Wuyi Origin Jin Jun Mei, and a bit of origins background on me

Back to the quest for the unattainable in this blog, a simple review.  I've tried different versions of this tea type from Cindy before (Cindy Chen, oft-mentioned in this blog), comparison tasting three last year, so this will just be passing on how this experience goes, nothing new.

I've ran across a Reddit post of someone cross-reviewing different versions of this tea type not too long ago (possibly including this one, or at least a related tea also from Wuyi Origin).  And also the typical vendor claim that only a very limited range of versions are "real Jin Jun Mei," and everything almost everyone but them is selling is something else instead (or maybe also the other few vendors making similar claims, I guess).  I'd mention an example of a related claim but it would come across as blaming them, and there could be something to it, I'm just not buying it.

I didn't get a full description of the tea from Cindy, but if it's the same version as on their website then it's "2017 Honey Aroma Jin Jun Mei," which to be honest doesn't really mean anything to me.

Review

not the best type of outing during getting over a cold

The dry tea smells rich, sweet, toffee-like, and a little earthy, with layers to what is going on in the scent.  Of course dry scent doesn't always match the brewed tea characteristics.  I'm still getting over a cold, the same one I had a week ago, probably because I went ice-skating last weekend before I was fully recovered.  Hopefully I've got enough sense of taste left to do this tasting justice; it's the usual feeling a bit off, not the full-blown version.


The first infusion is great; kind of what I expected.  The taste is rich and full, a bit sweet, with lots of layers of flavors coming across.  It's not as if one aspect hits you first; the impression is that there is a lot going on.  It's grounded by a very clean earthy range, towards mineral, a bit of the rock common to that region, but nothing like how that comes across in the oolongs.  A dark caramel or toffee fills in the sweetness (or it could seem a little like honey; I wrote that part after looking up the listing), joined by a roasted chestnut-like aspect.  Some of the sweetness traces off towards fresh roasted corn, but the tea doesn't really taste like corn, it's more the way that cooked sugar effect works out.

tea brewing in a gaiwan

As comes up regularly there is more to the experience that's hard to describe, something positive and a little unusual.  I'm reminded of former-blogger Amanda describing some Dian Hong as possessing a resinous quality; there is a richness and a feel to this tea that reminds me of such a thing, a way that it coats your tongue and remains as an aftertaste.  More will come up in the second round; it's often easier to tease apart the flavors based on a slightly stronger infusion (although still moderate, for this tea type, there's no call for brewing it strong), and experiencing the basic range first helps with sorting out finer level of details later.

I know I said I was going to keep this simple but now I'm curious what that one review said about it, so I'll take a look and copy it here before getting into the next round.  Typically I'll taste teas blind, but that just depends.  It's not that long so I'll cite the whole thing:


Wuyi Origin - 2017 Jinjunmei (honey aroma) Grade A

There were actually two teas that I tried from Wuyu Origin - the 2017 Jinjunmei (honey aroma) Grade A and 2017 Jinjunmei (honey aroma). I think they were very similar, with the Grade A being a bit sweeter, and maybe a bit more flavorful overall? The Wuyi Origin Jin Jun Mei is probably my favorite tea in general - I like this more than any others that I've tried (any kind of green, black, puerh, etc.). The dry leaf has notes of sweet bread, wood, and some kind of nuts (maybe almonds). After a rinse, the wet leaf has strong notes of chocolate and raisins. It still retains some of the notes of sweet breads/pastries that you could smell from the dry leaf as well. 

A first infusion has a great flavor - a subtle sweetness. Things like rose water, and sweet pastries come to mind. The taste is clean, and (maybe disappointingly) the tea doesn't exactly "coat" my mouth like some other more oily feeling teas would. Later infusions dull the sweetness, but a constant taste of fresh bread remains. Overall, this tea was relatively cheap compared to some of the other ones I've tried, which makes it easy for me if I want to get some more.

I would highly recommend this tea - even if you weren't looking to try Jin Jun Mei.  10/10


Nice complete reviewing, but without rambling on, a good balance.  Rose water, sweet pastries, and later fresh bread; maybe.  As far as this tea costing relatively little it was almost certainly the only version purchased directly from the producer.  The other teas had been bought and sold, perhaps multiple times, with every additional resale step adding cost but not value.

The next infusion has transitioned a bit, not less complex, but a little brighter and sweeter, a bit less earthy.  That resinous aspect (feel and taste related) did seem to shift a little towards yeast or pastry, with the roasted chestnut range dropping back.  I'm not sure about that gap in feel; it has diminished a little already, and it never did remind me lots of oiliness, more in between that and a typical roughness of astringency, on the novel side.

