Golding Jing Mai Xiao Shu sheng pu'er

I feel a little like writing one of those tea reviews that just basically says "wow."  That would definitely be easier than describing this tea.  I tried the tea twice to adjust brewing--the running theme for me getting back into pu'er--and more tries would make it more familiar.  One obvious thing is nice initially:  it doesn't have the mineral / green tea / smoke / taking an aspirin bitterness young sheng pu'er tends to have.

Since the Golding Shop website doesn't include full details, and it was only described as the name, Jing Mai Xiao Shu pu'er, I asked them to describe what it is:


The Jing Mai Qiao Shu is from the year 2013, so it is not really aged, just lightly so... The Jing Mai Xiao Shu is of the small/young tea tree variant. It is approximately +- 80 years old. Hence Xiao Shu = Small tree if translated literally. Gu Shu/Da Shu means old tea tree, and for these, we use only trees that are above 100 years old. 


Given all the debate and accusations over pu'er source descriptions and tea tree ages in the last few months that goes straight into controversial territory.  I'll get back to all that in another post, eventually, leaving it at that for now.  I will mention that they are directly involved, on-site in Yunnan, with the leaf sourcing and production of their privately made pu'er, so it's not just a case of someone repeating initial producer claims.  Most agree the impression of the tea itself is more critical than the age of the trees, or even origin location and other back-story, and the tea itself was nice.

Review:

Even the dry tea has an unusual scent to it, rich, sweet, with a bit of spice, and one other element it's hard to make out, maybe along the line of brandy (sure not really it, but that gives the idea).

It took a few infusions to really get the tea going, to loosen up and extend the expression of flavors, but even immediately there was a nice range of aspects going on.  Floral was probably the dominant aspect range, with just a hint of the spice I picked up in the smell (or thought I did).  Spice can be a nice range for teas to express, as often happens not one clear spice element I found easy to pick out, towards clove, but really stopping at a different aromatic bark spice range.  The rest of the range didn't get any easier to describe, floral, just a touch of date, leather, and wood, and more pronounced minerals, but not the sharp, light, flinty limestone range minerals, more like how a dark red clay might smell.

None of this sounds great, to me at least, but the effect was really nice.  There was an overall balance, a subtlety.  As far as feel and aftertaste go this infusion level seemed a little light to really get the most out of that.  Drinking a tea brewed very lightly can mask negative aspects, for example offset astringency, but to an extent it can also make it easier to separate out minor aspects, even though that seems a bit counter-intuitive.

People more into pu'er seem to pick up preferences that could make perfect sense with a lot more experience, but I'd not have an opinion as to what feel or aftertaste elements are desirable.  At the end that rich mineral taste remained as an aftertaste, in an unusual range, not something I've experienced before, and that did seem nice.  I almost want to say there was a dryness to it but that's not the right word; it just had an unusual feel in the center of the back of my tongue and the roof of my mouth.  That didn't change things much for me, for better or worse, but it was interesting.


I think drinking that Hong Tai Chang Thai hei cha did help me appreciate this.  I wouldn't say the two were similar but there was some overlap in the range of experience, the unusual tastes, relating to adjusting to more mineral aspects in teas.  This one is a good bit cleaner, more subtle and sophisticated, and somehow more interesting in general.  That tasting comparison wasn't direct, for what that's worth; I tried that tea over the two days prior.


Some of the dark wood / leather / unusual mineral range was similar, just very faint in this tea, but the trace of spice not so much, and for being in such a strange range (novel to me) the flavor aspects were pleasant.  The tea is quite subtle, even though listing a lot of flavor elements and other aspects might seem to contradict that.


Across infusions the tea didn't seem to change much, but then I suspect someone more familiar with a taste range would pick up more transition, or if someone was more tuned in to other aspects maybe related to those shifting too.  There wasn't much in the way of astringency or a bitterness to subside but the tea did become a bit smoother all the same.  I suspect these brewing parameters were getting close to a "right" range, much as there might be such a thing, but I'll experiment a little, try it just a little stronger and see what happens.

Second tasting review:

Even the initial wash gives off sweetness and complexity, a rich floral taste with some underlying element that is really interesting, towards red wine or spice.  I just read an interesting article on pu'er fermentation that gave one reason for discarding a rinse rather than drinking it, more for shou or aged sheng.  It relates to what fermentation actually is, what the micro-biological components are doing and what trace compounds are being created, but I'll hold off on mentioning details just yet.

Related to talking to the vendor about the tea he wasn't getting that spice element, so maybe it's just in my imagination, or I'm interpreting something else in an unusual way.

