Xinyang Maojian and Himjian; exceptional quality green teas

Maojian left, in all photos

I'm trying two green teas sent for review by a somewhat local online vendor, a Thai business owner living in China now. 

It can be odd trying green teas since they're my least favorite category. I can appreciate good Longjing, and sometimes buy fishhook style Vietnamese Thai Nguyen green tea if I see it.  I can tell if Japanese green teas are good from trying enough but the general style doesn't match my preference, so I would never buy sencha or gyokuro. 

To spoil the outcome these were surprisingly good, among the best quality green teas that I've ever tried. One might suspect that most of the best versions in styles beyond the few we know of in "the West" are only known of and drank in China, and when less known types make it out the quality is moderate.  I had a related experience with Qimen (black tea) not so long ago, trying a range one would typically never encounter. 

These citations of Instagram listings work as one reference, and local Thai online sales on Shoppee (like Amazon) are here and here. 

Xinyang Wild Tea, floral fragrance, high mountain, organic, premium, ancient tea tree

490 baht for 50 grams, a bit under $15

Gaoshanxin Yang Maojian Tea (Grade 1, top 2 leaves)

Also 490 baht for 50 grams.

Both those prices are presented as discounted rates, from an original higher price.  Under $15 for 50 grams of either does seem like a steal, given the review findings.

Review:

Xinyang Maojian:  it was clear that these were high quality teas long before brewing them.  The appearance is novel and promising, and dry tea scent rich, complex, and sweet.  Both have tea dust inside the bag, from trichomes, fine hairs on the buds of fresh, high quality tea.  I suppose it's conceivable that a tea could look beautiful, smell great, and contain tea fuzz and not be well above average quality tea but it would seem unlikely. 

This reminds me of running across a grass blade looking green tea version in a Beijing market a decade back, sold only as high mountain tea, which I never identified further.  It surely wasn't close to this good, but I wouldn't have known then either way. 

Taste is rich.  Umami comes across first, then vegetal range beyond that, along with freshness and sweetness.  This is really in between aspects I would associate with other green tea styles, which means nothing, since I haven't tried much of the entire range of Chinese green teas.  

Umami isn't as pronounced as in many Japanese green teas, but it's still pronounced.  Richer warm tones include a toasted rice sort of aspect I'd associate with Longjing.  Floral tone and vegetal range I can't really match to other green tea, but that would vary across many types.  Vegetal range is close to sugar snap pea, very fresh and clean.

Xinyang Himajian:  this includes richer, warmer tones.  There is some umami present too, but the whole general range is shifted.  It includes light, sweet, floral range too, but also warmer tones, not exactly matching the toasted rice in the other, but not completely different.  It tastes a bit like barley tea, that one flavor aspect.  Tisanes in general and barley tea in particular generally express a limited flavor range though, only so much complexity.  This is far more complex, going further than pretty good green tea versions often do.  

I'll have to look up how much these sell for to set up a baseline for reference after tasting, but these are clearly among the best quality green teas I've ever tried.  I wasn't really expecting that.

This includes vegetal range too, more like a fresh version of green bean instead of sugar snap pea (so heavier).  That may sound negative, as if cooked vegetables isn't a promising range for tea.  I mean that these seem to express the flavor of a lightly steamed vegetable, retaining that freshness and sweetness, not the they resemble well-cooked vegetables of any kind.

There is plenty of floral range too, just occurring in warmer tones, I guess more towards lavender, but then isolating and describing floral tones isn't really one of my strengths.  Feel is rich and full for both of these teas, with aftertaste experience carry-over.  They're clearly exceptional quality teas.

As of the first round I like the lighter tone character of the other version better, but the way these aspects in this come together in this version, and the way refined complexity and intensity is expressed, make it slightly better overall.

Quality one can determine by a range of typical markers, which vary by tea type.  It's an entirely different thing than match to preference.  The description list for these teas indicates what great quality is for green tea:  good balance, flavor intensity, positive flavor aspects, refinement, presence of umami (when matching the style), clean flavor range / lack of flaws, full feel (less of a determining input for green tea), and pronounced aftertaste experience.  In general--which varies by specific tea type--flavor aspect range varies by type as much as quality, and heavier vegetal flavors indicate a lower quality version, with sweetness and lighter floral range standing out more in many better green teas.

