By VinceL
I sip 3-5 cups of green tea daily, specifically 2nd or 3rd grade Dragon Well. I enjoy the light vegetable flavor and semi-transparent “texture.” When I started about 6 months ago, I would steep the 3rd grade tea for around 2 min. When I switched to 2nd grade I found 2min was too much and dropped the steep time to 30-45s.
My friend, Fen, gave me a sample pack of various teas with the disclaimer that none of them are premium grade. I had been asking him about different teas, so I sampled the tastes to see which invited further exploration. Over the course of about 3 weeks I tried each of the 6 teas.
Pu Li Tea
The tea looks black in the cup, rather than the semi-transparency of a green tea. The flavor tastes rather like an OLD house that’s been smoked in smells – a musty flavor. It’s not a bad flavor, rather dark and it stains the cup very easily.
Update on April 24: I sipped this tea again today (finished the sampler tin), 5 or 6 cups from the same leaves – I actually like it, but think my teeth will look better if I don’t sip it very often
Jasmine Tea
A fruity flavor, this is more my kind of tea (a brownish-green). I recollect drinking this tea in a nearby Thai/Vietnamese restaurant I enjoy. This tea has bits of flower in it. According to Fen, a Jasmine tea is a generic green tea with Jasmine flavoring infused into it (usually by smoking the leaves with Jasmine flowers). He goes on to say that higher grade Jasmine tea smokes the flavor into the leaves, lower grade tosses in jasmine flowers to make up for lack of (or minimal) infusion of flavor. That this tea might be of lower quality is no surprise, it was bought in a sampler pack for goodness sake J
Lychee Black Tea
From the first waft of steam, it reminds me of the fresh Lychee we ate (is “enjoyed” the right word?) in Kathmandu, Nepal. This is good, since Lychee is what this tea is supposed to be! After 5 cups, I find that I like the flavor of Lychee tea better than the flavor of fresh lychees. If you haven’t tasted Lychee, it’s sweet but pungent. The flavor bites you, and while you want to like it for its sweetness, there’s an element that just tends to put you off.
White Tea
This tea presents a slightly sweet taste, very close to Green Tea (naturally) which is my favorite. The flavor is mild, pleasant, and if steeped any less it might not taste much more strongly than the steaming water. When chewed, the tea leaves have a bitter taste.
Orchid Tea
While this tea was steeping, it smelled almost like coffee. Actually, after several sips it reminds me of a cheap Oolong. Fen is sipping premium Oolong this morning, so we compared the scent of the steeped leaves. Actually, the two scents are hardly similar. Fen’s premium Oolong tea gives off a scent that is more vegetable, less bitter, and not sweet. The Orchid tea scent is dark, strongly bitter, perhaps woody (like walnut?). This flavor is almost as pungent as Lychee, but not sweet.
Update on April 25: I sipped 2 or 3 more cups of this today and decided that I don’t like this sample of Orchid Tea – this is not surprising as this “supermarket grade” has proven quite disappointing (see my update on the TGY tea below). I have decided that if I want to sample teas – skip the cheap supermarket packs and go straight for small quantities of the premium stuff.
Tikuanyin (Tiekuanyin, TGY) Tea
I find this tea bitter and not all that pleasant. Fen tells me this is traditionally served in clay teapots and has a history and ceremony. Often served in small quantities, because it is strong and intended to be an experience. It’s in the class of Oolong tea (“the other green tea”) meaning that it’s half-fermented (a tea term referring to the level of oxidization, not to be confused with alcohol-producing fermentation), where green tea is only lightly fermented, and white tea not at all (theoretically).
Update on April 25: Fen gave me a small packet of premium Ten-Fu brand TGY tea – the taste is PHENOMENALLY different – this taste is clean and flowery, almost like perfume. Fen tells me that premium oolongs taste flowery as opposed to green teas which offer a vegetable flavor. This flowery perfume taste is not an added scent, flavor, or flower added, but an inherent quality of the tea.
Tea Fermentation Guide
Ten Ren’s guide at http://www.tenren.com/fermentation.html offers a full discussion of the differences between white (theoretically no oxidization), green (very little oxidization), oolong (20-50% oxidization), red (European black – fully fermented), and true black (Pu-erh, Pu Li – which is double fermented).
Fen writes, “If you ever feel like broadening your familiarity with Chinese green teas, I’d suggest trying Biluochun (aka Piluochun, Green Snail Spring) and Baozhong (Pouchong). Technically, Baozhong is between a true green and Oolong on the oxidation spectrum.”
I think I will!