The tea is still subtle when brewed slightly stronger, still with great complexity and interesting character.  Unusual aspects are layered together, just nothing too forward.  There is plenty of floral tone to it, and a lot of mineral going on, but somehow that more minor aspect that gives it the extra layer of complexity is more interesting, since it seems to pull the rest together into a really unique experience.

The tea isn't really bitter but there is a bit of effect across a broad range of tastes that supports an impression of fullness and complexity, and a little bitterness is part of it.  It's so light that it's really more about filling in range than an element that's either positive or negative.  It would be easy to overlook the role the sweetness plays, since all the rest works better with that as another context element.

As infusions pass the tea softens and becomes more full but I'm not experiencing a lot of flavor aspects transition, maybe just shifts in the balance of the different aspects.  The feel shifts from the sides of the mouth to the rear of the back of the tongue.  But then I'm still not clear on how that sort of thing is interesting or relevant.

It's a cool tea.  The general subtlety makes it nice to drink water along with it--not warm or cold, neutral in temperature--to keep experiencing it more fully, with a fresher palate.  I might contrast it with a Dian Hong I reviewed recently, a great Chinese black tea.  It had lots going on, and great character, but it was all right there to be tasted, with one interesting feel element as background.  Then again maybe someone more familiar with this tea range might say the same thing; a reasonable number of aspects are right in front of you, no mystery to it.

I don't need to consider if I like the tea, as I've been going through with others lately, since I do, but I do wonder if I love it.  I wonder how my experience of it would change over time, or how the tea itself would, with age.  Pu'er has been that one tea type I didn't really get around to, the unexplored range.  Teas like this one highlight that there is still a lot of novelty to experience, beyond interesting aspects into different overall effects.

China Life Jin Ya Dian Hong, Yunnan black tea

A friend passed on this tea in a recent visit to Bangkok (full name Feng Qing Jin Ya Dian Hong, from China Life).  It's a nice friend that gives you tea this good to try, an interesting and very pleasant Chinese black tea, with a style that doesn't really match conventional black teas.  I'll describe what it is more at the end, with a little research into the type and explanation of the name, but basically it's a buds-only black tea from Yunnan.

Review:

The taste is just what one might hope for, soft, full, complex, a bit sweet, with a nice dryness to the feel, nothing questionable or out of place.  It works well to describe this particular tea as a list of flavors since there are so many to pick out.  So lets do that:  the package cites cocoa, malt, and hay, and this tea includes those as predominant elements, although malt seems to be used to describe a range of different closely related tastes in teas.  Flavor aspects also include yams, with just a hint of smoke, and I could swear there's a little vanilla in the background.  I'm not noticing pepper so much; maybe.


For me the sweet potato / yam range can be too much in some teas, leaning towards an artificial sweetener taste if too strong, but in this case it's all in great balance, all expressed as positive aspects that work well together.  I think there is even a mild mineral tone as a base flavor that helps it all really integrate, but that's hard to pick up, more like the context for the rest of the flavors.


It's the feel and balance that make the tea work so well though.  That slight dryness--nothing like astringency in typical Assamica black teas, although it is vaguely related--offsets a generally soft feel.  Along with that a nice sweetness brings all the aspects to a good balance.  I get the impression that the tea would deal well with being drank at different strengths, based on preference, working well quite wispy or standing up well to someone liking tea brewed strong.  It also seems like a tea that would be hard to screw up.


Some teas are difficult to brew, expressing a range of aspects depending on slight shifts in parameters, tricky to optimize, and this doesn't seem like that.  There seems to be no need to completely dial in approach, no astringency to brew around, no subtle aspects that are hard to draw out.  I guess one might see it as a trade-off that it's easy to get great results but capable of less variation.  For me it's really nice as it is so that's not really a trade off.




Seems too early to stop there, but that about reviews it.  From drinking pu'er lately I almost want to describe how the feel comes across within your mouth, where it's located, or how the aftertaste plays out, but those things don't seem to add so much (in general, for me, perhaps more than for this tea in particular).  For what it's worth I feel the tea more on the sides of my tongue, and a little in the back of my tongue at the end, which means nothing to me.  The taste does stick around after you drink it for a black tea, with that dry cocoa effect and a trace of yam sweetness lingering pleasantly.



About brewing, it's pretty simple, still black tea even though it is from tea buds (more on that in the next section).  The one interesting twist is that it brews really nice later infusions, not giving up much at all in terms of that full taste profile, sweetness, clean flavors, etc.  As with Silver Needle style white teas it keeps on brewing nice tea.  After several steeps you need to go a bit longer on time, and that draws out a little more mineral and dark caramel flavor but that's really nice too, and the sweetness and clean-flavored effects stick around.


