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A White Antlers tea, many thanks!

I wanted to pass this one around so I kept enough for only two western sessions. My experience, albeit limited, says Black Lily begs to be leafed heavy. The long and wiry dry leaf doesn’t exactly conform to spoon measurement.

My best cup of the two was 1g:75mL western. Aroma like raspberries and other berries, orchid, apricot, orange. Smooth and tangy, mineral and very clean, elusively creamy and thick. The flavors were difficult to pin but the main notes I picked up were apple, delicate honey, soft sweet cinnamon maybe allspice?, oats, berries, raisins, wood and orchid, apricot-orange tone, and a brown sugar returning sweetness. Finished bright and clean.

A fantastic profile for autumn that I think would appeal to all seasons of sippers looking for such.

Organic Colombian black tea with cacao husks and nibs brought to my tea table by White Antlers. My first knowing taste of Colombian tea! All I drank in Colombia was coffee… very good coffee.

Dry, the blend smells of cocoa butter and raisin-tobacco. The steeping time range given by Upton says 4-6 minutes; I was aiming for 4 but ended up at 6. The liquor is a dark amber-red color with a chocolate aroma filled out by a complex fruity midtone.

The liquor is very full-bodied, very fruity taste almost like cherry-orange-raisin and tobacco with some rose. The influence of the cacao isn’t so evident but I feel it provides some grounding to the fruity brightness and a unique sweetness to the tea. In general, the flavors beyond the fruitiness are subtle and in a good way. The same fruit taste lingers with wood in the aftertaste.

There is some neat, seamless texture transition going on. It starts like a thick ball on the sip to midmouth where it turns brisk, finally leaving the palate clean and tingly with oily lubrication.

One thing that threw me was sometimes a soapy taste. It could have been the result of the oils in the cacao going rancid but I think this is a relatively fresh tea. Or maybe the temperature was too high and steep time too long. Regardless, I wish I didn’t save only a sample of this approachable tea for myself before dispersing the rest of the bag across the world.

Song pairing: Queens of the Stone Age — Mosquito Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiLsvRSU5H8

Spring 2019 harvest.

Dry leaf has a wild look, large dark and craggly leaves interspersed with gold to beige glimmers of fuzzy leaf. They smell of wet grain, specifically malted barley mash for sippers with beer-brewing experience. Warmed leaf smells of Grape Nuts cereal, molasses, black cherry and wood with rose and orchid florality. The steeped leaf reveals the heavy red oxidation.

Western steeps can be adjusted to create a slightly different flavor profile and body. Brewed with the recommended parameters (I think it was a half tablespoon to 8oz boiling, 3/5 minutes), I found the flavors and body rather mild and unobtrusive with smooth notes of brown bread, molasses and a hint of cherry. Using 1g:100mL made a full-bodied brew with a similar, though more pronounced taste. Cherry wood-malt aroma.

Gongfu brewing was honestly a waste. Some fruitier notes popped out in the first steep like passionfruit-mango. It quickly developed a brisk and tannic-bitter quality which it retained through another 5 infusions.

This tea did have the trademark cherry taste which I’ve experienced in every Thai oolong I’ve tried (which isn’t many). I’d call this an above average daily drinker black tea; it did lack what I would consider ‘gushu’ qualities, at least in comparison to Chinese teas. Whether that’s due to the leaf not coming from ‘ancient’ trees, the processing, or my relative lack of familiarity with Thai terroir, I’m not sure.

My taste for citrus seems different than most people here. I adore grapefruit, either a straight pink or a yellow, no sugar please. Ruby reds are too sweet for me. Following grapefruit, I have a deep love for yuzu and its incredible taste and fragrance. Any Japanese dish with a yuzu sauce is an automatic selection. Yuzu hot sauce from Trader Joe’s is all I need to top some steamed dumplings. Meyer lemons, highly floral sweet limes and sumo tangerines round out the top five of my citrus love-list.

This sachet tea from Rishi has all kinds of ingredients I enjoy, like well, grapefruit, yuzu, lime, green tea and matcha, ginger, quince, rosemary, black pepper and coriander. Literally every ingredient in this blend I adore the taste of on its own. And I get the feeling that if the damn ginger didn’t overpower everything, it would be sublime.

I tried brewing these sachets with varying steep times and could never get past the earthy, spicy! ginger. The tastes underneath would change, yes, sometimes one of the citrus fruits would be highlighted, or the black pepper, but I could never get this tea to perform reliably. The ginger spice actually upset my stomach in the morning. It did work okay as an after lunch brew. Overall — kind of a let down.

Next in my exploration of Yiwu sheng is Windfall, a sample kindly sent by Bitterleaf Teas with an order.

Dry leaf was sweet plums with a hint of bitter-smoke and vegetation. Warmed aroma was of baked red and yellow plums. Rinse provides wet vegetation, forest floor, antique wood and aged florals.

