Verdant Tea

Autumn 2020 Harvest
Date of Picking: October 2020

Dry leaf smells nice and chocolaty. The taste isn’t doing it for me today though. I know in my mind I’m comparing it to the Jin Jun Mei I had earlier this week. I guess I should have had that one last, since none of my other Verdant teas can seem to compare.

Autumn 2019 Harvest
Date of Picking: September 2019

I made an order with Verdant a month or so ago and decided to grab a small amount of each of the Laoshan Black harvests available so that I could try each and compare them. I should have used more tea and/or more water for this one; the flavor is much lighter than I would have liked. I think I’ll resteep and see how it holds up. Holding on the rating for now.

Second Steep
6 ounces water + 212 degrees + 20 minutes

The second cup leaves a lot to be desired, and I’m certain it’s because I botched the first cup. There is a mineral flavor in this steep that I hadn’t noticed before, plus something else I can’t quite put my finger on. Overall, it’s far too light for my taste.

Rich chocolate flavor with fragrant flower notes at the end.

#tiffanys2021sipdown Tea #216 overall / Tea #40 for May
Thursday 5/27 — Verdant Tea Spring Laoshan Green 2020 25g packet. I have a LOT of this tea; I bought some last year then bought more this year on clearance (not realizing I had also purchased last yet). Decided I better start sipping down and it is very nice as a cold brew – got 3 pitchers out of this packet (approx. half each time, and one re-steep). Looking forward to drinking greens this way year-round.
#tiffanydrinkstea #tiffanys2021 #tiffanysfaves #tiffanyinthe614 #tiffanysteasipdown

#tiffanys2021sipdown Tea #169 overall / Tea #40 for April

Monday 4/26 — Verdant Tea 2020 Spring Laoshan Green 25g(?) pack. Last cold brew pitcher I started rebrew of leaves 4/22 for a day or so I can’t remember but then brought to work to finish tea 4/26. Strong green tea. Need to try brewing it less when cold brewing to see if the flavor can taste a little lighter. I have a lot of this since I apparently acquired some last year and I didn’t realize so then got a bunch on change of season sale at Verdant.

#tiffanydrinkstea #tiffanys2021 #tiffanysfaves #tiffanyinthe614 #tiffanysteasipdown #sipdownchallenge

Sipdown (211)

Y is for…Yu Lu Yan Cha

Thank you Sil!! Turns out I have 3 “Y” teas. All are straight black teas. 2 were gifted to me from Sil and this is one of those two.

I keep forgetting about this tea and tea note. I feel that’s not the best sign for this tea. It’s good. Got a lot of cinnamon notes. Honey as well. It’s just not capturing my attention much apparently. If I were someone who drank a cup of black tea daily to get a caffeine fix in, this would be alright for that because its got just enough flavor to be delightful without being something you would get bored with. However, I drink tea for the flavor and this just isn’t standing out. Still fun to try though so thank you again Sil!

This will be my first time trying a Roi Gui. I’ve heard a lot about it from other tea people but just never tried it until I bought the Master Zhang oolong tasting pack from Verdant. Verdant is hard enough to pass buy without buying as it is but mention Master Zhang and the chance for buying increases tremendously. The dry leaf is so fresh smelling. Slightly floral, some tropical notes mixed with mineral notes. The mouthfeel on the first cup was incredible. The silkiest mouthfeel I have ever experienced. It’s so smooth. Like licking the smoothest rock. Licking a piece of silk sheets? I’ll stop. The wet aroma is slightly like buttered popcorn and baked bread of some sort… Like pudding bread. With nominal orchids and other unique florals.

Brewed Western-style. First steep was excellent—had a roasted, coffee flavor with an underlying sweetness and a warm, spiced quality. Would’ve rated this quite high, but it lost complexity on the second and third steep. Still very drinkable, but not as interesting.

An Ode to Tea, X entry!

Squeezing in another gong fu session during my weekend off. This was also a sample I grabbed from the final Here’s Hoping Traveling Teabox, so thanks to all that contributed to that box and tea-sipper for organizing it! I had 5.38g of leaf and steeped in my 100ml shiboridashi.

100ml shiboridashi | 5.38g | 205F | Rinse/10s/15s/20s/25s/30s/35s/40s/45s

The rinse smelled so strongly of dirt that I admit that after having such a pleasant pu’erh experience yesterday, it was right back to dirt, swamp water, or nasty tobacco for me. And the first steep did pretty much just smell and taste like dirt. The aroma reminded me of dirt, mushrooms, and a faint BBQ smoke quality. In taste, it had that strong earthy dirty flavor, but it was much smoother than I’m used to… a “fresh” tasting dirt. A bit of a mushroomy note as well, and a flavor I can only describe as plantain (though I’ve only tried dried plantain chips once… as someone with strong banana aversion, they aren’t high on my list of must-have foods). It was almost a banana-like flavor, but veered just enough toward a potato/yam note to not trigger my extremely strong “Danger! Danger! Banana present!” gag reflex. It was easily the worst steep, because after that, the tea mellowed and tasted much less like dirt to me, and instead a smooth and refreshing petrichor note. It was a wet earth and rocks taste but crisp and lacking the vegetal “pond scum marshiness” I’m used to accompanying such flavors in pu’erh. About mid-session, a very strong oat/grain flavor popped toward the end of the sip and lingered in the aftertaste. As I approached the end of the session, I noticed the plantain/yam note creeping back in subtly amidst the petrichor.

