Toba Wangi (Indonesian) gold needle black and green needle teas

These two teas from Toba Wangi (an Indonesian tea producer) are the last to review from them, and more amazing stuff.  They're not really so connected that review in a combined post adds much, but that's also part of trying to write shorter reviews, to squeeze them down to a manageable summary.  There are common threads in all these teas, just exhibited in vastly different ways in the different styles, and some of that should come across in these descriptions.  Getting right to it then.

Gold Needle black tea

This tea reminds me of lots of better examples of Chinese black teas.  The taste is complex, not just related to there being layers of flavors to list out, but with a nice overall effect of lots of aspects coming together.  It's just one more example of why black teas are one of my favorite types, with a lot more range and complexity to them than they seem to get credit for.

Basic flavors:  dark cherry, malt, earthy tones, towards dark woods or leather.  Under those there is a mineral aspect that integrates well with the rest, not one that's easy to describe, probably related to the mineral rich volcanic soil the plants grew in.  There is another sweet fruit element that really ties back to Chinese black teas I've tried, maybe closest to yam, and a hint of cinnamon as well.  Lots going on with this tea!

To me such teas work really well or aren't so great based on the balance, how the sweetness and astringency play out, how the different flavors come together,  how clean the effect is.  This tea is soft and clean tasting, (using a var. Sinensis, Si Ji Chun / Four Seasons, I think it is), and it matches that general profile type, as much as the unprocessed plant type input relates to one.  One other favorite, a Thai Jin Xuan based black tea, had a little more of floral sweetness and fruit, but this tea compares really favorably to any other black tea I've tried. Surely part of that is my own preference for this particular style, not just about black teas but related to this type of version.


There is something going on with this tea that's hard to describe, a unique feel that overlaps with a taste range, sort of common with Jin Jun Mei and better than average unsmoked Lapsang Souchong I've been drinking lately (with a comparison post on those here, and more struggling to pin down the most subtle aspects).  There's a bit of flavor aspect range in common, but also feel, a type of dryness.
  

For me at least, when I first tried better Jin Jun Mei I sort of liked it, then that distinctive profile later really clicked and I really craved it. Related to the Lapsang Souchong that dark earth, mineral, and malt is common, with other flavors and the feel varying.  That tea works really well when brewed to a lighter balance point, somehow really making perfect sense at one level.  This Gold Needle black tea seems relatively flexible, working well at at a broad range of different strengths, but there probably is an ideal balance point that careful brewing would identify.  That would differ for different people, so it's nice the tea works well across a range or brewed strengths like that.


I've been drinking one other Toba Wangi black tea lately, an Assamica tea type, and it's interesting noting differences in them.  They have a lot in common, but this tea comes across as less earthy, and slightly different in terms of astringency, both with quite different flavor profiles.  Both are softer black teas, so this element gives them a full feel, nothing like "bitterness," which of course is really a flavor, not an accurate description of astringency, which relates to feel.  I really love Sinensis based black teas--var. Sinensis, of course--but I could imagine someone with different natural preferences going the other way, or I guess not even liking black teas so much.  But one would have to try better versions like this one to really know, since this is worlds away from Lipton.

Green tea needle leaves

The dry leaves look unusual, long and twisted, but that is sort of Galung's signature style for tea processing.  Needle is in both names, and all the teas look a bit like Dan Cong to me, maybe this one more than most.  Per Galung his tea making style draws on various influences but more from Wuyishan versions instead (with more about that in an interview with him here).  The dry tea smell is earthy, floral, and vegetal and rich, lots going on with this tea.

The first taste confirms it's a green tea, but a good bit different than any green tea I've ever tried.  It's quite rich in feel, with a good bit of depth, too much going on to take in withing just a few sips.  It's just what I expected from them.  I'll start with a list of tastes, or just start there,  since such an approach wouldn't do description justice.

A sweetness stands out, a taste similar to fruit, probably closer to orchid range, which carries over and changes form from similar elements in the Wu Mei oolong and White Beauty.  It's a little like the bubble gum flavor in those classic pink cube-presented brands.  It's better than that, cleaner and more complex,  but that gives a range.  Or maybe just saying the honey orchid, similar to one Dan Cong aspect, already covers that more accurately.

This is really an example where a tea tastes exactly like one thing, but it's easy to not place it at first, since it's not a common aspect:  toasted coconut.  I tried a flavored tea from the Monsoon tea shop once (in Chiang Mai, Thailand) that was quite similar,  but in this case that flavor is natural.

Beyond that mineral tones stand out more than vegetal, but there are lots of flavors layered together.  The tea is quite soft, with limited astringency, nothing towards bitterness.  I've been drinking a little Taiwanese oolong lately and this tea gives up some fullness of feel compared to that style, but it's not thin.  It actually compares favorably related to that "feel" aspect when compared the last Dan Cong I tried (which I didn't write about).

