What Oolong Are You Drinking

[tjkdubya]

Hello, long time no post. Just dropping by, checking what's up in these parts. Drinking some leftover RG this morning.

I heard you are launching a yancha company?

"A yancha company?" Sounds more grand than it is haha. Not sure what you heard, but considering bringing things out to the public audience, things we've been selling privately. A pretty small passion project rather than make-a-living endeavor. Yancha yes, but a wider range of collections, focused on connecting the dots between the everyday and the high end, both tea and teaware...

I am totally surprised this question is the first response here

[tjkdubya]

Btw do we know each other elsewhere? IG?

[Balthazar]

Having HY Chen’s winter 2020, 100 year garden medium roast DD as well. Balthazar, did you also get his new organic garden DD, or any other teas from him? Wish I’d gotten two extra jin, it is so good, especially after a couple of very lean years. His rich roasting style aligns with my preference perfectly.

Yep, also got a jin of the spring 2020 DD. By the time I got around to making an order he was sold out of the "100 year garden", so it's from the organic garden. I asked him about whether or not the new garden uses the qingxin varietal, to which he replied that it does not, and lightly reprimanded me by adding "不要再被品种迷惑了，那是茶商的骗局" (Apparently the organic garden contains "about" [sic] four different varietals)

Very much looking forward to trying it! It's the first of his productions I've bought that's not from the "100 year garden", so it'll be interesting to compare.

Seeing your last steeps in the background, reminds me to mention I always do overnight steeps after the first four during the day. It’s a rich treat the next morning, having cooled down the flavor is more pronounced.

That's a good tip, haven't tried overnight steeping in years. Will give it a go next time around.

[Victoria]

Yep, also got a jin of the spring 2020 DD. By the time I got around to making an order he was sold out of the "100 year garden", so it's from the organic garden. I asked him about whether or not the new garden uses the qingxin varietal, to which he replied that it does not, and lightly reprimanded me by adding "不要再被品种迷惑了，那是茶商的骗局" (Apparently the organic garden contains "about" [sic] four different varietals)

Very much looking forward to trying it! It's the first of his productions I've bought that's not from the "100 year garden", so it'll be interesting to compare.

Interesting to see him say that, but then he’s right - his skill is what makes his roasted oolong so special. I’m thinking he uses each varietal for specific productions, rather than blend them. Although, from his organic plot he’s only offering roasted DongDing so maybe he’s blending. Interesting to speculate and look at leaves. He commented to me that his “organic tea is more fragrant” and “100 yrs garden more rounded”. I like them both, it’s difficult to tell them apart, but I haven’t done a side by side yet. Am curious to hear what you think of the ones you got @Balthazar.

[Bok]

The new and organic garden will be fragrant as its newly planted, only with the years of settling, it will mature and get more mature and balanced taste.

Qingxin is widely considered the best varietal but not the easiest to grow and maintain, so it makes sense to use others that give more returns.

I heard his harvest yield was low this year due to the bad weather. Across the board harvest was poor and not very good this winter. More hope lies on spring...

[LeoFox]

Tested a bag of generic TGY gifted years ago. A horrible tea. Am posting the pics here - maybe it can help people to link visual attributes to bad quality.

Leaf looks green but smell heavy roasted.

Lots of powder in the dried leaf

Infusions taste flat from the start with an additional chemically green characteristic. Leaves mouth feeling dry and uncomfortable

Very mild fragrance

Avoid

[LeoFox]

Brewed up a hon yama "koju" cultivar oolong from thes du japon.
This is from the 2020 harvest and the vendor has the following tasting notes:

unique fruity fragrance, recalling white grapes, peaches and also sweet citrus.

This is a "zarai" and is supposed to have no bitterness. TDJ recommends 6g/100 mL with boiling water for 40s.

Based on the description I treated it like a chinese oolong: threw 5 g in 85 mL gaiwan. Off boiling water:
Rinse/35s/30s/35s etc

The dry and wet leaves smell a bit like a hybrid of baozhong and zairai sencha: floral and vegetal.

Unfortunately the first few infusions are quite bitter. The bitterness in the front is eye popping and devastating - I will start with the positives. The flavors in the back and in the aftertaste are much more pleasant: sweet grape juice, some light savory herbs, and a greenness that reminds me of gao shan. The aftertaste lingers for a long time and is superb - sweet and slightly drying that makes my mouth water. The infusion is also thick with a medium to heavy body...keeps getting thicker as steeps progress. Lots of pectin.