Maojian #2:  vegetal range shifts; this is much more complex.  Brewing this in different ways would draw out far different results.  Using cooler water would lighten flavors (this is well off boiling point but not cool, not 70 or 75 C); many people would prefer that.  Brewing this using an approach closer to Western brewing might be more conventional, longer infusion times at a lower proportion, again shifting temperature to cooler water. It's easier, and it trades out experience of transitions for even more complexity. 

Vegetal range is now dominant, with umami secondary.  Flavor is centered more on green beans, versus sugar snap peas in a first infusion.  Sweetness is great; overall complexity and intensity is perfect.  I've tried some exceptional green teas before but nothing in this style, and not much at this quality level.

Himajian:  warm tones pick up in this in an unexpected way.  It adds a lot of mineral range, and umami approaching seaweed levels and flavor.  It's still floral with some vegetal range, but it almost comes across as spice, for this being so novel and intense.  I don't love a lot of seaweed flavor range but again this really works.  It's just so clean; there is no negative fishy or sea-oriented flavor related to that, just dominant vegetal range, that is hard to place.  

I had a fantastic version of well-roasted river weed in Laos once, an experience I never will forget; this isn't completely dis-similar to that.  Maybe it would help to say that one part of the experience seems close enough to toasted sesame seeds, that flavor warmth and depth.

Maojian #3:  this shifts again; I guess it will continue like that for both.  A unique vegetal aspect enters in, like flower stem.  Floral range still supports that, and sweetness is good, so it balances well.  It could still be interpreted as tasting mainly like sugar snap pea; this shifting interpretation tends to focus on what changes, as reviews often do.  

It's hard to describe how this balances, how complexity, refinement, intensity, and additional feel and aftertaste aspects support this.

Himjian:  yet another pronounced shift in flavor range, but again it's hard to describe.  Warm tones ramp way up, and they were already pronounced before.  It might taste a bit like roasted almonds.  It's not completely nutty in the sense of peanuts or cashews but still in that general range.  

Maojian #4:  I'll give this one more slightly longer soak and end the notes here.  These will keep going.

A toasted rice / cashew sort of note picks up.  Again brewing just a little of either of these for a shorter time at a lower proportion would be different; that would also be pleasant and interesting.  Aftertaste expression may even pick up in this.  Mineral tones and other supporting range also really supports complexity.

Himjian:  this really is shifting towards a spice tone, in a way that's hard to isolate.  It does taste a little like that roasted river weed, but there's no way that helps for most readers.  The warmer spice range that picks up is a bit like aromatic incense spice, along the line of sandalwood.  A higher level of structure picks up in the feel, of course nothing like the far more intense sheng pu'er range, but it is interesting that it changes.  Aftertaste lends the experience greater complexity.

Both these teas are just fantastic.  I had no idea that they would be like this.  It made for an interesting surprise, trying versions that are more novel and higher in quality than I could've expected. 

People who think that they don't like green tea might be surprised by these.  Some people who already do like green tea might be even more surprised, that the range extends beyond what they have experienced. 

tea event in a Bangkok mall this week

Vendor use of social media for tea marketing

first published in TChing here 

I was just talking to a vendor friend about this topic, mainly from the perspective of a moderator for a large Facebook tea group, International Tea Talk.  This isn't a rant about people joining a tea group to post ads that violate group policy, I want to discuss the rationale for such rules, and how it works out to filter those in relation to Facebook feed filtering (what gets shown).  Then I can extend that on to how to optimize use of social media posting for exposure, to do better than just posting a typical ad.  

It's not just about working around group rules to counter their intended limitation, instead about engaging potential customers in discussion by providing informational content versus ads.

