The Tao of Tea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dsngKEtA-k
I need to focus and finish this drawing before we move next week. I’m getting too nit-picky for the level of detail I should allow myself at this stage. It’s very counterproductive.

I let the water get too cold this afternoon but it dissolved well enough to help me focus.

That talk about mouthfeel and zing made me thirsty and cleaning stole my energy. The remedy? A pre-lunch appetizer of two whole raw caco beans, a tablespoon of raw nibs, and a bowl of Liquid Jade to wash them down.
I took a sip with a clean, less sleep deprivation deadened palate first. I must bump the rating now that I can taste fresh half-steamed spinach over the ashy aftertaste. The cacao was eactly the chewy fix I needed and tasted phenominal with a slurp of matcha mingled in. The matcha didn’t exactly wash the cacao down so much as create a grassy, earthy coating on my gums but anything that extends a bowl of matcha for ten minutes is a plus. Between savoring matcha and chewing cacao, I think I found my new favorite long, meditative snack break. I almost skipped lunch it felt so filling.

It started snow a little while after the gas guy left. I had some things to do before I could sleep so I waited out the disappating cold with some matcha.
I understand it’s named Liquid Jade. It feels like warm molten jade going down, thick, frothy, and satisfying. It doesn’t taste bad but it has that ashy aftertaste of lower quality matcha that reminds one it’s use is as an economical usucha. Which is fine. I got my taste fix from Tao’s tuocha and the energy I needed.

Awesome while it lasted…and that wasn’t long…YUM…see my other note(s)

Thanks the tea gods for this gem! Ahhhhhh! YUM!

Dry – smells like a pale chai

Post infusion – it smells like a sugary black tea with hints of spice…maybe more cinnamon than the other spice types.

The taste is wonderfully surprising. If you are looking for heavy spices – this is on the light side but I’m totally diggin’ it! There is something naturally-sugary, too, that I can’t put my finger on but it’s yummy! It’s slightly chewy but not the chewy I am used to. This is VERY different and I really like it! VERY MUCH!

This has a faded fresh yet cocoa-powder aroma to it before infusing.

The leaves are WILD and fun! Almost a natural tye-dyed effect or natural/earthy colors! LOVE these leaves!

WOW! The smell of this completely changes as it infuses! A nice, unique scent. Buttery but very plum-like with a hint of nuttiness!

The leaves are swimming and dancing around in my cup…very active lil buggers!

The color of the liquor is very light brown with almost a greyness to it.

The taste is very pure. Seems to quench my thirst. There are both fruity and nutty hints present…maybe more plum notes than nut notes tho. This is a VERY Impressive Oolong! It’s creamy, too! And Buttery! yes! A lovely Buttery end sip on to the aftertaste! Ahhhhh! I like this a lot!

The dry aroma sort of reminded me of a lighter darjeeling type scent. Post infusion is a bit flatter in aroma but it has a nut-like smell to it as well.

The color is dark and bold.

The taste is well rounded and about medium strength for a black tea. It’s pretty smooth. Not astringent at all! What a soothing and simple yet tasty black tea! YUM!

I decided to dust off my tin of this after reading LiberTeas latest review. But alas I still find this teas flavor to faint for my taste buds. It does have a slight hint of butter but my palate is not sophisticated enough to drink this. Once again this tin will go into the back of my Tea Bus.

Having one more cup of this tea (well several infusions of this tea) before I send the rest to TeaEqualsBliss.

I love this tea! It has such a beautiful, well-rounded flavor. Sweet but not too sweet. Buttery but not so much that I feel like I need to wipe my palate after I sip it. Creamy smooth, rich… fantastic!

An amazing green tea.

This is really good. Liquid Silk! So smooth and imparts a soft mouthfeel. But unlike some greens where I would describe this soft, smooth sensation as buttery – it doesn’t have that buttery taste. Not a bad thing … at all … just different. I like the buttery, but I really like this too.

Slightly vegetative, but more like a fresh vegetable. It isn’t grassy, nor does it remind me of steamed vegetables, it reminds me more of a crisp salad type of vegetative taste. It has a floral note in the background too. Orchid?

I like this very much…

ETA: As I continue to sip, a buttery flavor develops. It is still not nearly as “buttery” tasting as a Sencha, but it definitely has that buttery, silky smooth texture.

Yesterday, I tried this tea for the first time, and I was asked on that tasting note if there was any astringency to this tea, and to be honest, the amazing flavor of this tea had me so captivated that I didn’t even notice the astringency, if there was any! So, I decided that I should have another cup today and make it a special point to note any astringency.

The astringency here is light, but it is there. But what is different about this tea from other Assam teas is that the astringency doesn’t hit in the finish. I notice it right at the start of the sip. It is very slight, but then the flavors start to hit the palate and seem to wash over the astringency. The tail has just a hint of residual astringency, but again, this is so faint that it really doesn’t seem to have that dry effect that astringency usually has.

This really is the most different Assam that I’ve ever tasted. The creamy aspect is so amazingly good that I want to crawl into my teacup and bathe in it. I love this Assam. I have quite a few Assam teas in my cupboard, but if I could only have one … this one would be the one I’d choose.

