Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: Zoomdweebies
Tea Description:
YEE HAW! Listen up, everypony: this tea is a delicious blend of hay-like shou mei white tea, freeze-dried red-delicious- and granny smith- apples and organic flavors. This tea tastes like heaven and is great hot or iced. Don’t be surprised if drinking it leaves you uttering strange phrases like, “What in the hay is going on?”
Learn more about this blend here.
Taster’s Review:
OK, when I first saw “Apple Jack’s” in the name, my thoughts weren’t of ponies but of breakfast cereal. I love Apple Jacks. And that would be a really good tea flavor … don’t you think? Maybe a green tea, apple, cinnamon, some barley or malt for the grain-y/cereal-y flavor. Yum.
But this tea isn’t that tea. This is a apple flavored white tea. No cinnamon or grain flavors. And it’s been named after one of those ponies. My daughter used to be into those, but, she’s outgrown them. We recently took a bunch of them to the thrift store as a donation. Hopefully someone will love them as much as she did.
Moving on to the tea that is in my teacup at the moment, eagerly awaiting me to take a sip…
The dry leaf smells delicious – like apples! The aroma of the brewed tea is much softer but I’m still able to pick up some delicate apple notes.
To brew this, I brewed the tea in my Kati tumbler. I put about 1 1/2 bamboo scoops of tea into the basket and poured 12 ounces of 170°F water into the tumbler. Then I let it steep for about 3 1/2 minutes.
The flavor is very apple-y! It is definitely like an apple harvest in a teacup. There are both sweet and tart apple notes and I appreciate that there seem to be more sweet notes than tart. Just enough tartness to offer contrast without making me pucker.
The Shou Mei base is ideal for these flavors, I think, because the flavor of apple is on the delicate side and the light flavor of the Shou Mei allows for a good balance of both white tea and apple flavors to shine through. I taste the sweet, hay-like notes of the Shou Mei and the natural fruit notes of the white tea elevate the apple notes.
A really delightful apple tea that will provide you with several delicious infusions. I infused the leaves three times. I got a nice apple flavor in all three, but I noticed that the flavor was starting to drop off a bit by the third cup so that’s why I stopped there. A really tasty tea that tastes great hot (cozy and autumnal!) or iced (sweet and refreshing!)
Kokang Green Tea from Shan Valley
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Shan Valley
Tea Description:
This first flush green tea is from the Kokang region of Myanmar, close to the Yunan region in china. This is considered the highest quality tea that is available to the public in Myanmar.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This tea is interesting because it really seems like two different teas: when it is served hot, I get a different set of flavors than as it cools. Both are really delicious, though!
When served hot, I get a fresh and exhilarating flavor that is rich and brothy without tasting overly vegetal. In fact, there are very little distinct vegetative flavor to this green tea and I found that quite surprising.
There is a lovely buttery note to this – not so much a creamy, sweet butter flavor but more like a browned butter. I’m picking up on a slightly smoky note to this as well as distant notes of flower and a nice fruit note that is like a hybrid fruit of melon, sweet green grapes and a hint of citrus that is particularly noticeable toward the finish.
The hot cup is a beautifully sweet tasting tea with notes of savory and smoke. As the cup cools, I notice the flavors changing a bit. I still get a pleasantly sweet cuppa, but, the aforementioned buttery note becomes more creamy now and less like a brown butter.
This is sweet and creamy! Mmm! I still taste those notes of fruit and flower, and I’m not tasting quite as much of a smoky element as I noticed with the hot tea. It’s still very subtly there in the distance. The fruit notes seem more pronounced now, and I’m tasting primarily fruit and cream with the cooled tea.
A really WONDERFUL tea – I’ve been so impressed with the 2014 teas from Shan Valley!
