Sweetening tea, grades of tea, and a Thai Jin Xuan oolong review

Back to basics!  Jin Xuan is the other of the two main cultivars one finds in Thailand, along with Ruan Zhi, which I recently reviewed.  This one is from Tea Village, my favorite shop, which is in Pattaya (next beach resort over from Bangkok, famous for a unique entertainment industry there).

In that other blog post I said:  Jin Xuan can have a notable creaminess to it, even natural flavors that resemble butter to some extent.  Decent versions of both are pleasant and easy to drink, with good flavors, and better than average versions can be very nice, but in general the two teas are consistent. 

With that straight to reviewing.

Review:

The tea has a fresh taste to it, slightly vegetal, so it reminded me a little of green tea as oolongs go.  Most Thai teas are lightly oxidized oolongs, although some few from here aren't, like two darker Thai oolongs I recently reviewed.  The main flavor element was pretty close to kale, with a bit of a mild spice note, a hint of cinnamon, with a faint floral component and underlying mineral tone.  All those flavors reminded me some of the standard profile for Ruan Zhi, which is typically less sweet and more "structured," with different flavor elements, closer to how oolongs might normally come across in Taiwan.

If someone was really looking for the mellow sweetness, more pronounced floral component, and buttery effect of a Jin Xuan (typically not really tasting a lot like butter, although some do a little) then this tea might not be an exceptional example.  For someone that likes green teas and can appreciate a vegetal flavor profile, but also desires a tea that's easier on their stomach, this might be just perfect.  For me that problem with green tea only relates to drinking it without any food, and then only when I drink a good bit of it, so green tea paired with anything to eat is fine.

As is standard the flavors were relatively "clean," nothing unpleasant at all, with a nice finish / aftertaste, just not really exceptional related to that compared to some other similar style teas.  The tea brewed a lot of very consistent infusions, also typical for good examples of the general type. 


This is starting into tea enthusiast blasphemy, but I tried the tea with a little sugar in it.  What is so terrible about that?  I'll spell it out after describing how it worked out.  With the limited natural sweetness supplemented with sugar the vegetal flavors were a bit subdued and the character changed, closer to how sweeter Jin Xuan versions come across, so for some the tea would be great that way.


Since I don't drink sugar in most teas (few, really) it tends to make the tea taste like sugar, although in this case it worked well, a little extra sweetness helped shift the effect of the whole flavor profile.   

The rambling-on section:

Why not add sugar to tea?  If you like it that way then do it.  But there are reasons not to:



1.  because you're a tea purist:  not really the best reason, to adjust tea drinking according to your perception of  tea drinker status.  But it could work out related to developing palate and preferences, to drink your tea related to image instead of how you actually like tea.


2.  because is masks or changes the natural taste of tea:  to me this works better as a good reason, and is really what the first point is supposed to be about.  White sugar is a neutral sweetener, adding little flavor besides "sweetness," still that shifts the flavor profile and can make it harder to taste other flavors.  But really, a little matters less for this for covering up the taste.


3.  because the best teas don't need it:  not really a reason, right, you're either drinking the best teas that don't need any adjustment (according to your own preference, of course) or you're not, and either way adding a sweetener is a judgment call.  But taken together 2 and 3 say that if you are sweetening tea you are most likely drinking bad tea (or at least inferior tea), and by extension that you aren't a tea purist.  Taken one way all of this could be experienced as a pressure to drink your tea a certain way (unsweetened--but I guess it could extend to milk).  Of course this assumes a certain degree of exposure to these ideas and people making claims about sugar and tea.


For a relatively astringent tea maybe all this shifts a bit, more related to black teas.  You can "brew around" the astringency (bitterness, roughly) by adjusting temperature and brewing time (lowering both) but one might also offset this by adding sugar to compensate.  Or so it seems to me, but since this is purely in the realm of taste I guess someone could sweeten anything, even for those teas about which reviewers tend to say "don't add sugar to this."

