Re-reviewing Jin Xuan Thai black tea from Tea Side

cool looking tea, with just as nice a dry smell

I've already reviewed this tea, a Thai Jin Xuan based black tea, sold by the Tea Side vendor.  The point here is to compare my own impression of it from now and when I tried an earlier sample that vendor sent, about nine months ago, in this post (the time just flies).  I liked the tea so much I ordered 200 grams of it, to have a nice daily drinking tea around.  That just took time; I tend to get side-tracked, as on that Indonesian teas tangent.


The trigger for finally buying a version was trying an aged 21 year old Thai oolong from Tea Side a few posts back, which I really loved, the kind of tea that might not be around to order in the future (with another Steep Stories review of the same tea here, with nicer story telling).  I'll have more to say about the teas, including a Thai hei cha I liked and bought a cake of (and already reviewed, the 0801 HTC 2006 sheng; would seem a bit repetitive to keep repeating posts about identical teas), and a sample of an hei cha from Myanmar that sounded interesting.

tea haul!  great teas, including one sample that sounds really interesting

I could see why I loved the tea from the smell; lots of floral character, sweetness, a richness that almost smells like a red wine component.  The brewed version was nice too, but it was a little different than I remembered it.  It is a soft, sweet version of a black tea, with those elements, floral aspects, maybe some cocoa, malt, and a bit of bread dough, a slight yeastiness.  It sounds like some sort of cobbler, doesn't it?  I didn't remember that last part as being as much of a factor.  I like the tea, and it doesn't really detract from it, but it seems possible I really loved that general effect a year or year and a half ago and I'm sort of moving on from there.


Why would I say that?  The Vietnamese oolong Red Buffalo was the same, in a lot of ways.  I loved the tea, the softness, full flavors, malt and cocoa aspects, and also fruit and spice components, but the bread dough / yeast aspect would really be a make-or-break for someone to love the tea or not.  I think I loved it more initially, then still liked it a lot when I bought a lot of it (a kilogram; some extra to give away), but I was less in love with it the second time.

I think this will be a perfect tea for giving away too, a type that would serve well as an introductory tea, although I still like it enough it will be hard to part with much of it.  All the same I did give away samples already, to three people at work, and they liked it, so that worked out.  I'll keep at least half to drink so I won't feel shorted.  It is perfect for a tea that you drink when you don't really want to challenge yourself to make or drink some incredible tea, just as something nice with a breakfast or afternoon break.


A related tangent, about everyday teas:  I deviated into an Earl Grey drinking tangent recently related to that, which I'd been considering mentioning, but didn't.  I bought a Cordon Bleu version on sale (the French cooking training school brand), and I'd bought some of a Twinings version (which I did mention here).


A blog-post comparison might have worked, but it was hard to take Earl Grey seriously enough to do that, and there was no real story.  The Twinings version had a floral component added, and the other straight bergamot, so they were just different.  The Cordon Bleu version was right at the limit of too much bergamot, the perfect balance point, to me.  Standard-recipe Earl Grey is the way to go, for sure; hold the flowers.

Compared to prior review of the Tea Side Jin Xuan black tea

A lot of the point was trying to see if my description of an identical tea changed.  Related to that, I reviewed the tea last year here, with this description:


Brewed tea tasted a little more like peach, still plenty sweet, but nice and clean flavored, with a good bit of cocoa and malt, and some cherry as well, with a rich floral nature.  So good complexity across a range of awesome flavors.  It started to hint a bit towards sweet potato, somehow not my favorite taste element in teas, even though I like sweet potato, but didn't have the too-sweet aftertaste that can go along with that sometimes. 


Versus this year, no bread dough no yeast mentioned then, this year perhaps a bit lighter on fruit, but still floral with cocoa.  So what changed?

same tea, different lighting

The idea was to test my taste-memory and palate, to write a new review and compare it, but of course there are problems with doing so.  It might well be the next-year's version of the tea, or the last could have been hanging around awhile, not necessarily a bad thing for black tea.  Storage could come into play, and this actually leads into another subject that's been coming up lately, tea aging.