Temomi Shin Cha Green Tea from Sugimoto America
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Sugimoto America
Tea Description:
Temomi Shin Cha is one of the rarest and highest quality Japanese green teas. The word temomi means “hand-rolled”. From the meticulous picking of the best young tea leaves to the final process of kneading the leaves to fine needles, the whole practice is done by the hands of elite temomi artisans. A method used in Japan centuries ago, the temomi technique is vanishing due to the adoption of today’s machines to produce tea. Temomi Shin Cha is offered to the Japanese Emperor each year in a ceremony celebrating the first tea of spring.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I have tried Shin Cha teas in the past, but I have never had this very rare Temomi Shin Cha tea before. What an amazing opportunity to try it!
This is one of the finest green teas I’ve yet to try.
The dry leaf is long and elegant. The photo above almost suggests an appearance of a Japanese Sencha, and … it does look a little bit like that, except that the leaves are longer. These aren’t a finely cut leaf, they’re the tender, young leaves – whole – that have been assiduously rolled by hand. Each tiny, beautiful leaf has been rolled into a long, very slender, sleek “needles.” They’re gorgeous.
Since I do not own a kyusu, I steeped these leaves in my gaiwan. My gaiwan is not the “standard” gaiwan, it has a fairly wide, shallow chamber and it is the perfect size to accommodate these precious leaves. How this tea is brewed is very important. The temperature should be only 100°F – yeah! I did a double take on that temperature too. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a tea where such a low temperature was required!
Fortunately, my Breville One-Touch doubles as a variable tea kettle as well, and while it doesn’t have a setting for a temperature so low, it does show the temperature as it builds and I was able to pull the kettle at 100°F. The steep time is 2 minutes. After two minutes, look at the leaves and see if they’ve opened. They were beginning to open at this point, but not fully open, so I gave the tea one more minute. After the extra minute, I strained the tea and sat back to enjoy my this rare tea experience!
The color of the tea is very pale. But even though there isn’t a lot of color to the liquid, there is a LOT of flavor and texture. It is sweet and the texture is thick. Thicker than any other Japanese green tea I’ve ever tried (Matcha is not included in that statement.) It is rich and buttery with a strong vegetative taste that is somewhat grassy. Sweet and grassy.
In the literature that comes along with this tea, it says:
Temomi Shincha is consumed in small amounts, very much akin to enjoying a rich and strong flavored espresso.
And I get that. No, I’m not tasting espresso here. But it does have a very strong and forward flavor, just like you might experience if you were to be sipping on an espresso – but without being brash like espresso can be. Hey, what can I say, I’m not into espresso … I’m a tea drinker through and through.
For the second infusion, I used 130°F water and steeped for only 1 minute. This cup is not quite as thick as the first was, but it maintains the same level of flavor and the same sweet, grassy, rich taste that I enjoyed in the first cup. Still buttery, but because it isn’t as thick, it doesn’t seem quite as buttery or creamy as the first cup was. It still has a really luscious texture though, it’s just a little lighter. I notice a bit of astringency to this cup.
I brewed my third infusion the same way, but I added 15 seconds onto the infusion time, steeping for 1 minute 15 seconds. The extra 15 seconds made a difference, and I’m getting that same soft, thick texture that I experienced in the first cup with this cup. It’s thick and buttery and delightful.
This third cup may be my favorite of the three. It has the same rich, brothy texture of the first cup, but with a softer vegetative presentation, the flavor is a little softer and this accentuates the creamy texture.
And because I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to this tea just yet, I decided to do something that I don’t ordinarily do: eat the leaves! I brought the kettle to a boil, and poured the boiling water over the leaves to soak them for five minutes to remove any tannic qualities of the leaves. So after I finished drinking this tea, I enjoyed a warm salad of tea leaves and a light dressing of sesame oil and orange. It was tasty!
This is – unquestionably – an exceptional tea and offers not just a journey that’s well worth taking but also represents an opportunity to taste a rare tea that is available only in limited quantities. I highly, highly recommend this tea to all those who truly love tea.
Fengqing Wild Tree Yesheng Raw Pu-erh Tea Cake 2013 from Teavivre
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Pu-erh
Where to Buy: Teavivre
Tea Description:
This raw pu-erh cake is grown and produced in Fengqing, Yunnan, which is the origin place of DianHong black tea. This Wild Tree Yesheng Raw Pu-erh Cake is harvest in spring of 2013. Between March to May, after harvesting the fresh leaves, tea workers will process them: fixation, rolling, drying, sifting, and then store the leaves in carton boxes.
