Reviewing another interesting style of tea from Moychay, a Russian Gaba Sheng. After reviewing this I was looking forward to checking out the Moychay description, to see what this really is, but it didn't include anything on the tea plant type or processing inputs, just about aspects:
Krasnodar gaba sheng, (spring 2021)
In appearance: large, red-brown, curved leaves with long cuttings and thin tips. The aroma is restrained, floral-herbaceous. The liquor is transparent, with a greenish-yellow shade.
The bouquet of ready-made tea is multifaceted and fresh, floral-herbaceous, with berry and spicy notes. The aroma is tender, floral-herbaceous. The taste is refined, silky and sweet, oily, with berry acidity and a refreshing finish.
The review comments were interesting, and diverse:
Wow, it really looks like a medium-rare Taiwanese gaba! Favorite cookies and light berry sourness. I did not expect this from Krasnodar tea, it holds about 10 straits, delight...
Bread crust, menthol, pleasant astringency, notes of red tea, fruity sourness. There are candied fruits too, but in the background. Differs from 2020 version...
The smell of the liquor is spicy, it reminds me of baked berries and pumpkin. The taste is silky, buttery and sweet, with berries acidity and the notes of eggplant and nettles. The aftertaste has a sweetness of forest berries and vegetal taste of an eggplant.
It's normal for aspect interpretations to vary, as mine isn't exactly the same as any of these, but they kind of do seem to all be describing roughly the same tea.
Review:
First infusion: interesting, different. I really expected sheng with an edge of sourness and that's not what this is, at least not so far. It's completely different in character. It's a little early to call but it tastes most like dried autumn leaves, that rich, warm, sweet scent. I've experienced that a number of times in different teas and it's always a very pleasant inclusion. That includes a caramel-like sweetness.
Maybe there is as much sourness as bitterness in the rest of this, but it's early to tell, and sheng often changes character most over the first 2 or 3 infusions, as it "opens up." I'll do more description and list next round. The sourness and bitterness that is present carries over in an interesting aftertaste form; that and feel might be novel for this tea version.
Second infusion: it's evolving, but more ramping up than changing. This has some bitterness, so it's not completely out of sheng character range, but it has an edge of sourness too, and a completely novel flavor profile. It's hard to describe. Warm dried autumn leaf tones are still dominant, but all the rest increased while that level stayed the same, so it's more just an even part of the rest now. Both sourness and bitterness seemed to pick up, and a warm mineral undertone. Sweetness is ok in this but slightly lower than it could be. It's enough to tie the other range together (a role that at least I see sweetness as playing), but low in comparison to that frequent intense sweetness, bitterness, and floral or fruit tone mix that occurs in sheng versions.
I can do a clearer aspect list next round, but I'm already getting the impression that feel and aftertaste are going to "make or break" this experience. Feel isn't standard, but it has some structure to it. It's not the fullness (that varies a lot) in sheng versions, or that dry edge in some astringent black teas, or the smoother fullness of other softer and fuller black teas, or the round, deep fullness of rolled oolongs. One part is structure, a generally full feel, and the other part is an odd way that your tongue reacts to it, like you might when tasting metal.
Why taste metal? Who hasn't put a penny in their mouth, as a child, or noticed that some natural spring water has such a heavy mineral taste that it seems almost metallic, but often in a very pleasant way. Aftertaste is just about all those ranges carrying over. It might be that subjective interpretation then makes or breaks this tea, and someone seeking to love it for appreciation of novelty easily could, or the opposite could happen, and someone could hate it for not matching existing expectations. A couple more rounds will show how it's going to unfold though.
It seems like this tea might have been allowed to wither and "oxidize" quite a bit, so that it was intentionally made to include a lot of that transition effect. If so this is really in between a gaba oolong and sheng version, using the pan frying as a heating step, with the same shaping and drying, but with an unusual extra input. Sheng pu'er leaves could oxidize a little prior to pan frying but it's my understanding that it's kept very limited, on purpose, that they don't intentionally wait long for processing. Of course I don't actually make tea, or try to keep track of such details, so all that should be taken with a grain of salt.
Third infusion: it all integrates a little better, and a new part is developing. The autumn leaf input is shifting to more towards a tree bark or bud version, like a red or dark peeling bark tends to smell. It would probably be helpful to try to correlate that to a food input, even if it's not a close match. It's in the spice range then, if one attempts that. It's a lot like star anise tastes, but without that strong sweetness, which is kind of an odd reference, since that's the main range of star anise. Towards bay leaf then, but warmer.