Let's start with what an ad is.  It's this:

used with permission from vendor, credit source

That's from that group's post filtering folder; that was never shown in the group feed, that part or the catchy supporting background information and contact.  It's not offensive, or badly done, in fact to me that's a pretty good effort, a good example of showing a product using good graphic context.  It just violates the group rules.

So as I define it an ad is a product image and description, with some selling points, contact information, and maybe sales details, like something about a discount.  But other types of promotion isn't as clearly an ad, but can overlap in scope and function.  Here I'll talk about the two extremes, one of which makes filtering an issue, when a post isn't clearly an ad (like that one), but it's still pretty obvious.  Then the rest is about the other extreme, how to "create content" instead, which can be interacted with as a fundamentally different type of thing, which will allow the Facebook algorithm to promote it (show it to people).

High Quality Low Price Green Tea 8810 and 8008.  Crop from Spring tea material with highest quality. Special taste to make it unique style. Talk to us for more details at...

I will often put profiles that show products, but that aren't clearly ads, on pre-review status, because such content is slightly less ad-like in appearance.  I tend to let first posts like that show in the feed as a new member self-introduction, then restrict approving them to group feed distribution a lot more, especially if they are posted frequently, versus once in awhile.  

It's inconsistencies like that which make it hard for group members to keep up with judgment, but without putting every post on automatic pre-review--which I've avoided doing--ad posts or those just showing product photos are posted every day.  It's easy to imagine how that range sorts into a grey area; if a vendor doesn't mention contact detail and price, and only shows a tea product image, that's only implying that they sell it, not explicit advertising.  Let's leave off the definition issue and get on with why groups tend to exclude ads, even though it probably seems obvious enough.

Why the ad prohibition?

A lot of tea groups on Facebook, maybe most of them, consist of feeds that are streams of the exact same ads shown in other tea groups.  Many tea vendors post ads daily, or every other day, and in a group with 25,000 members it's normal for 100 of them to post ads regularly, multiple times a week.  So that's the feed; the group is then just an ad board.  If you are in 20 or 30 tea groups you would never see any of that in your personal feed, because rock bottom level interaction with ads--who is going to comment on one, or "like" it?--relates to those being shown to almost no one.

So that's it; ads defeat the designed purpose of many tea groups, to promote discussion, tea enthusiast or vendor interaction, spreading information (about events, courses, tea background, whatever), or providing a place to ask questions.  And they shut down group activity, because almost no one will interact with advertising content, and it won't be shown in individual feeds by the FB algorithm, generally.  If you can restrict such content, which really takes some doing, that clears up space for information content, event notices, etc., which is more likely to be interacted with.  This brings your tea group back to life, in relation to Facebook algorithm perception and activity (showing posts to people).

Promoting a social media group as a place for discussion isn't as simple as that filtering step, only separating the chaff from the wheat.  The other range of positive input depends on active participation by interested parties, and your group more or less needs to develop a social shared-interest feel to support that.  The one I moderate doesn't exactly have that, at this point.  There was a core group of people active in discussion and posting at one point, but as can happen natural turnover led most of them to become less active there over time.  Even me, to some extent; I monitor the group daily but I'm not as consistent now about sharing interesting things I see on there.  I add blog post links there but that's sort of something else, a different form  of self-promotion (not that I benefit from my blog financially, so I guess being heard is the point, perhaps related to helping others).

Creating content instead

A recent post by a vendor friend, the manager of Gopaldhara, serves as an example of how someone with the right background or awareness of tea themes can express ideas and include informative media content that is a totally different thing than an ad.  That content (a partial citation):

used with permission from Gopaldhara; original source

It has been widely marketed by big Tea Companies that they buy different varieties of tea to create a unique blend. However our view is very different. Each cultivar depending on season produces a unique flavour and aroma.

For eg Yabukita is very Umami in Spring and has complex notes of Plum and Spice in Summer

AV2 has very sweet nectar like notes in Spring and a well made AV2 in Summer will be richly sweet and the best ones will have rich plum and earl grey finish.

The third one I like is B157. Very herbaceous in Spring and Sweet and Woody in Summer.

Another wild cultivar has Spicy notes.

