Nyot Ou Laos huang pian from Anna of Kinnari Tea

I'm trying another tea from Anna, the owner of Kinnari Tea (of Laos), passed on by her in a visit here two months ago (with an earlier write-up of other Laos sheng versions here).  I'm not getting behind in trying teas, I'm staying behind.  I looked through what I had from her and there's a Moonlight White, one of my favorite types.  Somehow I felt like experiencing this one more today based on immediate inclination though, a huang pian version.  I don't think she sells this tea, to clarify that related to a "Kinnari Tea" reference; it's my impression that in this case she just passed on a sample of something interesting she had ran across.

I've botched her tea description before by reading the writing wrong so I'll cite the picture along with saying what it is:

I'm reading that as Nyot Ou Nammanoy Huang Pian, produced in October of 2017.  According to Maps Yot Ou is a district in Laos North-West of Phongsaly (likely an odd difference in transliteration), and I'd expext that other name to be a local village, although it is conceivable that it's a reference to something else.

Somehow it's not surprising that Maps doesn't know the names of local villages in Northern Laos yet.  Pulling that up in a search brings up a video by William of Farmerleaf about visiting that area, on a development initiative I've said more about in the past, here.  That first post I mentioned (reviewing another tea from Anna) talks through that connection, about an NGO initiative there related to improving options for local tea production, covered in this other reference link.  To me that's a fascinating subject, and both William's take on it and that other organization's reference information is well worth checking out.

Review

The initial flavor is interesting, and novel.  It's soft, in a different range than conventional sheng, which is to be expected; that's kind of the point.  Huang pian is yellow leaf tea, older leaf versions that had yellowed, also called "farmer's tea" due to being sorted out in processing and drank by farmers instead of being sold (due to not being regarded as a standard version the tea, not because it's better).  It's sweet, and a bit earthy, like a very mild wood or tree bark tone, even a bit towards cork, but not in a way that is musty or sour.  It's not really fully infused yet on this first round so I'll pass on a longer description on the next one.

On the next round intensity ramps way up, the underlying mineral tone and the rest that I'd already described, mild wood, tree bark, and a touch of cork.  There's a little spice in there too, probably; transition may draw that out to be more noticeable.  The main flavor is tree-bark, along the lines of birch or aspen tree bark, a thin paper-type version of one.  Pine bark has a much different scent, towards the needles, but just as close to the wood, with the bark a bit earthier than either.  Other hardwood tree bark is much warmer and more aromatic, closer to how a fermented version of cinnamon might come across (which is itself a type of tree bark:  Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus Cinnamomum). 

One might wonder why I would know so much about tree bark.  I split a lot of firewood in my childhood, and even did some commercial logging at one point.  It was a hands-on labor-intensive rural sort of childhood.  I remember my sister once getting partly rolled under a full sized tree trunk we were moving around when she was probably around 6 or 7, which would've made me 8 or 9.  At least I wasn't the one using the chainsaw.  We cut and split a lot more firewood for use in a fireplace and wood-burner than that, the theme that comes up in Abraham Lincoln's childhood.

wild turkeys in the PA woods at my parent's house

 
Some might interpret this as me saying that my life was a bit rougher than it should have been, but I don't mean that.  Some other work I helped with went a bit overboard, construction work, building maintenance, and car restoration, but all of it made me who I am today.  Nothing I ever do is as hard as building a house at 13, not even getting through a difficult engineering program, or taking up unfamiliar work in a foreign country.  Back to the tea theme though.


The mineral range in this version is interesting; it comes across as a heavy type of rock and also as metal.  Bark, rock, and metal probably doesn't sound good as a description (although I'd imagine there are people who think it does), but it really works.  It's about the flavors balancing well together, in addition to each one being "clean" in effect and positive.  A little too much metal or the wrong effect from tree bark would make a tea seem undrinkable, but in the right balance it can be very nice, as this version is.

It's not all that close to other more conventional forms of pu'er, to use a comparison to help place it.  The overall effect is probably closer to a hei cha, to a mild and sweet version of a Hunan Fu brick tea, but the flavors aren't a perfect match for that.  It's tempting to express a related general description, to say that Hunan Fu brick teas follow some general pattern for aspects, but I've not tried so many that even the initial comparison is clearly justified.  Here's a review of version with golden flowers, and a review of a version without, as an initial start on that.

On the next infusion (the third) the metal / mineral picks up in relation to the tree bark / wood, but otherwise it's similar.  There's a catchy way in which the aftertaste stays along the center of your tongue; it's an effect you get from drinking from a natural spring or artesian well when the water is heavy with minerals.  Probably tied to certain minerals, as much as proportion, but I have no idea what those would be.