Green teas are not my favorite but this one bypasses any reservations I have over some of the typical aspects, the grassiness and such.  In a sense it fulfills the potential a Wonosari plantation tea had but didn't fully exemplify,  drawing out some comparable flavors (mineral tones and sweetness, apparently regionally related) without the flaws (eg.  not as clean in effect, a bit softer).  Brewed a little stronger the body picks up more and astringency is experienced as a slight roughness, but the general impression is that the tea is easy to  brew and doesn't require special preparation to offset anything.  One shouldn't brew it too strong, and of course it's a given to use well below boiling point water for all green teas, but that's it.

The only negative one might experience is that it's still a green  tea, so a preference against the type, but as with their other teas it doesn't work to pigeonhole it as a characteristic type.  Other green teas can show that sweetness, or express a floral range, and complexity,  and avoid astringency,  but I've never tried one that accomplishes all that in a similar way, and the character is distinctly Indonesian.  To me it even shows some oolong character related to the way some of those aspects come across, it's just that that fresh "greenness" shows it to be a green tea.

Both are awesome teas, better than just good examples of standard black and green types, distinctive and unique.

Christmas tea blend follow-up, and Indonesian jasmine black tea

I wrote about a homemade Christmas tea blend recently, and mentioned I was going to try variations.  It's not as if I've really broken new ground by doing that but I'll mention the update.

the dried fruits part

It had seemed the tea, a fruit and spices blend with black tea, would work best made as a masala chai is made, boiled versus steeped, with milk and sugar, so that's how I tried it.  It did work really well.  I've tried it twice since then prepared to be infused instead, as a normal tea blend.

Indonesian jasmine black tea

One part of that adjustment was varying the black tea used to make it.  One other Indonesian commercial tea I'd bought was a jasmine black tea, which turned out to be quite nice.  The appearance was a little odd, on the dusty side, with some sticks, and tea presented more as flakes rather than some other conventional way.  Oddly that didn't translate into a bad tea; it was actually mild and well-balanced, with limited astringency, nice clean flavors, some underlying earth and mineral tones, and a good balance of light jasmine flavor.


It couldn't pass for a higher end specialty tea, based on appearance, but it was much better than it looked, quite good for teas of that type, not so far off other teas I've tried that look much better and cost much more.  In fact it may have been the best value in a tea I've ever bought; something like 50 grams of tea for around a dollar, for one of the best teas I ever bought in a grocery store.  A black tea I found in Cambodia was pretty good once, and a hojicha in Japan, but you get the idea; grocery store teas are universally mediocre or even bad, and this one was ok.

Indonesian black tea label

I mixed that black tea with the other black tea I'd bought from the Wonosari plantation (another Indonesian tea I bought on that trip).  It also wasn't so bad, but was quite astringent, so that for me to drink that tea without milk and sugar added would be unthinkable.  This was really going to be the challenge for this blend, if I could adjust the ingredients for it to work as a normal steeped tea.


I loved the idea of clove mixed with tea, really the main reason I even tried it, and that spice in particular was problematic.  It gave the tea an aromatic, spicy earthiness but it seemed like adding enough of it to actually taste it would require at least sugar mixed in to counter the "spicy" spice aspect, something related to pepper or ginger, the heat.  Someone could drink straight cinnamon brewed as tea without compensating in the same way, or cardamom, or nutmeg, but spicing that comes across as heat is hard to integrate into a standard tea flavor profile not designed for adjustment with sugar or milk.  Why not add sugar and / or milk then?  Kind of a long story to get into that, but there is an image issue related to those, which overlaps with an image issue related to drinking tea blends.


One challenge would be balance.  Making it in a masala chai style took away from that problem; milk and sugar could offset any problems with astringency or spicing, and even smooth over other balance issues between fruit, tea, and spicing.  Another would be getting the fruit to show up, since tea typically brews in around 3 minutes, but a 5 minute steep really isn't long enough to get a fruit peel or dried cherry to give up flavors.


For the first try at an infused version I just backed off the spicing, went a little heavier on the fruit, and tried it out brewed at boiling point for the typical range, around 2 to 3 minutes, prepared with enough extra tea it would brew two or three infusions at that ratio.  I skipped the vanilla because it was too much messing around for preparing a tea with breakfast, cutting a bean / pod open to get to the spice itself.  It was drinkable but not great.  I tried it with sugar; better but not great.  Then with milk and sugar both; much better but still not great.  The fruit really didn't come out nearly as much as in the first version I'd wrote that earlier blog post about, a boiled preparation of a similar tea, but then I'd simmered the dried fruit alone without tea for 5 minutes in that batch to give it a head start.

the earlier version; pre-simmering the fruit and spices

I adjusted the mix a little the next day, backed further off the clove, and added a hint of cardamom along with the nutmeg and cinnamon, but the results weren't so different.  It was more drinkable but still needed sugar and milk to get the flavors balance right.  It seemed possible that I was so accustomed to straight teas, usually a bit subtle, that trying to drink a plain spiced tea wasn't working based on that, even adjusted to be more subtle.  The fruit still wasn't completely there.  It occurred to me one could go with a much reduced ratio of tea to water and use a 5 minute steep to compensate, then add more black tea and go with a second 5 minute steep, and it would show through much better in both infusions.



