Taiwan Li Shan Oolong Tea

I bought 50 g of this tea in my Black Friday 2020 blowout with Derk, and have finished a little more than half of it. I steeped around 7 g in my 150 ml clay oolong pot using 195F water for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds. However, this pot pours much more slowly than my porcelain pot, so steep times are actually a bit longer.

The dry aroma is of citrus, stonefruit, orchids, other florals, cookies, and sugarcane. The first steep is very floral, with notes of orchid, honeysuckle, orange blossom, sweet pea, and other flowers, plus cookies, butter, citrus, peach, spinach, and grass. The second steep brings out cooked pineapple, citrus, cream, pine, herbs, minerals, and peach, plus sugarcane and even more florals. I see where Derk is getting green apple, though sadly, the cherry eludes me. It has a long peachy/herbaceous/vegetal aftertaste. The tea becomes a little more vegetal in the next steep, though with lots of fruit and florals to balance it out. By steep four, some nuttiness is apparent and the cooked pineapple is a bit stronger. The next few steeps continue in this vein, becoming more savoury and vegetal as the session goes on. However, the citrus, peach, orchid, and honeysuckle continue until almost the last steep, along with the grass, veggies, and minerals.

This oolong didn’t deserve to sit in my cupboard for over a year. It’s a lovely, uplifting Li Shan at a good price, and I will be buying more when I next order from What-Cha.

This seems to be the only Li Shan that What-cha carries so it must be this one that Kawaii433 sent me.  It was a while ago, but thank you very much again for that excellent package!  I will be drinking it alongside the crazy flavored Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster and that may be a mistake, but I will see what I can taste here anyway.  I’m also eating some melon so there are all sorts of flavors happening.  The oolong itself is very tightly bundled and very dark green. It’s very smooth, silky, with a strong minerals, hint of cream and coconut… as it cools, pineapple.  So an odd oolong for flavor notes for me… but I think I had one like this before where it tasted both of coconut and pineapple.  Possibly that is how Li Shan varietals taste to me?  I like it, but there was also a biteyness to the leaves throughout the consistently flavored steeps, which seems out of place considering the cooler water and short steeps I used.  Always glad to try something once though!
Steep #1 // 1 teaspoon for a full mug // 22 minutes after boiling // 1 minute steep
Steep #2 // 20 minutes after boiling  // 2 minute steep   
Steep #3 // 3 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep 
2020 Sipdowns: 10

This might be the the most floral tea I’ve ever had, which means it’s not as balanced as I would have liked though. However, I think objectively speaking this tea is higher quality than my current impression of it.

There are aromas of grass, ice cream, magnolias as well as other flowers, but overall the smell is not too strong. The taste, on the other hand is plenty strong. It has notes of citrus, sugarcane and nectar. It is a very ‘green’ taste with a prevalent floral sweetness. I didn’t get any custard flavours as is often the case with these high mountain oolongs. In the aftertaste, apart from an explosion of flowery notes, I also notice some celery stalks. It is very cooling in the throat and body warming tea. The cha qi is also strong – heady and focusing. The liquor itself is not overly thick, but the mouthfeel is interesting. It is soft and sticky as well as quite lubricating at times.

I feel like this tea has the ability to transport me to a totally different place, as it does well to capture my attention and its characteristics are quite focused.

This is a fine oolong and I wanted to have a proper reflective sitting with it, but life often doesn’t go as planned, eh? I tried drinking it at the office (nasty water and not worth bringing nice teas there), at home, and now here. I’ve stretched this last serving over the course of three days, hoping I’d have time to savour it (nope).

First steep: grassy, orange blossoms, citrus, silky, almost creamy. Honey-fruit notes to finish that become more apparent as tea cools. (I got to here).

I guess I’ll just have to order more. Life’s tough.

Steep Count: 4-5, usually

Swap Sample Sipdown! (16 | 85)

This was one of many oolong samples that the lovely Kawaii433 saw fit to share with me!

So full disclosure, li shan and ali shan oolong are not my favorites. They have a tendency to be quite floral, which is not an attribute that I love in tea.

This one was quite floral as well. The rinse was creamy and delicious with light peach notes, and it probably should have occurred to me to start with shorter steeps because of that. But it didn’t, so I started my first steep at 25s. Next time, I think I’ll start at 15s (at most) for gaoshan.

So the first several steeps were very strong on the floral notes. There were also some sweet peach, grass, pea, and spinach notes in the background. I didn’t find the overall flavor to change a lot during this time, which surprised me. But this may have been a side effect of my poor brewing parameters.

I did really start to enjoy this tea in the last few steeps though, where the flowers faded a bit and I could appreciate the soft grass, vegetal, and fruit notes more.

I will say, every single steep of this tea had an amazing sweet aftertaste that lingered forever. I’m not sure if that was what is referred to as hui gan, or not? Either way, I could definitely appreciate that this is a very good quality tea, even if it isn’t my personal “cup of tea”. ;)

There are already some fantastic, detailed reviews on this tea (Reason I tried it and thank you all. :D I so so so enjoy and appreciate all of you who do detailed reviews.) so I’ll just add that I’ve been enjoying this tea throughout the week. A complex taste which evolves: Fruit, floral, nuts, citrusy. What-Cha has my all-time favorite sticky rice oolong, and I love their Vietnamese Oolongs too. This is an exceptional and smooth Li-Shan.

