Comparing compressed white teas, shou mei, gong mei, and one freestyle

I've mentioned drifting into compressed white teas recently, and I think this last purchase and review are going to be where it all levels off for awhile.  I left behind a gong mei version a couple months back, at the Teeta Talk shop--not far from Central Plaza Rama 9, for people in Bangkok.  I kept wondering about that tea, and since I happened past that shop not too long ago I bought it too.  I don't know much about that specific version, or the type, except that it's described as a higher grade (quality level) than shou mei, with bai mu dan above that.  Bai hao yin zhen (silver needle) is sort of a different thing, made from only buds, while the others are leaf and bud material white teas.

This is going to go long.  I'll add a section covering some background issues first so I won't get far with research or tea descriptions, and hopefully the taste-by-taste part can be a little thinner this time.  I tend to focus on flavor versus other aspects when things get complicated, likely how this will work out.  Passing on a general idea will do; no need to describe the last aspect of every version.  I've tasted all these teas, so that should make it simpler on my end.  Onto a brief description of what these even are, then some background first, then tasting notes after.

Tenfu gong mei cake (online vendor reference here):  it's interesting looking for an example online and finding one for under $5 (but then that's vending related to Taobao, if that means anything, the Chinese version of Ebay).  I was never under the impression that this was rare, exceptional quality tea but the last search I did put online sources in the $15 range (related to a Western vendor I'm not turning back up), and I've just bought this for a bit under $20.  None of that affects how the tea comes across, really.  I've wondered If there is any chance a modest tea version like this could be fake but it almost wouldn't matter, unless it wasn't as good as the original, which is how that is supposed to typically go.


The tea is stamped as a 2015 product (the one on that site 2014).  I won't say much more about what it is, or should be, besides citing a Teapedia entry related to the category:


Gong Mei is a white tea made of the Da Bai subvarietal of Camellia sinensis. It is grown mainly in the provinces of Fujian and Guangxi in China. Because this tea is harvested later than Bai Mu Dan it's liquor is slightly darker in color and stronger in taste. The infusion is golden yellow and thus darker than other white teas. Gong Mei is sometimes also referred as Shou Mei although the latter is considered as fourth grade quality while Gong Mei is a third quality grade tea.

Shou mei (younger version):  I reviewed this tea here, as a Liu Miao brand shou mei cake, also from that Teeta Talk shop.  It's a 2012 tea, for what that's worth, so with a few years of age on it.  These teas are all going to look a bit similar, the cakes, multi-colored, mixed lighter and darker browns, like fallen autumn leaves, images a bit fuzzy from not putting the effort into photography, etc.  I add a bit later guessing the likely best way to break them up versus how I'm doing it.

Glancing back at that review post I wrote a good bit about storage conditions there, about what relative humidity really means, about the carrying capacity of level of humidity in air at different temperatures (the absolute versus relative difference), if that's of interest.

Shou mei (older version):  this is where descriptions are going to get even thinner; this is some random shou mei cake I picked up at that one Bangkok Chinatown shop, Sen Xing Fa, mentioned in this post.  I've tried this tea already but didn't review it separately.  It was ok, but I didn't like it quite as much as the shou mei version I just mentioned, so I never got around to that.


I could tirelessly image-search to find more about it, or use different methods to transliterate the characters, or if all else fails ask the shop what it is, but it doesn't matter.  It's shou mei, and the transliterated Chinese name would just be random sounds to me.  It says it's from Fuding; that's a good start.  I suppose it probably really is a 2008 produced tea but I wouldn't be that astounded if it wasn't; I did just write a review of an obviously fake pu'er from that same shop.  How do I know that tea was fake?  It was sold as an LBZ for around $20; I bought it as a fake, something I've not tried to do before.

candy bar style compressed white:  I'm not sure what this is. I bought it at the Sen Xing Fa Bangkok Chinatown shop too.  It was supposed to be a few years old (5?) but I don't remember much for specifics.  It just looked different and interesting.  From trying it before I know it's about as solid as any highly compressed sheng tuocha so it takes awhile to get the infusion process going.  I'm wondering if that doesn't limit changes due to aging, but then I guess I only need to wait a half dozen years and I'll know that.  Based on already trying this it's not great tea but it's ok.  If it was the only compressed white tea someone had ever tried it may seem better for the novelty but I liked the other versions better, and it's hard not to compare like that.

Background issues

Someone just asked me:  what is white tea?  Starting that far back for this post could turn this into a long read but I will touch on that, then skip across a few other related points.  "White" is a main tea type, along with green tea, black, oolong, and hei cha / dark tea.  Sometimes yellow tea is added but it's not so common now.  I've only tasted one of those, and since it was a South Korean yellow tea there's a decent chance they interpreted the processing and style a little.

tea processing chart (from the World of Tea site)

The general idea behind white teas is that they're processed less.  Green teas are heated in some way to stop an oxidation process early on ("fixed," fried or steamed, although I guess any heating would do), so they stay green.  Of course it's not so much about the color, but about specific compounds not changing, affecting taste and perhaps health benefits.  That last part is a real potential issue but I don't tend to focus on it, since research doesn't seem to clarify the related facts of the matter at all.


Black teas are roughed up a bit (rolled, to allow for air contact with the internal compounds), then allowed to oxidize, to brown, a combination of enzymes with air, specifically with oxygen.  Whites are sort of just left to dry compared to those, although nothing is ever quite that simple.  These two tea processing charts only mention one potential variation in processing but some reading up would surely fill in plenty of additional complexity, which I won't read up on or mention here.  Onto some other background issues.

another processing chart (from Wikimedia, from a Wikipedia page)

White tea as compressed tea:  why compress this in the first place?  Who knows.  Why not compress it?  Compressing teas was used for helping store and transport tea at one point, very early in the history of tea, per my understanding, and some related practices stuck around.  It wouldn't be exactly the same if it hadn't been compressed but it might not be that far off this either, relatively speaking, or at least that's my expectation.  In contrast to that I just tried some sheng pu'er maocha a vendor shared, essentially just a loose version of the finished tea, and that vendor said that re-steaming the tea and compressing it into a cake (bing, if you prefer) does tend to change it's character to some extent.