Per the vendor a taste of yeast or bread dough is an indicator of a recently-made tea, and will fade over time.  I can't confirm or deny that based on my own experience or prior knowledge, so just passing that on.  According to discussions with tea vendors it's not just about getting the processing right, and storage, but tea characteristics also relate to growing and harvesting conditions, so how much it rained, or when, could affect a tea from year to year, a lot.


So I really can't say if I was "tasting it wrong" before, and missed a main component, or if not how those other issues came into play, what caused the difference.  I guess it's possible it could be essentially the same but could use a few months or a year to rest (although that line of thinking really isn't familiar to me, related to black teas).  It's not exactly a major flaw in the tea, the one aspect I keep talking about, tasting like bread dough / yeast, but I suppose I did like it less for trading out rich fruit tastes like peach and cherry for that.


Eventually it would be possible to even "outgrow" a taste black teas, but I don't see that coming.  An online friend just mentioned that pu'er drinkers don't drink those for the taste, that drinking tea for taste (flavor) is something one moves on from (an idea I covered in an earlier post about hei cha, a Thai version from Tea Side, go figure).  Obviously I notice some other factors, and mention here when they really come together, but taste still seems like the main aspect of tea, related to where I'm at now in a preference development curve.  Here is a list of other attributes one might appreciate instead in teas, proposed by that friend:

body, viscosity, aftertaste, huigan, inside aroma.  

I don't have much to add related to those, but here is a nice reference explaining some of them, of course related to pu'er.  In that other post of mine I reviewed ideas from a Tea Addict's Journal post that there is a trend to drink teas for taste, then feel and other aspects, then effect, or qi (roughly summarized).  The last part is interesting since he also tends to claim that most teas have very limited qi effect, which of course lots of people have lots of different takes on.  I'm not so sure I can really notice how caffeine affects me, never mind qi, but maybe I'll get there later.

Conclusion

Dunno, really, the tea seemed a little different.  I was expecting to have missed an attribute or two the first time but it didn't seem to work out like that, although it seems conceivable the same attributes were there, and just shifted a little.  I still like the tea, perhaps just not as much as I had last year.  It could be related to drinking a lot of different black teas, and expectations shifting, or a gradual move away from preference for the type, but then I've been drinking a lot more oolong for a half dozen years now, but I still like interesting black teas.

China life Mi Lan Xiang Dan Cong, royal peach orchard

Dan Cong!  Definitely one of those types you'd love to find a good example of, and this Mi Lan Xiang / Peach Orchard version was nice (listed here).  It's hard for me to compare it to the range of a lot of other Dan Cong versions, since I'm newer to this type than many others, but it compares well enough with the few I've tried (a review of a commercial version with type background research is here, and a later review of another here).  Anyway, the aspects of the tea tell the story, so on to review, after one other related mention.

China Life has posting great introductory tea videos on You Tube, basics about brewing technique and such, and also on to more advanced content.  I just watched one on sourcing Dan Cong, and this video was a novel take on blind tasting four Dan Congs together, and this one a good introduction to the general Dan Cong tea type (probably a good place to start).  Don (the company owner) is visiting where those teas are made in China, walking around the plants growing and through a village where they process the teas, so the video background alone is worth a look.

The dry tea scent is sweet and rich. The tea appears very tightly twisted, and dark, perhaps a bit oxidized or roasted as Dan Cong goes, but tasting tells more about that.

Peach does come across first, as tastes go, fresh and intense.  The taste range is full and complex, with good sweetness, and a good bit of tartness as well.  As with many types the overall effect is more about how it all balances than which positive attributes come across.

The balance is nice, although the tartness is at the limit of what would balance well, perhaps too much for someone that doesn't care for that aspect.  It seems related to the mild astringency some Dan Congs have, just a different expression of something related, more a flavor element.  For a second infusion I dropped the temperature a bit more and went with a quite short infusion, to shift the aspects balance, and the tartness did fall into a more pleasant range in a light infusion version.