There's essentially no bitterness in this, or it has dropped back to be hardly noticeable, and sourness is quite limited too, just stronger than bitterness. It's in an odd range, since all that doesn't add up to what goes into a normal tea experience. Saying it tastes like spice and autumn leaf isn't exactly it but that's in the ballpark, so close enough.
Fourth infusion: feel even shifts now, picking up more smoothness and roundness. It's interesting how much this transitions. That really novel flavor profile, including underlying mineral base, then also spice, autumn leaf, tree bark, and caramel sweetness, comes across as really simple and integrated, even though it includes a lot of range. The warmth part comes across more as a black tea at this level, the way the mineral and wood range links with that feel.
This isn't really like any oolong I've tried, it seems to me, but it's as close to a more oxidized rolled oolong as it is to gaba versions (the "red oolong" ones, although I don't love that term use), then it also leans in a different direction. It's not very close to conventional sheng, not nearly as similar as to those types. It'll be interesting to see how Moychay describes it, if that "oolong" part on the label really was some sort of typo, or if they feel it's really between sheng and oolong styles. It could just as easily be labelled as a gaba black tea, if the idea was to categorize to match pre-conceptions and the experience. At a guess the most accurate type label might be "gaba oolong," whether it was pan fried to serve as a fixing step or not.
Fifth infusion: kind of similar to last round; it has finally levelled off from the changes. Even though all those transitions were interesting I bet this would be fine brewed Western style, and maybe even better. That's just a guess, but combining ranges of those rounds might work out well.
It was never as if you needed to keep the intensity moderate to get positive results, as happens with sheng pu'er, or need to get the infusion strength dialed into an ideal to get the absolute best results, as occurs with Wuyi Yancha and Dan Cong. For those higher quality oolongs you can still get good results brewing them Western style but nowhere near the ideal, so in a different sense it "doesn't work."
Sixth infusion: I'll probably leave off here, and as usual skip the story of the last half of late rounds. That should include a novel or change or two for this tea, which I may or may not mention from memory during editing. Not changing much, but woodiness shifts form. It might be onto losing some of the more distinctive and novel aspect range, as oolongs and black teas can do (or sheng, or any others, but those can tend to just seem woody in later rounds, sometimes). It still strikes a cool balance for flavor aspects, feel, and aftertaste; it's not spent.
Conclusions:
Very nice! For being this novel I would probably change interpretation of the flavors a good bit for trying it 2 or 3 times instead of once. It's probably the wrong question to keep focus on asking what this is. I did re-try it, and I'll mention what that changed for impression.
I was focused mostly on trying to tell what it was that first tasting, so I emphasized whether or not bitterness was present (related to it being sheng), or if sourness was (related to a conventional aspect in gaba teas). Of course oxidation level also relates to tea type, so that was a concern. I've ran across the idea that even for processing in a nitrogen environment (with no oxygen present) it might be appropriate to call the related transition (chemical compound change) "oxidation," since the electron exchange might be similar. I don't know; chem classes were awhile back, and it doesn't seem to matter.
I noticed more of a fruit or sweet cooked vegetable range in that re-tasting than I've mentioned in these tasting notes, and also why I didn't pick it up more in the first round, beyond "looking for" other range, as I've just mentioned. It comes across as non-distinct, even though it is a range that defines the experience, pleasant aspect scope that really makes it. It might start a little closer to something like pumpkin (mentioned in one web page comment), but that transitions to tasting a lot more like persimmon, or in some rounds a bit like a mango jam. Then in later rounds it shifts to more of an aromatic wood tone, like cedar, while never completely losing the persimmon range. It might be as much dried persimmon as fresh, with the experience varying by round, and surely shifting with brewed infusion strength.
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dried persimmons, one style (dusted with sugar?), well worth buying on a Chinatown visit |
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what those look like fresh |
All of this probably sounds like a more complete revision of impression than it really was; it had seemed like some aspect range I didn't get around to describing in that first round, for focusing a lot on bitterness and sourness, and trying to pin down a type, and this goes into that. It was definitely a novel and interesting tea, which made for a pleasant experience. That repeating theme of not getting gaba versions applies less to this than to others, since an early sourness dropped out fast. It didn't seem much like sheng pu'er but it was nice.
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