Montreal Tea Festival – Tea #10
This was another new to me tea company that I saw while I was at the festival – though their booth was absolutely packed. In fact, I think it was one of the most crowded booths at the whole festival, and consistently too. We waited probably a good twenty minutes to shove our way to the front of their booth to get a clear look at exactly what they were selling – which seemed to be a mix of high(er) end traditional teas, some sort of flavoured tea in prepackaged boxes, and teaware. They also had a large tea table set up at the end of the booth where they were brewing about four different straight teas Gongfu and sampling out the teas to anyone who wanted to try them.
While I saw a bunch of traditional teas on the table that interested me, this was the one that jumped out the most to the person I was attending the festival with and I’ll admit that my knee jerk reaction was kind of to roll my eyes because, really, how nice could a Japanese Oolong tea really be!? I was feeling pretty certain it was mostly being showcased for the novelty factor, since it is an uncommon find.
However, this turned out to be one of the four teas that they were brewing Gongfu so we both decided to give it a taste and much to our surprise it was actually really good. Definitely light bodied, but fragrant and fresh with very smooth and silky notes of fresh spring flowers and an edge of something greener, but well rounded. I was definitely much more intrigued than I had been prior and, ultimately, I ended up grabbing a small bag of this one (and another tea that caught my eye) so that I could try to steep it up at home and attempt to recreate the lovely tea we were served.
I wish I had inquired more about the ratio of leaf to water they were using, and their water temperature but it totally slipped my mind in the moment. So it looks like I’ll have to put in the work to figure out the best method for this tea on my own!