Aging tea:  these are different ages; there is a bit of correlation with compressing a tea and aging it.  The standard story with hei cha and pu'er--pu'er is hei cha, unless you think it's somehow outside that category, then it's not hei cha, do what you will with concept use--is that later in the history it was discovered aging helped the tea mature, to ferment and improve.  White tea sort of does the same, or so the story goes.  It's complicated to consider if compressing a tea helps it age in any way, since that would just reduce air contact, so I just won't address that.  I researched storage and fermentation issues for a post and mentioned a fascinating article on what the latter really is (my take:  the influence of bacteria and fungus living out their life cycle).

Rinsing tea:  these ideas sort of all connect, as I'm presenting them.  In that article on aging tea the one research paper says that a rinse helps remove traces of toxins created in those biological processes.  No need to panic, the tea is safe, even if you drink a ridiculous amount of it.  But a rinse makes it a little safer, so why not.  Should you rinse aged whites?  There is no clear consensus on that but why not.  Unless you don't want to.  How bad could traces of toxins be?

Straining tea:  you can; the dust and flecks that get in the cup don't add much to the experience.  Or you can not; they don't take much away from it either.  Being into gear and presentation "tea people" almost always would strain it.  The sloppiness suits me so even though I have a few devices around that would work well for that I may or may not; it goes with how I feel at the time, so almost always not.  But then I'm no role model.  If you ate the tea nothing bad would happen, it just wouldn't make any sense to eat it.

the gong mei cake, missing some

How to break off tea:  it's best to help compressed teas flake off in sheets, more or less, to not shatter the leaves by pulling off a cubic chunk.  A pu'er knife can help with that but it's not so necessary for loosely compressed versions.  I have one, somewhere, but I haven't seen it for awhile.  A letter opener would also work, or I guess a butterknife would do in a pinch (although it would be best if it was shaped exactly like a pu'er knife, which wouldn't tend to come up by chance).

a letter opener, not a pu'er knife

I found a letter opener next to this comparison tasting set-up during cleaning up so I took a picture of it.  But then all that matters more for pu'er, when you might want to limit the astringency and retain a really clean profile by not ripping up the leaves.  I've been giving away parts of these white tea cakes and tend to do the opposite, to tear off sections, because that retains the original look of a compressed tea for someone else to see.  I'm giving away tea for people to experience something new, and getting a sense of the original shape is part of that, not so much for people that know the teas already to experience.

Aging effect on tea:  we'll see, I guess.  Without trying the teas at time of origin I would have no idea.  I've heard the teas get fruitier and sweeter after around a decade but who knows.  That might well depend on the tea, and storage conditions, and maybe even more so on interpretation, on someone carrying a bias towards tasting something in particular into the experience.  Comparing these teas and guessing about that factor as an input isn't likely to work.

Tasting four teas at once, related to quantity:  I ran across a problem with this tasting silver needle style white teas not long ago (in this post), related to taking in too much caffeine.  Better to go with the small gaiwans, if that's an option, but I only have three of that size.  This time I plan to not cycle through 10 infusions each, too, to sweep these aside into a combined cold brewing steep to drink some other time after the effects start to kick in.  

Brewing process / parameters:  I tend to guess all that out.  You don't need to flash infuse white teas, relatively speaking, easing up on times to limit astringency or bitterness as in young sheng.  Some people brew white teas for a long time to get the infusion strength (the flavor part) up to where it would be for most other types, or they also tend to be ok prepared lightly, brewed fast.  I'll probably just use 30 seconds to one minute infusions for these, varying it a little to see how that changes things, and probably won't really use a progressive increasing-time cycle.  The one candy-bar shape tea is pressed like some sort of floor-board material so I'll need to give it more time to open up, but the rest are accessible.

White tea gives you some flexibility; you can brew it however you want, because they tend to work well at different strengths.  A lot of oolongs are like that, or soft black teas, but some oolong types are nothing like that.  With Dan Cong and Wuyi Yancha you generally tend to go lighter and aim for an optimum, or really any tea could have a specific optimum per personal preference, it might just vary by person what that is.  I like white teas brewed on the lighter side, I guess, but not as lightly as some other types.

Tasting notes

Really these are from after an initial rinse, which I also tried, but didn't write about.  It was kind of like running a warm-up lap.  After all that about the toxins I still did drink those, although in retrospect given the caffeine issue I probably shouldn't have.

gong mei tea, in gaiwan (they tend to look about the same)

Gong mei:  this tea is nice!  It's soft and full, a bit sweet, with a good bit going on, for the general type being so subtle.  I want to say it's fruity but it'll be hard identifying a fruit.  Maybe initially it reminds me a little of dried tamarind, just to cite a range.  There is a little earthiness, kind of the standard context, but it's hard to pin down, not woody, exactly, maybe how aged parchment paper would taste, but still clean in effect.

gong mei, brewing (first time I tried it)

Shou mei (younger):  also nice, not quite as bright and clean.  It's harder to appreciate that difference without tasting the two side by side like this.  It's also fruity but towards spice from a more conventional expression of that, towards the root in root beer.  It's just a little woodier.

shou mei cake, older / Sen Xing Fa Chinatown shop version

Shou mei (older):  this has a little funkiness to it.  I don't mean that it's off, but it is different.  It's towards a light, sweet expression of dried wild mushroom, maybe.  Or maybe closer to a tropical dark wood tree bark, and somehow that sounds better.  It's not bad, but unusual.  The cleanness slips down a little across this whole tasting sequence, really kind of how I arranged these, from an expected most favorite to least favorite.

Candy bar style:  different, again.  One aspect reminds me a little of coffee--that's different.  I let it brew twice as long because it doesn't open very fast, so in a sense that certainly threw off a balanced comparison, which was actually impossible with the teas not unfolding at similar rates.  It's probably the least clean and bright / most murky in effect, but still decent tea.  It's not bad, with that coffee aspect drifting a little towards cocoa, just well off what these other teas are doing.