Regarding the bitterness, it is so strong and off putting that when my wife had it, she gagged and coughed - and had to wash the taste out of her mouth with tap water. She has never done that in the past with other teas, even young sheng! The bitterness does decrease and goes away after 3-4 infusions. As infusions progress, the tea soup is thick and juicy. The leaves can withstand a lot of infusions and seems to be okay with boiling water after the bitterness vanishes.

This makes it clear to me that florent has a very high capacity for bitterness since he thinks there is no bitterness at all.

When approached expecting an oolong, this tea disappoints due to unpalatable upfront bitterness. When approached as a zairai sencha, or simply as a Japanese green, this tea is pretty good with the complex fruity flavors, and long satisfying aftertaste.

I believe this tea benefits from lower leaf to water ratio (maybe 4-5 g per 100) and cooler water (maybe around 80-85) with the typical sencha brewing parameters. Alternatively, quick/flash steeps with boiling water might also work in the beginning to deal with the bitterness.

Edit:
Brewing it with flash steeps of boiling water does control the bitterness to a degree. The teasoup is very flowery and remains thick and heavy - and still a little bitter. Can steep this way for a long time. Reminds me of some younger sheng... what a strange and interesting tea..

[mafoofan]

Last night, I brewed some 1997 Horse Head Cliff shui xian from Essence of Tea: https://essenceoftea.com/products/1997- ... uyi-yancha.

I brewed it gong fu-style in a 100ml zhuni teapot, which I filled 80-85% full with leaves (about 9-10 grams). We used filtered spring water, heated to 100 degrees Celsius. I flash-brewed the first four or five steeps, about a second each. Subsequent steeps I increased to 4-5 seconds. The last couple of steeps were 10-20 seconds.

First of all, the smell of the liquor: old books, mossy funk, slight tinge of over-ripe fruit. Not very complex, but quite clear and consistent across all nine steeps.

The taste: again, not very complex, but very clear and lasting. Zero astringency and very quiet and mellow flavor development in the mouth. After a moment, the taste of over-ripe lychee surfaces—you know, when all the sweetness is gone and the flesh of the fruit has shrunk and oxidized. Rock and mineral notes are very present, but l would otherwise not have guessed from taste alone that this was yancha at all.

Mouth feel and texture were exceptional! Extremely smooth and thick soup. Leaves the mouth and throat feeling coated with fuzz.

Overall, a very elegant and extremely unique yancha. Some might be disappointed by the quieter, less complex fragrance and taste, but they’d be missing out on the very special texture and feel.

[Bok]

Some might be disappointed by the quieter, less complex fragrance and taste, but they’d be missing out on the very special texture and feel.

I think this might be due to lack of exposure to a greater variety of Yancha. The better ones are often exactly this – subdued and subtle, only gently revealing what they have in stock.

The in-your-face-rougui-fragrant-kind of Yancha are more common and mass market. Yancha has a dizzying variety in flavours, only a fraction is available in the West. I've had the same reaction as you quite a few times, there are so many never-tasted-before varietals among the Wuyi teas it is a whole parallel world among Oolong teas.

[LeoFox]

@Tillerman's laoshi dong ding winter 2020

Vendor description:

Grower: Chen Huan Tang
Cultivar: Qing Xin Wulong
Region: Lugu, Nantou County
Altitude: 700m

The tea has a beautiful layered structure: sweet dried fruit, roasted nuts, chocolate and some dried flowers and herbs. Each layer is clearly expressed, separate yet playfully interacting, like a quiet but precisely keyed baroque counterpoint, long after the tea is swallowed. 

The roast is very clean. The one flaw to me is that the flavors are a bit thin when brewed according to the vendor: 6g/100 mL 35s/30s/40s and so forth. This may be due to the poor winter harvest. Interestingly, the leaves expand so greatly, that I cannot fit more than 5g into my 85 mL gaiwan making it impossible to push harder with leaf:water. This tea should benefit from a teapot with high heat retention and longer brewing time. Nothing should be rounded.

[belewfripp]

2001 Family Reserve Aged Oolong from Taiwan Tea Crafts. I have to give it up to TTC - the teas I ordered are good and they got everything to me in 7 days, which is crazy fast. Some of that was DHL being unexpectedly quick, but all the same - I was very excited to have this arrive on Friday. Aroma of the wet leaves is cinnamon raisin toast or baked cinnamon plums - bready and fruity and spicy. Taste is more of the same - some fruity sweetness, especially around the edges, plenty of bready/malty notes and some leathery bitterness. As described, no sourness beyond some light, fruity tang. Can be a bit astringent on the back of the tongue and the top of the throat if pushed too hard, too soon.