As the workers use iron pan for fixation, and roll the tea with their hands, the leaves do not have good looks as machine-made leaves. Yet regarding on quality, this Wild Tree Yesheng Pu-erh Cake is a green food from nature, in the mists and clouds on high mountains. It is a tea worth being in your collection list.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
The dry leaf aroma of this 2013 Fengqing Wild Tree Yesheng Raw Pu-erh Tea Cake from Teavivre is almost non-existent. This surprised me, only because I’m used to Pu-erh having some aroma, but I didn’t smell much of anything when I smelled the dry leaf.
Conversely, the wet leaves have a strong vegetal scent to them that immediately made me think of peas. Granted, peas are not my favorite vegetable (that’s putting it mildly) and because of that, they are not a food that I’m smelling on a regular basis. But when I smelled these wet leaves, green peas is what came to mind.
For those of you who are like me: timid when it comes to Pu-erh tea because of that strong, earthy and sometimes fishy taste and smell, you can rest assured that you won’t experience that with this Pu-erh. This is a very young Pu-erh, and it tastes much more like a green tea to me than it does a Pu-erh.
It has a vegetal taste, but it’s a remarkably smooth vegetal note. It doesn’t have that “crisp” or “lively” sort of vegetative taste that you might experience with a typical green tea. Instead, this has a very mellow vegetative taste. It doesn’t taste grassy. It tastes like mild steamed vegetables: like spinach, perhaps, only milder and sweeter.
There is a buttery note to this too, something I don’t typically experience with a Pu-erh. So, imagine that aforementioned extra mild, sweet spinach, topped with mushrooms that have been lightly sauteed in butter and then topped with thinly sliced almonds … only the almonds are raw. It has that sort of creamy, buttery taste that you might experience with a raw almond.
Later infusions brought out more savory flavors to the vegetal tones. Notes of salt and seaweed were contrasted by some newly emerging fruity notes. The flavor becomes deeper and more complex with each new infusion.
I like in “wild tree” teas like this that I can almost taste the “wild” in them. There is a note to these teas that I don’t often find in the more conventional farm grown teas.
I would recommend this Pu-erh to those new to Pu-erh so that they can experience some “different” Pu-erh teas, as well as fans of green tea. It’s a really unique tea experience … one definitely worth trying.
2005 Lao Lin Cang Ancient Arbor Sheng Pu-erh Tea from Life in Teacup
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Pu-erh
Where to Buy: Life in Teacup
Tea Description:
Production Year – 2005
Season – Spring
Production Region – Yunnan
Factory – Lao Lin Cang Tea Factory
Style – Sheng
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
The dry leaf aroma of this 2005 Lao Lin Cang Ancient Arbor Sheng Pu-erh Tea from Life in Teacup is a gentle, earthy scent. Generally, I find myself kind of put off by the strong earthy notes of Pu-erh but, this is such a subtle earth scent that I’m not finding it off-putting at all, and the sweet tones are very intriguing.
I steeped this the way I would typically steep a Pu-erh – in my gaiwan. I steeped the first infusion for 45 seconds (following a quick 15 second rinse), and the flavor was earthy and sweet, with a woodsy note to it that is sweet. There are hints of a fruit-like note to this as well. It’s a mellow tea with a pleasant sweetness. There is also a cleansing astringency to this that I don’t usually find in a pu-erh.
The second (1 minute) infusion delivered a flavor that is less earthy and more sweet. The woodsy note has developed and I am tasting more of the fruit taste now too. The finish is sweet and the aftertaste is clean.
The next two infusions, I noticed that the earthy tones began to develop, and these tones meld together with the fruit and woodsy notes, and are softened by the sweetness. Subsequent infusions, some of the earthiness begins to taper, and I find a nice balance of fruit and sweet wood tones.
Overall, a pleasant Sheng – mellow and relaxing. The sweetness of this one keeps me sipping!