozhong flavored mochi!

The little downtown of Pinglin is full of shops and restaurants serving tea related foods. We got some delicious food at a restaurant that only used oolong tea seed oil in the kitchen. The oolong oil gave all of the food an herbal, grassy kick. I really enjoyed it, but I can certainly imagine that some people might find the flavor overpowering.

If you follow the online tea nerd world (presumably you do, since you’re here), you’ve seen the much-acclaimed Tea Ave sampler. It really was the greatest sampler I’ve ever received. My package included samples of Ali Shan Jin Xuan, Li Shan, and the Wenshan Bouchung.

Tea Ave is a Taiwanese oolong specialty shop run by a brother and sister team in Vancouver (Best city ever! The real world utopia/Shangri-La). Their website and general design is perhaps the best of any company I’ve seen. You should definitely check out their website and drool over the beautiful packaging. Perhaps I am a bit biased, since I have an unnatural love for sky blue.

Teaware

I brewed this tea using a standard gaiwan. Nothing too exciting this week.

Dry Leaf
These leaves looked wonderful, just like the highest quality baozhong oolongs you can find in Taiwan. I was very impressed with the aroma. I could smell the leaves through the sealed bag! The aroma was incredibly floral and had a slight caramelized note, which is a bit unusual for a baozhong, but still very lovely! There was a mixture of dark grey-green leaves and light greenish-yellow leaves, with the characteristic long, twisted shape that all baozhong oolongs have. Between the amazing appearance and smell, I was super impressed by Tea Ave’s sample!

Brewed Tea

I brewed this tea using a gaiwan and 8 grams of leaves.
I started with a quick five second rinse just to open up the leaves and warm up my gaiwan. I tasted the rinse water, as I always do (don’t judge me). It was very floral and flavorful, even though it had only steeped for a few seconds.

The first steep came out a light golden-yellow color. The taste is very light and subtle, but definitely more complex than a run-of-the-mill baozhong oolong. This baozhong is a lot more “herby” tasting than most baozhongs I have tasted. The tea also has a very grassy character, which might lead some people to classify this as a green tea. The characteristic floral taste is certainly there as well.

The aftertaste is nice and vegetal, like raw spinach. I love teas that taste like spinach, so that is a good thing in my book.

This tea has a very smooth mouthfeel, and even has a touch of the creaminess that tea drinkers tend to associate with the high mountain Taiwanese oolongs.

By the six or seventh steep, the tea was starting to lose a bit of its strength. Oddly enough, the color did not change much.

I enjoyed my session with this tea. It was very thirst quenching, which was a nice change compared to all of the dehydrating puerh I’ve been drinking lately.

Finished Leaf

This tea was very durable. I got about 9 steeps out these leaves, which is pretty impressive for a baozhong. The dry tea unfurled into giant army green leaves with very dominant veins. The leaves had no holes or tears.

Conclusion

This tea is undoubtedly one of the best baozhong style oolongs I have ever had. In fact, I would probably say that it is the best baozhong I have tasted. With that said, this tea is certainly not cheap. At about $11 per ounce, this tea is a bit out of my usual price range. I would certainly consider buying some oolong from Tea Ave if they had a good sale going. If you are a fan of baozhong or other lighter oolongs, then you should definitely try this…and leave more Li Shan and Ali Shan for me!

In additon to tasty homework for my tea sommelier class, I’ve been tasting lots of other new teas, but have not had time to write them up. I’ll try to catch up over the next couple of days, starting with this absolutely delightful Taiwanese oolong that came as a sample from Tea Ave. Wow, what a brew! I only regret that it took me this long to try it. The first steep smelled nutty and spinachy, but the flavor was dry, a bit floral, and kind of citrusy. By the third (1 min) steep, it had really come into its own: rich, dry, still citrus, but also with honeysuckle. That citrus kept going and going and going until I lost track of how many steeps I’d done (I started at 30s and added 15s each steep). There were at least eight and it was not tapped out. Sample not enough – need more of this deliciousness.

Beautiful fresh dark green leaf that reminds me of delicate steamed greens once brewed.
Fragrant aroma and taste which is sweet and floral, with butter, vanilla and a bit of savory green/grass.
This is really a gorgeous tea that provided many delicious steeps.
Thanks to Tea Ave for the lovely opportunity to try this!

Another very interesting sample from Tea Ave to help warm me up on a cold and icy day.

First thing I noticed when I set up was that opening the bag was a sensational experience, with a very intense fresh herbacious/grassy scent wafting up from the dry leaves. The only other teas I own that are like this are the freshest of Tie Guan Yin’s and the most traditional of Shinchas. Incidentally enough, they all are very lightly processed teas, so I guess that’s the key. Anyway, I put some in a pre-warmed gaiwan, boiled some water and let it cool off to about 95 degrees centigrade, and steeped it for about 7 seconds for the first infusion. Right off the bat there’s a very strong fresh herbacious aroma, which was expected but still pleasant. The tea produced is a very light honey color, with a slight green tint to it. The flavor profile of the tea is very smooth, with something between a silky and mineral mouthfeel that gradually trends towards more mineralish as the aftertaste continues. Flavors of grass, herbaciousness, and sweet hay dominate the profile, and the tea is very sweet like most lightly-processed teas. The tea is also very thirst-quenching, and will probably make for a good summer tea.

The second infusion was steeped for only 5 seconds, using 95 degree centigrade water. The resulting tea actually smells more floral this time, which is interesting since that’s something that tends to fad in other oolongs, not develop. The flavor profile actually tastes like I steeped it a bit to long, which is a bit odd. It’s lost the silkiness and has gained a tiny bit of astringency. I think that the best bet for this tea is to pour it immediately if the leaves are fully awoken, and I’ll try that for the next cup.

I performed the same steeping as the previous cup, but I poured as quickly as possible this time. The result was much better, with the smooth mouthfeel making a comeback and the absence of the astringency noted previously. The flavor is a bit more grassy now, but still very pleasant. The aftertaste is also less mineral now, and fades fairly quickly. I think this tea really didn’t like the treatment it got during the second steep, and is starting to fade now, so I’m stopping.

In the end, it’s a great tea, though probably not the ideal thing to drink during the winter. I’ll review this again in summer, and I’ll be a lot more careful with steep times.