I think the interpretation-space is the issue here; I was calling something roasted chestnut that was probably alternatively interpreted as sweet pastry and fresh bread (assuming it is the same tea, which isn't a given, since they make more than one version, and he or she reviewed two of them), and I think both could sort of work.  I tried a Bai Ye dan cong black tea not long ago that wasn't far off related to that aspect, with it coming across more as baked sweet potato.  If you drink this tea and think "roasted sweet potato" that's it instead.  It's also not far off cocoa, just not exactly that.

I read through my own post comparing three Wuyi Origin JJM versions last year (a golden version, and one "good in soup," another "good in aroma").  I don't know which this would relate to; maybe the golden one.


This tea is thinning a little on the third infusion.  There is still plenty going on but the intensity and complexity have already leveled off a bit.  I've been using relatively long infusion times for the tea proportion, a good bit over a minute, and brewed very lightly the tea would stretch to produce twice as many.  This will still produce at least a couple more nice infusions, maybe even three of four, but I'd expect the flavor range to keep narrowing and for the taste to go towards woody or pine.


Some teas have an ideal brewed intensity that they work best at; I tend to notice that for Dan Cong or Wuyi Yancha (oolongs).  For others it really just depends on how someone prefers the tea; I guess various white teas work well for an example of that.  This one probably works well across a broad range, just balancing aspects differently.

Even with extending infusion time the tea is fading.  It's not going "off" in any way, maybe picking up a hint of coffee-like aspect versus the pastry / sweet potato range, more than becoming woody.  I'll keep brewing it but there won't be any more to say.


All in all it's another great tea, not so dissimilar to the same versions I tried last year.  I can relate to why that other reviewer rated it so highly, and per my own past experiences it would compare well to any other version of this tea type.  Unless this isn't Jin Jun Mei at all, and then who knows.

An unrelated post-script; about local Pennsylvania scenery and history

not exactly how I remember it

I mentioned being from the small town of Cranberry, PA in a recent post (hardly even a village, really).  That related to describing a tea as a little tart, and that high school mascot being a "super-berry."  A friend just posted some photos of visiting back there and I wanted to share what it looks like.


We would bike along the area in the pictures when I was younger, or even canoe there, getting dropped off in one place and floating along to another, sometimes the next day.  It was a different world then; we even did that without cell phones.  It's an area with a long history, well prior to Europeans visiting there.  The local Iroquois Native American people went by the name Seneca "Indians," which was also the name of the "town" that high school was located in (more or less just where some roads cross each other).


I've ran across a bit of that history in this local reference not long ago (referenced here).  That is related to another place known as Cranberry that's not that far away; funny how that worked out, but obvious enough why it would have, related to the berries growing in both places:


The Indians gathered and ate many kinds of wild plants and roots. They ate walnuts and hickory nuts, wild grapes and blackberries. In marshy areas, or bogs, along Brush Creek they gathered wild cranberries. They mashed the cranberries in dried venison, or deer meat, to make meat patties they called pemmican. They used cranberry juice as a dye...

...Another important Indian village was the Seneca Indian settlement of Venango. It was located at the mouth of the French Creek on the Allegheny River, about 50 miles north of Cranberry Township, where the town of Franklin is today. 

From Venango, the Indians could travel by canoe down the Allegheny River to visit and trade with Indians in downriver communities. One of those downriver villages was a Delaware Indian town called Shannopintown. It was located where Lawrenceville is today, about three miles upriver from downtown Pittsburgh.

Because the Allegheny is a swift, rocky river, the Indians could not easily return by canoe to their home village. Also, the Allegheny is such a winding river that the distance from Shannopintown back to Venango is much longer than a direct overland hike through the forests. So the Indians used a footpath, the Venango trail, to walk back to Venango.

That reference goes on to talk about George Washington visiting Venango during events leading up to the French and Indian war, nothing really so relevant to this tangent, so I'll leave it at sharing the pictures.

the Allegheny river (photo credits Mike Gibson, aka "Gibby")

not there quite yet but the area is beautiful in the fall, very colorful

old rail lines have been converted to bike paths

lots of National Forest and state game land around, just not here

Comparing three amazing Jin Jun Mei from Cindy Chen

Jin Jun Mei, golden version

It's a tall order, but Cindy sent good-sized samples of three different Jin Jun Mei to try, so it seemed obvious to taste-compare all three together.  There were lots of noticeable differences in the dry scents, but it seemed as well to start with reviewing the brewed tea, not the dry tea scents.  Even that is going to be a bit much.  Comparing two teas in tasting is interesting, and it can really highlight minor differences in aspects, but adding making comprehensive tasting notes to a detailed review gets to be a lot, even for two teas (even for one, really, it can be much nicer to just drink the tea sometimes).  A few notes about impression of lots of teas would be one thing but a detailed, aspect-by-aspect review is something else.