First steep was viscous, mellow. I was reminded of 2016 Last Thoughts from White2Tea in many ways. Beyond that, the liquor was mouth-watering, metallic-brassy. Lingering cooked plum aftertaste. Body warm, sinking.

Second steep was a mishap and was very bitter, thick and oily. Bright tobacco, plummy caramel aftertaste. Clean feeling in the back of the mouth. I’m hot!

As the third steep went down, the texture turned fluffy — marshmallow fluff — a food abomination but good in this context. A plummy caramel taste traveled down the throat as bitterness concurrently rose from the depths.

I did a fourth steep and felt the tea to be very bitter and astringent in an unpleasant way. Any similarity to Last Thoughts vanished. Metallic with a heavy sweetness. The tea left me feeling very out of balance so I let the leaves air dry for consumption the following day but never got around to it. Nor any day this week. The dried leaves smell lovely and look pretty sitting in a tea cup but the desire to have a continuation of the session wanes more every day.

Maybe the abrasive, unbalanced power will age into something pleasant. For drinking young, notsomuch.

This tea is a mood for sure. I find myself craving it but not as a daily drinker.

This has SO MUCH going on. Rich, brisk, warm, minty-fennel cool, cinnamon spicy, chocolatey, woody, herbaceous, floral, darkly bitter-sweet, mineral. On first sip, I questioned the color namesake. It soon made sense. Read the Chroma (Verdant) description.

It’s mellow enough to drink at night and fall asleep. Enough strength to stack two steeps in my thermos as work fuel.

All with only tea leaves—spices—flowers—herbs!

Roswell Strange said sophisticated. Maybe a sophisticated mystery.

Rating would be somewhere around 95 for being unique, evocative, multi-faceted and multi-functional.

Tonight’s wind-down cup is Parker’s Evening blend, a pretty simple blend of chamomile, peppermint, butterfly pea flower, lemongrass and honey granules. CuppaGeek uses whole chamomile flowers in her blends and the difference in quality between this and most chamomile teabags is obvious! The chamomile is sweet, fresh and very appley. The peppermint I can’t taste but I do notice a slight opening of my chest and sinuses. This was my first blend with butterfly pea flowers and they really do turn the tea a brilliant purplish blue. I think they contribute just a hint of musty flavor. Light lemongrass taste. Not sure if it’s the chamomile and/or honey granules (which I can’t see in the dry mix) contributing to the honeyed body and flavor, but the sweetness is mild and pleasant. I do notice a lingering sweetness in my throat. The addition of butterfly pea flowers makes this a caffeine-free blend that I think would attract young sippers… so I ordered a pouch of this for my niece. Overall — smooth, sweet and simple.

The aroma tickled my housemate as I poured her a cup from the pot. She’s definitely into it. The lemongrass reigns in this caffeine-free blend. I often find lemongrass sharp on my palate. Here it’s well tempered by jammy-sweet blueberry. I lean toward tart blueberry flavor versus jammy but I found this to be a totally pleasant profile.

It’s been interesting tracking the progression of this loose leaf sheng. I’ve had it only 3 or 4 times over the past two years. Despite not being in cake form, it is still taking the path of transformation.

The dry and warmed leaf aromas are now strongly brown sugar, ripe papaya and plums, floral, kind of citric. Rinsed leaf is pungent, wet leafy and floral.

The liquor color has moved from lemon yellow to gold to the current pinkish-yellow-brown. The taste is of caramel sweetness, moderate drying woody bitterness, slight acidity, minerals, flowers and camphor. The aftertaste rises from the throat with caramel, flowers and a hint of smoked meat. The brew quickly becomes thinner in body and taste. An underlying vegetal character presents as the caramel become ever lighter. The bitterness is persistent throughout all infusions. Very relaxing energy.

I wish I had more of this tea, like all the previous Old Tree Black offerings from Old Ways Tea. I had one bag, which I drank during the Steepster Freeze. Old notes, fairly illegible.

Like the other 3 years I’ve had (2016, 2017, 2018), this one had a great, complex strength in aroma and taste. It reminded me most of the 2018 harvest, and I think that’s because there was an umami quality present in this one that wasn’t there in the 2016 and 2017 harvests.

Main taste profile included pumpkin candy, wet rocks, sunflower seeds, rose-orchid-sunflower florals, almond, blackberry, antique wood, malt, bright leather and a tangy apricot-orange tone. Creamy finish with lychee, morphing into apple and peaches and cream. Long lasting floral aftertaste developed vapors of nutmeg that grew stronger. Ginger heat, camphor cool.

I can’t recommended the Old Tree Black teas enough if you’re willing to pay for a treat! These teas deserve attention and would be a fun learning experience for anybody wanting to develop their palate and understand complexity.