Imperial Teas of Lincoln

The leaves of this Mi Lan werent full, it was quite broken, although I had the bottom of the bag, and its over a year old now.

Its really perky! One cup and boing, i can feel it. I am comparing it with my benchmark Mi Lan which is the JingTeaShop one. This one has a bit more of a baked flavour – this is however very subtle, not smoky, and i think i can taste the years age on it – it has that slightly softer taste than fresh. Standard orchid floral aroma, less astringency than others. Probably the age again.

I get some butter, cream & honey. Its very pleasant – a bit like honey on toast. Also a lot of oil was released, with a drying mouth. Not super-fruity, more like some of the oolongs from the #OolongTimeAgo group buy.

Quite a mellow tasting cup but with a perky head – I can feel the caffeine. Recommended if you want something soft tasting but with a bit of punch to wake you up.

Its a very nice 2nd flush Darjeeling.

A slight hint of rose does creep into the taste & aroma, which is grape & wood, all the nice 2nd flush characteristics.

Nice clear deep amber/red liquor, decent price, cant complain really!

I had this Darjeeling last year, so cant review it as drinking, which is my preferred.

All I remember is that it has been my favourite of the second flush darjeelings I have tried. The Grape aroma is strong and wonderful, the liquor is a lovely deep amber & clean, and the taste is perfectly balanced, deep, with no bitterness and little astringency.

I have tried other darjeelings and none have been as good as this. Tried to find it today and it wasnt on the website. Im hoping that is just due to the time I am writing this (fireworks night!)

Nectar. Of. The. Gods. Tastes like honey. cant believe this is an Oolong. totally different taste to anything ive ever had before!

tried it gonfu style and had massive burnt sugar aroma, and grapes. Tasted the burnt sugar/caramel thing going on. wonderful

another great balanced oolong, leaning towards the savoury. Slight caramel astringency, but mixed up with the woody oolong taste makes it a very interesting cup, which changes throughout the taste, ending with a nutty aroma and nice head feel.

The steeped leaves smell of peaches, the aroma of the cup is 100% cream, amazingly so. My nose is learning slowly to distinguish smells, and something about the smell of the oil from this one is great.

The taste is very forward sweet Oolong, and a very complex taste, hints of wine and trees, and maybe a bit of Da Yu Ling in there, then pear. wow. im in love with this one.

Less balanced than the Xing Ren Almond Phoenix, less savoury, more colourful, and with a creeping astringency that comes in at the side of the tongue.

I like this one

It has a very malty taste, and totally unlike any other tea i have tried. unsure if this is a Yunnan thing, or a black gold thing.

i only like it occasionally, but when i do, it hits the spot perfectly

Such a nice Oolong. I read another review of this type of tea and was described as ‘nutty where it wants to be, sweet where it needs to be, and with a small dose of butter from the fridge on top’ or something to that effect.

That is as good a description as i can give i think. very complex, with a changing aftertaste and feeling that continues after the sips. very well balanced, my first cup steep i just gulped down (I alternate between gong fu style and yo-yo cups).

Has a bit of a kick to it! I’m not sure on caffeine levels but medium to high.

Didn’t think id like it as much as i did.

If you like savoury but not dry, balanced Oolong, you cant go wrong really

Yum. Found this in the bottom of my ‘big box’. I had been saving some, and I’m really glad I did. I bought it a couple of years ago when I had no experience with Taiwanese Oolong. And now I do. And I like this stuff.

This one is special because its essentially an Anxi, that has obviously been grown so well and is so tasty that Mr Jassid and his band of merry men just cant keep their hands off. So not only is Guan Yin tough and compassionate, shes also beautiful as well – (and probably annoyed with all the leafhoppers on her)

It actually comes fully branched & with red-leaf-edge intact, not Lime green like lots of the TGY, but olive green with brown and red.

But it packs a punch. Seriously a lot going on here. I will try to remember the train of thought after drinking some grandpa style – which I realised after is akin to glugging down a complex cocktail.

