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I may be having an off tea day. I’ve had two sessions with new-to-me teas and both were just okay. Maybe I’m getting too expectant after the mind-blowers I’ve had recently. Though… here I sit now, with one of my favorite oolongs (Taiwan Charcoal Roasted from What-Cha), and it’s great, so maybe I just batted 0/2 today.

2020 harvest. This was my first gong fu of the day, and based on the 2015 harvest that folks commented on, I was pretty excited about this tea.

My first 5-sec steep produced a nutty nose, like roasted pecan or walnut, with very subtle hints of roast and spiced baking — like plum pudding baking off in the oven. Not a lot in the first sip, dry leaves. Wisps of dark fruit, like cherry or plum.

Very subtle second steep… it’s a solid cuppa, but not terribly exciting to me. Some floral in the third. Fourth produced some tangy astringency.

Overall it’s a “meh” for me today, but I’ll come back to it.

2022 harvest/roast

What-Cha… WHAT KIND OF SORCERY IS THIS? I can’t even. Just. Love.

Dry leaves have a smell of spinach. Lovely. Unlike any green tea I’ve smelled before, though my experience is mostly Japanese greens — sencha, genmaicha, matcha. I feel like I’m about to go on a ride.

Beautiful yellow-green pour from the first (~5sec) steep. Nose is a big bowl of asparagus soup — cooked asparagus, cream, even some umami/salt, if that’s possible…? Yep, that’s possible — taste is absolutely everything I smelled. Some toast, too. This is making me smile. I didn’t know tea could do this.

Second steep is our second course, apparently — pea risotto now, with everything that implies — cooked rice, garlic scapes, butter, cream, spring peas. Little touch of potato. Umami for days. I got a leaf in my last sip and it was soft and delightful, not tannic when chewed. You could put these in soup.

Very very mild astringency in the third; back to asparagus soup. Starting to get watery in the fourth, but I get squash blossoms as it cools.

My fifth was a much longer steep (managed to forget about it)… light greenish-yellow liquor, some very light olive oil on the nose. Spinach is back and there’s still quite a bit of flavor here, actually. Gave it one more fuggedaboudit steep and it was quite watery.

What an absolute freaking joy.

2021 harvest/roast.

I love this tea so much. It is the selection that was thrown out as a possible replacement for an oolong I really enjoyed from August Uncommon… I tasted this stuff and that was the day I stopped chasing flavored teas in favor of exploring varieties/regions/craft. I’ve been drinking this so much that I’m afraid of losing the subtleties before I review it, so let me get to it…

First steep pours light brown with a nose of leather, cedar, floral perfume. Floral and charcoal notes come through up front, without a rinse.

Second steep is bigger leather and cedar, more floral, more easy charcoal… the roast is not intrusive, just underlies the other flavor components beautifully.

Third steep, tobacco. Wet leaves. Through several more steeps, the florality holds strong. Even the watery steeps are nicely leafy and twiggy.

This tea is just such a heady, lovely thing. Oolong gateway.

Gong fu:
Hay and white mushroom (enoki — really delicate, not fungal) in the first steep. 2-3 were grassy; I picked up a tiny floral or light fruit, like apple. Some astringency in the fourth; everything is so subtle and washed out, I’m a little surprised this is red label. I keep getting fruit on the nose when I let it sit for a minute, then it flutters away in the sip. More astringency and some grass on the last steeps.

Thoroughly “meh” for me. Most everything I’ve had from Red Blossom so far tastes very watery right out of the gate. Maybe this is the “clean” they describe in their mission…? I don’t know, I’m just not falling in love.

Western brew:
The elusive almond was more present in the nose here; nutty like boiled almonds, not amaretto. There’s some honey also, which rounds out the bottom of the nose… much easier to detect here, even though everything is still quite subtle. Hay, brown grass in the mouth; I don’t taste the almond and honey so much as I smell them. This feels like an everyday restaurant drinker, not a red label adventure. White mushrooms again.

Eh.

2022 harvest/roast. My first (that I’m aware of) Tie Guan Yin. Pretty excited.

First steep, no rinse, was a light golden-brown pour. Notes of honey, light charcoal, and grapes.

Second steep poured a tan-honey color. Notes of violet, purple grapes, a nice round roast with no sharp edges. I’m getting durian, cotton candy on the nose as it cools, very ripe cantaloupe.

Browner pour, less gold on the third steep. Durian and violet still present, very similar to steep 2… some dry roasty leaves. More mild roasted notes come through in the fourth; this fruit sweetness has a “sickly sweet” note to it. I don’t not like it, it’s just very distinct. But fun. Some maillarded sugar… I wouldn’t quite call it caramel. Mild tannins peeking through.

Mild brown bread in the fifth, with twigs; sweetness is more secondary now. More of the same in the next steep, with a little nip of that sickly sweet flavor coming back… heck is that? Like a nice kukicha for the rest of the steeps. I forgot about one of them and it was still lovely, only mildly tannic. Hint of charcoal at some point.

If this tea had a color profile, it would be purple. Grapes and violet and that sort of overripe-almost-turned kind of sweet. Really delightful little session.