I ordered a full bag of 250 g and am inclined to keep it taped up in a cool, dark and dry place and let it age some more. I'm wondering lately if it doesn't make sense, in drier parts of the West, to age quality oolong instead of puer. With puer it's constant fussing about "humid but not too humid, warm but not too warm, maybe a little air exchange but only a very little bit" etc. With oolong, you don't want any of those things at all, really - cool, dark, dry and sealed tight. Obviously, it can't possibly be that simple or there would be more good, aged oolong around but then maybe the fact that some of the places which love oolong the most are also really humid (and so maybe not so good places to store it?) is also part of that problem?

[Ethan Kurland]

.... Aroma of the wet leaves is cinnamon raisin toast or baked cinnamon plums - bready and fruity and spicy. Taste is more of the same - some fruity sweetness, especially around the edges, plenty of bready/malty notes and some leathery bitterness.....

... I'm wondering lately if it doesn't make sense, in drier parts of the West, to age quality oolong instead of puer. With puer it's constant fussing.... Obviously, it can't possibly be that simple or there would be more good, aged oolong around

I commend you for your descriptions of the aroma & then the taste. I never smelled baked cinnamon plums yet think I know what you mean by it. I have been drinking an aged oolong daily for several months in my new lifestyle of enjoying the best teas as much as I can (not saving them for special days). With this change in my habits I find myself not talking about specific flavors, not even recognizing them often; yet, enjoying tea sessions as much or more than I did before. Nonetheless, whatever bitterness I encountered when I was more on top of specifics, never seemed leathery to me. Yet, I bet many people understand what you mean.

On the consumer side of aged oolong, one that is excellent is likely not to improve once he has it. Your tea, which sounds delightful, had 20 years to get there & probably cannot improve. However, I think you are wise to consider keeping a lot of aged oolong versus puer. Aged oolong is less trouble than pu. I think many people enjoy the challenge to improve their leaves with discipline & planning; so pu is their thing. On the business end, excellent aged oolong does not come from mediocre leaves. Top quality oolong fetches high prices without aging. There is not a great reward for ethical tea producers & vendors to sell aged oolong. (Selling a story about aged oolong, such as b.s. about 50 year old extremely expensive... that is different.) Puer sells even though it is low quality leaves, even when it does not taste good while it is being bought, even though by the time it becomes delicious (which is a feat achieved against the odds) the person who bought that puer & nurtured it to greatness is likely to have died, become senile, or to have found himself in an anxious state as the administrator of a nasty divorce does not allow him to remove his tea from the house his spouse occupies alone at least until the divorce settlement is completed. ("Your honor, we don't even celebrate wedding anniversaries because restaurants & getaways cost money, but he has thousands of dollars' worth of tea sitting in a cupboard.")

Cheers

[faj]

I have been drinking an aged oolong daily for several months in my new lifestyle of enjoying the best teas as much as I can (not saving them for special days). With this change in my habits I find myself not talking about specific flavors, not even recognizing them often

It would be logical that the food or drink you have often becomes the implicit reference. If you have the same tea repeatedly, and it has some similarity to, say, cinnamon, then at some point you taste the tea for what it is because you know and expect the experience of that tea as a whole (rather than being taken by surprise by, and noticing mostly, a similarity to some other food or drink). But then you may find the apple pie you have once in a while reminds you of that tea instead. It is not like cinnamon "owns" the aromatic notes it is associated with.

I have written before that although I understand noticing aromatic similarities may be fun (or unavoidable), I think being able to truly enjoy a tea does not require referencing other sensory experiences, just as enjoying an apple pie does not require being reminded of an oolong tea. To me, focusing on "notes" is kind of like focusing on how your date reminds you of previous partners. It may show your analytical prowess, but does not necessarily make for the best evening...

I surely wish my tea journey brings me closer to enjoying fewer teas, but teas that are a good enough fit for me that I am able to enjoy them every day without becoming bored or irritated with their flaws.

[Edit: typo]

[LeoFox]

I have written before that although I understand noticing aromatic similarities may be fun (or unavoidable), I think being able to truly enjoy a tea does not require referencing other sensory experiences, just as enjoying an apple pie does not require being reminded of an oolong tea. To me, focusing on "notes" is kind of like focusing on how your date reminds you of previous partners. It may show your analytical prowess, but does not necessarily make for the best evening...