It makes you wonder what kind of intake of minerals a broad-type, consistently high volume tea drinker would take in, doesn't it?  Some kinds of water alone can have elevated levels of some minerals, and for this beverage we are extracting what the plants intentionally extracted from the ground water and stored in the leaves as functional cells and compounds like chlorophyll.  I'm not worried, more the opposite; I wonder what health benefits result from intake of the various compounds in teas, and from the minerals.  I don't spend a lot of time considering or researching that but at a guess I'll be healthier for drinking a lot of tea.  Or already am; I turned 50 a few months ago and it would be normal for me to look older at this age.  It's not as if I've never appeared in a photo in this blog but I'll go back through my Photos back-up to show a picture as related background.

probably not ideal for purpose; Bangkok has been smoggy lately

that works better; from two weeks ago

oddly that was the picture of them acting the least silly

On the next infusion (fourth) vegetal range gains back some ground, but the character is shifting a little.  It still contains some tree bark range, but green tree wood is ramping up, with more of what could be spice filling in.  To me--and this aspect is faint enough that this is even more an interpretation than most descriptions, which are all at least partly that--the spice is closest to nutmeg.  Nutmeg seems a complex-flavored spice to me, not one that expresses one simple flavor, in the same way cinnamon generally comes across (or at least to that extent; cinnamon has a lot going on too).  It probably only relates to part of what nutmeg tastes like.  I'll stop short of breaking nutmeg flavor into parts; although it's tempting to go there that would probably be incoherent.

4th infusion; they tend to start to look the same

On the next infusion (fifth) it could be my imagination but it seems like sweetness is picking up a little.  It was at a normal level before, enough to provide a good balance for the rest of the range, just not so notable that I was going on about it.  Usually the compounds that seem to come across as sweetness seem to infuse out earlier on, stronger over the first 3 or 4 infusions, so the effect is usually tapering off around the fifth infusion instead of ramping up.  It's probably just a quirk related to what I'm noticing.  It's roughly the same as the last infusion, and that one aspect is probably not really different.

I just brewed two infusions one right after the other, which reminds me of a point I made on another review (might as well make this blog repetitive); brewing temperature does change outcome, and waiting 10 minutes between infusions to allow the device and leaves to cool will change things.  I was messing around for at least 15 minutes prior to the fifth infusion, and now at the sixth round this tea was brewed hotter. 

It doesn't change much, throwing off that theory a little, but it is slightly different.  Wood-tone along the line of sticks had been strongest in that last round (which I didn't get around to noting) and this is closer to including a touch of cinnamon now.  That relates to the earlier-mentioned nutmeg; the two aren't that far apart.  Really it's in between cinnamon and nutmeg for this round, so tied to it even closer than only mentioning cinnamon implies.

Conclusions / interpretation

This tea is far from spent but it does seem to be fading a little on the seventh infusion.  Using longer infusion times, finally extending them to over 10 seconds, will adjust for that, although drinking two more on the light side would also work well.  Changing parameters related to infusion time will change aspect balance a little; it brings on a natural transition in what you experience, along with some compounds already rinsing out more than others.  This type of tea will probably be very pleasant out to very late rounds since the character was already in the range for where late-round brewing often goes (a bit woody, warm mineral, etc.), and that was already working out well.

It's a cool version of tea.  In one sense it's simple and straightforward; it's not thin or lacking in aftertaste, but compared to really intense sheng it's not doing as much with those ranges.  Flavors aren't necessarily intense, but they are unusual in the range they cover.  Small shifts in aspects or just in the balance of aspects make the tea seem different, since it is somewhat subtle, and expresses mineral and vegetal range in a novel way.  Per a different interpretation this could all just be regarded as "autumn leaf;" the character isn't so far from that, close enough that it also works as a description.

I'm not sure why this tea is like this.  It's a 2017 huang pian; that's what I know from the label, beyond a source area description that doesn't ring a bell, surely a place in Northern Laos.  It's says "10 / 2017" so this being an autumn harvest tea is a factor; those are more subtle, and likely different in character in standard ways that I'm not the best person to summarize.  It's a compressed tea; that's not unusual at all for Yunnan sheng versions, but production in places like Laos (and Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar) doesn't always relate to using that last processing step, re-softening and pressing the maocha, designed as much to enable the tea to travel better (initially), and now for aging storage, more than for the limited changes in character doing that causes.

I'm not sure why it's so brown, but then I suppose that is probably normal for how huang pian (yellow leaf) versions age over a year + time-frame.  Conventional sheng often starts out greener, or greenish-grey, more of a typical rock color, and then just darken, even over the first year, or especially then.  I think what I'm seeing for conventional aging patterns may not be typical, since it's very hot and humid here in Bangkok.  Sheng loses that new-sheng character fast, and an edgy young shu transitions to smoother and sweeter and complex in a different way fast too.  Teas tucked away in storage aren't experiencing the daily heat related to swings in temperature quite as much as I am (it's 34 C out now, 93 F, and it's not even the hot season, and only noon).