I enjoyed this one as well! Not as much as the sheng I drank yesterday, but this was a nice session. I think the cha qi for this one is sitting with me better than the tea yesterday, which knocked me out for several hours; I feel a mellow but alert awakeness right now.

Backlog.

This was a good tea but seemed to suffer from a loss of freshness. Partly a result of Covid related shipping delays and partly due to sitting in cold storage for several months. I feel like delicate greens such as first flushes don’t hold up to refrigeration as well as dragonwells and sencha.

At standard green tea temperature (170 – 175 F) the tea has an odd note of overly ripe pear and banana. Upon bumping up the temperature, it went away and the familiar Laoshan flavors of soybean, fennel, and green lettuce appeared with an underlay of nuttiness.

Not terribly complex and as mentioned had lost some freshness yet still a pleasant drinking experience.

Reading about young sheng. I got that grassiness and pleasantly bitter astringency that indicates it’s a good candidate for aging, woo. And I see what someone meant when they said it’s not so much about the taste but the feeling you get during and after drinking—the sweetness and energy really built up through the afternoon. It is my understanding that this may be what is referred to as hui gan.

Was a little worried when I read that young sheng may upset the stomach due to certain enzymes being present but it had the opposite effect on me, even as someone with digestive issues.

Looking forward to seeing this tea evolve. Gonna try this again in a little while to see if lower brewing temperatures bring out more flavor.

I have a backlog of tasting notes to catch up on, so here’s the first. This was an enjoyable gong fu session with my partner. Always a delight to share tea with someone else, especially when they’re eager to try something new. I was a bit surprised that she seemed to enjoy the tea more than me considering she’s the type of person to add sweetener to everything, and well, there’s none of that here. I found it nice enough but it lacked that depth in flavor I was hoping to find. The flavors didn’t quite evolve in a significant way either, though after some time the tea became reminiscent of green beans, kind of melding a lot of the notes together which made me “get it” more. Recently I’ve found those moments are nice, when you’re sipping and all of a sudden you have that a-ha moment and learn to appreciate it.

Sipdown (329)

Thank you Sil for sharing this one with me. It’s weird because (1) I’ve never had a TGY that wasn’t an oolong before and (2) this is a black tea that tastes sort of like a white tea. That’s also a first for me. It’s not bad but different than I expected for sure. It’s got sort of hay notes to it and like yeasty bread with some honey as well. Maybe some cinnamon. I think I like it but I don’t think I need more of it.

This tea continues to integrate, becoming fuller, with more harmonized flavors of green olive, aged hay, and orange. It continues to be an interesting tea, with good pick me up.

This tea is integrating nicely. I’d give it two more years (from 02/21) to fully integrate. It definitely holds the typical olive flavors of Mt. Ailao and the forest floor. It generates strong salivary activity in me.

Sipdown 46

Just logging the sipdown.

Unfussy. Mostly honey and soft florals. Some stonefruit- peaches, apricots.

Sipdown 133-2021
Made a strong pot of this to finish it off. I oversteeped it a bit and it ended up slightly astringent, but still tasty.

I’ve had a couple cups of this throughout the week, and it’s just so tasty and easy to drink.
It’s pretty unfussy and doesn’t get bitter easily. I’ve enjoyed it with while eating some salted caramel bark and it was a delicious pairing.
It’s very honey forward, with notes of chocolate, stone fruits, and a tiny bit of cassia.

Laoshan Black Tea
He family spring 2020
Laoshan, Shandong, China
崂山红茶

5g, 130 mL, brita filtered water, water off the boil

Dry leaves: chocolate, raisin

10s first steep: brewed leaves smell a little burnt. Taste: a sweet floral, very pleasant, but also deep, reminds me of coffee without the acidity.

20s second steep: similar brewed leaves. Taste: aftertaste reminds me of Chinese dried jujube dates. No other thoughts.

No more notes, except sweet potatoes at some point. Online reviewers overall seem obsessed with LB, so I had really high expectations going in, and that probably dimmed my experience a bit. I’ve been spoiled by my aunt’s mystery pack that she sent me a while back, and that had something basically exactly like this with different packaging, so I’ve already had it or an eerily similar one in the past. It’s not a bad tea per se, just perhaps not for me. Didn’t bother with more exact notes, because everything that can be said has already been said.