Rishi of Gopaldhara sent some really interesting looking teas to try, a batch of some autumn harvest teas, I think these are. Seasons don't match temperate climates perfectly at other latitudes but maybe Darjeeling does experience more autumn and winter than here in Bangkok, related to being at a much higher altitude. We can tell that the days get a little longer and shorter here but that's about it, except for one week typically being cooler than the rest of the year here in December. This year that ran early, and lasted for two weeks, so it was a nice cold season for us, down into the teens C at night (60s F), not cold, but nice and cool.
I don't know anything about these, beyond the names, but per usual process I'll go back and add more after making the notes. Let's skip the part about how close Indian oolongs really are to Chinese style oolongs. Not that close, but medium oxidation level and some comparable degree of processing steps needs to have some category name.
After checking, the background related to a website change includes more to consider than just the description; this is posted in the Gopaldhara India site, but there's an additional international site now too. With pricing listed in US dollars, so maybe it's a US site instead? I'll check on that and add more about it in a later review post. When vendors list multiple site versions, as Yunnan Sourcing does, it's often about basing stock and shipping out of somewhere else, which drops cost and speeds up delivery time anywhere, and can relate to avoiding customs issues in places like the EU.
This listing information:
Rohini Winter Frosted Rare Creamy Oolong – Master Series 2021
This rare Darjeeling yellow oolong tea has very exceptional characteristics than any other oolong teas in the Darjeeling Hills. It is produced from P157 clones at the picturesque valley of the Rohini Tea Estate in the winter season. In this season the growth of Darjeeling tea is very slow and the workers could only bring in a very small quantity of leaves that are very special. The workers carefully pluck the tea leaves while making sure that only the best shoots with eminent buds are plucked.
The teas are very mildly oxidized and delicately processed to induce minimal damage to the whole leaves. As a result, the dry leaves become greenish with abundant silvery tips that give us an amazingly clean cup with very high notes of aroma. The texture is very creamy and we get the mixed flavour of Green Apple, Ceylon olive or Indian olive, Indian gooseberry, pear, and vanilla.
Sounds good. Per my understanding both of these are somewhat experimental, representing ongoing evolution of processing, where the related autumn "Red Thunder" version is pretty far along that path, something they've been tweaking for years.
This "Christmas honey oolong" Rishi said was sold as a batch but not listed on either site. It's interesting how that part works out, how producers try to re-create standard branded versions, like the Red Thunder, accounting for variations in annual results by blending inputs from different lots to get to a more standard outcome. To the extent any part of what I'm claiming or implying is wrong I'll also amend that in another post; it's not as I'm passing on these few comments directly from input from Gopaldhara.
Review:
Christmas honey oolong: that is really interesting. I gave it a nice long soak so I wouldn't be saying "we'll know more next round," and infusion strength might be just a touch over optimum. The flavor is complex and positive, and character really isn't even completely familiar. After trying so many experimental Gopaldhara teas that's nice, that they can keep breaking new ground.
I want to say that there is a novel aspect in this, but it's not that, it's a set of them. The varying oxidation levels apparent in leaf color would indicate that might happen. One part is bright, floral and including vegetal range, that green wood that I take to be one main characteristic of Darjeeling. Another is warm, rich, and sweet in a different way. There's a risk in such circumstances that it might not integrate, but it really does. I think astringency expressing so much range makes this interesting in one way and a little confusing in another. Not in the sense of it being unpleasant, but related to fully taking it in. As to flavor list someone could brainstorm and just keep going on, about honey, floral range, warm spice, trailing towards cocoa, or an aromatic part relating to cedar or other wood tone. It'll be interesting to see what stands out as this evolves, and how the proportion shifts.
Creamy oolong: a similar experience of not really being able to place this tea occurred again. Again it's quite pleasant, so not in the sense of it seeming off, although the warmer range mostly dropping out in relation to the other seemed a little jarring at first. I think a crazy range of floral tone is making these hard to interpret; their characters are crowded around expressing a lot of that. This is creamy but not buttery; the smooth and rich tone also connects with a bit of vegetal edge. It tastes like butter in relation to how a butter cookie tastes, at the intersection of that butter flavor and shortbread. The more vegetal part I'm not really identifying yet. It's not so far off flower petal or stem but it's not that.
I think it also complicates things that these teas are expressing mostly floral range but also rich fruit. I wouldn't be surprised if that seems more dominant and noticeable as infusions evolve.
Christmas oolong, second infusion: much better a little lighter, and opened up. Intensity is good, and overall balance. Astringency edge is moderate related to typical Darjeeling range but substantial as the much lower whole-leaf Gopaldhara versions go. At this level it gives the tea a nice balance. It would be just as good with less, but it's not negative. Honey sweetness stands out more than in the first round. Floral range seems to evolve more into dried fruit, it's just hard to pin it down to one version. Maybe not far off dried apricot.
Creamy oolong: it's interesting how this tea would be completely different without this degree of astringency edge and green wood flavor. It's nice as it is, but with half that input the overall effect would shift. Put another way this stands between Chinese oolong character range and first flush Darjeeling.
Maybe my kids' review input will help clarify. My daughter tried both and said that both are nice, and that she liked this creamy version more, but didn't really explain why. My son tried both and said that both are bitter. Maybe a little, but it's really astringency that he's picking up. My daughter, who is 8, seems to tolerate it better, and see both as more positive, which really makes no sense given that her only food preference is for eating candy. He could live on bacon, and neither prefer to ever eat vegetables, or even fruit. Ok, maybe all that is not helpful.