It was a nice tea to try; something interesting and pleasant in a novel way.

Kinnari Tea sheng comparison (Nyot Ou district in Phongsaly, Laos)

I'm reviewing two sheng versions from Anna of Kinnari Tea; these should be really interesting.

They're Laos sheng, from the far North.  One lists it's from the "bai hao" cultivar, a tea plant type more typically used to make white tea.

William of Farmerleaf was also involved with an NGO project to conduct local training workshops in producing more standard and consistent sheng pu'er versions there, along with Anna and a supporting agency, with details about that in this video.

William mentions a link to more details about that project here, from the Comité de coopération avec le Laos (with an alternate Facebook page reference here).  Part of the introduction goes into that background:


In Nyot Ou, the northernmost district of Laos, tea trees grow in the wilds of the tropical forest covering the slopes of the mountains bordering the Chinese province of Yunnan. The wild tea stems from the variety Assamica, one of the two main varieties of tea. In China, this variety is called “the high tree with larges leaves”.

Growing tea has a long history in the Yunnan region: large tea leaves were used as medicine for at least three millenniums and seem to have already been a popular drink around the second century B.C.

Wild tea trees in Nyot Ou can grow as high as fifteen meters. Old pruning marks observed on some of them suggest that they could have be planted hundreds of years ago. In this case, they can be considered as “Ancient tea”, namely a tea tree resulting from a selection of wild tea varieties.


The rest of the background story is compelling.  I would highly recommend reviewing William's summary video explanation and at least scanning that NGO web page.

This really is the "wild, forest friendly" tea that comes up in discussion and sometimes in marketing claims.  The tea is something else; how it turned out depends on lots of factors, the plant type, growing conditions, processing, etc.  So I'll review it without adding more about all that, but I will pass on a few photos taken from that reference page to visually add more about it.

this photo set copyright of CCL, Comité de coopération avec le Laos.  see related link for content description.

Nammanoy village, Nyot Ou

more remote than where I've visited in Laos, which was already rough travel in spots

Review background

Something unusual came up related to this review; I was discussing my impression with Anna and it didn't match hers.  In particular that related to describing the level of bitterness in the Bai Hao version (sheng version made from a cultivar usually used for white tea production).  I decided to re-taste the teas, without referencing the notes, in order to see if my take was the same.  It was but it wasn't; related to that level of bitterness my impression was different.  

Instead of including the typical round-by-round description (which I now have two sets of notes on) I'll summarize findings for both from both notes.  I can't completely explain the discrepancy, the difference in interpretation or assessment of the aspects, especially that one, but I'll mention some possible factors in a section after the review summary.  It was interesting how even though the rest of the reviews seemed relatively consistent, beyond that one point about level of bitterness in one, interpretation of the flavor aspects did vary some.

Review

First tasting round, Bai Hao Left, Workshop version right

Workshop tea (I'll go tea by tea across rounds in this format).  This tea was on the subtle side but the character it did have was pleasant.  It was a little more intense than the other version related to flavor input, but the "Bai Hao" tea had a creamy fullness to the feel that filled in that experience more.  A warm tone stood out; described in different parts of both reviews as possibly related to autumn leaf or a warm version of mineral, like South-Western US sandstone.  Bitterness was very light; part of what might have been occurring related to seeing the "Bai Hao" version as bitter was noticing a relative difference (with more on that in the other review and explanation).

Some amount of floral tone was present in this version, which trailed into a light version of dried fruit in later rounds.  The tea was noticeably darker than the other version, related to the leaves, and the brewed liquid, which might indicate that it had oxidized a bit during processing (hard to imagine what else that could relate to).  That could also help explain the character.  It wasn't really like a black tea but the normal degree of bitterness dropping out and the flavors extending from light and bright into a warmer, softer, earthier range would all be explained by that.  It even had a mild savory quality to it (only picked up in one of the two review notes versions), a bit like sun-dried tomato.

Bai Hao plant-type sheng:  this tea was much milder in overall character, light in flavor intensity, with a degree of bitterness identified as very low in one tasting and only moderate in another, but the dominant aspect in the experience.  In the review where bitterness seemed stronger a flavor along the lines of green wood paired with that; in the other review the tea was described more as mild, light in flavor, and floral.  A flavor along the line of hay or mild version of wood was identified in the other set of notes; that would probably correspond, but seems interpreted as different in regards to level of bitterness and related flavor.  Feel seemed full in both review impressions, a bit creamy even, and the character pleasant, with enough sweetness to give the tea good balance, but a mild overall flavor.  A mild floral tone filled in background complexity, just light in tone, and subdued in character, how chrysanthemum or even chamomile can come across.

