Lu Shan Yun Wu Green Tea

All I can say is, wooooooooooooooow! I really enjoyed this tonight. We went to the Asian buffet and got take out. I had made two steeps of this before we left the house and poured it in my tetsubin and put it over the warmer. Hubby and I drank it with our food and it was really good. Then when the food was all gone, I poured some more and had my dessert of three mellocreme pumpkins. (Like candy corn, for the uninitiated.) It was fantastic. I have heard that it is traditional to celebrate special events in Asia with super sweet desserts and tea, and it must say my mouth was celebrating this tea tonight!

This was sweet, smooth, fresh, green, and lightly nutty. It had just enough oomph to go with a meal, and not enough astringency to be bitter.

Thank you, Teavivre, for the delicious sample!

I agree with the other reviews – this is good.

What I really want to mention is this is the best example of why I love to use a clear glass vessel when I steep. The leaf is so interesting. It looks like a pile of knotted thread until you spread it out. Then it looks like fine green wood shavings. In the bottom of the press with a mug of 175F water the leaf comes alive and puts on an amazing display. It wiggles, like the blades of grass I watched as a kid when a bug crawled through. Then it intensified until the bottom was shaking and twisting like butterflies trying to free themselves from their cocoons. What a show – and then I get to drink it too! Thank you Teavivre.

Spring 2016
Dry leaf has the scent of sweet and salty dry-roasted green peas which carries over into the wet leaf and brewed tea. Leaf is moss green and fluffy.
Brewed tea color is yellow. Taste is salty, vegetal and slightly nutty. Extremely tasty and flavorful, although it isn’t my favorite.

It’s been a cold few days. Pups are very clingy heat leeches lately. :)

THere’s nothing like a hot cup of tea on a cold day. It just warms you from the belly out.
This is a particularly nice green. The first impression is of a savory green. Like toasted soy beans. But there’s also a nice surprising sweet floral finish. I had two pieces of mint chocolate with this tea. very nice combo. :D

Happy New Year!

It has been a long while since I’ve really been interested in drinking green tea, anymore it only seems I do so when I’m eating Chinese or Japanese on the odd occasion I don’t cook and decide to order in. This morning, however, I woke up with a craving for it so I pulled out one of the samples that came with my TeaVivre order.

I haven’t tried this specific type of green tea before, but I really enjoyed it. It has a very strong vegetal flavor, but beyond that it is subtly sweet with slightly nutty undertones. As the tea cools the sweetness becomes more apparent and the vegetal flavor mellows out a bit.

This is such a wonderful green tea, I really do need to explore what others TeaVivre offers. Surprisingly, I’ve tried very few and I have been missing out.

Decided to revisit this one today – and I’m also making it a sipdown since after making my Timolino full of this I sent the last bit off in a swap package. I figured I’d revisit it since I had relatively fond memories, but I doubted that I’d enjoy it enough to ever really get around to drinking up the last of it. I’m sure it’ll be better appreciated where it’s going…

For preparation, I steeped 1 tsp. in my timolino with 80 degree celsius water for two minutes. The tea liquor was a pale green yellow like last time – but this time for the quantity of water I used significantly less leaf so I’m expecting the taste to be a bit lighter than what I remember (thinking maybe that’ll ease up on any unwanted vegetalness). I can’t really judge anything from the smell: my timolino seems to have picked up a permanent “white chocolate” creamy type of smell from the White Chocolate Frost I had in it (although I’ve managed to get the lingering taste of that tea out).

Taste wise, I’m fighting through a little bit of bitterness. I guess the steep time I used was too much. However, once I fight through that kinda bitterness the result is a somewhat creamy kind of spinach/cucumbery taste. Not too bad. I think I’m gonna try and hold onto my initial memory of this though: I remember it tasting better that first time. The after taste here is quite pleasant though – and even though there’s vegetalness it’s not in a “seaweed” or “grassy” which so I’m not completely turning up my nose on this one.

I don’t drink straight greens often if ever so sometimes I forget you need to use a very ‘light touch’ with most of them – but over all I think both memories/tasting in mind (edit: I just went back and reread my last tasting note on this) I’m happy with my rating and satisfied with my decision to pass it on, though glad I took the opportunity to try it one more time.

I would have never chose this for myself but Roswell Strange was kind enough to send some over so I decided to give it a try. It really is not bad at all. I doubt I would stock up but this cup is enjoyable. I might be a bit crazy but my first few sips were almost buttery. Now as I get more into the cup I am still getting those buttery notes but combined with a bit of vegetal (perhaps spinach) flavor. Definitely an interesting cup. Thank you Roswell Strange!

ETA: Made the rest of this so this is another sipdown!! (159)

This is a great clouds and mist green. Refreshing is definitely the biggest word that comes to mind. It’s got a solid sweetness too it, balanced by a fairly assertive but well-balanced vegetal intensity reminiscent of a Japanese green. It is a very “brisk” tea as well, there is a pleasant bitterness on the finish that leaves your mouth feeling very clean and refreshed. This would be a great everyday green, I imagine it would be great cold-brewed. Very fair price for a solid casual green tea.

Thank you to the ever-generous Angel for the sample.

Well I must say that I was excited when I was asked to participate in another tasting of Teavivre tea. Even more excited when it after being sick all last week with bronchitis. This was the first that I decided to try. I went with the green because I heard that green tea can help booster antibiotics. I probably heard it on John Tesh since I produce his show for the station I work at. I opened up the packet and noticed a little bit of roasty aroma. It’s definitely a much lighter green in the color of the liquor. A medium body. I like the slight roasted flavor to this one. It reminds me a lot of the tea my brother gave me a few years ago for Christmas. He got it at an Asian market in Ann Arbor and I tried to see if anyone on Steepster could read it. I’m thinking maybe it’s Lu Shan Yun Wu. They are definitely similar flavor profiles and the leaves are similar. Who knows. It almost tastes like silver needles. I definitely like this one.

Backlog: Catching up on reviewing samples today. I was sent this tea as part of Teavivre’s spring collection and have not yet written them up. This is a shame, because I enjoyed all the teas in the collection. I’ve also just realised that I sampled this tea two years ago. So, how is the 2015 picking?

The leaves are tiny curls that expand a little in the pot to create a grassy bed in the teapot. It’s times like these that I am pleased that I use a glass teapot for these teas.

The dry leaf has a savoury spinach aroma that is evident in the liquor too. The liquor is a lovely yellow-green colour. It has notes of spinach and nuts with that savoury edge to it, but the flavours are delicate rather than strong. The aftertaste has a slight minty note to it, cooling in the mouth. The vegetal notes dominate the aftertaste while the savoury element lurks on the edges. This is a lovely refreshing tea.