Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Taiwan Green Tea
Where to Buy: Stone Leaf Teahouse
Tea Description:
Bi Luo Chun
Spring 2012
碧螺春茶
Taiwan. San Hsia Township.
Fresh is the operative word for this tea. Fresh, vibrant and green with notes of bamboo sprouts. Perfectly balanced with subtle nutty aromas, lively vegetal flavors, lingering grassyness, and a touch of ocean mist. This sparkling green infusion is perfect for a sunny day, or if you’d just like it to .
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
When I opened the bag the buttery sweet aroma was so intoxicating! Then a sweet vegetal aroma lifted up toward my nostrils and I was in love. I just melt when I sip on buttery, sweet, vegetal, grassy, creamy, nutty teas and if I had to list adjectives to describe a perfect green those are the adjectives I would list, and this tea captures every single one of them perfectly.
It is such a very pretty leaf! All curly and springy! I love the shades of green and would describe this leaf as “playful”. The steeped leaf is so soft and silky – what I describe as “angel hair” feeling. It feels so plush I wish I could sleep on a bed that feels like this!
I keep re-steeping in order to do a proper review but I just can’t keep my cup full long enough to savor these amazing flavors, and while I do like to respect the tea, and appreciate it, savoring each and every sip I can’t seem to contain myself to do so with this one. Look out folks…its a guzzler!
Now I assume that in the description they say “a touch of ocean mist” to mean there is a slightly seaweed like flavor in it. I have to say that I get very subtle notes here and there of that, more of a salty like note, however it is slight and I do love salt! Ironically even though I am a total saltaholic my sodium levels always run low! Go figure, I could put a salt block in my living room and be quite happy. So for that reason I am very happy to have that “touch of ocean mist” flavor in my cup. As for a seaweed note, to me that is more in the aroma than in the flavor but it is there, that salty seaweed bamboo like flavor just screams tropical rain forest to me more than ocean side sea spray.
The flavor is so very buttery, so creamy and silky in the mouthfeel, yet I can’t quite decide which vegetable it tastes like, corn came to mind, but so did green beans, and peas, but its more like a medley of vegetables. Yet there is this nutty almost wood like flavor perhaps from the bamboo sprouts. The after taste lingers so nicely making me just want to keep sipping away without a care. Which in and of itself is making it more difficult to really give a detailed review of exactly what this tea taste like other than AMAZING!
I clicked on the blog link on Stone Leaf Teahouse website and found this tidbit of information about Bi Luo Chun that I wanted to share with you because I found it so romantic:
Yet another legend claims that this tea was named after a girl, Bi Luo, who watered a tea tree with the tears she had shed for her slain dragon lover. She then died under this tree, and the next spring, the tree produced a fragrant green tea which we now call Bi Luo Chun.
This is only a small excerpt however as there is an entire article about the name of this tea and the man legends associated with it. Here is the link to their blog if you would like to read more for yourself.
Spring Green – Bi Luo Chun (Alpine Tea) from In Nature
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: In Nature
Product Description:
The words Bi Lo Chun translate literally to mean ‘spring snail shell’. The leaves are picked in the spring. Then, when you see this tea, you will notice that the leaves are rolled into small balls which resemble snail shells.
When brewed, this green tea produces a yellow-green colour, the fragrance is described as floral and it has a clean and smooth flavour with a sweet after taste.
Taster’s Review:
There is no doubt that this is a “Spring” tea – springtime is in the aroma and in the taste. The fragrance is lightly floral and grassy, evoking images of springtime when you can smell the scent of flowers in bloom and the fresh, green grass wafting through the air.
The flavor is also lightly floral. It has a “green” taste to it that falls somewhere between grassy and vegetable-like. It is very pleasantly sweet with a savory taste that hits just after mid-sip, just enough bitter taste to cut through the sweet and give the cup balance. There is some drying astringency at the tail, and the aftertaste is sweet.
Overall, I find this to be a very agreeable Bi Luo Chun (or Snail Shell tea as it is sometimes called) with an uplifting, crisp taste. I like it particularly in the afternoon or early evening when I am in need of invigorating; it seems to gently energize the body while it replenishes the soul and soothes the spirit.
This is the perfect way to de-stress!