For the third infusion I'll go around a minute soak again, thick enough to not be grasping at subtle aspects.  I'm feeling these teas already; maybe two more infusions should be plenty, and that cold-brew experiment as a second part really could be medicinal strength if I'm not careful.  There is a lethal dose amount of caffeine but long before you get to that it can seem like too much.  About 5 grams might kill you, perhaps 100 cups of tea, something to keep in mind.  And it doesn't pass out of your system very fast, or at least mine, it can make for an all-day ride.

Second infusion

Gong mei:  the tea didn't pick up intensity or transition much.  It's nice how clean the flavors are, how it all comes across and balances, but it's not exceptional in terms of any one aspect or a set.  Maybe it's just my imagination, and the power of suggestion from just mentioning a related aspect, but I seem to pick up an underlying trace of wintergreen that fills in with the mild fruit and subdued spice / earthiness that gives it a bit more complexity.  If so it is quite subtle.  If someone didn't like subtle teas, which would be quite a reasonable thing, then they'd not like this one.  I can be put off by silver needle styles that don't seem to have much going on but the complexity of the context layer of these works for me.  It's not that there's not much to experience, it's just not in your face, instead complex in a subtle way.

dried persimmon; another reason to swing by a Chinatown

Shou mei (younger):  all of that general commentary can apply to this tea too.  It's a little thinner in effect though; there's slightly less to experience.  It's still quite clean in effect, and to me that makes earthiness work much better.  Add a bit of murkiness / peat / mushroom / oxidized aluminum (kind of joking related to that last one, but not completely) and this wouldn't work.  Distilling this to a flavors list is tough.  The earthiness is a little like a tree bark, the fruit a little like a dried persimmon.  But those are subtle, and I'm not capturing the complexity saying it tastes like those two things.

Shou mei (older):  this did transition; way different.  Now that is tree bark, just a bit towards aged leather from that.  It has a touch of fruitiness but it's hard to sort out under that earthiness.  It might be more like an aromatic bark spice under an earthier, heavier tree bark.  The woodiness is towards cedar, or maybe redwood.  It's not bad but it wouldn't be for everyone.  The flavor is still a bit clean but not like the first two.  This could almost pass for something other than tea but I'm sure it's tea.  Aging might have changed it; this is supposed to be nine years old.

candy bar style version, it never does flake apart as well

Candy bar:  I went with the same infusion time for this one this time (around a minute) so it lightened.  It's closest to the third, of the other three, but still tasting a bit like coffee.  Kind of strange, really, who would buy a tea intending it to taste like coffee, since there is another beverage option for that.  It has a slight toastiness to it too, and a touch of cocoa, so at least it's interesting.  It's hard to imagine someone preferring this tea version from the rest in this set but I guess that is possible.  

If shou was someone's favorite tea type this would be the one that rings a bell.  It's still ten times more subtle than any shou, so to be clear I'm talking about within a compressed white tea range here.  It has some sweetness but the last two gave up a little to the first two related to that.  That doesn't match the idea that teas would sweeten as they age, since the first tea in the set is the youngest (the gong mei is 3 years old), the third the oldest, and second and and fourth about the same (both probably around 5 years old now).

teapots at the Sen Xing Fa Bangkok Chinatown shop

Third infusion, last one

The caffeine is going to add up, and I've been tasting teas for awhile and have things to do, so this will have to be it.

Gong mei:  the tea is thinning a little; it seems early for that.  The general effect is still nice and it just seems to be tapering off slightly, not transitioning.  I'm sure it can brew a few more by stretching the time but it doesn't seem like it's going anywhere for changes.

Shou mei (younger):  the same for this one.  Maybe compressed white teas aren't as interesting for expressing transitions as some other types, in general.  A lot of the effect is subdued too, a base of rich, complex flavors, but not something that stands out as a list as for some other types.  I guess I'm saying they're not perfect for review description, but the experience is still interesting, if someone is on that page.

Shou mei (older):  this tea is changing a little, moving more to root spice off heavy wood and tree bark.  Maybe those few extra years did lend it more complexity, at the cost of coming across a bit extra earthy in the first few rounds.  I'm not sure though; I'd have needed to try it when young to know.

a break from pictures of compressed white tea

Candy bar:  this one is just thinning.  That coffee / earthiness / cocoa effect doesn't work as well thinner, but it would be possible to bump that with longer infusion time.  It's not just about intensity but also depth of the experience, the range, and it wouldn't work to get that richness back, even if it was stronger.  This just isn't as good a tea as the first two, and the third probably depends on preference related to it being the best or the worst.  It was the most complex but in an earthier range.

Overall take

I like these teas, the first two the best.  It's nice that I like the gong mei since I paid twice what I did for the younger shou mei for it, or rather the same amount for half as much tea (just under $20 for 200 and 100 grams; still a decent price for both).  I think my intuition did well in selecting that first shou mei; it probably was one of the more interesting teas and better values in that Teeta Talk shop (as if I'd really know that).

I think if someone tried white teas for the first time all of these might seem a little thin, too subtle.  It takes some adjustment to appreciate the range.  It's not the same kind of adjustment it takes to crave a sheng that tastes like tasting an aspirin, quite the opposite, but to me a light oolong or soft black tea makes for a more reasonable starting point.  Even shou can work as a starting point if the earthiness--tasting like a crude oil soaked chunk of peat--matches personal preferences in some odd way; there is no finer level of appreciation to dial in related to liking or not liking those.

These teas could all ramp up intensity just by giving them a longer soak, and in a limited sense they would push more towards the range of a black tea for doing that.  That sense would be quite limited; the astringency would never be the same, and the taste range couldn't shift.  Brewed stronger this set of aspects is still going to seem subtle in a different way, just stronger, and the effect of feel might thicken a little.

