Ali Shan Oolong - Spring 2011 from Teamasters

Tea: Another gaoshancha from Stéphane, and again a generously included sample with my last order. Stéphane's notes on this luanze oolong can be found here.
Origin: 1450m up Ali Shan in Taiwan
Harvest: April 23, 2011

What this spring will surely lack in maple syrup production (unseasonably warm temperatures are causing the trees to bud early, at which point the sap can no longer be harvested to be boiled down into syrup) is already being made up for in increased opportunities to drink cooling teas outdoors. Today the mercury soared into the twenties (in degrees Celsius, of course), and so after regaining my composure I ventured out onto my back deck to taste a new tea.

Like all my teas with a low level of oxidation and roasting that I want to keep tasting fresh, I've been storing this sample in a small section of my fridge devoted to such teas. Thanks to the low temperatures, the teas coming out of there generally don't have much aroma until they warm up, generally quite rapidly inside a preheated gaiwan. Even when chilled, this tea lets off a concentrated oily perfume indicating that almost a year after harvesting the leaves are still holding onto their freshness. Warmed up, these same characteristics intensify along with a pronounced sweetness that now joins the ranks of the other aromas; when mixed under the lid of the gaiwan the collective impression is of a creamsicle!

Over the course of the first infusion the tightly rolled leaves hardly open, though they do swell up a little as the water begins to work its way in. The bright green liquor from my gaiwan looks even more appetizing in the light blue caress of my super thin porcelain cups, and tastes as good as it looks. From the first sip a wave of cooling energy spreads through my chest and arms, making my fingers and the tip of my nose tingle pleasantly. Satisfying but at the same time light and sweet, drinking this tea is reminiscent of the best parts of eating fresh corn on the cob. The liquid's texture is incredibly smooth as it slides down my throat leaving behind an evolving aftertaste, eventually resolving into a sweet minty taste which cools the mouth with every inhalation.

The leaves open much more rapidly over the course of the second steeping, releasing finer aromas and overall increasing the concentration of the liquor. I feel as though I'm drinking some kind of peculiar and delicious potion as watered down honey turns to sweet menthol on the tongue and hints of the lightest of spring flowers in the nose. The first cup gone, I inhale deeply the fine floral sweetness found at the bottom of my apparently empty cup. The lasting sweetness is incredibly clean and smooth, metallic springs to mind, if that descriptor can be used flatteringly. Between infusions I reheated the water to see how this tea would respond when pushed, and a shift towards complexity in the aftertaste as well as a smidgen of chalkiness in the mouthfeel were the only changes. As I steep and re-steep this tea, some of the finer aromas give way to mellower counterparts, but the clean texture, mint aftertaste, and prominent sweetness remain to refresh the drinker.

This tea gives me the impression of what it might be like to skim the absolute top notes off lower altitude oolongs and drink them separately. Unsurprising and fitting, I suppose, this being a high-altitude oolong. Clearly I need to drink more goashancha (then again, with such a wonderful genre, how could this not be the case?)! However, the best and most central part of this tea must surely be that sweet minty freshness lasting a year since harvest, and seemingly just as long in the mouth; that little green gem at the bottom of every cup.

Semi-Wild Baozhong: One Year Later

 ...sort of. I first reviewed this tea back in June of 2011, little more than a month after it had been harvested in Taiwan. Now, just over ten months from the baozhong's late-April harvest, I'm drinking part of a portion I set aside for 'aging'. Not having the patience for serious aging, I elected to leave a few grams of the tea in the bottom of the plastic sack it arrived in for a few months as more of an extended airing out to see what would happen. I've been drinking a little bit of it every couple of months to check up on it, and at this most recent trial I feel the changes are significant enough to be of interest.

Initially, this tea was full of strong notes of raw vegetables, as well as having a long lasting fresh aftertaste and a few rough edges that needed managing. All of those traits still exist, but have undergone great changes in proportion and character. Chiefly, while this tea still tastes and feels very fresh, it has lost most of its raw character. In days not so long gone by the liquor bore a similarity to fresh green beans in its raw and slightly biting edge of freshness, but now that bite has been tamed, only appearing briefly in the first gaiwan infusion. More akin to lightly steamed beans, the tea has become more savoury and rounder. I tasted this tea when it was fresh and then again a couple of months ago with a friend who tends not to enjoy overly vegetal teas such as this one. Having mellowed out significantly by then, my friend was surprised to find out that the tea he was enjoying that day was the same one he hadn't much liked a few months prior.

The strength of aromas in this tea has waned over the year, but the pleasant sweetness and lightest of floral notes are still to be found in the bottom of the cup, largely bereft of the vegetal notes that accompanied them in days of yore. The fading of the rawness from when this tea was fresh has allowed other elements to come to the forefront, namely the mouthfeel and the aftertaste. If this tea was initially silky smooth, then now it's more like cashmere. The liquor is still very light and fresh, but has become full to the brim of umami. (Umami is a tricky thing to describe if you don't already know what it is, and apparently as much as a quarter of the population can't taste it, but 'brothiness' seems as good a descriptor as any.) Smooth and dry, but full of substance, this tea's mellow and satisfying fresh character makes it great for drinking outside in today's record-breaking high temperatures (12C; it's early March in Canada, I'll take what I can get).

Only a few months of airing out have made this tea much more manageable, and in a pot dedicated to all things green and fresh I really don't have to pay much attention to it so long as I stay mindful of water temperature. What seasoning this pot has brings out the aftertaste in the tea, leaving sunflower seeds and a cool, minty freshness on my breath long after I've stopped drinking.

Dong Ding Cuisson Traditionelle - 2011 from Cha Yi

Tea: Traditionally roasted Dong Ding oolong from Cha Yi (English), a well roasted green oolong with surprising vivacity for its relatively low-altitude origins (roundabout 700m, if I remember correctly).