Even after white teas seem done, having brewed lots, you can draw out one extra one by cold-steeping the leaves again (or buds only, depending on the tea).  To do so you just put the tea mixed with warm--but not hot water--in the refrigerator for a good long time, and let it steep on it's own.  How long doesn't seem to matter, six hours or a day.  I didn't think to check if that would work with this the first time I made it; I'll have to.

Dian Hong research section:

Why not a bit more about the general type.  It doesn't take much reading around to get to the idea that Dian Hong can include buds and leaves, and Jin Ya Dian Hong is just the buds (kind of obvious the tea was that from looking at it), with Feng Qing as the location, a county per the China Life description.  Here's a bit on the type from Seven Cups (a vendor, who's version I've not tried before):


Yunnan Province first began producing black tea in 1939.... Jin Ya was invented in 1958 by Feng Qing tea company. Instead of using 1 bud to 2-3 leaves, they started picking only tea buds. Yunnan Province was the first place to make black tea entirely from tea buds. If left on the tea bush, healthy tea buds will open in to five or six tea leaves...  The tea master must completely control the oxidation process throughout every layer of the bud... Black tea that is too oxidized will be sour, and under oxidized tea will very heavy and tannic.


This version wasn't tannic or sour at all so I guess they nailed it.  Not really about this tea type but there's an interesting mention of an old tea tree, a subject that keeps coming up:


There is one famous tea tree in Feng Qing County, called “Xiang Zhu Qing Cha Zu”. It is the largest and thickest tea tree that has been found, and is protected nationally because of its botanical significance. This tea tree is estimated to be 3200 years old and the diameter of the trunk of 1.84 meters thick.


Good to know!  They should try to make pu'er from that (just kidding).  I noticed a Seven Cups guide for brewing Dian Hong Jin Ya on You Tube looking for a China Life reference for it there, but as the video describes there isn't much to it; it's black tea.  China Life does post a lot of nice brewing and type guides on YouTube, just not related to this type.  The tea works out well brewed Western style using boiling water, steeped for three minutes or so, then for more time for later infusions.  As with any brewing all of that could be adjusted for preference, shifting any parameters as one is inclined, but again it seems to me a strength of this tea is that you don't need to fine tune brewing conditions to get great results.

It would even be possible to brew this grandpa-style, to use unregulated infusion time, to just drink the tea as leaves mixed with water without separating them, but I wouldn't.  The tea is too nice when brewed to a good infusion-strength balance point to give that up.

May Zest Oriental Beauty (Bai Hao oolong)

The tea tastes like an Oriental Beauty (what I'm going to call Bai Hao here; the same thing).  It's a pretty good version of one from May Zest tea, but of course good is always relative.  Per my understanding the typical type profile aspects include muscatel, citrus, other fruit, and spice, with good sweetness and aromatic characteristics, and this one is like that, heavy on the spice.  That spice in this version is cinnamon, not really atypical, just not normally so pronounced, and quite pleasant to experience since I like cinnamon in a tea.  There is some citrus and a good bit of muscatel, with nice clean flavors, and good sweetness, with fruit in the range of peach as a secondary element.

I feel like that's just about it for the review; it tastes like a nice OB should, just a spice intensive version, while some go heavier on fruit aspects (peach and such, maybe even berry for some).  It's right in the middle for level of oxidation, the normal amount for the type, on the high side as other oolongs often go, even those described as mid-level oxidized.  Or maybe level of roast might complicate all that a little, but I must admit I'm not completely clear on how processing this varies from other conventional oolong types.  Some OB / Bai Hao versions could have more tips that this one, but it does include some, and the look and dry leaf smell are what one would expect.

This tea is one of several grades of OB that May Zest sells, not the highest, per my understanding, since they were out of some others at time of order.  Since I understand this is a summer tea maybe that will change in a month or two, and for a tea like this type what they find and sell might well change a good bit year to year.  Per the general type it depends on a specific type of insect eating just the right amount of the tea leaves.  I've recently read a good World of Tea general type reference about how that works, or a more conventional Tea Masters blog review format (Taiwan based blog) says more, and I wrote a blog post summary of the same issues last year.  China Life made a video summary about the type, for people that prefer to watch video (but still read this blog, I guess, since I'm mentioning it here).