Grade and cost related to tea

Related to grade, I recently started a discussion about Awareness of Tea in Thailand on an expat forum here.  Normally people go by pen-names (an alias?) but I guess for the sake of mentioning it I'll give up my anonymity there, which I wasn't really using anyway.  The point I was making there, part of a larger discussion, is that if cost is an issue then tea grade or quality is also an issue, and this ties back to the issue of sweetening tea.  Or so it seems to me.  The type of tea preferred also relates, and how much sweetness one likes in tea.

This would be the second tea reviewer faux-pas in one post, a lot for even me, but I'm going to venture into the one subject people are even less likely to address than sweetening tea:  cost.  I only went down that road because it kept coming up in that discussion.  People pushed me to it by claiming they drink tea-bag tea because of cost issues, which I don't accept; it's an awareness problem. 

Convenience is a real issue too (tea-bags travel well) but I can only take on so much in one discussion or post so I'll get back to that eventually.  I mentioned the actual price of the tea I just reviewed there (the Jin Xuan) but I'll leave it out here (it's on their site anyway), but suffice it to say it's a good price for a Thai tea in Thailand, not what someone could find in a region like the US.  Add a bit for shipping and someone could; the world is getting to be a smaller place now.


About that discussion, I'll quote myself at length:


The point is the pricing is low enough that anyone drinking tea-bag tea to save money beyond that might not be thinking it through.  The [Jin Xuan] oolong is much better tea (of course that's a judgment call; someone else might really like Lipton's better).  It's not a fair comparison since one is black and the other lightly oxidized oolong anyway.
 
What would be the next level up, for grade?  It's not exactly just a move upwards since tea-type flavor profiles differ but roughly speaking a reasonable grade of Tie Kuan Yin would be.  That cultivar (plant type) can be grown in Thailand but it's not common, and most likely better versions would come from Taiwan or China.  Of course how good a tea is depends on the tea, not where it's from, since it's based on lots of factors, some related to growing, others processing, even storage. 
 
Tea Village sells a Tie Kuan Yin for $7.85 for 50 grams, definitely not a higher grade of the tea for that reasonable a price, but most of their teas are a good version.  I think I did try it sampling different teas with the owner but I'm not really prepared to offer tasting notes.  Compared to the Jin Xuan it would be more floral in flavor profile, a little sweeter, perhaps slightly "cleaner" flavors, more refined, and often it will brew more infusions than other teas (although that Jin Xuan can be brewed a number of times consistently, whereas black teas maybe two or three depending on how you make it).
 
I'm not pushing their tea with this example, the point is explaining how grades work.  If you don't mind spending three times as much for a couple dozen cups of tea--still not a lot--the taste is different, and perhaps even the aftertaste or body (feel) of the tea.  If that cost is a factor then adding a little sugar may make a similar difference, it just wouldn't be exactly the same.

By extension I'm sort of implying that if cost isn't a factor, that if someone has $20 or $30 a month to spare on tea, with no concern about that expense, then they might well drift towards drinking better teas, and keep drifting, exploring new and better teas.  That can happen.  I like to drink a lot of types of tea, to mix it up, and I don't mind some being common grade / everyday tea (just not Lipton's--too common grade), but I would sorely miss drinking some better teas as well.


So I guess I'm indirectly condoning drinking ordinary grade tea, and sweetening it, although it's really not my place to accept or reject that. 

Good black tea is similar to that in some ways but quite different.  If someone likes tea from tea bags and wonders what better grades would be like I've reviewed some here, not investment-grade high-commitment cost tea but decent tea.  This is one from Hatvala in Vietnam that I loved ("Wild Boar") that cost next to nothing, and another was even better from Indonesia, from PT Harendong Green Farm, not expensive but not an amazing value like the other. 

If the teas sound interesting buying a good bit from Hatvala is probably the natural place to start (contact here); it would make a great everyday black tea but it's really much better than that.  That said I liked the darker oolong I reviewed a little better (the Red Buffalo), and other people might prefer completely different teas, different types, different grades, who knows what other differences.