I like all of them, and it will be interesting to see if they change with more age.  I have enough I don't mind sharing them too; I've passed on some to two local monks to try out not so long ago.  Some feedback from one:  he thought it was interesting but likes pu'er better.  Another I didn't talk to about it but he's more into oolong anyway.

she probably has no future as a monk, really

Comparing silver needle teas from Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam

Doi Inthanon left, Kinnari middle, Hatvala right

I'm comparison reviewing three white teas, all presented as silver needle style teas, from Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam (from Doi Inthanon, Kinnari Tea, and Hatvala, respectively).  It's a bit much.  I've been on a comparison tasting cycle lately and may as well stick with that, since it helps place teas better than tasting them alone would.  I'll be dropping it before long, maybe for a couple more types then I will.

There is a cost to that, a drawback and trade-off to doing comparisons, which came up in a comment on the last review, comparing Darjeelings.  If the tea plant type or style is different then the review could be more about noticing the style difference than the relative quality level of the teas, and subjective preference description can work out the same, more about type than how good either tea is.

I try to make those factors explicit in the reviews, to clarify when I think I prefer a type-related aspect, or when a set of aspects is uniquely positive in a tea within a range of one style, but there's a limit to that.  With a God's-eye view of tea types, related typical aspects, and characteristics tied to quality levels that would work better, especially if every tea stuck to a clearly defined type, but obviously all of that don't match reality.  Teas tend to vary.  In a sense it really doesn't even matter how close these three are to an original Chinese white tea version anyway; I'm experiencing them in relation to how much I like the aspects, not judging them related to trueness-to-type.

This would be a good place to introduce the teas, perhaps with a few more words at the end about the standard type and differences:


Doi Inthanon (Thailand, outside Chiang Mai):  Silver Needle #12 Bai hau cha - tra trang

Kinnari Tea (Laos) Moon Buds

Hatvala Vietnamese Floating Cloud White tea Yen Bai


This review is mostly about how I experienced the teas, not that background about any standard.  No vendor really claimed these closely matched a traditional Chinese version, and I'm not the best person to judge how well they did.

Review

Doi Inthanon lower left, Kinnari top, Hatvala lower right

The three teas look and smell quite different.  The Thai tea is much darker, with much smaller buds ("needles"), and a rich, complex scent.  The Laos version is the lightest, with a sweet, light, fruity scent, and the Vietnamese version is just a little darker than that and sweet but with a bit more of a savory edge to it.

The taste of the "silver needle" tea from Thailand, the Doi Inthanon Silver Needle, is a bit intense, perhaps closer to a black tea range than white based only first impression.  Of course white teas can oxidize to different levels based on processing differences, and this seems to have more than most.  That's not a good or bad thing, taken alone, just a variation; that just depends on how well it works.  I'll need to use short infusion time for this tea to limit the intensity, the opposite of what I expect from the other two.  It doesn't look like a silver needle tea at all, with much smaller buds than is typical, and quite a bit darker.  The dry scent is sweet and rich, heavy towards molasses and other earth tones, so I think it has lots of potential, it just won't match the typical profile, and it won't be subtle.

Tasting it the first round will involve tasting past an astringency balance that's a little high, but it's still positive.  It has an interesting citrus high note that stands out, and a great mineral intensive structure at the base, with lots of earthy range below that, the molasses, in general, maybe just not exactly that.  There's really a lot going on; it's partly floral, familiar from their other teas, and that molasses scent seems related to a woodiness in this particular infusion.  It all could be a little much for a white tea drinker looking for some subdued floral tones and maybe a little melon or whatever else mixed in; this is a little intense.  It'll review better brewed very lightly though, so I'll get back to all that.  That astringency even reminds me of pine needle tea, nothing like the bite in many other kinds of teas, a bit unique, coupled with a sharp, piney flavor element that's not negative, just quite different.

The Kinnari Tea Laos tea (Moon Buds) is subtle, as I would have expected.  It's sweet and complex though, with lots going on too, just in a completely different range.  Part seems like freshly dried hay, maybe a little floral, and that sweetness may well extend into fruity character, not so far from melon, maybe that.  I think there is some bright citrus going on too.  That citrus is so light and bright it's hard to pick a match for it, along the lines of tangerine peel spray, that citrus oil that comes out when you bend a peel.  I think it'll be easier to review on the next infusion for the opposite reason; it will take another round to really get going.  That contrast is funny.  The lightness and brightness is nice; it's not just light in the sense of being subtle, there is a bright character to it that's not easy to describe.  Someone might say "freshness" instead but to me brightness captures it.  It's a lot sweeter, or will be, once I get both of these teas brewing in a range that works for them.

The Vietnamese version (Hatvala Floating Cloud) is warmer, richer, a bit fuller.  Again this infusion is a little light for this tea; it will be easier to pin down going a little longer.  That first infusion was a bit over 30 seconds, probably still less than 45 though, long for this Gongfu proportion, but kind of normal for these types of teas that need longer to brew.  Or really the Doi Inthanon tea didn't need as long as it steeped; we live and learn.

It might not be easy to pin down the richness of this Floating Cloud even with optimized brewing; the main element seems closest to pine nut.  To me that's a really good thing, but I guess maybe not everyone loves pine nuts.  For people that haven't had them they're rich and a bit sweet, with a distinctive flavor, not so far from macadamia nut but not exactly the same.  They're a touch less creamy, but still creamy, and don't give up anything in being distinctive.  The warm aspect in this tea isn't so far from the fresh dried hay aspect in the Laos tea, they just head out in completely different directions from there, one to lighter, brighter and sweeter and the other to richer tones.  This is cool so far, and these teas have hardly gotten started.

the initial set-up

Second infusion

I went with a short infusion for the Doi Inthanon tea, around 15-20 seconds.  I think I'll go with the nicknames for these, instead of location, but this was only called silver needle (or bai hau cha - tra trang).  It's light but it works.  The sweetness and brightness stand out more, and that astringency steps back to a nice supporting level.  To be more specific it's not exactly astringency; it seems to both be a "feel" dimension and a related flavor element that seems connected with that, again close enough to pine needles.  For pine needle tisane lovers out there it's not light and sweet like white pine or hemlock (which is not the kind of plant that killed Socrates, it just shares the name), more like a Norway Spruce, a bit heavier and more intense.  It's like a light version of pine pitch.