If you mix all these teas the delicate notes are all lost and you will get the flavour of the most common texture. It could be flowery or mineral or stony but without the complexity...

As a tea blogger I can see plenty of room for development of these ideas, and the connection back to the image content (it's not clear which cultivar is being shown, but they know that information).  The subject of character of blends versus more narrow material type inclusion goes on and on, although saying a little about it is still interesting, as this did.  That's basically already it in summary; if you blend a lot of tea plant type inputs together you can balance out flaws or limitations, but the distinct flavors that make a tea version seem the most complex, interesting, and pleasant get blended out, too combined together to appreciate as individual experienced aspects.

The extra effort to express more was there in that post, and responses by people seeing it caused the FB algorithm to show it to more people, so it reached over 3000 views, versus most posts not getting far.

And that's basically it; pretty simple.  The same issue comes up in my company, related to IT services, how Marketing staff write ad content and it doesn't reflect the same depth of understanding and perspective as technical staff.  It's equivalent to tea plantation marketing staff not understanding cultivar differences, or having access to a broad range of photos.  Which is crazy, right?

Let's look at this from a tea blogger perspective:  which steps would help staff who don't understand tea on that deeper level create better content, which might engage potential viewers better?

-get input from other staff who actually make tea, or acquire the same information in whatever ways it is available (eg. read references, or follow tea groups).

-understand what is interesting to social media participants by following group discussions (seems pretty obvious, but then a lot of these points will).

-go easy on overused themes like health benefits and sustainability.  If there is a novel, developed, and well-grounded point to be made that's fine, but otherwise leaving those topics alone is better.  

-reference to older, developed tea cultures is fine, but that takes a lot more development than one might expect, and citing a Wikipedia summary level tea origin myth isn't close to enough.  I suppose it could be sufficient if that's the goal, using a few words of ancient tea wisdom input as a set of short phrases, but it won't add interesting perspective framing or new idea content for tea enthusiasts.

-use local or online events to participate in a form of discussion, for example attending or mentioning seminars, conventions, etc.  Learning and networking are useful outcomes, but it also relates to having something to say, beyond "buy this particular product." 

-related to producer promotion, creating an event could help provide something to talk about.  There's nothing wrong with on-location services including a tour theme, which could be very interesting, but adding distinct events (eg. a hands-on tea production workshop) could add depth to that, which could work better to support online discussion.

-think way outside the box.  A Thai wild origin tea producer once gave a local TedX talk on sustainability.  This is obviously an extreme case for developing theme and a new communication channel, but limiting exposure to purchased ads, FB and Insta posts stops short of exploring a range of other options.  Developing a Discord server might work, or really any such steps would depend on how a producer or sales vendor fits into a niche, which channel or form would make sense for them.  

-standard resale vendors would need to put work into developing a theme just to fit anywhere, to be distinguishable.  Writing a half dozen blog-level researched short articles is a good start, and visiting a tea area is great, but that week's vacation worth of exposure is still going to relate to sightseeing level input.  Meeting a producer and telling part of their story that's better; there would be real depth to that.  It's for the best if the story has a hook to it, some reason that it should be interesting, which could take lots of forms.

 

How do you maximize quality of text or graphic content, given that the ideas are already developed?

-don't write a first draft and final version quickly; produce the content in stages instead.  This gives you time to think of other ideas to include, or to re-consider how ideas are framed, or to trim back redundancy or fluff in the writing.  It might trigger thinking through variations that could work for other posts, and help you better arrange which peice to put extra ideas.

-if you are cross-referencing other resources, events, organizations, or subject experts include an attribution, and where applicable a link reference.  This absolutely never happens in marketing oriented content, because it's about directing traffic to you, not elsewhere, and it's too quickly developed to reach that depth.  But this kind of content context identifier changes what is presented from self-promotion to information, because the form is different.

