TeaGschwendner

Though I bought the tea not too long ago, it was still the 2009 vintage, and so it’s not at its very best (typically, one would want to buy a green tea as close to its picking as possible, which would mean anywhere between April and June; drinking a green a year after its picking is obviously going to dull the taste a bit and make it sparkle less).

The TeaGschwendner China Long Jing can be translated as “Dragon Well.” I originally bought it for my lovely sister-in-law as a gift, along with several other teas, but she returned the Long Jing to me because she disliked it. Puzzlement! I had made Laura some Long Jing teas, and I knew she liked it. So what was the problem?

I asked Sister-in-Law Number One what she was doing wrong. She was ignoring the directions on the packaging, and steeping at too high a temperature, and probably for too long. I write this as a teachable moment for all my readers: DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT STEEP CHINESE GREEN TEAS AT BOILING, unless you steep for only a matter of seconds (in the range of 5 to 10 seconds per steep). This results in a harsh, ugly concoction that will make you return someone’s very thoughtful gift to them, which they will then enjoy immensely without you.

When properly steeped, the TeaGschwendner Long Jing is predictably lovely: a tawny-gold color with a lot of fragrance. There is a slight bitter tang to the flavor, but the bright, high notes and long finish are quite pleasant. This tea survived two steepings nicely, and perhaps more that I’ll savor later.

How to describe? There are elusive berry notes in the center of my palate, but the high is a bright, acerbic cheerfulness that I enjoy immensely. There is a hint of something dark in the low palate that offsets the high notes, to give a beautifully balanced cup.

I wish I had been able to get this tea when it was freshly picked, because I’m certain it would have been quite extraordinary. Unfortunately, the TeaGschwendner people have their tea shipped from China to Germany, and from there to the U.S., where it’s shelved until it’s sold, which means it was a bit beyond its prime by the time I got to drink it. I look forward to tasting the 2010 variety, which I hope will live up to my expectations.

Thank you, TeaGschwendner, for being so consistent and careful with your tea offerings. I’ve learned so much from living near one of your very few shops, and I am grateful for your considerable addition to the U.S. tea culture.

I ordinarily don’t drink many mixed-estate teas, much less those whose origins come from mixed regions: Culinary Tea’s Irish Breakfast Green comes from Kenya, China, and Japan, and together they form a pleasant enough liquor, fairly light green with a hint of bitterness and a lightly floral, verging on citrus, note amidst the greenly vegetative impression the tea gives.

The instructions on the Culinary Teas Web site call for boiling water on the leaves for three to seven minutes, but I admit, I couldn’t bring myself to follow the directions exactly. I could imagine using either boiling water with a duration of perhaps 10 to 30 seconds; or alternatively, 70C to 80C water for the longer duration, which is what I decided on. I think it’s a mistake to steep a green tea in the Western style (which is boiling water, 3 or so minutes, as per the Culinary Teas Web site directions), because that tradition was created for black teas. Many people are turned off forever from green teas precisely because they follow this type of instruction, and they end up with a soupy mess that tastes like cooked spinach, completely missing the delightful nuance they might find with a lighter steeping. I, myself, spent 20 years drinking nothing but black teas for this very reason.

Prepared as a more typical green tea, this is enjoyable enough, though not particularly memorable; nevertheless, it does not remind me too much of the sharp, bright, hard-elbowed Irish Breakfast teas I have drunk in the past. I imagine that scalding the tea at a higher temperature and brewing it for a long time might provide that level of deliberate harshness, which is rather desirable in an Irish Breakfast, but can typically be cut by either milk or sugar. I didn’t necessarily want to try a green tea with milk this morning, so I’ll leave that to your own experimentation with this tea.

THE LEAVES
Smallish twists of pure black, highly fragrant. When they’ve been steeped, they take on a reddish-brown hue, fairly dark, indicating a highish level of oxidation, consistent with the way second-flush teas are processed. The aroma of the spent leaves is quite faint, easily overpowered by the other kitchen aromas of this morning’s breakfast.