The tea being sweet too makes that work.  The floral is still present but lighter, and something along the line of wood tones fills in some.  It might all work better than "wood, pine, and flowers" sounds, although really there would be a lot of range within those three description scopes.  There's a bit of a sage-like spice aspect filling in between that woodiness and pine that's nice.  It would too good a tea for blending with, and crazy to use it as such, but it would work well for part of the flavors base in a soup.

The Moon Buds (Kinnari tea) is still a little subtle, brewed for the same time again, in the range of 45 seconds.  I just can't measure infusion times; I'm philosophically opposed to it, but my internal clock works well enough.  There's something catchy about this tea, which I'm not going to do justice to by putting names on aspects.  It's bright and sweet, but not in a way that's familiar.  Maybe I like it more since I've been into first flush Darjeelings that emphasize brightness and sweetness, even though the character is a little different.

I should brew it for a full minute to let it go stronger, or a bit over that.  The package says 95C, 3 to 5 minutes (or was that a 7?), and of course part of going shorter on time is that I'm using a relatively high proportion of tea to water.  After 3 minutes at this proportion it would be as strong as a mild black tea in effect, but really some people would still like that.  I don't think it has enough astringency in it for that part to become a problem, but the flavor balance shift would let earthier elements play more a role and that light sweetness would drop back into a continuum of other aspects more.  I'll try it though; I can't add more to description here based on this tasting.  It's vaguely floral and citrusy, perhaps with a touch of melon, but there's more to it than that.  As for which melon, that part gets complicated.  I hate almost all melons but I like this flavor aspect, but maybe it's as well I don't expand on how that plays out.  Maybe it's not melon anyway, something fruity but slightly different, off towards apricot or plum instead.

The Floating Cloud (Hatvala tea) is still sweet but more in a richer, warmer range.  I will go a little longer on these two and describe them further for a third round.  The Doi Inthanon tea could probably handle a 30 second steep but not longer.

Third infusion

Screw the philosophy, I timed that last infusion, 30 seconds for the Doi Inthanon tea, 2 minutes for the other two.  To explain that part more, to me timing infusions puts more process between the tea drinker and the experience, as much as it standardizes and optimizes brewing.  I get it, about more people probably going the opposite way on that, but I like the minor variations in preparation, they are as informative as they are pleasant to experience.  And reviewing teas already adds a thick layer of analysis and interpretation to trying teas that I find disruptive.  It's interesting to do it, on a different level, but take away this blog communication step and I wouldn't really care to split flavors and other aspects into concept-lists like this.  Back to that though.


The Doi Inthanon tea is right at a level of intensity that works.  From here it's more about the balance of aspects working out for someone or not than dialing that in more.  It's woody, and floral, a sweet type of floral, with a bit of feel and taste matching pine needle, so more of the same.  The level of sweetness makes that work, but it's not as sweet as the other two teas.  The Kinnari tea is the sweetest, and brightest, but also the most subtle.  It's tempting to say the Hatvala tea is in the middle somehow but I'm not sure experiential space maps out like that.

The Moon Buds is picking up some warmth and depth brewed stronger, not giving up much brightness, but that aspect range is diminished for sharing some space.  The depth it gains is more in the range of sunflower seed, soft and sweet, a little rich, but still light.  I think it's a floral tone I'm not able to capture in description, as much as fruit, maybe spanning both.  It would be possible to try and focus on that dried hay / sunflower seed aspect and try to pin that down further too, and possible to interpret that in different ways.  It's hard to imagine that being read as mineral or spice tone but it's not inconceivable, really, or maybe I'm just missing something else.  The tea is a little subtle still but complex.

I haven't been saying much about feel or aftertaste (anything about those, really), but for me comparison tasting goes like that.  It works out to naturally truncate description for having so much space to cover.  A 2000+ word tea review is a bit much to write or read, beyond that extra being lots to focus on when tasting.  This tea isn't thin, and the taste does linger after swallowing it, but doubling the infusion time again would surely thicken the feel and add even more aftertaste.  It's a preference issue.  I always disliked silver needle style teas for being too subtle and not having enough dimensions but at the same time I prefer them on the light side, a bit of a contradiction.  To me--not a given, we're on what I think versus any standard understanding on this, best taken with a grain of salt--it shifts the aspect range going longer by pulling out richer, earthier flavors, at the expense of the lighter aspects, which don't drop out, but they do get crowded a little.

The Floating Cloud is similar to before, brewed stronger:  rich, sweet, a little subtle but with lots going on, with both brightness and earthiness.  The sweetness is in the range of both floral tone and honey, maybe with a trace of citrus, and that pine-nut aspect moves out to cover more range, but it gets harder to pin down.  I think I wouldn't have liked this tea as much a year or two ago for not really embracing the experience of related subtle teas, but I'm better with that now.  I've been drinking a good bit of compressed white teas lately, two shou mei cakes and some random pressed white version, and those are quite different--sort of--but the general range is not so far off.  This tea is definitely brighter than those, and more complex, with more going on at that higher end, the floral aspect, but not as bright and sweet as the Laos tea.  I think it's a bit richer and fuller than the Laos tea, maybe in feel too, but I really mean in flavors aspect range.

Doi Inthanon lower left, Kinnari top, Hatvala lower right

Fourth infusion

To push the teas a bit I went 40 seconds for the Doi Inthanon tea and three minutes for the other two (timed infusions; but I'm not going to switch over to embracing optimized brewing all the time).  They would drink just fine brewed lightly but this should help show what's going on with them better.  A full five minute steep might work to identify more about the structure, or really delve into all they have going on, but it wouldn't match my own brewing preference, at least not at this tea and water proportion.

The Doi Inthanon tea is fading just a little, although it's surely far from finished, it would probably go any number of rounds past this brewed longer.  The pine stands out a little for the rest dropping back a little, and the lighter feel works well, otherwise it's about the same.