-use appropriate photo or other media adjoining content.  It's all too easy to over-rely on a set of in-house produced stock photos, or worse yet, online sourced standard stock photos, which would be created to a high quality standard, but with minimal editing lower quality content could also serve in this role.  The average cell phone image will still not be ok for a lot of context use; the idea is to pair development of media content along with development of ideas and supporting text.  Obviously this is necessary if Instagram is to be used to support some external awareness.

back to the ad theme, simple sale promotion content with a product photograph works well

In conclusion if a vendor doesn't put more work into creating online marketing content than the average personal Instagram account it's going to show, and ads will not attract attention.  Shifting from creating ads to creating content with greater depth can help, including opening up new channels that allow that to be shared, but not ads.  It's important to be sensitive to individual group rules, since even personal blog posts are prohibited in many groups, and then informational post content blurring the line between an ad and sharing information probably also would be.

It takes time and effort, and of course that's a problem, given all the other business function, sourcing, logistics, sales related, packaging, and other aspects to running any business.  But if it grows directly out of personal interest, versus working backwards from creating standard advertising content, that could result in greater external appeal in relation to any level of work input.  

If you can share an idea that a consumer is not already aware of that can create a point of interest for your tea product beyond the potential consumption experience itself, which can't be fully communicated images or text, or even video content.  Using a video medium can show expression of reactions, but for other types of content other information or ideas will need to fill in what can be conveyed, with product descriptions a limited form of that.

Tea evaluation template

first published in TChing here

Just mentioning a "tea evaluation template" implies that analytical evaluation, a conceptual breakdown, is a positive thing, so let's start there.  I think that tea experience works just as well without translating experiential aspects into a list of concepts, or probably even better skipping that.  But evaluation could serve a few different purposes:  for a vendor to keep track of detailed tea impressions, for purchasing reasons, or communication, or for a tea enthusiast to track progress and history in working through exploring tea types and versions.  

From Josh Linvers posting thoughts on tasting notes (here)

Of course writing a blog about tea experience involves use of concepts, and even in video raw experience doesn't come across much without use of supporting concepts. I'll need to settle on a level of analysis here, to not keep jumping back and forth between placing experience versus just having it, or how useful this would be.  So I'll move onto discussing an approach soon enough, since this is headed towards describing a template for categories and notes that I made up.

Setting that aside, I've considered and written about evaluation and rating themes before, quite early into writing about tea.  Five years ago this week, also published to TChing; it's about time for an update.  This reconsideration relates to discussing this with a vendor who is evaluating teas (more or less), the same context cited in that post.  Two of the more interesting vendor reference-source related citations in that post seem to relate to businesses that aren't active now, based on web pages being offline.  Maybe the approach didn't really help them. 

used with permission from Temple Mountain Tea, with more on tasting wheels here

Breaking experience into parts and rating the parts and the whole them seems like one obvious approach; "scoring" body / feel, aftertaste, taste / flavor, flaws, match to a standard type, quality evaluation...  One of those cited sources (now missing in detailed form, since the links aren't active) used a half dozen such weighted categories to get to a final tea score.  An opposite approach would be to try to map out aspects instead, to make the project about ending with a flavor / aroma list, mouthfeel description, and such.  Doing both might be possible, detailed description and also rating.

The "final score" idea is problematic, because different teas are positive, negative, or just limited in different ways.  It might work better to map that out per tea type, eg. to value a Wuyi Yancha oolong version in relation to a weighted set of factors, and black teas or young sheng pu'er differently, related to differently weighted sets.  Then one pronounced flaw or unusual strength really could throw off that evaluation, making a tea very desirable or all but undrinkable based on just one aspect input, limitation, or flaw.  Sweetness being all but missing can really throw off a balance in a lot of styles, for example.

The record template based approach I drafted (available here) works to collect notes into categories, without really being geared towards a combined and weighted score (although that would be easy to add, tweaking the form to include a couple more final evaluation rows and a weighting system and summary there).  Let's skip past tea type details and preparation documentation, which are in that form, and consider a tasting notes section:

Feel, aftertaste, taste	Description	(1-10)	Notes
Body / feel
Aftertaste (length, type)
Mineral
Sweetness
Bitterness
Sourness (note if positive, negative, or neutral)
Intensity (also for aroma)

So far a bit straightforward, just a lot to include in one short set of notes for many of these.  Some people value those first two categories (line-items) so much that a few words of notes wouldn't really do that justice.  