Smooth and subtle butter in the first steep, which poured a beautiful medium goldenrod. I was surprised to get this much flavor from the first pour, as I did not rinse and did not give it a lot of time to open up (10-15 seconds including the pour time). Second steep was more of the same (though I’d anticipated bigger flavor), with just the tiniest bit of floral added.

Quick stop to smell the wet leaves… spinach and flowers. Lily, maybe. Those floral notes came through more in the third steep, and I no longer detect much of the butter. Some astringency peeking out now. The color is lighter; where I’d expect an oolong to be peaking in the third steep, this one feels like it might already be on its way out. Curious.

Fourth steep I let sit a bit longer, maybe 30 seconds. Floral, astringent, a faint note of sunflower seeds.

Fifth steep, I feel like I’m chasing ghosts. I think that’s it.

I enjoyed this tea, though I admit I don’t quite understand the fervor I’ve seen so many people express toward Tung Ting/Dong Ding. Reddit seems full of the sentiment.

In the vein of interweb chatter, I learned today that I’m arriving unfashionably late to the Steepster party. I tried to update my profile, but nothing saved — I embarked on a troubleshooting mission and learned about the Adagio acquisition and the subsequent lack of support. I appreciate that some stalwarts are still hanging out here, but it makes me sad that such a resource might fade. I don’t see that anything else has quite taken its place in terms of breadth and usability and community. Bummed out.

This tea feels a little bizarre. I just read through all the reviews and it seems like everyone gets something different from these little sticks. First session, the first note I picked up, I swear to god, was pickles. Maybe this is what everyone else is calling sake, but I got pickles. Followed straightaway by vanilla…I’m sorry, what? But then, everything is so subtle I start wondering if I’m making things up. Bizarre.

Minerals then, and a kind of florality that I couldn’t really place — a taste I associate with white tea, for sure. Maybe this is the lychee others are describing, though it didn’t scream fruit or even sweet to me — more floral. Licorice crept in and my tongue tingled a bit. I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one who experienced and tried to describe this sensation. Around steep 5 or 6, things got quite astringent, with a pronounced drying effect after swallowing.

I thought I’d erred a little soft on the ratio for my first session; I doubled it for the second — about 2g tea:1oz water. I did get some honey and a more fruity, lychee-esque flavor in this session — but bitterness and astringency were also more pronounced, which maybe stripped some of the more nuanced flavors out for me. I’m not certain at this point which ratio I prefer or would recommend.

I’ll be going back to this tea to explore and dig around. At this point, it feels more like a fun experiment than a straight-up enjoyable experience, but I’m not opposed to a good diversion. I may not invite white antlers over again, but I’m not sad they’re in town for now.

Gong fu, though I look forward to giving this a western brew. I have always loved a darjeeling (even cheap ones), and this was no exception. The nose offered up more whimsy than the broth during this session, with some floral and toast flitting by. My tasting notes were rather more straightforward, with tangy citrus and leaves dominating each steep, and some drying astringency lingering behind.

ETA:
I’ve now western-style brewed this, and it was lovely. I might actually prefer it this way, which is surprising to me. The limited flavor fluctuations between gong fu steeps, versus the fuller and more nuanced pot brews are tipping me. I steeped the first bowl for 2 minutes, and the second for 3. The second was far more watery, but I think I may actually have done a physical double take when I smelled some butter coming off the second! That was pretty exciting and kept me coming back for more sips, regardless of the toned-down primary flavors.

I’ve had two sessions with this tea so far, the second with double the amount of tea.

A 1g:1oz ratio felt a little more restrained than I typically enjoy, surprisingly, though I did enjoy what I found… the first steep gave up some floral notes and banana, apricot. The next steep defined the florality a little more… lilac, maybe? Found a delightful caramel nose in the third go, with wood (Kukicha stems), caramel, and smoke notes through the next few steeps. Watered out more quickly than I expected.

For my next steep, I upped the ratio to 2g of tea per 1oz of water. I don’t generally like to be heavy handed, but I am so so glad I did this — the profile really came alive and I didn’t feel like I was searching through (literal) water to get my bearings.

First steep: custard, floral, banana. Deeper and sweeter flavors came out in the second steep — pecans up front, followed by leaves, smoke, maple… letting it cool a bit brought out some minerality and melon.

The same general flavors presented throughout this session, but they all had more character and nuance than their wispy session one ghosts. This is still a pretty subtle oolong; fruit, some light tannins, and a return to the floral profile rounded out the last few steeps before I was back in watery soup land.

I’d like to compare this to Red Blossom’s Tung Ting Charcoal Roast, especially in terms of subtlety, although as I write this it’s not available on their website. I also have their “regular” Tung Ting waiting for me, so I’m looking forward to trying that as a reference point, too.

Gong fu. Cocoa on the nose right up front, big taste of brown bread. So, so smooth and luxurious on the palate. Second steep opened up with bran flakes, white pepper (flavor, not bite or heat), cattails beside a pond (you know that flavor, right? hehe). Third steep was really interesting — cocoa notes were joined by potato, mushroom, soy sauce and just the tiniest hint of tannin. Color and flavor just kept pouring, even with short steeps. Really just had a delightful time with these little snails… as they morphed into slim brown buds in the pot, I found myself considering their long journey to me, and all the hands that ushered them along.