The Moon Buds tea doesn't transition much, but it does pick up more earthiness, probably both from a natural aspects progression and from going longer on infusion time.  That one "catchy" aspect does remind me a little of that AV2 Darjeeling character, the smoothness and roundness coupled with sweetness, brightness, and melon / light citrus character (or some other fruit I'm not "getting").  Or maybe I've just described a set of aspects instead, even if to me they tie together somehow.  All of those things almost come to a central presentation point in one distinct but hard to describe bright flavor element.  At the end I can say how the Kinnari tea owner describes it as a list; she's pretty good with such things.

The Floating Cloud moves into an interesting space, transitioning the most of the three, towards a sun-dried tomato sweetness, a sweet and savory tone.  That was actually present in the initial dry tea scent but I wasn't noticing it so much in the other infusions.  I wouldn't be surprised if it would be possible to pull out a completely different type of experience from this tea by going long with infusion time initially, and maximize the savory tone that way.  The Kinnari tea would pick up more earthiness range in such an approach too, whichever way that sunflower seed element would present itself brewed stronger, but the Doi Inthanon tea wouldn't be as drinkable brewed any stronger.  This might be a good place to close this, to move onto some final thoughts based on those vendor's input.

Additional

This will only make for a token aside about traditional style, not from the most authoritative reference on the internet, but the related Baiho Yinzhen article in Wikipedia (the Chinese name for the general type) points out something worth noting:


Two regions, Zhenghe and Fuding, spanning the north to north-eastern parts of the Fujian province are the major and original producers of this tea, although neighboring counties have also been producing.[3] The two major cultivars employed by these regions are Fuding Da Bai and Zhenghe Da Bai, named after their origins. These differences are important to distinguish the two major styles of Silver Needles — the Zhenghe style and the Fuding style. The former is usually a lot darker, with significantly longer piled-up time for oxidation, yielding a tea with fuller body than the latter style, which is generally lighter with shorter oxidation.[5] 


It wouldn't have mattered to me how much these varied from traditional styles, and I'm still not really pointing towards a connection in noting that, although a guess about plant types does follow.

Related to vendor descriptions, there is no vendor description of the Hatvala version on their site, but one does appear here (edited):


...from Suoi Giang in Yen Bai province.  This is a hand crafted tea that undergoes an extended sun withering followed by gentle stirring and drying... Made from leaf buds only harvested from wild tea trees that grow in the ancient bio-diverse forests at altitudes above 1400 metres... Floating Cloud is both elegant and complex and produces a delightfully sweet tea with notes of honeysuckle, sugar cane, walnuts and pine forest. 


None of the aspect descriptions match completely directly but the general description really does (eg. swapping out walnuts for pine nuts, interpreting sugar cane as honey).  I think the tea is quite good; the general impression matches too.

Moon Buds description (not as clear due to a branch in branding)

I didn't see any description of the Doi Inthanon tea, but this graphic lists some background on the Moon Buds version (listed as White Wings; it's possible different years' versions picked up different names, or it could just be a split in branding).  Again it sort of matches what I've described, just not directly.  Brewing it light I'd pick up less texture, although "buttery" is surely intended as a flavor here.  The mineral side would stand out more brewed even stronger too (I love "pebble" as a description though; I never can really sort out different rocks as aspects).  Citrus I'd mentioned, and the fruit I never did pin down, describing it as melon perhaps towards plum or apricot.  Incense:  maybe!  It really did have a lot going on.


It's probably as well to not stretch this out but I think all three are grown at significant elevation, with both the Kinnari Tea and Hatvala tea from older natural growth environments.  Not only would the Doi Inthanon tea be farm-produced (a typical row-planted, single, selected plant type) it's probably not similar in type to the other two.  I'd be speculating to say they are both from Assamica type plants but I think they are.  More "native" versions in the North of Vietnam and Laos are, per my understanding (only native in the sense of being introduced a long time ago, most likely).  That would explain the buds size differences, smaller for the Thai version, relatively similar in appearance for the other two, just a bit different in initial color.  So it's back to the idea of comparing apples and oranges I started on initially, related to the Doi Inthanon version, but then the review was clear on that in descriptions too.

All three were nice anyway, with a lot of complexity and interesting character from all of them, I just preferred the Laos and Vietnamese teas' styles more.  There was a time when the overall subtlety of those wouldn't have matched what I like in teas so well but now I'm more on that page, maybe not in terms of overall type favorites, but related to what I can really appreciate.  Those two teas were fantastic, so similar but so different, in different senses.  The Thai tea is still nice, well worth checking out, and positive enough that someone with a different style preference still might like it more, if having a bit more edge to the tea somehow seemed better.  As I mentioned in that last post related to Darjeeling types I tend to prefer oolongs and soft, complex black teas (Dian Hong and such), but it makes perfect sense for someone to like a bit more astringency than I do to balance other aspects.


One last aside:  I've been stocking up on gaiwans lately, so I now have three each of smaller and larger size versions for reviews.  I went with the larger ones for this tasting and it was a mistake; it took me all day to come down from the buzz of drinking around 18 cups of white tea.

Visiting Tea Village in Pattaya, Thailand, and about a Bai Mu Dan

Last week I visited the Tea Village shop in Pattaya, Thailand, the closest beach resort area to Bangkok, where I live.  Pattaya is famous for adult themed nightlife but we go there mostly for our kids to play in a hotel pool.  I had a nice visit with the owners, who had added a nice tea tasting area to a standard tea shop environment, a bit small but very well designed and comfortable, a great place to drink tea and chat.

a Pattaya show-girl, one of the main attractions there

I mention their Thai version of Bai Hao / Oriental Beauty most often in posts, a really nice tea.  This time I picked up some of a Bai Mu Dan / Peony, a Chinese white tea I missed out on the last time I ordered tea from them since I gave away what I bought earlier this year, to a monk and to a friend that visited.  I've had other versions before, and tried theirs, so I was really looking forward to drinking it again.