How would the other grades differ?  I'd expect they could have more fruit, a brighter effect, shifting the balance from spice to citrus and more muscatel, maybe even into berry and such.  Quality level also depends on sweetness, for this tea, and a full feel, and clean flavors, how well a tea brews consistently across a number of infusions.  This version performs well related to those, per my understanding, compared to other versions, so a main factor is if cinnamon as a dominant taste element is preferred or not.

The China Life version I recently reviewed was different for being more oxidized, another variation someone may or may not prefer.  Per both the Tea Masters blog post and the May Zest description OB versions are typically 70% oxidized and up, so not exactly mid-level compared to other types of oolongs, on the high side, but on the upper end of that range a tea would start to seem like a black tea.

Tea blogging and preference judgments

a Thai version of an Oriental Beauty; not so different

Lately I've been considering the idea of saying exactly how good teas are, or rather working around that, feeling a gap when I don't give a full opinion.  To communicate my full impression of an Oriental Beauty, when I've tried others relatively recently, it would make sense to compare the teas directly, but that wouldn't seem so necessary to a vendor if their tea compared less favorably.  I'd be communicating my opinion, though, and someone else's might well vary.  In this case someone could love cinnamon in a tea and not prefer fruit, or vice versa, and that would tip the balance of their impression.

This concern also leads to the role of a blogger.  Is the writing for marketing, speaking for vendors, in order to get some free product out of it, or is it objective review, to inform the readers?  Related to that part about samples, I bought this tea, but they sent some extra samples, and they've passed on free samples in the past, so it's a factor that still applies in this case.  It may seem like bloggers that only discuss aspects get the balance right; a tea tastes or feels a certain way--that's it.  But two teas could share virtually identical aspects as they would be defined, and still be different quality level teas.  For example, I just tried a Dian Hong that tasted like malt, chocolate, hay, and yams, and a better or worse version might also taste like that list of aspects, but not be as good, or could be better.  It only goes so far to specify how "feel" relates, or how "clean" flavors are, or the issue of a tea brewing more consistent infusions.  Bloggers / tea reviewers get their own sense of this, how good a tea is, but again it mixes with issues of subjective preference.  I'd think most would get some sense of how those two inputs play out.


A lot of this ties back to my recent post about unwritten rules of blogging about tea, on reviewing conventions.  Citing personal preference related to teas breaks with convention, although it's also normal for tea bloggers to imply that they absolutely love every tea.  I claimed that it violates convention to review a tea from a wholesale source, and May Zest is that, they just don't sell teas per 50 gram sizes through a check-out website.  Why wouldn't someone review tea from different types of sources?  It would be strange to review a tea from both an original source and the vendor that resells it (that tend to give bloggers free samples), especially since that resale vendor would rather not publicize where the teas come from.  It also violates a convention--breaks one of those rules--to talk about tea pricing, but obviously along with a requirement to buy higher volumes pricing is lower from wholesale-theme vendors too.

The trend now is for vendors to buy direct, right, if not directly from a tea farmer then from someone who claims to have done so.  In a sense it doesn't matter that it's almost impossible to verify that, that a reseller in the middle could still pass on where the tea came from, who grew it, so marketing could just refer to the more upstream step.  In that example it would seem to not matter which company someone bought it from, but each step would add resale cost.  One other issue with final-level vendors buying tea from wholesale sellers (that might buy from aggregators, another layer) beyond adding costs is that it's possible that more mediocre, mass-produced teas would take such paths.  The "best of the best teas," or at least those not good enough to be spoken for before they're even made, would instead be carefully sourced by tea-curator theme specialty vendors.  Or at least that's how the marketing stories go.

The reason I go into all this is to reinforce that regardless of the story attached in the end it's about how nice the tea is.  Of course nothing is ever so simple; there are also concerns related to a tea being organic, for some, or if a well-paid and happy worker picked and processed it, or if someone being oppressed by a life of poverty did instead.  But I'll move past all that.  Someone could curate crappy tea directly from a farmer, or tell a very nice story that's not true, or a long, typical, multi-step wholesale process could procure and sell a great tea, even at great value.

This tea I reviewed is pretty good, and that's a lot of the point, beyond the "naming names" related to aspects.  One other thing I've been saying lately; even though I've tried a number of Oriental Beauty teas I'm not the right person to put it on a well-informed objective quality scale, even if I weren't conflicted in doing so (and I'm not all that conflicted; I'll keep on with the tea hobby regardless of how samples play out, so I'll keep saying what I think).  So to be even more direct:  I think I might like that Thai version I kept writing about a little better (that was some nice tea), and the higher oxidation level in that China Life version might not work as well for me.  But someone else might have different preferences and switch the order, since all three were decent versions of Oriental Beauty.