I bought a few portions samplers as part of my Journey Back Into Tea, and this was the packet at the top of the oolong box. Out came the six-and-a-half ounce glass teapot and the Whittard of Chelsea “English Breakfast” teacup and saucer, lower went the temperature knob on my kettle, and off we went!
I’ve had several Ali Shans before, prepared both western and gong fu style, and I debated breaking out one of my gaiwans for a moment before I decided to stick to the instructions on the packet, which were for western brewing. Once I tipped the leaves out into my little glass pot, I felt assured I had made the right call there, as it just didn’t seem like there was quite enough leaf there for…what my hands can remember of gong fu, at least. The dry leaf smelled strongly vegetal, but this turned into a very thin, light scent somewhere between the smell you get when shelling peas and something floral. After a three-minute steep, I poured the tea up and found a very pale yellow brew with more or less the same scent as the leaves had when they first touched water, only a bit stronger. It’s still far from the most fragrant oolong I’ve ever had, I have to put my nose quite close to the cup to smell it at all, but it does smell good. One of my kittens even seems slightly intrigued, looking back at the cup a few times between pets, though without any particularly obvious signs of either desire or disgust.
When I first started reviewing my teas on tumblr a few weeks ago, I used the time it took me to write up my introductory notes to let the cup cool just a touch to drinking temperature, and I employed the same policy here. Then, with my teacup in my right hand and my entire left arm occupied with ten pounds of cat who needed a snuggle, I took a sip and got…
Crispy hot water?
Sounds strange, but that’s the best description I can come up with. You know how lettuce is basically crispy water with only a faint trace of flavor to it? It was like that, except hot. Since there was nobody about to witness my impending act of poor manners except for the cat, I slurped on the second mouthful like a proper tea taster and got, this time, a taste – delicate, but a taste. It was pretty much exactly the taste version of that smell you smell when you are shelling peas or snapping up fresh green beans – clean and clearly plant-like, not entirely dissimilar to what I remember cut grass smelling like before I developed a painful allergy to it…Or maybe it’s closer to when I would pick dandelions out of the yard when I was little, and that smell which came with the white “plant milk” substance that would seep from where the stem had broken off. There’s also just a hint of something I interpret as “the smell of mud,” which, given that we’re on red clay here, I’m going to tentatively identify as a mineral note.
Well, that was a pleasant little drift down memory lane – in addition to the childhood dandelion memory, it also brought to mind how my family, it used to be the custom for all the women and girls to sit around shelling peas or snapping up beans together, as the work went much faster if you had people to talk with as you worked. Same went for shucking corn, though I never could help as much with that because I have a reaction to corn silk (and just corn silk, for some reason. I can and do eat popcorn all the time, and have done since I grew my first couple teeth, but let corn silk touch me and I’m going to go to itching all over and being unable to shake the headache I’ll suddenly have no matter how many times I sneeze). One more swallow, and the cup was empty. In the interests of science, though, I did not wrap up my tea session there and go put my phone on the charger, where it very much needs to be. Instead, I lowered the cat to the floor, heated the kettle again, and put the leaves on to resteep for three minutes plus as long as it took me to type out all the above notes about taste with one finger, since although I’m a good typist, I never got the hang of texting properly. This all done, I poured the tea up again and think it is a slightly deeper shade of yellow than the first cup. It also has a more pronounced floral smell. Excellent. And my mouth was just getting a tad uncomfortably dry from the finish of my first cup, so it was an excellent time to put more liquid in there, and so I did. And it tasted like….
Multiple things!
As I sipped on this cup, I remembered what Ali Shan is supposed to taste like – those cream and floral notes. I was able to find them in the cup this time, with the sweet floral notes particularly clear on the swallow. They were not as strong as I would have liked (though Ali Shan is, if I recall correctly, supposed to be a fairly delicately-flavored tea), and there was a now slightly bitter vegetal note on top, but it was nevertheless a pleasant cup that reminded me why I used to love a good oolong so. I think I could get along quite well with this tea, if I just upped the amount of leaf involved the tiniest bit…
Do I dare attempt a third steep? If I do, it’ll have to be documented later, because my phone is very dying and I don’t want to lose this whole note to a battery shutdown. To the charger with me!
