Red Blossom Tea Company

Sipdown. I found some fruit and minerality along with the nuts and bran sweetness (still wouldn’t call it honey) I’d noted before. This is lovely, but not necessarily my favorite style. It’s tempting to consider embarking on a journey to understand the fervor for dancongs… I first need to learn what exactly they are, though… so not today, wallet, not today.

I didn’t think much of this tea the first time I had it; I likely was expecting something much different with a name like “Honey Orchid” and let that color my impressions.

I didn’t take full notes on this session, but I especially was taken aback by the amazing roasty notes immediately coming off of the first steep, before I even closed my pot. It almost smelled like nuts baking, their skins just beginning to turn dark brown and almost char.

The first two steeps were my favorite, with subsequent steeps fairly quickly dissipating into sticks and wood. But those first two steeps were full of bran flakes — like sitting with a bowl of cereal and experiencing the sweetness that creeps in as you chew each bite and release the natural sugars. I don’t get honey, but this robust bran flavor didn’t need it. Really lovely.

Sadly this tea is 1-2 years old and I believe it’s no longer in its prime. Still a very good tea but it’s time to finish it up (I have ~30g left).

6g in 150ml Chaozhou Hongni pot (which might explain why the aroma is more muted)
Wet leaf smells strongly sweet, fruit like grapes, honey peach and melon, florals, and a creamy fragrance that is not quite milk but maybe like a cantaloupe-flavoured soda / sugary milk drink?

1st infusion: 88˚C, 0:30
Liquor colour is almost white. Very light, not much flavour or sweetness coming through, slightly astringent. When cooled down it was significantly sweeter and balanced.
Rating: 85

2nd infusion: 88˚C, 0:30
Slight grassiness and hay now. Also a bit of minerality like I imagine I’m drinking water from a sweet mountain spring. Sweet and long aftertaste on the tongue.
Rating: 88

3rd infusion: 91˚C, 0:45
All that’s left is the florals, but damn they’re gorgeous. More astringency now, but it’s a lively dryness on the tongue, not unpleasant.
Rating: 87

4th infusion: 95˚C, 1:00
Liquor is more a gorgeous pale gold colour now, but almost more white than yellow. Still lovely mouthfeel.

I went ahead and added a generic entry for this oolong, as I just received mine in 2022 (2021 or 2022 harvest?), and all the entries are for various harvests of the “same” tea. I am looking forward to reading back over all the iterations from different years after I post this.

Nose on the first steep was baby powder, which I now know consists of jasmine, violet, and white musk! I can understand the gardenia tasting note that Red Blossom provides. Taste is vegetal but not of cooked greens like spinach or asparagus — rather, I got a fresher note like green pepper, along with some root vegetables. Creamy.

Delicate corn husk color on the second pour; notes of pine, and that jasmine coming back strong again. I am tempted to note butter, but I think it is more precisely olive oil.

Lots of delicate flowers, like a tiny spring bouquet, in the following steeps. I oversteeped one on accident and did not get much astringency at all. I am still steeping this as my thermos runs out, which means about 10-11 solid steeps.

This isn’t the flavor profile that typically gets me super excited, but I really can’t argue with how lovely this Alishan is. I’ve been a bit critical of Red Blossom’s wares since I started tasting my way through them, but this one may help me take a step back and reconsider. I don’t necessarily need to be whacked over the head with every tea in order to appreciate it.

Sipdown. Had 10g or so and dumped them all in my 5oz ‘fu-pot. It was fun to have these flavors more pronounced than usual. I burned through this bag pretty quickly — there is comfort and such delicacy here that it’s an easy pick when I’m standing in front of the cupboard. I’m looking forward to poking my way through Jin Xuans from other sources, but I’ll be back here eventually.

I worked my way through a few teas while studying today, and this was my third. I forgot about a later steep (5? 6? 7?), poured it, and to my delight… found pineapple at the top of the cup and jasmine at the bottom. I am really coming around to some of Red Blossom’s teas. I find myself reaching for this one a lot as something that feels easy and light, but still very interesting, delicious, and full of joy. Upping my rating!

I drank this tea yesterday for the third time. I quite enjoy it, though — as I am finding with every Red Blossom tea I’ve tried — most every scent and flavor note I discern is very subtle. To be honest, this doesn’t thrill me when I’m in the headspace of “tasting.“ It does, though, make for a really lovely and clean cup of tea when I just want to have a nice experience, and that’s what yesterday was — a really nice, enjoyable tea session. Here are my tasting notes from my first two sessions, where I my brain was turned up to 11, and I was really trying to suss out every flavor I could find:

I think this session was about 2g/oz:
First steep was custard, butter, caramel, vanilla… it’s all subtle though.

I over-steeped the second, but still had nice floral notes with some astringency. Mostly florality in the following steeps; the creaminess really didn’t seem to last past the first go.

The second was a 3-4g/oz brew, as an experiment to see if the subtlety would persist, or if the flavors would become bolder…

First steep is creamy, with notes of spinach… very smooth.