A review on this tea is long overdue, but first a few words about the teashop from which I bought it. I'm a big believer in supporting good local sources of tea for the simple reason that there's no better way to learn about what you're drinking than by buying your teas in person from someone who really knows their product. This Gatineau teashop located just across the river from Canada's national capital has been open for a little over a year now, and by the looks of it will be around for a little while yet. The service is friendly and the staff knowledgeable (Daniel, one half of the couple who currently run the shop, worked for Camellia Sinensis for five years, and through this association now offers some of their teas in the Ottawa area). Though I've limited my sampling to their selection of oolongs, I've been entirely satisfied with all my purchases so far, and the lower priced teas don't seem to suffer the plunge in quality common in some other local teashops.

Short version of the above: If you're in the National Capital Region, stop by 61 rue Eddy in Gatineau. It's nice.

I'm a big fan of roasted Taiwanese oolongs of all stripes, but I also have frequent cravings for the creamy vegetal freshness of gaoshan oolongs. This tea satisfies both needs, but without the hefty price tag that frequently accompanies hung shui type oolongs. Though certainly not a substitute for this highly acclaimed genre, this tea carries a level of roasting and freshness not commonly found together in 'lower range' teas.

Having by now enjoyed this tea on more than one occasion, I know this tea performs best with a bit less leaf than other teas. If made more concentrated, the roasting characteristics overwhelm the others in the first few infusions and render the brew excessively dry. I pour the requisite amount of small, tightly rolled green balls into the bottom of my teapot and lift it up to my nose for a sniff. Straight away the dry, roasted character of this tea kept subdued by its refrigerated storage wakes up and fills my sinuses.

I pour hot water quickly from high up to help open the leaves and decant the infusion directly into two of my porcelain singing cups. The hot liquor is deeply satisfying and slightly warming; the chaqi goes straight to my head in a pleasant head-rush type sensation. The roasting has left the liquor feeling slightly dry, but the tea is still fresh enough that it sloshes around and coats my mouth in the manner of any good green oolong. The roasting also dominates the taste at this point, with a dry caramel sweetness accompanied by fruity floral undertones. It's in the aftertaste that the green-ness of this tea is most apparent, with an oily and slightly vegetal finish; a subdued version of what I expect from gaoshan. The empty cup bears similar notes, but with a refreshing lightness, rendering the whole experience heady but not overpowering.

In subsequent infusions the balance shifts away from roasting and more towards the light vegetal notes, obviating the thick and slightly oily mouthfeel for a time before a dryness begins to creep onto the tongue. When I was sold this tea, Daniel told me one of the things he likes about this tea is the way this roasting gradually diminishes and gives way to other, equally pleasant characteristics. Unlike many low quality teas, this tea evolves from infusion to infusion rather than simply peaking then tapering off, and it's this sort of endurance and complexity that led me to believe that this tea was from a much higher elevation than it is.

The finished leaves are dark green, tender, and very springy. Fresh, roasted, and all around very nice.

Teapot also from Cha Yi, bowl by Petr Novak featured here

When the leaves finally do start to give up the ghost, make one last long cool infusion and use it to deglaze a pan of sautéed onions for quiche. Chop of a couple of the more tender leaves and mix them into the filling as well. The tea seems to lighten and freshen up the dish a little bit, while adding a touch more savouriness. A delicious way to squeeze those last bits of goodness out of an already delicious tea. (Apologies for the lack of a picture, in all the excitement I got distracted and forgot. I'll be sure to post one the next time I make this dish, perhaps the subject of its own blog post.)

Music and Tea

The pairing of music with the preparation and consumption of tea seems to be fairly commonplace, but not too often  discussed among drinkers of tea. I think this is perhaps simply because of variation in individual musical tastes, but surely these tastes merit as much discussion as preferences for styles of teaware or genres of tea? Background music seems to be everywhere nowadays, whether it's coming from a myriad of speakers in a department store, or from two tiny ones nestled in your ears during your morning run; this omnipresence suggests to me that any music accompanying tea (or the necessarily deliberate lack thereof) becomes a de-facto mood-setter for the session. Today I'm breaking the silence about music and giving it the pride of place it deserves as part of my experience with tea!

The choice of a beautiful set of antique teacups or the clean, simple lines of an unadorned and expertly crafted yixing teapot are something any tea-drunkard like me will have some level of appreciation for, but unless you happen to have heaps of money to acquire a range of them (which I don't), it's difficult to use such elements to incorporate much-needed variety into your tea drinking routine. A good friend of mine known to some as Biblical Jon is a master of the art of using small details to ensure that no two sessions are quite alike, even if they involve the same tea made in the same teapot and poured into the same cups. He also happens to have fantastic taste in music. Whenever he hosts tea, he reliably pulls out his phone and starts playing whatever strikes his fancy, instantly setting the tone and creating a calm atmosphere as he goes about the process making tea.

 

As much as I feel music is an integral part of a tea session and not to be ignored, I also don't think it should be taken too seriously. I don't concern myself with sticking to music with shared origins to my tea, though from time to time I do find myself wanting to listen to Krishna Das alongside a cup of tea (it's the right sub-continent, at least). So long as the music enhances the overall experience, it's done its job in my book, whether it may be Alexi Murdoch, Mogwai, traditional Nankuan music, or Nine Inch Nails. Sometimes you just have to throw things at the wall and see what sticks, and that, for me, is what tea is all about.

With that in mind, I'd like to hear from anyone reading this blog about what you listen to when you drink tea, or if indeed you listen to anything at all. What do you think the choice of auditory ambience brings to the experience? Is it something you find worth paying attention to, or is music just a distraction from the tea itself? Please comment and let me know.