Jim Marks Send Message

I think I said this about the last Long Jing I purchased. These teas remind me more of Japanese style greens than Chinese style greens. They lack any sense of a fired or roasted finish.

The write-up is pretty much spot on. A bit sweet, a bit vegetal without being leafy green vegetal and a somewhat beachy finish.

I forgot to log this one yesterday.

MUCH stronger smoke flavor than my beloved “Black Dragon” from Upton Teas, but manages to avoid the pork rinds/bacon flavor that many of the stronger lapsangs develop.

This is a solid choice for people who like a very smokey tea. I would recommend it for blending, but it isn’t exactly cheap.

I ordered from Camellia again and accidentally ordered the same pu erh as last time. Probably because it is the oldest one they offer I can justify buying.

I still love this tea, and it still tastes like a basement renovation.

Be warned: there is nothing black about this tea. The leaves are green. The dry leaf smells green. The wet leaf smells VERY green, and the cup, is green fading to hay.

So don’t think of this as a black tea, even though it is categorizheed as such. Think of it as Indian green tea — which is weird.

But the good news is that this is doing a really brilliant balancing act between the toasted flavors of Chinese green and the resounding bitterness of Japanese greens. This tea is a bright green. Vegetal like broccoli, not kale. Not sauted broccoli with butter and garlic and salt and all that caramelized sweetness, and not raw broccoli with that woody fibrous tooth, but steamed broccoli that is bright green and soft, but still not at all sweet.

Beware also the incredibly short steep time and adhere to it! I went a hair over 2 minutes running to the cupboard to confirm the time and then back to the timer and that extra 7 seconds or so made it clear that another 7 seconds would be 14 seconds too long. But, this is after all a black tea, and so you use boiling water. Go figure.

Oh how I love Formosan oolongs. Toasty, roasty, sweet, nutty goodness.

The problem, of course, is that now I’m craving shu mai and the soonest I could have any is this Saturday.

This oversteeps REALLY easily. I went over by maybe 20 seconds and this has a really sharp bite to it which I’m confident isn’t supposed to be there. So be warned. Three minutes means three minutes.

This is not nearly as sweet as the other Yunan Gold I tried recently and so I think with proper steeping I will really love this cup.

This reminds me a great deal of a lot of Darjeelings that I have had. Very, very good Darjeelings.

Not too floral, not too toasted, but a very full cup. Soft on the palate.

Nearly out of tea. Gearing up for a big order of known unknowns.

I have discovered that the key for the yunnan gold is to blend it with other leaves. This manages the sweetness well. Good options are TG’s malty black tea and, not surprisingly, a fermented pu-erh (which is also made in yunnan, and so, probably very similar leaves to the gold).

I really love the wuyi oolongs. I have this pipe dream of finding the perfect blend of wuyi, pu-erh and lapsang. Basically, the tea equivalent of Balkan pipe tobacco, which, as it turns out, is my favorite of those. No coincidence, then, I guess.