JJM, "good in aroma" version

The three teas are a golden Jin Jun Mei, a "good in aroma" JJM, and a "good in soup" version.  It's always seemed like people stumble over trying to translate whatever "brewed tea" works out to be in original Chinese languages.  It must be close to "soup," as Cindy has used, or liquor, as one also commonly sees, but brewed tea is not soup or liquor, as we use those words in English.  People understand what is meant, so either works, or dragging out the extra word and saying "brewed tea" would also do the job.  It's "soup" here, shortened from "good in soup" in that version description in lots of places.  Straight to it then.


The first infusion of the golden JJM is nice, right in that ideal range.  I would imagine a paragraph on that taste profile would just be a write-up about how JJM tastes in general, and then the comparison would vary from there.  I did struggle with a more general description in this post comparing the tea style to Lapsang Souchong (the LS version that isn't Jin Jun Mei, the type made of leaves).  Even that first part isn't so easy, about the type and general range.  It's a softer type of black tea, but very rich and complex, with good sweetness and a full flavor profile.  There are fruit and earth aspects to it, probably some spice layered in, and a slight dryness, but nothing like the dryness and earthiness in that last tea from Nepal I just tasted, the golden tips version.  That was a nice tea but these are some next-level teas.

JJM, "good in soup" version

No written description could do this tea any justice; kind of a strange place to start in doing a review, but that's how it is.  The complexity, that range of flavors you just don't ever see, the way it integrates, the feel, the cleanness, the way sweetness balances earth and other elements--it's absolutely off the charts.  I'm reminded of a comment about the wild Lapsang Souchong Cindy sent a sample of in a forum discussion (do I even need to clarify the tea wasn't smoked?):  it's just damned good tea.  Even the basic flavors list description is too much to grasp, too much complexity to describe as a list.  The others likely are too, in different ways.  This would be a lot easier if I'd just say these are three different related versions of damned good tea.



The "good in aroma" version comes across a little sweeter, a little lighter, across a lot of the same range but quite different.  It's a little sweeter, more subtle, less of the mineral undertone and butternut squash / yam range, more floral, but not exactly floral in the sense lots of other teas that describes are.  But then I'm not going to finish this comparison in one taste; I'll fill more details in as I go.


The "good in soup" version is completely different.  It's more like an unsmoked Lapsang Souchong (well, technically it is one, but you know what I mean, the other kind made with leaves instead of just buds).  It has more of a black tea taste, just not at all in the range of other black teas, more earth of a different kind and more mineral, not as sweet and light and subtle as the aroma version.  Mineral is more pronounced, a lot more tie to the other Wuyi Yancha range people are familiar with, which itself comes across in a very broad range.  I definitely don't mean the cardboard / dark wood / leather / cinnamon range ordinary versions of Wuyi Yancha exhibit, I mean the characteristic mineral undertone.  It's still sweet, still very complex, and would still be the best Jin Jun Mei most people have ever tried, by a good bit, but I'm not sure which of these three I'd like best yet.

golden lower left, "good in aroma" top, "good in soup" lower right

On the second infusion the golden JJM picks up the flavors profile a lot.  This could be a tricky tea to brew in the sense that you want to get it just right to optimize it, not that it wouldn't work well across a range of infusion strengths or made in different ways, but you'd want to get the most out of it.  Brewed perfectly this type of tea can go from great to transcendent, at least great versions.  It's a bit complex to describe.  Earthiness picked up a little, almost like a touch of coffee, along with a hint of smoke, but still plenty of sweetness, in a soft, rich, full tea.  It's really amazing.  There's malt present, and that familiar Chinese black tea sweetness people attribute to yams or sweet potato, which to me is great or not so good depending on how it balances with other flavors--here working well, to say the least.

The "aroma" JJM picked up a lot more floral character, although "floral" really doesn't do it justice.  The flavors range experience is different than the golden version, maybe in a sense not as complex, more limited, but that other level of experience is really something.  It really does a lot with subtlety, still complex, just not as complex and in a different range of experience.