That cuts out a lot of the specific observations but covers the main themes and impression.  To be clear (and probably to repeat myself) the Bai Hao version didn't seem relatively bitter, as young sheng goes, but it did seem more bitter in the first tasting, and very mild in the second.  The rest of the aspect description generally matched.

All of this might be implying some judgement of bitterness as a bad thing, which doesn't necessarily work.  I made this observation in the first round, related to that:

The bitterness is at a great level; for some people less would always be more, but to me this balances well.  

That aspect seemed more pronounced than in the other tea, and stronger in one tasting than the other (the one this comment came from), but to me bitterness can work really well in sheng if the balance of the rest compliments it well. 

Second tasting session; Bai Hao left, Workshop tea right

Possible reasons for variation

This provides a good background for talking through why reviews might be inconsistent; these two in particular, but also in general.  I'll list individual potential reasons for variation and talk through background more within that format.

I'm not a consistent input:  teas can seem different depending on changes related to the person tasting them; energy level, mood, background conditions changing perspective, etc.  Even though I've tried a lot of teas over a long time and feel I probably have a decent taste-memory I suspect that trying a lot of teas of a certain range shifts an interpretive baseline.  For example, I'd guess that if I'm trying a lot of very mild versions of sheng for weeks that my impression of what is a bitter version would change to including a lot less of that aspect as an input.  Quality level probably also shifts as an expectation; if I'm trying a lot of exceptional tea of any type it would be harder for a version to stand out related to being well above average.  Background noise in particular is a very significant input; finer details related to tea aspects drop out with any degree of distraction as a factor.

Parameter variations:  this could make a big difference.  Shifting proportion or water temperature would change outcome, even if proportion difference was offset by infusion timing change.  Using even slightly cooler water would brew a milder version of tea, related to infusion strength and intensity of both flavor aspects and astringency.  Drinking a tea a good bit slower would actually change water temperature, giving the drained leaves a chance to shed more heat in between infusions.  The water used itself would vary results quite a bit, and using filtered tap water might introduce another potential variable, since mineral levels and proportion really could vary some day to day.

Guesses about this specific case:  I hadn't given it much thought at the time but I brewed the tea inside the first time and drank it outside the second, at a concrete table beside our driveway.  It's nice out there; lots of plants make for a pleasant background.  It was a bit cool both days, for us, but maybe as cool as Bangkok ever gets for the second tasting, around 25 C (77 F, or so).  Right, it's warm here.  I was using a slightly lower proportion the second time, not for any particular reason, but that parameter judgment is usually just based on immediate inclination.  Infusion times would have ran a little longer as a result, to even out brewed tea strength, but it's easy to not really compensate for that difference with the right degree of timing change, and to drink the tea lighter.

I think temperature may have been a factor.  I was drinking the tea in a cooler space, on a concrete table versus wood, which may have drawn more heat out of the teaware, perhaps a bit slower due to having more time.  Proportion probably also came into play.  I suspect I always vary at least a little as an input, in every review.  Sometimes I have a long block of free time for a review, setting up a good baseline for background, but I don't always.  I definitely sleep different amounts every night, more or less interrupted, and review teas on Saturday or Sunday mornings, but at different times in the morning.  That kind of input change should be minor, but minor changes could add up.  If kids are around (and half the time they are) the background noise changes things a lot.  Even expectation of finishing more quickly would be an input; working around having a set length of time.

I doubt the leaves varied, but it's worth at least mentioning.  Plantation tea would be made of very consistent plant material input, and probably processed very consistently.  I doubt the tea itself really did vary though, but it is conceivable.  In cases when it's known that multiple types of plants were used in making the tea it would be more a factor, or when evident processing variation would be a cause (slightly scorched leaves, a case of a processing flaw).  I'm guessing that the tea was probably relatively uniform in this case, not a main cause.

It was an interesting experiment.  I won't be running that too often because it takes a long time to do two tastings and to edit notes for that kind of thing.  It seems a good time to point out that I see these reviews as an impression.  It might be more of an objective take than someone with very limited tea exposure and review practice would pass on but I never intended them as amounting to a final analysis.  To really get to that, a balanced, final opinion, it would help to try a tea at least three times, and compare notes on impression from those three tastings.  Four or five would be even better, perhaps using the last round as an evaluation in comparison to the earlier findings.  

Interpretation of basic aspect levels (eg. bitterness, sweetness, level of astringency) really should be relatively more consistent, but interpretation of flavor aspects would naturally tend to vary.