I've been drinking tisanes with dinner lately, to allow for a version of tea (something like it, at least) in the mid evenings, without caffeine, and steep times can just keep going for those.  When one reads package instructions or blog reviews of tisanes those always cite a 5 minute steep time, longer than for tea, but that's typically for a well shredded or even powdered version of an herb or flower (or whatever it is, a root or spice of some other sort, or mix).

sage!  it's already an "herb tea," just like this

If you make an herb tea / tisane with a plain spice like dried sage or rosemary (which I do; those are two of my favorites) that can make tea based on using 4 minute boiling-point infusions, nearly endless numbers of times, producing a half-dozen cups of tea.  Of course I'm not using anywhere near as limited an amount of herb one would find in a tea bag, and they need to shred that down nearly to a powder for it to brew out in the 5 minutes.  It would be possible to tear up the herbs a bit to speed infusion along (chop them, however that would go), but I don't, which is why I'm using a lot more and then needing to let it brew for much longer to get the "tea" out of it.


So what is the conclusion for this tea, prepared as a more conventional blend?  Per my taste it worked a lot better made in the style of a masala chai, with a lot more infusion time for the fruit, conducted at a simmer.  The real vanilla probably made a big difference, since that gave it a lot of natural sweetness and a creamy feel.  The infusion version may have worked out better with that added back in, but it wouldn't seem likely two 4 minute steeps would pull out most of the flavor of a vanilla pod either (although that might be wrong; I didn't test it).


Although I loved the effect of the clove, and the idea, it would be hard to get it to balance in a tea and herb infusion that didn't rely on sugar and milk to compensate for the peppery spice effect.  Something as simple as ramping up cinnamon by a lot might help with that, but cinnamon wouldn't bring the same smooth, sweet, creamy effect that vanilla did.

spices and some of the teas from Indonesia

I don't plan to do a lot more with tea blending but you never know; something else might come up.  I'll still be keeping an eye out for crushed tamarind seeds and orange blossoms to put that traditional Thai iced tea version together, someday.  And I bought cardamom pods I didn't get around to using yet in Indonesia (the touch I added was ordinary spice-jar version), so although we're coming to the end of the Thai cool season now at some point I'll revisit masala chai.  Given the daily lows are around 80 F / mid-20's C now it might make sense to adjust that to an iced tea version, but somehow it never comes to that, I just drink hot tea when it's hot and humid and then sweat a bit.

Tea Journeyman Indonesian black tea (PT Harendong Green Farm)

This was a great black tea.  Just to be clear, I mean it matches the type of tea I like, not that it's an exceptional grade of tea or an unusual or rare style of tea (probably some of each and more true of the latter, but not the point).

I've come to like the idea of a vendor having their say, but as far as flavor goes it's this (link to source page here):  

The aroma and taste boast sweet, fruity, and woody qualities. With a medium body, a clean, juicy texture, and a mildly brisk character

The tea!

My own tasting notes and review:

Primary flavors:  cocoa, drifting a little towards cinamon, with dark cherry and natural sweetness.  Trace of earthy element, dark wood, maybe towards peat.  No astringency.   Slightly muddled flavors combining with earth / peat flavor element, not completely "clean."  

Overall impression would probably depend on taste preference,  also feel / "body"of tea emphasis.


I liked it,  based on liking that style.  I had the impression I might've liked it more than the site review would justify; this is just what I like.  I love diversity in drinking teas but I could let green teas and lightly oxidized oolongs drop for awhile based on drinking such more oxidized teas.

Unflavored, high mountain, what else

It reminds me a little of the Vietnamese black teas I've been drinking lately, soft black teas with distinctive flavors, rich wood and earth tones, and with some fruit element, quite good balance, and natural sweetness.  Really what's not to love.

The "clean" reference in the web page and my own notes is a bit odd, especially pointing in the two different directions.   There is definitely nothing objectionable in the tea, just pleasant flavor elements, and a good texture (juicy; sure), so what I meant by it was a reference to a subtle character element, the feel of the tea.  It's hardly a flaw, just the slight room for improvement.

I sort of didn't "get" the briskness either, which I associate with both the crisp flavor (mineral element, sort of) of Ceylon black teas (Sri Lankan) and the sharp astringency associated with that (not completely connected, but somehow linked).  But then I guess the concept could be used in different ways, and it's not as if I'm classically trained in tea tasting.

Related next steps / postscript:

I've been drinking one other nice Vietnamese black tea, not so different than one I reviewed not too long ago, and also an exceptional more oxidized / darker roasted oolong.  It will be interesting to reference those back to this tea.

How to brew:  seems boiling water would work too

I also bought two other teas from the Tea Journeyman site I really ought to get to reviewing:  a white tea and a Ceylon black tea.  Both were nice, all three very different and distinctive, good examples of the types with their own individual strong points.

On a related note that online shop is closing, and teas are being sold at close-out pricing, so if this sounds good check it right away.  The pricing seemed ok to me but not exceptional since I've been spoiled by Asian pricing (the Vietnamese teas I've yet to review are close enough to free, and maybe just a little better per my own preferences).