Tea Gallery

I loved this tea, it was sweet but not too hard to swallow!

A lovey lighter green with high notes of tropical pomelo and a soft, warm undertone that provides just enough body to balance the brightness. Citrus, fresh shiso herb, gardenia, pistachio.

Very light, nectar-like flavor. Soft florals and an ever so subtle roast. The aroma from the gaiwan lid on the first short steep almost made me fall down. It was so pretty.

There is a very silky mouthfeel and delicate aftertaste. Honeysuckle flower hui gan. All in all, a very elegant and special tea.

strong, rewarding, and consistent aftertaste. roasted and lightly tart/tangy. A great tea. Score = 94 on Walker Tea Review # 278

Exquisite . . .

It’s tea like this that makes me want to drop the ratings of almost everything else but I do use the little smileys bar as an indicator. A smile is a smile.

However, there is definitely an echelon above the rest that exists and this belongs in it. I’m left wordless. Serious, serious tea.

Much depth, structure and a profound calming quality. The flavor just goes on for miles and the mouthfeel is rich and soft.

Awesome.

Usually brewed gong fu-style.

This tea is a bit expensive, but worth it. In fact, I consider it pretty much the perfect oolong. If you like roasted oolongs, you really need to try this. Let’s be clear: this is seriously roasted. If you like your oolongs to be gentle and flowery, this might not be for you. But if you prefer something a little bolder and more substantial, you’ll love this.

A note on the name: The Tea Gallery uses the term "Iron Boddhisattva" for what other vendors call "Tie Guan Yin," perhaps to avoid the messy orthographic variants associated with the more common term. This translation is accurate enough, I guess, but it substitutes the generic term "boddhisattva" for Guan Yin, a specific boddhisattva who embodies mercy and who is especially dear to East Asian Buddhists. Tie Guan Yin traditionally comes from the Anxi province of China, although some are now grown in Taiwan.

This is a tea that benefits from a little thought in brewing. Done wrong, a tea with such a strong roast can just taste burnt. I brew it in a gaiwan and use lots o’ leaf, but very short steeps (< 1 min. in the earlier ones). I throw out the first steep. The liquor is a beautiful red-amber. The aroma will remind you of a campfire. The flavor is surprisingly complex, with chocolate prominent, but with notes of stone fruits and a subtle mineral quality. As you proceed with multiple steeps, the roasted chocolaty flavors recede and the fruity qualities come forward. This is one of the most fun things about the tea: there is so much difference between the early steeps and later ones. It’s beautiful to watch the tea evolve over the course of an afternoon. The downside to that is that you’ll likely keep drinking it and drinking it to see where it will go and before you know it you’ll have drunk ungodly quantities of tea and won’t be able to go to sleep.