China Fujian Anxi 'Huang Jin Gui' Black Tea

This tea was a gift from the wonderful derk!

Yesterday I tried this western. The aroma is so powerful! I was hit smack in the face with rich, toasty aromas, nuts, a little honey, rich rye bread…so i was surprised at how light the color of the liquor was.

For the powerful scents, it was much more muted in taste and had a rather thin texture rather than the full and robust body I expected from the aroma. It was quite good, just not what I anticipated.

Today I had my first gong fu session in quite a while, sitting in the bow window watching the birds and the rabbits play. (We have had pet rabbits living at our end of the street for a few years now and everyone pitches in and takes care of them. They escaped from a breeder who didn’t care to recapture them. The adult couple was captured and neutered and the babies were given to good homes and to some of my students who we knew would be very good to them. They can not interbreed with our indigenous cottontails so no danger of hybridization.)

This is the best way to enjoy this tea. My first steep was pretty long for gong fu. I began with 30 seconds and detected no bitterness, so I added 15 seconds for each subsequent steep. The aroma is really toasty, almost burnt toasty like some DHP but not quite. How about rich, brown toasted rye bread? Body is a little thicker this way, and there was just a touch of toasted walnut, honey, and something floral – not a lot and more osmanthus or magnolia. I am leaning toward magnolia.

(Bird bath thus far – tufted titmouse, grey squirrel, Eastern bluebird, mockingbird, female cardinal, various sparrows, yellow pine warbler, and a brown headed nuthatch.)

Thank you, derk! I loved the two Huang Jin Gui oolongs I had tried, and it was a real treat to have a black huang jin gui!

I bought this tea last year in my infamous Black Friday What-Cha haul. I kind of wish I’d purchased their Jin Guan Yin as well, given that I like the one from Camellia Sinensis. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of dark chocolate, peanuts, rye bread, flowers, honey, and faint, tangy stonefruit. The first steep has notes of honey, peanuts, rye bread, dark chocolate, wood, and apricot. The second is more earthy, though I also get florals, peach, apricot, and lots of peanuts and chocolate. The tangy stonefruit and slightly sour aftertaste remind me of Tie Guan Yin, though that might be my imagination. (I also need to try plain osmanthus flowers, which Derk detected in this tea, so I know what they taste like!)

The third steep gives me an herbaceous note that I could also, like Derk, describe as menthol, but is mostly honey, wood, hay, rye bread, and chocolate. The next few steeps are all about the chocolate, peanut, honey, and rye bread, with hints of peach, apricot, molasses, and florals. The body is quite viscous and the aftertaste is long. I let the seventh and eighth steeps cool to almost room temperature and I see where Derk is getting cherry, and I get more of the tangy stonefruit as well. The session ends with notes of honey, hay, peanuts, wood, earth, and minerals.

This tea offers many of the flavours I like and has the chocolate note I associate with Fujian black teas. I’m not sure why I haven’t given it a higher rating, though maybe it’s because of its woodiness or the fact that it doesn’t change much over the session. Nonetheless, I’ll have no trouble finishing the rest of the bag and would consider buying more given its affordable price point.

I have decided to open this pouch I got from White Antlers last year while she bought some mystery teas, so Alistair chose this tea for me. It is harvested in April 2020, so it’s more than year old, but it was still in closed pouch.

I have decided to open this one to don’t bore you with another, same teas I had before, and moreover I felt I need something new as well. I have several black teas opened, but all together it seems they are unique on its own… Nepalese Ilam Pathiwara = super fresh, Guria Likhauri = Georgian tea, Unknown black = nice one, bready, soon to be sipped down, Zheng Shan Feizi Xiao by Tangpin = better in gaiwan…

So, yeah, opened this one and prepared western. Took two pinches of tea and steeped for 4 minutes.

I have to agree with derk, it seems eastern preparation method suits this tea better, as I got tea which seemed a bit underbrewed, athough I got nice notes too. I got malty, honeyish flavour, kind of floral as well. I wasn’t paying much attention to the tea though today, as my mind is thinking rather how to make my thesis. Kind of leathery aftertaste maybe?

It was easydrinking, smooth tea, good for afternoon cup as prepared. Gives me energy to work again on the thesis, though I am already quite tired of all the tables I had to do. Now I will work on the text part, which isn’t that much fun, as I found out I was calculating it wrongly, so I need to update that text part saying results. C’est la vie! In 14 days it must be done, sent online. Week for printing it out and having it binded together.

Enough of my thesis and my own problems. You want to read about tea, not my problems.

Song pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JJAXwAaA2w (they are singing about 2nd May :P, luckily I don’t need any alibi now)

Spring 2020 harvest

Dry — dark chocolate, peanut butter, malt, slight rye. Warm — dark chocolate, oak, osmanthus, vegetable oil.

Western has a very forward, sweet chocolate-honey-apricot taste for me with a delightful and drawn out powdery white floral and osmanthus finish. Overall, the tea is rich and deep upfront but a little thin-textured for my likes.

Gongfu, this tea has a good, viscous structure with balanced astringency and tannins. More tangy than western, less sweet. There’s also a nice swallow that I get from a lot of Old Ways Tea’s Fujian blacks – it’s squeaky, full and satisfying and I can feel it cool my throat. The tea is a bit drying but I think that allows the aftertaste to continue developing in the minutes after finishing a cup. Floral, rich and fruity notes of osmanthus and honeyed apricot-orange-peach with touches of caramel, chocolate and sweet potato linger in the mouth and sinuses. These aromatics are more apparent than the actual taste of the tea. Bottom of the cup retains a very sweet and deep osmanthus note supported by chocolate and red cherry. Comfortable energy. This tea is currently on sale.

Nice tea. Happy Easter :)