Of course black tea starts to mean very different things in other countries.  I could go on citing and linking and for awhile but it would be too much; suffice it to say there's a lot to it.  No matter what direction personal preference leads it doesn't work to explain to a tea enthusiast that there is a good reason to just stick with Lipton's (no offense intended about their tea, it's just not good).




not about tea; a Thai temple from a river ferry

Oriental Beauty from Thailand (Bai Hao, Peng Feng, lots of names)

Not to knock Thai teas, but I keep thinking I'm missing something.  If someone were to really love mild, sweet, rich textured, lightly oxidized oolongs (Jin Xuan or Ruan Zhi based) then I have tried good teas here.

interesting looking tea

But my natural style preferences lean towards more oxidized teas, and I've tried better versions of similar teas of those types from Taiwan.  The only more-oxidized oolongs I've tried from Thailand were unpleasant,  but I have a version at home I've not tried yet, so one more chance at that.  So why never something else, better, or at least different.


Finally I've found that in a Bai Hao tea from Thailand, also sold as Peng Feng, most commonly referred to as Oriental Beauty (see vendor reference here, the Tea Village shop page).

another picture, same tea

Of course the main story from this type of tea relates to insects eating part of the leaves, which is said to improve the tea.  I'll do the review part first here (makes sense that way), and a bit of review of that story and research on the reality of it, but the vendor description of that follows:


Peng Feng is made of selected tea leaves that have been bitten off by small green cicadas.  At the site of the bite, the tea leaf juice is released, which causes a fermentation sheet to occur long before harvest.  At the final stage of production, the tea has an exquisite aroma with a honey-sweet and fruity aftertaste.


I'm reminded of reading a similar description of the same basic thing in a New York Times article recently, along with comments on a tea group discussion mocking it for not being accurate enough:


Picking up the steeped leaves, he pointed to bite marks. They are made, he explained, by a small green insect called a leafhopper. The bites expose that part of the leaf to air, changing its chemistry and giving the resulting tea a distinctive sweetness that has traces of honey.


If memory serves the change in the tea leaf was about stress response, not a direct reaction with air, but I'll get to that in the research section.  It would only make a difference to someone pretty obsessed with tea, but then I am writing a blog post about the subject.

The review:

The tea was nice, one of the most interesting I've tried in Thailand, probably per my own subjective preferences the "best" Thai tea I've tried, but that could relate to my preferences as much as tea grades or whatever else.

It tasted like a more-oxidized oolong, probably mid-range as that goes, not really close to black tea, unusual since oolongs tend to gravitate towards one extreme or the other.  But then what you find in a typical tea shop--or God forbid a grocery store--need not be an indication of what exists for the range of better teas, and needn't really overlap so much.

The taste was unusually sweet, with a lot of fruit, and a cinnamon component.  For some teas I get the sense that someone with a different type of palate might list off ten different flavor components, but for me I work through sorting out what the tastes remind me of.  A rich, "round" type of fruit flavor reminded me of peach, but there was something else, a brighter tone, harder to pick out.  Eventually I decided blueberry would describe it best.

It sounds like I'm talking about a cobbler, right, peach, blueberry, and cinnamon.  But of course the tea didn't exactly taste like a cobbler, although some taste components did.  Or then again maybe it did; maybe if I'd made a peach and blueberry cobbler heavy on cinnamon spice and tried it with the tea I'd be amazed at the similarity.  The vendor description mentioned honey I suppose that fits too.

Really the tea flavors are complex and hard to describe.  Those are basics that initially occurred to me, and there's a trace of yeast / bread dough underlying the stronger fruit flavors, which I suppose could possibly be teased out to both fruit and floral components. 

A discussion of the general tea type on a Tea Chat (forum) thread  mentioned taste range (and brewing advice), listing citrus, honey, plum, muscat, Champaign, perfume, vanilla, and caramel, and of course other fruit and floral elements are also typically ascribed to different versions.


As for astringency, there was none.  The partial oxidation level gave the tea an unusual rich underlying flavor profile, almost more a feel, although the two are separate, as can occur with white teas.  I had the sense that experimenting with different brewing techniques could probably optimize this tea better than with some other types.  To me this is the opposite of most lightly oxidized oolongs in the sense that you only need to avoid screwing them up, and getting the same type of basic flavor profile out of them is kind of a given (although one could always adjust to optimize).