‘Tie Guan Yin Smell?, Floral, Caramel, Dongfang Meiren?, Honey, really thick honey on my tongue, wow its sour like Dongfanf Meiren woody taste, oh its Tie Guan Yin again, now its grapes, muscatel, darjeeling? No, raisins.. flowers… leaf.. vegetal.. cream, milk.. [Brain Melts]’

I literally had to scrabble to write down shorthand to contain what happened. And now ive spilt some on my picture that im colouring in. Damn. It needs gongfu to space out all this craziness.

Early steeps are sweet, sour, fragrant, deep & woody, and later steeps it turns into Jin Xuan/Milky with fragrance of TGY & the depth of OB & Muscat Grape Huiguan… even orange gets itself in there somehow.

Its a very nice interesting tea & I’m so glad I saved some. I will have to make another review when I Gong Fu some because Its a bit crazy when left to its own devices.

im finding it hard to describe this tea, as im not that familiar with jade oolongs yet.

but oh my is it delicious. the aftertaste just sits in your mouth for ages and i feel so much nicer after having a cup. later steeps taste better than the first.

hardly anything of the greenish taste from other jades i have tried, which im not much of a fan of.. it really has a taste i just cant describe. nicest green tea ive ever tried i think

Well, this is the tea that pushed all my other scores down 15%.

I am in no way a professional taster, have been drinking ‘proper’ tea for 2 years, and this is the nicest cup of anything hot i have ever had.

Trying to describe the flavour is hard, because its changes, every mouthful is different, and after every mouthful the flavour stays in your mouth and changes.

The main aroma is of a type of cinnamon that I have never experienced before, it is heaven. woody flavours and fresh sweet astringency that is perfect. some kind of sweet floral taste and it lingers on the tongue..

So completely balanced and a joy to drink. makes me a happy bunny

only reason it didnt get 100 is that I had to make a tea fund just to afford it, and once i bought 100g it disappeared from the website. limited.

changed my whole perception of tea.

I made a brew of this about a month ago and was a little disappointed, having previously been entranced by the same garden’s second flush Moonlight Delight. I’ve had another go today, and still found it disappointing. However, I’m not rating it yet as I suspect that, as so often with me and Darjeelings, I’ve yet to properly get to grips with brewing it. Anyway, here’s a write-up of my two sets of notes.

04/04/2012:

I brewed a mug with a heaped teaspoonful brewed for two minutes, boiling water.

In the mug it was a clear, light-orange brew with a faint, clean smell, somewhere between eau-de-cologne and cut grass.

In the mouth there’s a lingering smoothness, difficult to define, perhaps like a very, very mild butter. I get good basic tea with hints of cut grass and, perhaps, vanilla. Oddly, the vanilla and basic tea seem to fade as the level in the cup lowers and the tea cools.

It’s only the first mug, and I’ve previously found Darjeelings quite variable, but this doesn’t strike me as anything like as good as the second flush, Tumsong’s ‘Moonlight Delight’.

It says you can make one or two infusions, so I tried a second one, made the same way.

To my surprise, I’m tasting this as a fraction stronger. In the nose and mouth I’m not really getting the eau-de-cologne and vanilla elements now, but in both I’m getting a hint of the smell of fresh, sweet hay. Having said I thought it a fraction stronger, this time I don’t seem to be getting the flavour ‘fading’ as the level in the cup is falling.

03/05/12:

I brewed a mug with a well-heaped teaspoonful brewed for two and a half mintues, boiling water.

In the mug i’s a clear, pale yellow-orange; but I really can’t make anything much of the smell. I’m not getting it as the description in the last note.

In the mouth it’s quite bland: there are tiny hints of basic tea (perhaps just a fraction stale), nettles, toffee and something like the smell of ripped-up cardboard – but I do mean ‘tiny’, in each case. On that thing of the flavour fading, as it cools and the level falls I seem to have lost the hints of nettles and butter. This is disappointing, even compared to the last note.