The peach aspect, and some general floral sweetness beyond that, is more than intense enough to stand out even brewed quite lightly. The honey orchid effect actually picked up a lot in a lighter brew strength, or at least it seemed more likely due to that change to lighter, than due to a natural flavors transition, since the tea was just getting started.


Normally brewing around aspects in a tea is a bad sign but Dan Cong are supposed to be more temperamental, and tend to work better as very light infusions, and some degree of tartness and a unique expression of astringency are normal.  Astringency often resembles the feel in an unripe fruit, nothing like the heavy earthy-flavor accompanied roughness / astringency in Assamica based black teas (assuming the normal connection I'm making between flavors and feel actually makes sense).  The tartness in this tea comes across as a taste element but it is tied to feel as well, the tea just isn't particularly astringent, it doesn't have much of such a bite to it.  One relatively well-informed tea friend has mentioned that Dan Cong wouldn't be as appealing to him without that bit of astringency / dryness, that it helps balance the sweetness and flavor intensity.  Maybe; I guess it depends on the tea.

Both the taste and the partly brewed leaf appearance show the tea to be mid - level oxidized, perhaps a trace more roast than average as Dan Cong goes (at a guess; I'm working from relatively limited exposure yet, not a large sample size of versions).  It's nowhere near the normal range for Wuyi Yancha, many of which are then roasted until char taste comes into play, so still a light version compared to the way those two aspects might play out in those oolongs (oxidation and roast level).  Editing note:  I hadn't checked the vendor page but it is listed as "deep fired."  Compared to Dan Cong standards, maybe, but related to Wuyi Yancha and highly roasted TKY I've tried still only medium.


As infusions go by the tea softens more, and honey sweetness picks up, with peach transitioning into floral aspects.  Brewed right the effect and balance is nice, and tastes are clean, with a good degree of aftertaste.  The tartness is a function of brewed strength, it seems, so balancing that isn't so difficult, through quite short infusion times, which works since the other flavor range and sweetness is well expressed in a lighter strength.

tea-tasting and funny face-making

A tasting aside, about my young co - taster's input (the one who flagged banana in that China Life Oriental Beauty--not so sure about that call).  I gave her a taste, and she said it tasted like tea.  I had that coming.  If by that one means Lipton tea bags it really doesn't.  I asked what other tastes, and she said like flowers.  I was so proud of her!   I had just written that, that the peach had transitioned to floral.  She is on the path.


She also just tried some of that China Life Oriental Beauty I had put aside, cold brewing the tea overnight to get the last out of it, through which it had picked up a bubble gum sweetness.  That tea had essentially been finished, through a full round of infusions, but it had the one more in it, interesting but largely spent.  Anyway, she said she liked it better, so maybe her flavor identification is picking up but she needs to continue a bit further along a preference curve.

normal range oxidation, per the story the brewed leaves tell

It was interesting comparing this experience to the Gongfu tea brewing instructions on the box:


...increase the amount of leaf to 5-8 grams per 200 ml of water  and reduce your brewing to 15 seconds... you can re infuse the tea  many times up to 10 times for oolong tea), just add about 5 seconds extra for each infusion.


Of course with any brewing approach that would need to be adjusted for the individual tea and for preference.  Dan Congs can be touchy, and this tea provides plenty of flavor but worked better with faster, lighter infusions, even shorter than that.  I mention it here as interesting background, related to what I was already saying, not as a critique of labeled instructions, because that is a reasonable standard starting point.  Different teas fade faster than others, but it's easy to shift timing to account for that since you've always just tried that last infusion to base it on.


I tried the tea later brewed more Western-style.  I really used a hybrid style, to be more specific, with a proportion and timing shifted a bit from conventional Western brewing towards those in Gongfu brewing, perhaps not something I should be recommending since that could get tricky balancing those factors.  It worked quite well; I was surprised.  In past experience Dan Cong really does need the short Gongfu style infusions to work out best, often limiting the unusual astringency I'd spoken of (or tartness in the version), but I was able to get a similar balance using a completely different approach and set of parameters, and in a slightly different flavor-aspect range.  The sweetness was about the same, with tartness diminished, and the taste started as peach--the same--and included a bit more of an almond aspect, then moving to more floral.  I might have liked it even better made that way.