The leaves were unusually small, so this actually looked similar to two different white teas I'd reviewed not long ago, one from China and the other Darjeeling.  The appearance was a bit unusual, not really a rolled-style tea, not open in the way Bai Mu Dan white teas are, not really twisted like black teas or darker oolongs tend to be.  It seems like I should be going somewhere with those two unrelated ideas, some conclusion I'm about to draw, but I'm not.  It was interesting tea, unusual, but then the taste and feel of the tea had already determined that.

Research, mostly about insects biting the leaves:

I must have tried a version of Oriental Beauty before but it's been so long I don't remember what I thought of it, and don't really have a baseline for expectations.  For research I'd move on to the bit about the insects soon enough but I'll reference a couple mentions of flavor profiles to start first.

One of many people's favorite tea blogs, Tea For Me, recently included a review of an Oriental Beauty:


The taste was full of floral sweetness with notes of honey and a very subtle hint of spice. There was also an interesting biscuity quality that I seldom see in Taiwanese teas.


So maybe a little similar, although floral and fruit might seem different enough.  To be honest I was thinking of that difference when I tried the tea, about how a general sweetness really could be interpreted as tied to floral tastes by one person and fruit by another.  I keep coming back to the issue of objectivity; what would someone else taste, and to what extent is any of this "real."  About being "biscuity" the tea did have an unusual character I described related to oxidation level, a  mild yeast-like flavor, that was hard to pin down, which could relate.  I don't mean the tea was sour, or the flavor wasn't "clean," so maybe a trace of mild bread-dough sounds more positive and accurate.

Another Oriental Beauty citation by the same blogger will help fill in a bit more detail about variation across type:


Just as with the traditional oolong version, the leaves were bitten by leafhopper insects. This causes the oxidation process to begin while the leaves are still on the tea plant.... At first it tasted like a typical Taiwanese black tea. With each sip a really nice honeyed fruit quality became more and more prevalent. If I stopped drinking for a bit, a really nice floral after affect popped into my palate too.


So there's a second introduction to the concept related to the insects, which I'll get back to, and mention of this tea being prepared as a black tea (interesting), and fruit flavors but floral aftertaste.  Since these are all different teas the taste of one doesn't really inform another but we could get a feel for some basic range here, and comparing descriptions is interesting to me.  It's no coincidence both of these are teas from Taiwan; that is where this general type comes from, so it's really odd the version I'm trying came from Thailand.  But in general the tea types (cultivars) and processing techniques were imported from Taiwan, and the terrain is similar, so not so unusual.


It would be nice to refer to something that isn't a vendor's blog, or even standard review, to get more background about the insects or teas.  One Teamaster blog reference covers the standard story, but it's more a general "the legend goes" version than a research piece on what really happens:


During each summer, the tea farmers would be upset to see their crops eaten by swarms of small criquets... They didn't even bother to harvest the leaves...  One farmer in Hsin Chu county didn't accept this fate. He harvested these bitten leaves nonetheless and managed to sell them for a high price... Legend has it that this tea was so good that it supposedly made its way to the queen of England who named it "Oriental Beauty" (or 'Dong Fang Mei Ren' in Chinese.


The same post goes on to describe several different specific teas but these don't add much to the rest of the background (interesting for someone really into learning about tea types though).  Per the descriptions some versions do have significant astringency, and complexity, sweetness and fragrance, and mixed interesting flavors are the common elements, including some not ordinarily referenced, like pineapple.

Taken together it is curious these leaves of the tea I've reviewed are so small; how could there really have been time for an insect to get to them?  That is presented as a genuine part of the tea story though, not as legend that may not apply to some versions.