Thailand's most interesting tea drinker (nah, just kidding)

I suppose there's lots more I could say about the shop, their selection, tea-ware options there (which I didn't get around to reviewing much for talking too much), but I'll just mention that it's really worth a stop if you visit Pattaya, and they do sell online.


Those two teas I mentioned are in the range of mid-range quality tea pricing, and good value for that given what they are.  Some of the more modest Thai teas they sell are quite inexpensive, a good value for a different reason, and they carry different tisanes (herbs and floral teas), and blends, good for catering to a broad range of tastes.  Some other Thai tea vendors are set up more for sourcing the highest levels of specialty teas but demand is so limited that it also sort of doesn't come up much.

Review of the Bai Mu Dan / Peony style white tea

The general profile is familiar from drinking a Ceylon version of a Peony / Bai Mu Dan lately.  It's subtle, rich, and full, but light in terms of how flavors stand out, altogether a nice balance.  Flavors that do emerge are light hay, along the line of sunflower seed, and some light floral, like the less sweet and aromatic aspects of chrysanthemum range.  Or maybe chamomile is closest, but with a little more going on.



The rest, the general effect, is hard to describe.  It's smooth, full in feel, clean, and subtle, but complex (in a limited sense).  Based on the dry and brewed tea color the oxidation level is relatively low, not far from a green tea, in the light oolong level, but there is no astringency at all, no grassiness, and it's not vegetal.

I could imagine people loving this style of tea or not liking it at all,  even more than for other types.  It's so light in terms of pronounced flavors that it's almost odd that I like it as much as I do, since I generally prefer more oxidized oolongs and black teas.


That Ceylon Bai Mu Dan version (which I had reviewed in this post, a tea originally made by Ebony Springs that I tried from Luka cafe) is interesting for sharing so much common ground and also for being so different.  The richness, complexity,  and subtlety are the same but the flavors profile is different.  It expresses very light mineral tones, extending into a light wood or hay range, where the teas' aspects start to overlap, and there is one more aspect I couldn't place as easily.

that Ceylon, like a Bai Mu Dan, a bit broken for being the end of the bag

Mineral is really a range, of course,  different for high mountain Taiwanese teas, Wuyi Yancha, and Vietnamese green teas.  I can't specify a rock for that Ceylon but it reminds me of the smell of red clay.  There is no mineral component in the Tea Village version, and neither tea is particularly sweet.  There is an effect of brightness and freshness that isn't easy to trace to other individual aspects, in both, maybe more a part of the Chinese version style.

After drinking through nearly 50 grams of the Ceylon Bai Mu Dan I've got it, related to that one element that was hard to place:  forest floor!  You just never get to say that, even though it turns up on those tea flavor wheels, and it sounds like a tea might eventually taste like that.

fall color in Western PA (photo credit)

I'll add a little more about the "forest floor" idea, although I'd expect that would be familiar ground for many.  Different forests smell different, and the same places smell differently at various times of the year.  It could be intended to mean the same thing as peat, or it could be used quite differently.  I'm from Western Pennsylvania, so I really do miss that fresh, fragrant, intense vegetal smell of the spring forest, or the warmer, woodier, more diverse summer smell, dryer and more earthy then, and especially that rich, warm, almost root or bark spice intensive smell of the fall leaves.  Colorado mountain forests were more subtle in general, with the smell of rocks playing a larger role, and with vegetal tones like sage coming across in places.

This tea smells (tastes) more like fall, like the heaps of oak and maple leaves that are beautiful to see before they fall.  As a child I would pile up those leaves and play in them, and stuff clothes with them to make something like a scarecrow; it's a familiar smell.  The forest smell includes the ground too, and that matches with the very subdued mineral tones.

How to summarize?  Bai Mu Dan style teas can be nice, and diverse.  Floral and sweeter elements could've potentially been more pronounced in both but the aspects and profiles they did have worked really well; no need for all lighter teas to be fruity or floral and sweet.

Comparing Indonesian and Thai Silver Needle White Teas

Finally on to tasting one of the more interesting teas I picked up in Indonesia, a silver needle white tea from Wonosari plantation, in Eastern Java.  Two other posts go into some more background on there and those teas, but the short version is that it's a government associated, Dutch influenced tea plantation.  At least true per what little I've read or heard; without their own reference material, or a website, or more direct communication from them that's not confirmed.

The other tea is a Thailand originated Lana Silver Needle tea from Monsoon teas, a tea shop in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with this sample provided by them.  Per usual the combined tasting format was to help identify subtle character differences better, which stand out better in comparison.

Monsoon Thai silver needle left, Wonosari Indonesian right

Review

The teas look quite different.  The Indonesian silver needle looks like I would expect, silver-white individual buds, while the Thai Lana silver needle tea is a light greenish color.  I've read critiques of white teas described as not being true white teas based on using different processing, with different outcomes, but that is not familiar enough for me to address it here, and I didn't research it further for this post.

The Wonosari Indonesian tea had an unusual smoke scent, with a pleasant rich sweetness beyond that.  The Thai tea smelled sweet as well, but with a vegetal scent beyond that, in between the light, subtle-earth scent of white tea and a profile more common to green tea.

Wonosari tea; nice and silver

The first taste of the Indonesian tea was essentially just smoke.  Actually the first few infusions were like that, overwhelmed by it.  After two or three I was able to try and taste past it, and the tea seemed to have a full, rich feel to it, and good sweetness, with the typical subtle earthy / light floral flavors of a white tea, towards chrysanthemom or chamomile, but less explicitly floral.


The smoke kind of worked, after the first infusions, when it had diminished, it just seemed a really odd idea to be drinking a smoked white tea.  As many infusions passed it faded out and more rich, sweet flavors came to the fore; a really nice white tea.  One of the distinctions between good white teas and better ones has seemed to be the feel of the tea, and this one is full and smooth.

packaging; a filler picture

So the comparison idea didn't work out so well, given that one aspect, smoke, colored the effect of that tea so much.