I made a second infusion, exactly the same way.

The brew looks just the same as the first, but, this time, I’m getting a fruity smell – possibly a faint smell of packet, dried, mixed fruit.

I’m getting quite fleeting flavours in the mouth. I picked the mug up and took a sip and got the mixed, dried fruit with an immediate aftertaste of toffee; and a second sip gave ‘smell of nettles’ and grass – rather different to the first. Then I put the mug down and thought about it for a few moments, thinking what to write, picked it up for another sip before writing, and got different again; this time the sweetness had gone and I got quite a firm element – like the smell of grass or green vegetation, but without any sweetness to it.

These are all quite faint elements, though. I don’t think the experiment of two and a half minutes instead of the recommended two has made any noticeable improvement – perhaps I should try two teaspoonfuls?

I made my first mug of this with a moderately-heaped teaspoon and brewed (as per the instructions) for two minutes. It’s an orange brew in the mug but I found it quite bland – a touch of butter, perhaps a hint of vanilla, but not much else.

So I made a second mug with a heavily-heaped teaspoon – right up on the handle – probably a heaped teaspoon and a half-teaspoon; two minutes again. It smells of cut grass and rust. It has a much stronger flavour, with an element verging on the harsh element I described in my notes on Imperial Teas’ Superior Breakfast – liquorice without any hint of sweetness. There is just the tiniest hint of orange peel (not sweet orange, I mean the bitter juice that sprays from the peel itself,) and a hint of cut grass.

I didn’t enjoy this very much but I’m not rating it because I don’t yet think I’ve properly got to grips with brewing it.

Delicious, one of the best green teas I have ever had. Easily brews three times with no issues and still tastes great. When I get it right, it’s lovely and smooth, with a nice strong flavour.

The instructions are for ‘2 – 5 mins’ so I split the difference and brewed for three and a half minutes with boiling water. This is one of those awkward-to-spoon, long-stranded teas, but I used a near-as-I-could-judge heaped teaspoon. Actually, as this is quite light in weight, I’m now wondering if I should have used two.

It made a quite dark, slightly orange, brown brew, clear, but intense enough in colour to be almost opaque.

In the nose: there is a very subtle, but rich, fragrance which is difficult to pin down – it seems to differ with different sniffs. I get a good, clean, basic tea, a roast beef or Oxo note, uncooked pastry dough and, sometimes, just a hint of flowers or perfume. As it cools and the level falls, I’m noting a ‘herby’ hint – possibly somewhere between thyme and sage, but just a hint.

In the mouth I get the good, clean basic tea (I should explain that: when I used cheap teabags, as far as I remember I got a single, basic tea note but it had a rather diffuse or ‘muddy’ taste which contrasted with the ‘cleaner’ or more ‘pure’ flavour of the best of the loose tea we used to have when I was a youngster, before teabags were so widespread – I taste the teas I have now as varying between these two extremes). The roast beef or Oxo note of the smell is not so noticeable. I’m getting a good, smooth butteriness rather than the dough thing. There’s a note that is somewhere between cut grass and the thyme-sage thing I noted for the aroma.

I made a second infusion, same way.

In appearance, the colour didn’t look any less intense than the first time, but there were oily spots on the surface.

There was less aroma: I think I could detect a very faint and fleeting butteriness and an equally faint grassy-metallic element.

In the mouth it was definitely less interesting than the first infusion – I didn’t get much apart from a faint, doughy butteriness and a little basic tea flavour.

This is a pretty good brew – the first infusion, at least; but I think that when I make a fresh one I’ll try two heaped teaspoons.

This is a go to tea for mellow moods. It’s not sweet in itself but has a chocolatey caramel aroma and smooth finish which makes it delicious at any time of day. I don’t drink it regularly, but that’s only because it’s quite exceptional.