Floral scent wafting off the light cornsilk-colored liquor. Tastes of dewy grass, and the creamy mouthfeel persists. Strawberry on the nose… that was a surprise.

More florality in the third. Vanilla.

Fourth… white floral, grass, and now some astringency coming through.

I don’t remember exactly how many steps I got out of this, but any subsequent cups didn’t really yield anything new in terms of flavor.

Okay, I got a bit more out of this session than the one that preceded it. This Wuyi is not an immediate favorite, but it was pleasant and subtly interesting — I look forward to revisiting.

Sesame seeds on the nose, along with some funk in both the nose and first sip. Dark mushrooms, maybe. I didn’t keep such good track of my steeps today, but subsequent flavors I found included soy sauce, smoke, and cocoa.

Aroma and flavor seemed to fade rather quickly; I don’t think I got more than 5-6 steeps out of this tea before it got watery and I lost interest.

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.

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.

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.

I used my last sampler, and I still wasn’t satisfied. I used cold water, mixed it into a paste, put it in a double wall tumbler with hot water, shook it, and poured the drink into a small cup. The tea wasn’t nearly as clumpy and better mixed, but was still grassy and bitter. It had the trademark Lishan creaminess, orchid, plumeria, and even buttery bread complexities, but they were undercut by the bitterness.

They had samples!

I was extremely curious about this one. I used to really like matcha, but moved away from it and towards oolong. When I saw this, I wanted to try it out. Like the company owner describes, it’s got the same mouth feel and flavor profile of a Lishan, but slightly fuller. The only issue I had was the texture, and the tea was significantly earthier as a matcha. I used a proper matcha bowl and whisk, 160 F hot water, and z patterns with the whisk and there were no round clumps leftover, but there was a lot of green sludge left in my bowl after I poured some into my cup. I don’t know if I used to much, but the earth and dirt taste overpowered the Lishan delicate elements making me not enjoy the tea as much. The color was a perfect dark jade green, but I think I need to got lighter with the sample next time as to not remind me of the basic truth that I am literally drinking grinded grassy leaves raw.

I’ll try it another time. Not sure if I recommend it yet or not. It’s got a different kind of umami, and somehow, I’ve had much less earthy matcha. I still prefer whole leaf lishan after my first time, yet I still want to give it another chance. It’s more complex in notes than a regular matcha, though I think I might stick to a regular matcha.

Heavy on the floral Dong Ding. I should have had this tea then the MiXiang because the leafhopper bitten version was far better than this one. Red Blossom notes are pretty on point because this one is lead by the orchid aroma and flavor overall.

I used Christmas money to finally try out Red Blossom Tea, and I ripped open this sample on new years day. Safe to say it compares more favorably to higher elevation oolongs than to other Tung Tings. Passionfruit and honey were the most prominent things about this one, and tropical floral and fruity smell. It is on the green side of the oolong spectrum having some Gui Fei similarities, but not as totally as vegetal as other tung tings-maybe squash-like? It was also full bodied from steeps two onward having a honey malt flavor until it got into floral-leaf-oil-water-leftover-tea-phase.

Either way, I was hugging myself while drinking it last night. It’s been my favorite of my Red Blossom purchase so far and something I would consider getting again, though not too soon. High cost of living in California is keeping me from purchasing it as often with my Michigan income.

I got 2 samples of this tea to try out. Each sample is supposed to be ~3grams.
One sample was 2.8grams, which annoyed me as these aren’t cheap.

Their gongfu recommendations are a bit too close to Western Style: leaves 3.5 grams
temp 200 ° F |time 1 min 30 sec, so I used my own experience instaed.

I used both samples to 5grams. Brewed at 200F starting at 15 seconds.

Overall: This tea is exactly as they describe.
There are carmel, fruity, floral notes. It’s a very well balanced tea.
HOWEVER, it has no chaqi. It has no soul or spirit to this tea.

I kept feeling like it was lacking, and it wasn’t until later that I realized what it was.
I know many people like this tea, and it has all of the right notes….like a musician playing a song that is technically accurate, but with no feeling. This is this tea.

I kept steeping it for longer and longer, but to no avail. There’s no je ne sais quoi.
For the price point of this tea….personally, I’d give it a hard pass.

Notes, brewing times, and photos are on my blog:
https://jadeoolong.blogspot.com/2021/03/tea-session-heritage-beidou.html

Early spring (March 2020) picking; bright, clean flavors!
Dry notes: sweet corn husk, freshly cut thick grass, warm hay.
Wet notes: pea shoots, green beans, dewey spring morning.

Gongfu!

Steeped this one up last weekend over a Zoom tea call with three IG tea friends. It was a nice conversation, though short, and I focused more on that then the notes of the tea. However, the deep orange liquor and thick soup was stand out enough to still pull some of my attention and I had the last few steeps after our call and I recall those more clearly. Really autumnal in feeling with more snow chrysanthemum, mineral, hot hay, and slight vegetal notes. Just a good solid body to the tea, even in its last steeps as it was fading.

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CUVZxmFrmTI/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xixzkx5DpHU&ab_channel=GoldparkVEVO