The richness and creaminess in this tea make it very pleasant, and the positive floral and fruit tone complexity. It's not so citrusy but it leans a little towards lemon citrus. For being a sheng drinker the slight astringency edge and touch of what really could be fairly interpreted as bitterness is very moderate, and as positive as it is a weakness, for adding complexity.
Christmas oolong, third infusion: I would just be repeating the earlier comments to add more, but I'm not really bringing across how this is. It's novel. Intentional or not they've managed to oxidize these leaves to a lot of different levels and it really adds a unique depth to the experience, a broad range. It's not unlike how rolled oolongs might be browned at the edges and greener at the center, it just varied more within different leaves. This goes an extra step, because parts seem to be contributing true fully oxidized character to this, and other leaves relatively green inputs. It almost seems that in theory it shouldn't integrate as well as it seems to. Again without that final green edge and feel this would be a relatively different tea, and I suppose it might even work better, but it also works like this.
Sweetness, floral and fruit, and overall intensity are so pronounced that it leaves you with a perfume-like aftertaste. That one dry edge really defines the feel; probably that would improve somewhat if it balanced more with the rest, if it didn't stand out. But this tea experience is like drinking perfume, in a good sense, so it's not appropriate to focus on part of that seeming like a flaw, since how it all works together probably depends on the parts in a way I can't unpack.
Creamy oolong: this is warming in tone; interesting. A lot of all the rest of that about the Christmas version applies to this too, just in a different sense. This is a little lighter and brighter in character, with that other tea's warm dried apricot range swapped out for fruit towards citrus. Floral range is probably brighter flowers; it's not my personal strength to add flower names to that. Plumeria and what I think is an Indian cork / peep tree grow in one yard now and it's along those lines.
Christmas oolong, fourth infusion: this round I brewed really fast, just trying out variations, and it works quite well this way. One nice outcome is that it would brew very many infusions made that way, cup after cup, without losing intensity. Transition could also relate to a pattern of character changing across rounds; that happens. With astringency dialed back as an outcome this is just the straight experience of warm and complex flowers, with a bit of warm dried fruit underlying that. It's still intense enough to carry over as a pleasant floral aftertaste.
Creamy oolong: again the aromatic floral range is off the scale for this version, just in brighter range, with a different touch of feel grounding it. These teas are nice. I'll probably give both one longer infusion (still 10-15 seconds, not long) to see how that compares with transition cycle input and then stop taking notes. These will easily brew another half dozen infusions; it's more about me running out of patience for the review process.
Christmas oolong, fifth infusion: interesting how feel shifts along with infusion strength, and a warmer toned input. This might have evolved to include more citrus along the way, more a warm orange citrus, versus the other being brighter and towards lemon, or at least Mandarin orange. It wouldn't be surprising if transitions included a little more flavor range shift, beyond balance just changing over the next half dozen rounds. The feel to this includes an edge but there is a cool syrupy quality to it as well, which matches together with that perfume-like floral blast nicely. Aftertaste and feel effect both trail off slowly for teas of this typical type range. Or maybe these aren't part of any typical type range.
Creamy oolong: this is quite pleasant, but I think sheng pu'er conditioning for high levels of astringency and bitterness help with that interpretation. Someone drinking a lot of typical edgy, slightly harsh first flush Darjeeling might end up in a similar place, and see this as soft and approachable as a result. The level of floral range intensity in both is hard to really describe. Both contribute a real open handed slap of floral flavor.
Conclusions:
Both very nice! I suppose I liked the Christmas version better related to appreciating warmer toned range in similar teas. The usual first versus second flush character divide is pretty much about the same thing, with the "creamy" version closer to typical first flush range. Both were nice though, novel, complex, and pleasant. Both definitely included plenty of floral and fruit range.
About the oolong theme, I get it why producers in other places (than China and Taiwan) try to produce and communicate a general range for medium level oxidized teas. The character is just never going to be a close match, because of other starting points varying, tea types, growing conditions, and so on. I'm open to styles borrowing from other places, and name uses being flexible. Some people see the words "Thai Oriental Beauty" together and see that as a misnomer, but to me it's not a problem. What they mean is clear, and until a designation is origin area protected there's no need to avoid using it, as I see it.
It's really about how people see language use in general, more so than views on tea. If someone is open to seeing "literally" mean "figuratively," or they / them as a singular gender neutral pronoun, then it's easy to embrace the concept of Indian oolong. If not what can you do; people vary in how they prefer language is used, especially related to changes. Calling these oolong, in addition to autumn flush Darjeeling, just communicates that the oxidation level is medium. For some that's clear, appropriate communication and positive branding, and for others they probably shouldn't be saying that. It's up to Gopaldhara to decide it, since I see this as more of a branding issue than a category use issue.
They are not a distant away from dialing in a narrower range of oxidation level, it seems to me, and these would seem a lot closer to Chinese and Taiwanese oolongs in style. Tie Guan Yin often have a darker leaf edge and "greener" center, so it's down to getting that less oxidized part to transition just a little more. Or what do I know, really; I'm just a tea blogger. I can express how I interpret flavors and my own match to preference, and beyond that I really am just guessing. Related to those factors these teas were nice.
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