One problem with these teas is that they have no names — and most of the time, there isn’t even a region name to go by, so unfortunately, price is the only real distinction 🙂
This is a tea that I got along with the more expensive, but sour, tea. I got this one because it’s cheap… it’s under $50 for 600g (600g is a jin, or Chinese pound with 16 taels, and prices are often quoted in these, but do not confuse this with a mainland jin, which is 500g and has 10 taels).
The leaves are a bit mixed looking when you inspect them closely, and has a few shades — darker and lighter brown. Sniffing it, it smells a little aged, and roasty.
The tea looks very roasty
And tastes so too. There’s definitely some aged-ness to it, but the aged character is not particularly obvious. The roasted flavour is more prominent, and probably needs a bit of time for that to go away. The first few infusions are actually quite good — with a solid coating of aroma in the back of the mouth. There’s a slight sourness in there, but it’s not obvious enough to be unpleasant. When they sold it to me they said this is 10 years. Is it? I don’t know, I’m not sure. It’s probably a few years old, but there’s really no telling exactly how old. One of the problems is that the aged-ness of an oolong can vary very greatly. If aged in a sealed package, the aging can progress very slowly, whereas sometimes they’re aged in more open air, and the aged character show up much faster, but I think at higher risk of sourness and that sort of thing. Almost every time I go to a tea shop around here I ask if they have aged oolongs, and they really run the gamut, both in quality and price.
Would I drink this again? Sure, it’s not offensive, and the first few cups are nice. Again, if brewed a little lighter, there should be no sourness and perhaps even a bit more aromatic.
I really need to use a pot for this sort of tea. Brewing them in a gaiwan is almost a waste.
The wet leaves show this tea to be more broken in nature — not too obvious when dry, but really obvious when wet
Some of the spent leaves look greenish. Is this because of the angle of the picture? Can you descibe the colors of the spent leaves? I also see somes darker leaves too. Is it possible that this is a blend?
The picture is greener than the leaves actually are in real life, but like I said…. the dry leaves looked mixed, so I won’t be surprised if blending happened.
Nothing’s wrong with blending though.
it can also be uneven roasting of the same batch. The bottom leaves are heavier roasted than the top portion due to either too much tea and/or lack of stirring.
Well, the dry leaves don’t really look like each other if you inspect them closely, so I’m more inclined to think it’s a blend of some sort.