One research-oriented reference on the tea tried to identify what the change in the leafs amounted to, with much of the abstract cited here (original source reference:  Biosci Biotechnol Biochem. 2007 Jun;71(6):1476-86.  Chemical profiling and gene expression profiling during the manufacturing process of Taiwan oolong tea "Oriental Beauty"):



Oriental Beauty, which is made from tea leaves infested by the tea green leafhopper (Jacobiasca formosana) in Taiwan, has a unique aroma like ripe fruits and honey. To determine what occurs in the tea leaves during the oolong tea manufacturing process, the gene expression profiles and the chemical profiles were investigated. Tea samples were prepared from Camellia sinensis var. sinensis cv. Chin-shin Dah-pang while the tea leaves were attacked by the insect. The main volatile compounds, such as linalool-oxides, benzyl alcohol, 2-phenylethanol, ... increased during manufacture. ...  Many up-regulated transcripts were found to encode various proteins homologous to stress response proteins. ...  Thus the traditional manufacturing method is a unique process that utilizes plant defense responses to elevate the production of volatile compounds and other metabolites.


It's not even clear what this means, from the limited citation.  The change during the manufacturing process isn't of interest as much as the change when the insects eat parts of the leaves (note they are referred to here as "leafhoppers").  Naturally one would want to scan the whole of the original article, which is found here.



cited from research paper, note tea leaf appearance difference

A reasonably close read (it is a bit dry) seems to identify the research really doesn't relate at all to how leaves change originally, since only leaves related to plants attacked by insects were tested, and the changes that result were only referenced by research or prior understanding.  They do make a lot of interesting points related to secondary research, but these don't relate to the actual work here:


It has been reported that volatiles of monoterpenes such linalool and ocimen and of C6-compounds such as hexanal and hexenols are produced by insect attack and wounding.


Interesting, if not meaningful to me.  So the article is worth a read but the sources used would probably be of more interest if the main goal was to find out about that particular change.  It makes the conclusion statement in the abstract portion seem a bit misleading; the manufacturing method and the plant responses may well work together to produce unique compounds in the final dried tea product, but without a comparison to leaves that hadn't been affected such a conclusion relies on what they already knew or expected.


I recently ran across a Siam Tea post about a Thai Oriental Beauty tea, which I'll cite from here since there is good background on the tea type (with more information on the sales order site).  It can't be the same tea because it looks different, a completely rolled-ball preparation for the Siam Tea, unlike the one I reviewed.  The tea is also described as floral (versus fruit components), and the brewed tea is yellow versus orange-brown, possibly less oxidized but hard to be sure.

Most of the information is the same, the basic storyline, tea description, etc.  Thomas (the site owner and author) mentioned a recent discussion of citation of an old article on a tea competition in Taiwan that I had read of, but I've lost track of the original source of that.  That discussion was a bit vague anyway, a possible link to one of those historical stories actually being true (related to the "braggers tea" part of the legend, only indirectly related to the rest).  From that post:

 
...the interaction of a particular leafhopper type...  with the tea plants of the Cing Xing cultivar effects special – and highly desirable – taste properties in the resulting tea.   The leaves of the tea plant are bitten by the small animals during the time before the harvest, whereas their proboscis leaves behind a secretion in the tea leaf that mixes and reacts there with the remainder tea juices.
 

Note that this is really a different account than the other two I've referenced, that air exposure causes a reaction and that plant stress response does instead, possibly related to protecting the plant, although I'm not seeing that spelled out.  In a way it doesn't really make any difference, except the fact of the matter is at stake, and it may change how leaf harvesting and appearance relates.  I'll try to tie a few ideas together about all that.

The research paper picture seemed to indicate the plant was undergoing a stress response, not that individual leaves changed composition related to air exposure, or at least that's how I interpreted the color change in all the leaves shown.  If this is the case then leaves wouldn't need to show bite impact for all of the tea leaves to be affected, but if the other effect is responsible (air contact, or direct reaction relating to a leaf being eaten, really two different things) then any tea made up of mostly whole leaves wouldn't be affected in the same way.

Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so in that sense it doesn't matter, the tea is really good or it isn't.  It is one of those cool tea stories, though, with a bit of science behind it (if a vague bit), and this particular tea was really nice.