THE CUP
At three minutes’ steeping time, about 90C, the liquor is quite a dark reddish-brown, crystal clear to the bottom of the cup. The very first moment, when the tea struck my palate, it was rather strikingly bitter (not a quality I look for in a tea, but not one I despise, either), but it quickly resolved into a very smooth cup, very complex.

When I speak of second-flush Darjeelings, “complex” is the characteristic I most highly prize. Layers of flavor reveal themselves on my palate at every sip. First, that bitter note (which may have been caused by my allowing the steeping to take place slightly longer than 3 minutes; life with an infant makes tea steeping times sometimes fall short of a laboratory’s strict methologies); followed by an astringency that dried the tongue, reminiscent of a woody fruitiness, like blackberries or other dark berries; and then I notice this is followed by something akin to an aromatic evergreen resin, then other flavors I can’t identify but enjoy.

For the second steeping, which I performed at 2:30, 85C, but it was underwhelmingly weak. I would advise a longer steeping. NOTE ON SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT STEEPINGS: I have sought long and hard for some kind of consensus among wise tea masters of whom I have acquaintance, and none of them agree about how to make a second steeping of a black tea like this Darjeeling. So you kind of have to guess and experiment with a tea until you find something that works for your palate.

I find that most people, when reading reviews of this sort, find them to be unhelpful when trying to recreate the exact taste experience of the writer. If you sat next to me while we drank the exact same cup of tea, you’d say, “Evergreen resin? What in the world are you talking about?” Well, perhaps it’s best to paint in broader strokes, to convey the general, overarching experience, rather than try to notate personal taste memories that will not carry over to anyone else.

This Puttabong is enjoyable precisely because, as I allow a sip to sit in my mouth for a few minutes, various flavors slowly reveal themselves, ranging from the bitter, to the sweet, to the woodsy, floral, and fruity, and to things I can’t identify but are uniquely characteristic of this estate’s tea. It’s the sheer range of characters that reveal themselves in this tea, one after another, that is so entrancing. It’s by no means a tea that can be experienced at once, but rather one that is drunk as though it’s a book, being revealed page by page.

The sweetly bright huigan, which is practically the only Chinese tea word I know (and so, yes, I overuse it; I’ll work on that in future), is that retronasal experience when the tea is experienced through the back of the throat, entering up into the nasal passages. Did you know, the human tongue can only perceive five basic flavors– sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami– but the nose can perceive literally thousands of variations of aromas. This means that much of our delight in tea is caused by all those scents floating around within them. The retronasal experience of huigan is primarily caused by those smells, divorced from any of the five tastes perceived on the tongue.

There’s a reason I spent almost 20 years of my life drinking primarily Darjeeling teas, and this is why: a second-flush Darjeeling can be an engaging, complex, delightful experience. My only problem with it was the strike of bitterness at the beginning of the drinking experience, but following more religiously the #1 Rule of Darjeelings: NEVER OVERSTEEP, would have served me better.

I have come to love Big Red Robe oolongs. At least, the ones I’ve tasted have been uniformly delightful, and JING tea’s is no exception.

I steeped the tea with the best gongfu I could muster: I filled the gaiwan a little less than about a quarter of the way with the leaves, and used just-under-boiling water throughout the steeping sequence. By using a lot of leaf and many short steeps, I am able to drink tea in chapters, opening up the flavor of the leaves without having an overly weak cup. A good gongfu session can last an entire afternoon, with many many steeps. I recorded a few of them here, but I kept steeping well after I had run out of time to take sipping notes.

Steeping 1: 25s
The leaves are a rich, dark color, of what seems to be a medium-roasted DHP with a high level of oxidation. Leaves are beautifully resilient, with a sharp aroma that has high citrus notes. Quite brilliant.

Steeping 2: 20s
The aroma cup carries this intense, sharp aroma I describe as Christmas berries– spicy, citrus, light, sharp. A slightly bitter edge that could easily be attributed to my inadequate gongfu.