All in all a nice tea, complex and refined.  I get drawn into questioning just how nice, how teas compare to the best of the type, or where they fall across a general range, or how value-related issues work out, but all of that is not part of a normal review scope, and more challenging for me to assess at this point.  I liked it; it was how I just described it, interesting and pleasant.

Gopaldhara Maharaja of Darjeeling Muscatel; on Darjeeling clonals / cultivars

another beautiful tea, lots of tips

Gopaldhara sent two samples of second flush teas, related to a very recent post (here), this second of which they described as a Maharaj of Darjeeling Muscatel.  This tea and the last I reviewed are quite different, so I'll go against convention and review one after the other here.  I'll say more about the cultivar / clonal / plant type in a research section, and start with the vendor product background:


CULTIVAR:   AV2 Most Preferred Clones
ELEVATION: 5000-7000 FT
RANGE OF TEMPERATURE: 12 – 18 Degrees
TEA TYPE: Oolong Whole Leaf
FLUSH SEASON: Second Flush
TYPE OF PLUCKING: 100% fine leaf, mostly comprising of two leaves and a bud
GRADE: FTGFOP1


This really seems like a black tea, but then a standard oxidation level definition may well put it in the oolong range instead, as listed.  The first tea I reviewed from this set of samples was nothing like a black tea (the Wonder Gold), and the second seemed clearly that (per the more specific product description maybe not, as with this one).

Review:

black tea, small leaves and buds

In this tea the muscatel is even stronger than in the first tea I had reviewed.  It starts to develop towards a brandy liquor effect, which is very nice, a positive extension into an unusual level of depth.  It gives up some of the bright fruit effect for doing so but the trade is not a bad thing given the rich, balanced, more unique flavor range it moves into.  That other example was great for nailing the expected type, this one excels for deviating from it.


Spice rounds out the flavors balance.  Again there's a bit of orange rind citrus, with an earthy and mineral base that's more difficult to separate as a list.  Astringency is not so much an issue, and the flavors are very clean.  This tea could change character with brewing process changes, at a guess, taking on more body and astringency brewed at higher temperature or prepared as a stronger infusion, and lightening up brewed cooler or less strong, still showing the fruit range.  I take this to be a standard effect for Darjeelings, potential for adjusting results with brewing changes, but it does vary by type.  Some people recommend one brewing temperature for all Darjeeling types, but again that may or may not be the best approach, related to individual preferences.


This version includes a lot of tips, changing the style of tea from that of mostly leaf based teas.  It's interesting how many differences there are between different regional versions of related style teas, for example how far apart this tea is in character from an Indonesian tip - prevalent black tea, or how different the aspects are from a Jin Jun Mei (which should be a pure var. Sinensis, so I'm mixing different factors now).  The more general point is that black teas cover lots of range, interesting in how they vary.  Then again these two second flush Darjeeling teas were likely grown quite close to each other, at the same time, and they vary quite a bit too, so you don't need to go to the next growing region to be impressed by that.

One criticism I've had with some Darjeelings relates to some coming across as thin, but that's not applying to these Gopaldhara teas.  The rich fullness of a lighter oolong wouldn't be matched, except that Wonder Gold version went really far with full body, but the black teas--or these teas closer to true black teas--aren't at all thin, not light in feel, and not limited in terms of aftertaste.

Research section, on Darjeeling cultivars:

I've been skipping this type of research review for awhile, and this presents a good chance to get back to it.  The tea plant type is identified as AV 2, a Darjeeling clone or cultivar type, from the general Camelia Sinensis var. Sinensis, or Chinese branch of main tea plant types, versus var. Assamica plants used in Assam and other places.

Even that may oversimplify.  I'd mentioned a Hojo vendor reference in the last post that stated most Darjeeling plants are really now hybrids, with a mix of background types, combining genetics from Assamica plants through natural breeding.  Ideally this creates plant types with more positive characteristics than either pure original type, spanning a range of potential goals, not the least of which is final aspects in a brewed tea.  A short general Tealet reference authored by Nigel Melican mentions that most tea grown in the US is a hybrid from the two general plant types, but the concern there seems to be cold resistance versus other factors.