The soup version is moving off in it's own direction.  Now it's not like other JJM I've tried, or Lapsang Souchong so much, but complex, still nice.  It has a good bit of woody character, still a bit sweet with mineral tones but not like the others.  The floral / sweet aroma from the aroma version isn't really pronounced, and the flavors complexity in the golden version isn't present.  It is nice within the range it expresses but I think I like the golden version better, at this point in the tasting.

More of the same next infusion for the golden JJM.  It's interesting that flavors aspect range extends to include a touch of coffee like that, along with the normal range, sweetness, yam / sweet potato, and toffee, probably a touch of some spice, just not a familiar spice, in the wood-bark spice range but not cinnamon.  I'm not saying much about feel but it's what one might expect, rich in an unusual way, a bit "resinous," as fellow-blogger Amanda of Rambling Butterflies blog describes it.  Maybe it's not clear; that's saying it's a good thing, although I guess that would depend on preferences.  On the whole the complexity and the way all those different aspects come together is just great.

The aroma version keeps gaining depth.  Floral is shifting to a nice, light, subtle root-spice range, towards sassafras, although probably closer to some spice I'm not familiar with.  I'm reminded of visiting a spice market in Seoul, in a giant open room full of roots, tree barks, and herbs, being overwhelmed by a complex range of wonderful spice smells.  It was so amazing I could just stand and smell, nothing discernible, just a cacophony of experience, except related to smell and not sound, and pleasant instead of harsh.  This is much simpler but pleasant and unfamiliar in a similar way.


It is odd how the taste profile in the sense of one part of the range of experience is limited but a lighter, different range is so pronounced.  I get it, about the "aroma" description.  It's not that liquor-like aroma that some Wuyi Yancha express, lighter, complex, floral extending into all sorts of subtle range.  It would be possible to go a little stronger on the infusion strength to draw more body out of it, since it comes across as light, but I don't miss that, and the effect of the flavors in that "aroma" range is plenty to experience.

The soup version goes just a little further in the same direction.  When you taste it some component that hits your palate first is a little shocking, but it transitions into a rich, different range so fast it's hard to identify that element.  It might just be the shock of tasting it after the other two but I think there is something unexpected there, maybe in a wood-tone / vegetal range.  It also has a bit of root-beer character to it, and a little mineral, just not much.  If you drank this tea alone you'd likely say "now I get JJM," but alongside these other two there is a lot more range to experience, and depending on how preference plays out it could easily be a least favorite.  Or maybe a favorite; preference variation is odd like that.

good in soup upper left, golden upper right, good in aroma lower

All three are good teas, or really a bit better than what I usually mean by "good."  For other teas that are good but not on this level the experience is about appreciating one or more positive aspects, or complexity, or feel, or cleanness, but for all these it's just a given that the whole range of general positive aspects is sort of covered.  It's not about focusing on something positive, or appreciating that the range and effect is nice, but instead about narrowing into how unique aspects in the absolutely right kind of context relate to preference, or enjoying the synchronicity.  Or it would be nice to not analyze it, and just be swept along by all that.

Tasting these together feels a little like a turning point in my experience of tea, like that first visit to a decent tea shop when you think "I get this!"  Of course I don't completely get it, in the sense of a veteran tea expert completely placing a tea based on vast experience, but it all clicks a little better.

Relating to my own preference; I liked the golden version best, aroma next best.  The "soup" version wasn't a flawed tea, not bad or even in a more average range, it just didn't click with me in the same way.  I could easily imagine someone liking the "aroma" version even more, that to some it would capture the essence of what JJM is supposed to be; that experience is unique, the brightness, subtlety, sweet floral tones in a black tea, the balance.  A lot of people might not feel like it was a black tea, given how all that comes across, since it's absolutely the opposite of commercial grade Assamica based teas.  There is no astringency at all, not malty or earthy, much ligher, brighter, sweeter and more complex--in it's own way, in a limited scope.  It shares a lot with some aspects range of oolongs, in a sense, it just doesn't remind me of any in particular; it's unique.

Cindy and her uncle; tea legends

I could imagine some people not liking the golden version; the mineral aspects leading into a coffee range being too much.  Since I love dark roasted oolongs (maybe mid-roasted a little more; not the point here) it's still on the lighter side of where that general range can lead.  Without the rest of the range, that feel, the sweetness, the other flavor complexity it might not work, but to me it strikes an incredible balance.


Taken together with the last wild Lapsang Souchong I reviewed from Cindy these teas have given me a new appreciation for Wuyishan black teas.  I get the sense I'll never stop turning new pages related to all the teas from that area.  It's nice when tea type just clicks, and you absolutely love that, and want to have very similar experiences over and over, but this experience is nice too, when those subtle variations add up to relatively new experiences.