Steeping 3: 20s
Almost a vanilla aroma arising; berries and pine, again making me think of Christmas after breakfast. The taste is… okay, not fantastic but good. It’s slightly bitter, but again, I think it’s my fu as I get used to my new equipment.

Steeping 4: 20s
Less sharp and intense, the bitterness abating (from the roasting process, most likely), I now start to get to know the tea itself. Woodsy astringency. My, but my table got wet. There is an attractive roughness to this tea, a hard-elbowed quality I rather like. It’s the huigan that carries this lovely quality– the rising sweetness that makes me think of burning sweet applewood, say; ever so slightly smoky, fruity but not fruit (again, applewood, not apple).

Steeping 5: 35s
Aroma: sweet sushi rice, applewood. The aroma seems to dissipate more quickly. The deep brown-gold color has become a lighter orange-amber. Beautiful sweetness, but with a burn in the throat that catches the attention and is sharply at variance with the lightness in the mouth. There is a lovely mouthfeel, substantial even at the fifth steeping. A slight minerality develops in the mouth, like iron perhaps, as the more prominent, roasty flavors are in retreat.

Steeping 6: 45s
Most surprising here is the huigan, which rises up a couple minutes after drinking. Complicated flavors that remind me of a bonbon thing I once had at the Russian Tea Cafe, in Chicago: as it melted, different flavors would appear (first the pomegranate sorbet, then the ice cream, finally the orange-scented white chocolate). Here, a progression. The flavor is now quite muted, but still enjoyable. Learning to burn myself a little bit less on the gaiwan.

Steeping 7: 55s
Finally, a bit of floral brightness appears in the aroma. Flavor receding, but the mouthfeel– not as dry now, but substantial– is quite good. I don’t know what I think Qi is, but I feel quite energetic and alert, without a hint of anxiety or jitteriness.

Steeping 8: 65s
The aroma is now like a candy at the front, in the high notes, with a hint of tobacco following. And then very little aroma following through.

OVERALL IMPRESSION
A very nice DHP, with a robust character that carries through a number of steepings. Complex and quite interesting.

Japan is a small island. Therefore, the tea farmers have to be very smart agronomers, making the most of the tight spaces they have to grow their crops. Kuki-cha is a crucial part of the system of making the absolute most of the resources they have. After the tender leaves are plucked every Spring, the Japanese choose to then pluck the green shoots and very frugally make that into a tea of its own: kuki-cha.

In this case, Maeda-en blends the shoots with a touch of matcha powder, which is made from the light-sheltered gyokuro leaves and ground into a fine tea dust. Matcha is typically used in the Japanese tea ceremony, but here is added to lend a bit of mellowness to the flavor and brightness to the color.

And brightness! The leaves are by far the lightest green in my tea drawer. When steeped, the liquor is an opaquely rich, saturated, radioactive green color that could easily have been accidentally created by Homer Simpson at the nuclear power plant. When I poured off the tea, I could easily see the sharp difference between the 1/2-inch, pale shoots and the darker leaf matter, which appeared much like cooked spinach.

When I first made the tea (80C, 1min), I found it to be a bit… well, weird and bitter. Sencha, I understand. Matcha, not so much, though I’ve tasted it at Japanese tea ceremony a couple of times. The tea was vegetal and a bit bitter. I went back to the Web site and read that this pairs well with sweets– much in line with how the Japanese tea ceremony is designed, with dainty sweets accompanying the rather bitter tea, allowing for greater enjoyment.

So I pulled out our Toll House chocolate chip (on the theory that chocolate and matcha pair nicely together) and made the tea again (85C, 1min), and did have better results. The buttery quality of the tea was lovely and quite sweet (once the bitterness was taken care of), and I was able to enjoy the lightly vegetal quality– a bit like asparagus.