Yixing teapot, 5g, 110ml, 194°F, 9 steeps, 25s, 35s, 45s, 55s, 1m5s, 1m10s, 1m15s, 1m25s, 1m35s

What a nice tea.

Despite being a year old and stored neglectfully in a (thick) plastic sandwich bag, this tea still has a fresh and focused (credit to Togo) character.

It’s very floral. After 4 or so years of picking apart tea aromas and flavors, I still have difficulty identifying floral notes that aren’t the typical tea ‘rose’. The floral note is intense yet gentle and sweet, not so perfumey. I want to ascribe to it daffodil, lily, magnolia, orange blossom, orchid, others… Other aromas in the dry leaf are cooked pineapple, yellow cherry, nutmeg and bitter cooked greens. The florality rises high after the sip.

The taste is consistent throughout the steeps. It is crisp, like fresh spring rain. Sweet, creamy spinach (without being overly vegetal), sturdy young grass, sugarcane, yellow cherry, green apple, citrus, pine, nutmeg.

The texture is of thick, smooth spring water with a mineral, mouth-watering finish.

The only shifting quality of this tea is found in the aftertaste which moves from gentle creaminess and peach and grass to osmanthus then closer to that of the first cup with peach skin and tulip leaf. The tea is a little drying but that lets the creamy impression and rising florals linger.

I looked back at my old note for the June 2018 harvest and this June 2020 harvest fits my impression back then. This tea is a great pick for newer oolong drinkers and seasoned alike. It can’t be oversteeped and in fact, my favorite preparation method thus far is bowl brewing, same as what’s called grandpa style. I happen to like sipping out of a bowl better than a large cup as I find I can more easily get lost in the aroma with my face that much closer to the tea. The leaves of this tea also expand with great fervor; a bowl accommodates this unfurling easily!

As for seasoned drinkers, the tea offers a ton of complexity in flavor and aroma if you’re the type to go searching. If your the type to not focus on such, it offers a smooth, consistent delivery in flavor, strength of character, structural balance.

Oh – this tea handles water off the boil beautifully. It needs the heat to bring out the deep sweetness that balances the florality.

A light floral & citrus high mountain oolong…very smooth, light, complex. Delicious. Now on to my 3rd steep.
(Spring 2017 Harvest). I was just on the perusing the What-Cha website- looks like Alistair is running low on this one so if you want to purchase, now is the time.

I’ve been wanting to try this Li Shan for while since it has gotten such rave reviews on Steepster. After finally getting my hands on a sample, I have to say this was worth the hype. Love it when that happens :-)

The leaves of this tea are rolled into giant green nuggets that have a fresh orchid scent. Wet leaf aroma is extraordinarily sweet with florals reminiscent of hyacinth and daffodils. The tea started off fairly thin and light with a bit of sugarcane. Figuring the water temperature was too low, I upped it to 200 F from 190 F to help bring out more flavor in the second steep. Out came a thick nectar of wildflowers and honeycomb. The following steep I used just under boiling water and got more pastoral flowers, minerality, and a fairly viscous mouthfeel that was very soothing. I was really beginning to feel the cha qi at this point.

From there on out, I used straight up boiling water for the next 6 steeps. It went through a complex taste evolution going from buttery to brothy and then fruity; all the while maintaining a distinct gao shan flavor. Interestingly enough, this tea was mostly fruity in the later steeps with little to no vegetal tones unlike other Li shan’s I’ve tried. I loved its sumptuous fruitiness and powerful cha qi. Also impressive was the incredible staying power that lasted through 9 steeps without any bitterness whatsoever.

After 2 sessions with this sample, I had slightly less than 2 grams left which I brewed western style. Though lighter, the western steep brought out more of the tea’s floral aspects into play.

Really impressed with this offering from What-Cha. It’s complexity and evolution of taste over infusions was quite nice. Definitely going to get some more of this tea with my next order.

I managed to squeeze in another oolong session this evening. This tea was one that I had been meaning to try for some time. What-Cha’s Taiwanese oolongs seem to enjoy a good reputation here and elsewhere, so my hopes were high. Fortunately, this tea lived up to expectations.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 185 F water for 10 seconds. I followed this infusion up with 12 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 12 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 3 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves emitted pleasant aromas of cream, butter, grass, and flowers. After the rinse, more distinct impressions of lilac, honeysuckle, and hyacinth emerged, as did traces of vanilla and custard. The first infusion produced a similar bouquet with a very light hint of citrus. In the mouth, I detected mild notes of cream, butter, vanilla, custard, sweetgrass, hyacinth, lilac, and honeysuckle. I did not pick up any citrus. Subsequent infusions revealed hints of lily and magnolia chased by lime zest, green apple, pear, and a faint hint of almond. A lively mineral presence began to emerge toward the back of the throat at this point. Later infusions were dominated by minerals, sweetgrass, cream, butter, and almond, while extremely faint citrus impressions lingered in the background.

This was a very interesting and satisfying high mountain oolong. Though its peak was very brief, the tea remained enjoyable on one level or another throughout the session. I could definitely see this being a rock solid oolong for regular consumption and would recommend it highly to anyone looking for a respectable Li Shan oolong that will not entirely break the bank.