The idea of including rankings and separate description and notes aren't clearly required, or a best approach, it's just one way of arranging that.  As I see it splitting a summary and then also second-level additions about that summary might make sense (eg. describing form and level of sweetness in a "description," then placing that in relation to how it balances with the rest in a "note"). Skipping putting a ranking / score for most noted sections would work; the form doesn't clearly imply how it is intended to be used, and use could vary.

Tasting details (aroma)	Description	(1-10)	Notes
Floral
Fruit (/ dried fruit)
Vegetal
Earth
Spice
Sweetness / nut / dairy
Wood / hay / grain / malt
Roast effect / char
Other

This puts a lot of work onto a taster to split out an overall evaluation in this breakdown form, and it's a given that no two people would fill out this section in the same way for any tea.  All the same it's a decent starting point for arranging aroma / scent based flavor range into categories.  For most typical reviews saying a bit about basic tastes (the first section) then settling on a half dozen aroma inputs is enough.  

In my blog post reviews I tend to rank them, mostly in terms of what comes across as dominant, and then in relation to more vague or transitory aspects.  Evaluating form of transition comes up, for Gongfu brewing, and this table wouldn't capture a cycle so easily (aroma range changing over rounds). But the "notes" could be used to cover that (eg. cinnamon only in later steeps).  That form would also work for noting that bitterness declines following a certain pattern, in the last subset.  For a reviewer inclined to write a lot about transitions, as in Mattcha's blog, this category and list form just wouldn't work well.

Flaws / limitations	Description	(1-10)	Notes
Intensity
Storage input (negative)
Contaminant (eg. smoke)
Off standard type range
Atypical feel
Other

There are a lot of potential flaws, with this only intended to map out some standard categories.  Per two different evaluation preferences this could be expanded and developed, or it could be narrowed down to just one line item instead.

Overall evaluation	Description	(1-10)	Notes
Match to standard type
Most notable attribute(s)
Quality marker related
Most notable limitation(s)
Quality Level
Aging input (level, type)
Aging potential (estimate)
Subjective preference match
Other

Again I'm not really going to explain or justify a lot of this; inclusions like "match to a standard type" or "quality marker related" would be best explained by a few hundred words of write-up.  I probably mean those in my own way, and others would see those concepts differently, or wouldn't prefer to use them at all.  There isn't really one standard type for any given tea version, since they all vary within a stylistic range, but it is possible to assess if a version falls outside a typical stylistic range.  I see certain aspects as identifying quality level in some cases (eg. mineral flavor in Wuyi Yancha or sheng pu'er, smooth and full feel in some rolled oolongs, aftertaste length in some types but not others).

Hopefully the meaning of "quality level" and "subjective preference match" are clear.  Those are intended as a judgment about objective overall rating of the tea, surely partly in relation to match to type, and the same thing but in a subjective form, how much one likes a version.

The idea here was to start a discussion about such a tool and approach, but in practice writing anything about tea experience doesn't typically lead there.  I'll add this early template draft version in the group I moderate (International Tea Talk) and in my blog-related Facebook page, to make it accessible, but I don't expect that much discussion.  If you want to pass on input there will be links to this post in both places, or I can be reached through that blog page.

For strictly personal use I think it makes more sense to just drink the tea, and to stay on the opposite extreme in relation to breaking down the experience conceptually.  The old Steepster-form approach of adding a few thoughts (aspects that stand out) and a short summary works, to the extent one ever would need to discuss a tea.  Writing a 1500 word round-by-round blog review of a tea is definitely overkill; so messy, and too long to read.  Copying that Steepster summary form to an Instagram post seems to strike a better balance. But really who even needs that, unless it works as an actionable purchase recommendation, or the author is using it as their own organized notes.  Which reminds me; I didn't initially add price information to this.  Other inclusions like that would depend on the intended use.