Typically, I enjoy teas without accompaniment: just me and the naked leaves. In this case, the tea actually seems deliberately designed to be drunk alongside the sweets, much as British teas are cultivated to best survive the cultural habit of adding milk and sugar and drinking alongside scones and cream. Drunk on those terms, honoring the cultural heritage that brought about this tea, it’s quite delicate and enjoyable. Drunk, though, in the raw (the tea, I mean: you can enjoy it in whatever state of dress or undress you choose), this makes much less sense and is not nearly as enjoyable.

ANYWAY, to warm up and attempt to get through the long, dark afternoon of the soul, I am drinking Formosa Oolong by Tea Forté. It is in a clever nylon pyramid-shaped teabag, and I think the leaves within it are in pretty good shape.

THE LEAVES
Hidden within a tea bag, I can tell very little about their appearance. The steeped leaves have a pleasant enough, sweetly roasted aroma. I don’t really think the nylon bag affected the aroma. The tea bags reside inside a pyramid-shaped card-stock paper wrapper, and they have a cute metallic string with a little leaf on the end. Stylish looking and neat. Typically, none of the teas I enjoy are distributed in tea bags, so I don’t have much to compare this to.

THE PROCESS
I used just-under-boiling water (around 195 or so), in a covered, glass cup, for about 3 minutes. The Web site suggests 2-4 minutes, so I’m right in the zone.

THE CUP
A transparent, brown liquor with a roasty aroma. The flavor does not really work for me. I noticed an odd flavor note that makes me think of a paper bag. Now, I know that the nylon bag has nothing to do with this (not being made of paper, of course), but nevertheless there’s something there I can’t quite account for. Very light mouthfeel.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I don’t really want to belabor this review with the history of oolong, or the significance of Formosa tea-making practice, nor the proper place of teabags in the enjoyment of my favorite beverage. The thing is, I don’t enjoy this tea, and I find I haven’t finished the cup. I wonder if the paper packaging failed to protect these unfortunate tea leaves from off-flavors it might have picked up in transit or in storage. I do not know if the tea as purchased directly from Tea Forte would be packaged better t protect them, and if my sample didn’t get that treatment.  I’d be interested to taste this again, if I knew it was freshly packaged and stored in airtight foil. I don’t think my leaves gave me the same experience that was had by the distributor when they first received their shipment from the tea farms in Formosa.

“Oh, this is going to be good.”

The aroma of the first steeping greeted me with an intensity that I’d forgotten. I’ve had Ali Shan oolong only once before (a Fang Tea offering), and it had knocked my socks off. When that first whiff of this intensely fragrant leaf hit me as I poured out, I was reminded that I like Ali Shan, and I look forward to tasting what this has in store for me.

Ali Shan is a high-grown (over 2000 meters) mountain tea, and the region was recently in the news because a horrible hurricane swept the area, and the mountain tea gardens were unable to hold the topsoil, which washed down and caused havoc in the communities below. The Taiwan legislature has a bill in the works that (if passed) will make it illegal to grow Ali Shan oolong at these high elevations, for fear that global warming will cause more hurricanes and thus more havoc. You can read more about this here.

1st Steeping: 25s
For the first steeping, I chose 25 seconds of just-boiling, filtered water that has been soaking with Japanese charcoal, and tea made in my new glass teapot, courtesy of the very kind folks at JING Tea. What a beautifully fragrant tea, with a creamy, milky aroma. The lemon-yellow liquor is perfectly clear, with a tiny amount of broken leaf that has snuck through the filter into the fairness cup. Perhaps it’s the power of suggestion by the creamy aroma, but the mouthfeel of the tea is thick, quite substantial. Creamy, in fact. The balled leaves opened into springy, summer-grass green leaves that are only partially unfurled. This promises a number of lovely steepings. The damp leaves are deeply aromatic, and they seem only lightly oxidized, with reddish-brown only at the very, very edge of the leaf. I’m fairly partial to lightly oxidized oolongs, and this is quite typical of the type of tea I’ve discovered I really love.

