Origin: Fujian province, China
Year: Unknown (but basically irrelevant)
Vendor: Serenity Art, Inc.
This tea was a gift from Adrian, purchased at Serenity Art in Portland, OR (I wish they had an online store! Arrrgg). It is a somewhat-heavily roasted gaoshan, which is not always easy to find-- the unroasted, nearly green oolongs are reported to be more popular with young tea drinkers in China and Taiwan.
If you like Just4Tea's roasted TGY, you will probably like this tea too. The dry leaf smells of cocoa, caramel, and toasted grains. It looks darker than Just4Tea's roasted TGY, so I'm guessing this was roasted more.
The liquor has a solid caramel/ toasted grain flavor. It is sweet, smooth, slightly fruity (blueberry, I think), and it has a little bit of a kick from the roast.
This is a very good roasted gaoshan, and I would definitely recommend trying it if you happen to find yourself in Portland. Coincidentally (and conveniently, for this post), I was in Portland this past weekend and stopped by the store. It is a nice tea shop with a large selection of teas and teawares, which are generally cheaper than products of similar quality you may find online. Communication can be an issue (particularly if you butcher Chinese tea terms as badly as I do), but the owner is helpful and patient.
On a mostly unrelated note, I just got a new (used) lens: a 28mm f/2.8 Nikkor Ai. So far it seems to work fine; I used it for all the tea photos in this post (Not that they are anything special. Actually they're pretty lame, but the lens works fine). It is a manual focus lens though, so it can be hard to focus properly on my dSLR (the viewfinder is much smaller and doesn't have a split-prism for determining correct focus, unlike my film SLR), especially handheld in low-ish light like I had. Also, on my crop-sensor dSLR it is only the equivalent of a ~45mm lens, which is why these shots don't look like they were made with a wide-angle. I'm looking forward to running some film behind it though!
Sweet pot! Where'd it come from?
ReplyDeleteZero the Hero,
ReplyDeleteIt came from a store called Dragon Tea House, on eBay. They don't have this one anymore but you might be able to find something similar.
Brent
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ReplyDeleteI actually noticed some very exotic wood type notes, although it's not always easy to get. I also noticed the *almost* aged wulong type notes (you usually call it blueberry) as well, which prompted me to stock up on it so that I can let some age :)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm glad you liked it. I'm not well versed in high-fire wulong (yet!), but this is one of my favorites to date.
Now you'll just have to review the lighter ones of the same tea that I sent for comparison :)
Coincidentally my spouse will be in PDX at the end of the month, so hope to be drinking this gaoshan soon.
ReplyDeleteThose old camera bodies sure are beautiful. Thanks for including that shot.
ReplyDeleteABx,
ReplyDeleteI'll pay more attention to wood notes the next time I brew it. And yes, I'm pretty sure my "blueberry" is the same as that classic aged oolong flavor-- thanks for pointing that out. :)
I also tried stuffing the pot with this tea, and it handled it very well. It's an interesting way of tasting a tea; it really was almost like an espresso, but without any bitter charcoal flavor, somehow. You should try it-- I filled a teapot about 1/3 full, then filled it another 1/3 full with slightly crushed leaves. Ask Brandon for more details, I just tried to follow his instructions.
Georgia,
I hope your spouse finds it!
Salsero,
Aren't they? The new plastic ones may be more ergonomic, but I would rather enjoy holding a camera than just feel comfortable holding it, if you know what I mean.
Thanks all,
Brent