Wed Sep 23, 2020 10:32 pm
A return to the beginning: A medium-oxidized organic red oolong that gives satisfying drinks of smooth, toasty, beverage that has a fresh, rich aroma, a subtle silky finish, long pleasant aftertaste, a nice light dryness at the back of the mouth & top of the throat, & if one likes looking, it is a nice amber color. The drink feels familiar & is comforting because simple, basic, superior tea flavor grounds the complexity & high quality. Sometimes one appreciates tartness the most, sometimes one notices other characteristics more. One can vary preparation to highlight different notes. I also sometimes put several infusions into a server to drink at various temperatures: hot, warm, cool. Each change in temperature changes what I taste.
Western preparation provides 2 excellent infusions from a modest amount of leaves. Doubling or tripling the amount of leaves allows for quicker steeping of many infusions. I am selling this. It is at the end of the list of teas that I sell which is at the end of posts on my thread in the vendor section.
How did I get this tea?
Oragnic Jin Xuan Red Oolong: This is the first tea that I bought in wholesale quantity. I bought 10 kg. of this in Thailand a very long time ago. I was there for fun & business. I had tried so many teas because I like traveling in tea country. This was the only one that was special (the rest were not even better than fair).
In the North, my girlfriend, NIt, & I insisted on being let off a tour of tea country because she kept getting motion sickness (an early symptom of her brain tumor that unfortunately we did not recognize as such.) Anyway, after NIt was finished being sick, we soon realized that we were on a rarely traveled road in the middle of uninhabited tea farms (or at least, it seemed so.) We waited for vehicles to come down the road but none did. So, we walked for about an hour or so, then made our way to the only buildings in sight. We found people who were packing tea. We stayed with them for hours. During a break in their work, we gave them chocolate that I had brought from the USA & they shared their food with us. They allowed me to put some leaves into drinking water to make a brew. Even without hot water, 1 of those teas tasted good. I was allowed to take some of that tea. (A few ounces, nothing like the kilograms that were being packed into thick plastic bags & then into wooden boxes or large metal cans .
We were allowed on board a vehicle that came for the workers to take them to their tiny village; &, after that the driver took Nit & I (for a fee) to a town big enough to have a guesthouse. He also gave us some business cards which I thought would lead me to someone who would sell me some of that tea, but they did not. (He spoke no English & hardly any pure Thai. He spoke some local dialect which Nit could not understand at all.)
6 weeks later, I was in Bangkok with a businessman. I was having some garments made for me but was returning to the USA before they would be finished. This agent would inspect hand-painted banners of the Chakra symbols, then pay for the ones that were acceptable & ship them to me. (Believe it or not, the artists, would sometimes put the chakras in the wrong order. They would do such excellent work--beautiful--but make that mistake!)
I told him about my disappointment with tea. He introduced me (by phone) to a French Canadian, Germain, who shipped tea from Thailand to China & Taiwan. I met with Germain eventually at his abode/office/storeroom & there we identified the tea that I liked. (It being red & rolled into small pearls helped narrow it down.) I was able to purchase no less & no more than 10 kg. Germain gave me 1200 grams then & later sent me 8.8 kg. (I was not so completely lucky. The 1-kg bag inside my checked luggage disappeared somewhere between Bangkok & my home in Boston. Only what I had in my carry-on made it to Boston from that plane ride.) Before that 8.8 kg. of tea arrived, I had already started trying to sell some via Teachat. I did not imagine that I may not be able to buy that tea again.
Now, so many years later, not involved with any jewelry or garments etc.; out of touch etc,., I found an old card of Germain's with a Canadian phone number handwritten on the back. I called it & Germain answered. It was the home of his parents whom he had come to visit & got stuck there because of Covid 19. He referred me to a lady in Chiangmai, Thailand. A few months later, I have my favorite tea. This year can have a bit of good luck! Cheers