I admit, there is a faint bitterness in the cup, only a frisson, and I believe it adds to the attractiveness of the offering by Jing. I don’t usually look for bitterness in a cup of tea, but it’s one of the five tastes, and we shouldn’t try to avoid it in every circumstance, but rather embrace it as part of the sensory experience. In this case, it adds an edge to the otherwise very smooth cup.

2nd Steeping: 20s
Again, the lemon-yellow cup, clear and lovely. As the wenxianbei [sipping cup] cools, the aroma moves from these creamy, thick aromas to a more autumn-garden kind of aroma: earthy but light. Still, a very hint of bitterness, though less than on the first steeping. It’s possible I oversteeped slightly, and so I realized I had a word problem on my hands. So I asked for some advice on my tea math.

Word Problem: Stevie wants to steep his Ali Shan oolong for 20 seconds. His new teapot pours out at 7 seconds. He does not want to oversteep. Should he (a) start pouring at 20s, knowing that the latter part of the brew will have oversteeped by 7 seconds? Does he (b) start pouring at 13 seconds, knowing that the last drop will be steeped at exactly 20s? Or (c) does Stevie start pouring at 16.5 seconds [if he is able to be this accurate], knowing that the tea will, on average, be 20s?

Solution: As of the third steeping, I am going to go with (c), on the assumption that the average of 20s (or whatever length of time I’m steeping) is better than under- or oversteeping. I’m open to suggestions if this is not other people’s tea practice.

3rd Steeping, 20s
I find it’s difficult for me to describe this tea. Ali Shan oolong is memorable among a thousand flavors: rich, earthy, fragrant, sharp, bright, subtle, redolent of cooking herbs and buttery bread. There’s an undercurrent, oddly, of unusual animal aromas I associate with a day at the zoo: exotic, pungent, musky. In other words, my description makes no sense whatsoever, and it gives you no idea of what I’m actually experiencing.

So I’ll try this another way: The difficult-to-describe aroma and flavor have coated my mouth and throat, they’re rising up into my nose from the back of my throat, and the aftertaste is lingering a surprisingly long time. I like it a lot, though I can’t say I would need to drink it every day of my life.

A NOTE ON REVIEW WRITING
Michael J. Coffey wrote recently that it is a crime against tea (to horribly paraphrase him and invite correction) to drink while writing, or write while drinking. He maintains that converting the experience from the nondiscursive flav0r-aroma-texture-energy moment, into a carefully edited piece of language blunts the pure enjoyment of the moment, and it inhibits sense memory. I can’t disagree. But that being said, I write to help me remember over the long run, what I had experienced at one point, and to help me make purchasing, drinking, and serving decisions. And hopefully to encourage others to open themselves up to exquisite tea experiences they might not have thought to try otherwise.

ADDITIONAL READING:
Again, thanks to JING Tea for very generously allowed me to taste their Li Shan oolong (also called Ali Shan), a high-mountain tea from Taiwan. I wrote rather extensively about LiSan oolong here, and invite you to read about my very first foray into this intensely beautiful type of tea. I will excerpt here from an excerpt there, which I took from Winnie Yu’s blog:

Li Shan Oolongs are the most intensely fragrant, smooth buttery oolong there is, topping Taiwan oolongs growing everywhere else. Particularly, there is a pronounced taste of gan that lingers for an entire day, with less and less astringency the higher the elevation, no matter how strong a cup of tea you make. Incredibly sweet with a taste of fruit that’s been cooked at high heat, Li Shan tea no doubt is so highly sought after, many unscrupulous merchants would try to dupe the unsuspecting consumer. It is highly unlikely to buy any Li shan tea less than $200 USD p/lb. at a retail level, and at that price, one is guaranteed that it came from the second-flush or ’second spring’, or lower elevations at 1700 meters. Da Yu Ling oolongs are well over $300 p/lb., and difficult to acquire even if one would pay for it, for all of the crops are usually spoken for.