There is more on the region, tea plant types, and processing in another Hojo reference here.  It would take more research into AV 2 to determine which  prior plant types were inputs, and even then the history of plant derivations for those may not be clear given the long history.  Speaking of history, lets back up and start with that.

Tea production regions in India (photo credit)

According to this reference Darjeeling teas were originally based on Chinese plant types:

Arthur Campbell was a Scottish state employee who was transferred from Nepal to Darjeeling in 1839. Shortly after its arrival he planted some Chinese tea seeds in its private garden. Soon his neighbors imitated him and 11 years later Campbell reported that over 200 tea bushes were growing in the region.



A second reference tells a slightly varied story related to the timeline, with essentially the same details:

Tea plants from China were brought to this region from a British civil surgeon, Dr. A. Campbell, around 1834 as an experiment. This smaller Chinese variety (camellia sinensis var. sinensis, as opposed to var.assamica) planted at 700ft. Proved successful and he was given permission to plant several tea nurseries in 1847...


That reference credits the Puttabong Estate for creating the AV2 plant type, and mentions they were the first estate planted in Darjeeling, established in 1852.


According to a Teabox vendor reference AV2 is one of around thirty Darjeeling clonal tea types, with AV standing for Ambari Vegetative, with additional description as follows:


The Darjeeling oolongs grow at a higher elevation, with a more stable temperature range, and a mix of old China bushes and the clonal ones. The AV2 and complementary varieties are noted for their complexity and aromatic floral notes. Over the past decade, new AV2 teas have won most awards in competitions. One of the recurrent themes in reviews is the surprise factor – AV2 teas are decidedly different, not just better, than comparative ones of very high quality: common adjectives are memorable, mind-blowing, unexpected, bolder and even “budful.”


To cite an example of a well-known tea (to some), per that reference Castleton's Moonlight White is made from the AV 2 cultivar, of course using a derivation of a Chinese tea processing method instead.


There are a number of Darjeeling related research organizations and academic institutions (for example, this government supported agency), but researching background on teas is not as straightforward as one might imagine.  There is a broad gap between vendor marketing content, general summary reference material, and narrowly scoped research material (as referenced in this summary of related references by the Organic Tea and Agri-Horticultural Consulting agency).

A good example of that point is found in the paper Performance of Tea Clones in the Nursery through Vegetative Propagation in Darjeeling, which is actually a lighter and more interesting read than it sounds.  A bit of background from that, prior to getting into that study and the findings, which didn't include research of the AV2 type anyway:


...the out breeding characters of tea species have led to a wide natural hybridization resulting in
considerable heterogeneity in the existing populations. Therefore, it is difficult to assign a definite varietal status for a clone grown in a particular region. One of the basic requirements for successful tea cultivation is the planting material. It may be raised either from the seed or clone. Since, 1960s vegetatively propagated clones began to replace seed propagation and probably reduced the genetic diversity within tea cultivation. 

AV2 on the right (see Discovering Tea for more details, photo credit)

See, nearly conversational.  The first point addressed the issue of prior combined inputs to hybrid / clonal tea types, and the latter starts into propagating tea plant through cuttings instead of seeds.  Interesting!  But well off the subject here.


Back to the subject of different kinds of references, this Discovering Tea blog post doesn't include much content but does show pictures of three different clonal types, including AV 2.


As can happen all this isn't really heading towards any natural conclusion.  It was interesting reviewing a Reddit discussion on Darjeeling plant types in looking all this up, related to how limited the progress was there:


[–]hong_yun:  I tried this year's AV2 and B157 from Rohini tea estate, and I liked the former more.

[–]cupsandcakes9: Yes. AV2 seems to have a much richer flavor profile.


Good input, but that was about it.  Lots of other factors come into play, related to the final tea characteristics not just depending on plant type, but this related Gopaldhara tea had a rich flavor profile as well.