The Thai silver needle tea was nice, but different than I expected.  As with the scent some flavor elements resembled green tea.  The vegetal character didn't resemble grass, or spinach or peppers, none of that typical range, but it was close to green hay.  If that's not familiar, it is a pleasant, relatively neutral, soft vegetal element.  If you happen to walk through a field of growing hay give it a smell; and try pulling out the top green flower top from the bottom of the stalk, and taste the soft, rich part growing inside; quite tasty.


The tea itself had none of the astringency common to green tea, not even a start in the feel of the body.  It was even a bit thin, really, not a problem for me since I don't value white teas for the feel as much as that seems more crucial to some other types, presented differently in those.  It wouldn't have stood out so much but the Indonesian tea seemed much fuller in body in comparison, and a bit sweeter.

Monsoon left, Wonosari right

Both teas brewed lots of infusions, somewhat consistently, beyond the smoke element dropping out for the Wonosari tea.  The feel of the teas changed a good bit as I increased brewing times to compensate 8 or 9 infusions in, along with the effect and presentation of the flavor profile.  The Thai tea picked up a bit of astringency comparable to that in a black tea, just a much lighter version.  The Wonosari tea really didn't; it stayed quite smooth and went to a fuller feel rather than changing in that way.  All this reminds me of an interesting aside, which I'll add after this part.


As for final conclusions, it seemed without that smoke the Wonosari tea may well have been a really nice example of a silver needle tea.  It still worked well for me, and even the smoke was interesting, especially experiencing it dropping out.  It combined with the other elements in different ways as it faded, while the other aspects didn't change as much.  I could imagine other people taking that differently, more negatively.  It's odd to smoke a white tea, and it would seem likely that wasn't intentional.  Or maybe it was.

The Thai tea was nice.  Again a tea purist might have been put off by the deviation from normal silver needle character, in terms of flavor profile, and the thinner feel of the tea, but to me it was still quite nice, maybe even interesting for being different.

Aside about varying brewing time and tea strength:

In the past I've noted how white tea brewing suggestions tend to fall into two completely different sets (more on general brewing guidelines in this post), with one standard preparation method calling for relatively long brewing times (based on Western style brewing), of 4 to 5 minutes.  The other approach prepares the tea very lightly, more conventional for a gongfu approach, although really someone could brew tea Western-style very lightly and gongfu-style as strong tea, using longer times.

It's odd how the different proportion of tea to water comes into play, so that a white tea brewed as a strong version might infuse for 4 to 5 minutes for Western-style brewing, and still under a minute for gongfu style.  For a lighter version infusing Western-style for 2 minutes might do, and gongfu style only 20 seconds, or one could drink a very wispy version flash-infused, in contact with the water only as long as it takes to pour it in and then back out.

same teas, brewed stronger

It all depends on preference, doesn't it?  That's true, but it can be unsatisfying just leaving it at that.  I recently read a great related comment on a tea group thread that added lots of detail, what the difference in effect would be (not just that the tea would be lighter and stronger, I mean).  The discussion was in the The Great World Tea Group, kind of newer and smaller as Facebook tea groups go, but I guess typical of those.  To me they are either somewhat exclusively about pu'er or not; this one not (or some about Darjeeling only, to be fair).



Kirk O'Neil, the group owner, raised this question:


I don't know how people can drink any tea that's too light; it confuses me.  Sometimes I see gongfu brewed tea brewed lightly.  I like strong brewed teas except for most strong brewed young shou (ripe) puerh.  Is weak brewed tea being not as enjoyable as strong brewed tea a bad thing?  Is it a good thing I enjoy strong brewed tea?


To be honest I'd love to see more discussion of tea in a tea group anywhere, so I'm impressed that Kirk would share his own preference to initiate a discussion.  It's all too easy for the comments to drift towards "you are wrong," even in cases clearly related to preference, like this one.  I help moderate a different FB tea group, and I post different random things there, but even I don't usually address questions like that outside this blog content.

Christmas!  but nothing to do with tea

One response was more interesting and insightful than the others, by Thomas Smith, someone I have talked about tea a bit with online, and he's got a fairly developed take on things:


It is a matter of preference per focus. Lighter intensity and body allows a much wider range of flavor elements to be perceived, though they may be too light to be appreciable to some. Steeping longer will truncate flavor range to just a handful of easily identified characteristics, reduce number of total infusions that may be yielded, reduce spread of flavor deviations between infusions, hamper expression of sweetness and aromas, and promote potential astringency. The payoff is heavier impact of the relatively smaller set of flavors, increased viscosity, and greater consistency or reliability of cup character. 

Those who enjoy Assam, Yunnan, and Fujian red teas and many quick adopters of Shú Pǔ'ěr and similar accelerated-fermentation dark teas may gravitate to longer steep times both out of familiarity and from these teas not really offering much on the light approach compared to the texture payoff in protracted infusions.


Next level deeper analysis, right?  Does it match your experience?  I've noted in this blog that lighter tea brewing can actually allow for separating flavor elements better, so the main point I completely agree with.  For a white tea this variation in infusion time and strength seems even more pronounced, emphasizing completely different elements, not just shifting how they come across.

Wonosari plantation; outside Malang, East Java

Other factors also relate, including a learning curve for preference (or preference curve, if one would rather), related to appreciating different aspects of a tea.  Somehow it seems like preferring stronger tea first and gravitating towards lighter is natural, but of course it's not that simple either.

There is an underlying assumption that one would want to optimize brewing to suit their own preferences, but I don't necessarily end up there.  I experiment with brewing a lot just to see what it changes, sometimes even infusion to infusion.  That contradicts the appreciation of the "flavor deviations between infusions," as Thomas put it, at the core of what many tea drinkers regard as an essential part of the experience.


This would be a good place for a summary wrap-up, maybe something like "to each their own."  As I see it the beauty of the experience of tea is that it does keep going, new experiences, changing understanding, varying preferences, with change and diversity a big part of the appeal.  Of course, to each their own; others might figure out what they like and tend to stick with that.