Today's tea comes from a tea company located in Taiwan; Taiwan Tea Crafts. Taiwan is famous for its tea, most notably its bao zhong and high mountain (gao shan) oolongs. This tea is of the latter category.
Generally speaking, a tea is classified as high mountain if it is grown at an elevation of at least 1000 meters. High mountain oolongs exist towards the greener side of the oolong 'scale' and are revered for their orchid aroma and sweet, throaty aftertaste. As you can see from the image above, the tea is rolled into tight balls which unfurl quickly and display a dramatic increase in volume.
This tea, grown on Li Shan (Pear Mountain), displays a very low level of oxidation, as evidenced by the slight discoloration of the edges of the leaves themselves. Taiwan Tea Crafts notes the harvest date of each tea they sell so that a prospective customer can be aware of the freshness. This tea was picked in November of this year, and is certainly the freshest high mountain tea I have had the pleasure of drinking.
The wet leaves have a thick, sweet, creamy floral scent to them. During the first few infusions, the floral aroma is so strong that the leaves smell more like perfume than tea. Early infusions display more muted floral notes, leaning more towards a gentle vegetal sweetness that lingers on the tongue and in the top half of the mouth. As the infusions progress and the leaves open, the tea becomes increasingly floral, peaking around the fourth infusion or so. At this stage, the aroma is extremely penetrating, completely filling the mouth and nasal cavities with scent.
The aroma dies quickly after the fifth infusion, and the tea becomes more gently perfumed liquid until about the eighth infusion, at which point I discarded the leaves. At no point during the infusions did the liquid become astringent or bitter.
My tea friend and colleague, who hails from Taiwan, explained to me that the two things that people look for in a high mountain tea are the floral fragrance and aftertaste which lingers in the throat. This tea has the first aspect in spades, however the aftertaste of this tea is felt more in the top half of the mouth and in the nasal cavities, rather than the throat.
We tasted this tea along side an unopened bag of 2012 high mountain tea to compare the similarities. The 2012 tea had a more muted fragrance, however its aftertaste was apparent in the throat, a lasting sweetness that could be felt every time I exhaled. I can assume that fragrance, and perhaps a degree of sweetness, are the first things to leave a tea as it begins to age. This 2013 Li Shan was certainly the sweeter and more fragrant of the two, however the main difference could be found in the placement and length of the aftertaste.
I, for one, am extremely pleased with this tea. I do not mind that the aftertaste has different placement in the mouth. What I am most impressed with is the freshness of the tea, which can be so easily felt in the sweetness and the powerful aroma that the drinker experiences.
I inadvertently had a session of this tea which was brewed with a smaller quantity of leaves than I intended. What happened was interesting. A creaminess in the tea which was not present in other sessions was revealed. The taste itself was more milky, and interestingly enough, the floral aspects were more muted. It is perhaps possible that the creaminess existed in the other sessions as well, but was just overpowered by the high floral fragrance. It was an interesting result, and I think that I will try varying the amount of tea in the future as I work my way through some other samples.
No comments:
Post a Comment