To understand a thing in itself with no reference to other things may be impossible for us as humans.

Now we reach the territory of the structuralists

[belewfripp]

With this change in my habits I find myself not talking about specific flavors, not even recognizing them often; yet, enjoying tea sessions as much or more than I did before. Nonetheless, whatever bitterness I encountered when I was more on top of specifics, never seemed leathery to me. Yet, I bet many people understand what you mean.
....

On the consumer side of aged oolong, one that is excellent is likely not to improve once he has it. Your tea, which sounds delightful, had 20 years to get there & probably cannot improve. However, I think you are wise to consider keeping a lot of aged oolong versus puer. Aged oolong is less trouble than pu.

The leather is really more the taste of leather, not the texture. Once i'm familiar with a tea, I stop paying much attention to consciously recognizing various elements, but it's in my nature to analyze at the start and to mentally compare to how it may have tasted before and think about what may have generated the change (my mood? the weather? the water/preparation?). I appreciate your much too kind words for my attempts to discuss a category of tea (aged oolongs) that, as I have written in this thread previously, I am still very much learning about.

...

I have written before that although I understand noticing aromatic similarities may be fun (or unavoidable), I think being able to truly enjoy a tea does not require referencing other sensory experiences, just as enjoying an apple pie does not require being reminded of an oolong tea. To me, focusing on "notes" is kind of like focusing on how your date reminds you of previous partners. It may show your analytical prowess, but does not necessarily make for the best evening...

I surely wish my tea journey brings me closer to enjoying fewer teas, but teas that are a good enough fit or me that I am able to enjoy them every day without becoming bored or irritated with their flaws.

I think one of the reasons why I enjoy recognizing/commenting on "notes" in tea (and other things) is because I usually don't have just the one type preference, and I can find enjoyment (indeed often find more enjoyment) in that which is flawed somewhat rather than something that is perfect, especially in the world of things that qualify as art in some sense, and I think culinary things qualify. Considering the balance of the positives and the negatives can sometimes be as enjoyable for me as something less troublesome. I do the same thing with absinthe, my other favorite beverage.

I think part of it maybe could be related back to appreciating what a musician is doing, technically or creatively, as a separate thing from the actual music or melody/rhythm being created - e.g. I adore Sun Ra's electronic organ playing on the title track of his avant-garde jazz classic Atlantis, but as "music" per se it's less amazing than as a feat one is admiring. In the same way, separate from the holistic experience of enjoying the tea, there is also the part that stands somewhat removed from the experience, observing as opposed to experiencing.

Regarding logic, I think it is probably logical to go even further and conclude that there is nothing that is actually required in order to truly enjoy tea, except for the tea itself and a means of consuming it - defining "true enjoyment" often ends in defining the nature of a thing according to our own reality, and to the exclusion of others who don't share it.

I would note that I don't appreciate girlfriends/wives or friends/family in the same way as I appreciate tea, or "art" in general. Art is, in the end, a thing - a thing that bears the mark and stamp of a person or people, and which can at times communicate some "message" to the participant from the creator(s), but ultimately it is still a thing or an experience, both of which seem insulting to apply to other people. Other people are, in some ways, their own separate universe and to reduce them to the level of an experience to be had is nearly as insulting as saying, "This is Name" when it is just a name and can barely contain much of your essential "Name-ness" in those letters, no matter how much we may associate them with our inner selves (or our attempted efforts to do so with others).

To understand a thing in itself with no reference to other things may be impossible for us as humans.

Now we reach the territory of the structuralists

Indeed. But then, we have to ask ourselves, from whence came the things we first used as a reference? And what was our reference for understanding the reference? Genetics? Collective unconscious? Vendor marketing?

To be serious, though, I had a long-term relationship with a woman who is color-blind. She sees "red" as "grey". But - what's "grey"? Well, according to her, it was just the color she perceived when other people said, "that's grey" and then when people called something "red" it was the same thing. But how do we know what that actually looks like? How do I know when I see "red" you do, too? Kind of goes back to Ethan's comments on my tasting notes - he hasn't encountered cinnamon, but he thinks he knows what I might mean by that. And as faj noted, cinnamon doesn't "own" those aromatic notes (if it did, how could unadulterated tea ever smell like it anyway?).