Yes, this is my first cup of the day. I was up very late last night, so as soon as I got my little one off to school, I crashed!

Anyway… what a lovely, beautiful Assam! The tips are indeed golden and remind me a bit of a golden tip Yunnan, but it doesn’t taste like it. The flavor is so rich with an underlying tone of honey-caramel. Malty. Smooth. SO smooth. Absolutely delicious and just what I needed to get myself going today.

I really love this Assam!

Morning, friendly shopkeeper! Yes, another refill of tuocha…
Discontinued?
But-but-this is my mother’s favorite tea. How am I going to tell her?
Where am I going to hide when she finds out we only have half a jar?!

Jasmine, roses, lavender, mint; a garden grows in my teapot and the four infusions of tonight’s tuocha protect it from the cold.

I managed to get seven steepings of equal strength using boiling water the last couple times for four-ten minutes. I can’t believe how invigorating and relaxing the combination of pu-erh and rose is! I love this tea so much the sight of muddy liquor has become pleasant. I smile every time I see the equally ugly jar of tuocha on my bookshelf. Just to make sure I always have some close.

Huzzah! A happy and prosperous new year to you and whoever produced this tea! This was perfect companion to our “leap into the new year” ginger-orange frog cookies. I must admit, the single serving size per tuocha is part of the reason we picked this.
(^_^);

I rinsed the tuocha for 20 seconds into glazed gaiwans. Taking Jenn-cha’s experience into consideration, the third steeping was one minute and thiry seconds (I’m wary of straying from the 2-3 recommendation of Tao of Tea but also 2-3 minutes?!) and lo! Jenn-cha knows more than Tao of Tea! It came out with sweet and complex wood flavors. There’s oddly more oak than rose. But I swear peat moss and turbinado sugar were part of the tuocha! This was so good everyone went right along wtih the “weird” smelling your teacup. The leaf in the teapot smelled bizarrely like seitan, vegan bacon and rose.

The third and fourth steepings were both two mintes and yielded more mellow flavors that crept towards timothy hay and very little rose. The leaf in the pot smells more like damp hay and old straw piles. It was interesting to taste the natural sweetness of the tea and the actual sugar in the gingerbread. I prefer the sugarless tea.

Fifth steeping-At the suggestion of my rose loving mother we added some rose hips to the pot. What the hay? It says four steepings and was wrong about that.
I highly recommend this little addition towards the last couple of infusions because the fruity, strawberry sweet flavors were amazing with the hay and raisin flavors in the tea (and replaced the now undetectable rose petals). It was like drinking a summer day at the horse farm without the barnwork.
Out of curiosity I’m putting the leaf in the fridge overnight to see if it lasts for a sixth infusion tomorrow. Partially out of curiosity and partially because I need sleep.

Edit: Sixth and seventh steepings were weak but still had mellow orchard grass hay, plum, turbinado sugar and walnut tones! Maybe if I don’t wait over night I could get eight steepings with shorter times.

One, two, what is this one? Ninth steeping? These invincable littles spheres have been soothing my headache since yesterday afternoon. The earthy green base lends the right level of stoutness to thefloral comfort of jasmine. It tastes like the start of autumn.

This is just the midmorning pick-me-up I neded with the ginger shortbread from yesterday. This is the best jasmine green I’ve had. Half the new Year’s cleaning down, half to put off for an hour so I can time finishing with snack and another cup of this.

I finally got to track down an Assam with gold tips. I happened to be in SE Portland and stopped into the main shop to test out a pot of this. Some Twitter friends mentioned that it might not taste different than other Assams and that “flecks” of gold tips were added to up the premium price. I think they were wrong. What I got was a black tea with a mildly astringent foretaste, followed by straight nectar; a comparison I usually reserve for Yunnan Golds. With the malty kick added, this was more in line with a Golden Monkey – another partially tipped tea that I enjoy. I can finally notch this off my list.

It smells sour with a complex flowery undertone. The taste is mildly sour but incredibly sweet. There are hints of a rose taste with overtone of a flower that I can not identify.

More detailed notes can be found here: http://teasnobbery.com/2010/05/28/tea-review-tao-of-tea-keemun-hao-ya/

The tea tastes and smells exactly like the leaves did. It is dark and rich with intense earthy tones. It is like mixing dark hot chocolate with espresso, taking the sweet and the bitter out of both.What is left is comforting and caffeinated. This is a great morning tea because it wakes you up a lot like coffee with less caffeine and a better flavor.

For a more detailed tasting note check out my blog: http://teasnobbery.com/2010/07/09/tea-review-puer-tuocha-from-tao-of-tea/

The brew smells malty and sweet. There are sweet roasted undertones to the smell.

The tea has lightly roasted overtones. You can almost taste the ceder smoke in the tea. There are malty undertones, but not as intense as the smell initially suggested. It is also not as sweet as the smell initially suggested. The tea in fact has a little bit of a kick to it. It is not a bitter taste, but more like a hint of salt behind each sip. Sometimes it even reminds me of salted nuts because of the roasted salt flavor.

For the rest of the tasting notes, please check my blog.
http://teasnobbery.com/2010/09/10/tea-review-malty-assam-from-tao-of-tea/