Greetings! It's been awhile. My kids spent winter school break here in Bangkok, visiting back from Honolulu, so I took a couple of weeks off this blog, and most of the internet in general. I should probably never return to the same level of use, but this isn't about the digital detox theme.
I had tried tea versions from ITea World before, samples sent from a new mainstream Chinese vendor for review, in 2023. They were pretty good; kind of medium quality level, but for being moderate cost versions the value and experience in relation to expectations was fine. They asked if I wanted to try more, better versions of oolongs this time, and it's always interesting revisiting such themes. I drink a lot more sheng pu'er than anything else now, but it's interesting checking in with types I've focused more on in the past.
In this review I tried to sort out just how good the versions are. Better than the last ones, unless I've got that all wrong, this time more upper medium quality, or at the lower end of the highest quality range. It probably gets tiresome hearing that spelled out in detail, but it does also pass on my take on what differentiates really good tea versions from medium or slightly above average versions, so covering finer points at length serves two different purposes.
I don't lean into the theme of "quality markers" too much here, something I've not ran across used in exactly the same way I've developed it, but surely a theme that's not unheard of. Some specific aspects identify what is most desirable in some tea versions; that's it. For this it's enough to specify what stands out as most positive and what represents limitations in these versions.
They're not listed on the website, except in the sampler version they sent me. The versions are from different harvests than the earlier oolongs offerings, or else they seem the same, of the same types. I've not discussed how these are better with the vendor, in any detail.
The set sells for $40 for a 100 gram set of samples, all 5 grams each (so there must be 20--yep, I just counted them), so only that price point will serve as a cost baseline. 40 cents a gram for pretty good oolong is not so bad, as a starting point. For baseline reference I can buy really good versions of it in the Bangkok Chinatown for $30 for 100 grams, but you would almost have to live in China to have access to the same or better degree of options as there, to be able to buy good versions at low cost. Cost of teas tend to vary some by type, with some higher in demand, and the Dan Cong in this set may be the kind of version that sells for a good bit more than Tie Guan Yin or Shui Xian (for example).
What about comparison with online sales options though? That gets complicated, because online vendors set price points in a broad range of ways, which vary by the value they buy tea at, and their markup, all adjusted quite a bit for their costs, the volume they sell, and what works out well for profit for them. There is no standard range of norms, really; it varies. In this I talk as if there is, estimating what comparable quality versions to these would tend to sell for online. That can be hard to estimate based on product descriptions, because essentially every vendor exaggerates quality levels, describing their own teas in glowing, positive terms, as they kind of should, since a sales function just doesn't couple well with excessive humility about experienced aspects and quality level.
Let's push that consideration a little further, then cite their description, then get on with review notes. This is a medium quality (or at least medium range price) Mi Lan Xiang Dan Cong from Yunnan Sourcing, not the obvious place to buy teas from provinces outside of Yunnan, but a standard option, selling for $17.50 per 30 grams (so $58 per 100 grams), with their highest quality / cost offering selling for a lot more, more than double that:
This is a lovely middle mountain (中山) elevation Mi Lan Xiang (蜜兰香) from Da An village, grown at an altitude of roughly 900 meters from decades old tea bushes growing wild.
Strong and thick tea, golden yellow tea soup, powerful honey and orchid aroma. Perfect balance of sweet, bitter and umami with a long lasting mouth-feeling. Cha Qi is powerful and clean.
This is a high quality Mi Lang Xiang that will surely please even the most discerning Dan Cong connoisseurs!
It sounds good. One point here in citing that is that tea descriptions should focus on the positive, and another is to spell out a type-typical range: including floral range, good balance, good mouthfeel, and intensity. Bitterness and umami not so much; I'm not sure what that's all about. Sheng is bitter, and umami is found in Japanese green teas, or maybe Mao Feng Chinese green tea, but typically not Dan Cong. Maybe this Yunnan Sourcing version is better than the one I've already wrote notes for, or maybe it's not as good; you can't tell from a description.
This version from Wuyi Origin, a very, very well regarded direct sales producer site, lists for $60 per 100 grams; it's almost certainly significantly better. But it's not really fair, comparing tea from a mainstream resale outlet--what both ITea World and Yunnan Sourcing are--with the relative best quality and value source for this oolong in China that I'm aware of.
This kind of oolong sampler is for a different kind of customer, someone wanting to explore better oolongs than you typically ever find in broad-type online outlets or any local tea shops. From there people might eventually go on to seek out what pushes on towards being as good as any versions typically get. The Wuyi Origin cost isn't that much higher but moving on to spend $200 on a tea order isn't for everyone; I personally try to avoid that. 300 grams of the tea I mentioned gets you pretty close, and if "free" shipping isn't built into their pricing you're there.
Let's check that ITea World listing:
Again that's listed for $40 ($39.99) for 100 grams of those samples, packaged in 5 gram samples. That site shows free shipping kicking in at $39.98, so in theory you could just buy this set. That would be amazing self-discipline, ordering $40 of tea from a China-based vendor, but you could.
It does say a little more about specific local harvest area, growing elevation, and oxidation level on that page, but it seems as well to get on with describing the teas. Elevation does matter, and plant age (supposedly over 100 years old for the Dan Cong), but it's as well to go by final outcome, the experienced aspects, and you need to try the tea to determine that. Or hear from someone you trust on that, I guess, but then even given that kind of input verbal descriptions only go so far.
Review:
Dan Cong: it's good. As so often tends to happen this first round is a little light, and therefore harder to really judge, but this is quite nice. The oxidation input and roast balance is very medium, just as it should be to get to a very positive outcome for this type, complementing the floral range very well. I'll fill in the standard list of aspects and finer quality level assessment the next time, but this is probably as far up the quality scale as it should be for what I'm expecting of it, fairly far along. Style is zeroed in, especially roast level, I think; not pretty good but right there.
This probably is Mi Lan Xiang again, and again it's odd that the package doesn't say that, as with the first version that I reviewed. I'll cite a website listing after making review notes, and that may fill in this detail (it seems to not; a little odd, really even something that could be taken as a red flag, but again experienced aspects and quality are what matter most, as I see it). I'm brewing 5 grams, the package amount, which really should be relatively ideal, but I tend to use about 8 grams normally, so I'll have to make an adjustment.
Tie Guan Yin: the same; this will be easier to evaluate next round, once it has opened up and is more intense. I think this is better than their last version too, in the range better versions fall into. Not for traditional style more oxidized and roasted tea versions; this is still the bright green kind. Markers for quality level include very sweet floral input, ranging into an odd taste sensation form, which I'll describe further next round, almost oddly strong, with a somewhat thick, full feel seeming to emerge.
I really won't be able to make out the feel brewed lightly and not really opened up but the flavor is fine. It might include a very light off trace, drifting every so slightly into new car smell range, but that may just be an early round anomaly that drops out right away.
Dan Cong, #2: brewed much stronger, really a bit excessive, for trying to err on the side of definitely getting this strong enough.
Feel structure really ramped up as a result, and heavier, earthier flavors. That's actually better for evaluating feel, but flavor experience isn't optimum like that. It doesn't include a common harsh astringency edge some Dan Cong does, or many do. People can make the mistake of thinking that's actually type-typical, when it's my impression that it's really not, that it's common but not a marker of correct style and aspect range.
People also tend to get astringency and bitterness mixed up, which I find odd. It doesn't take that much exposure to tea aspects to see them as completely different things, which just happen to sometimes occur together, or maybe they come up together often. Bitterness is a flavor aspect; that's what aspirin tastes like. Astringency relates to feel; it's the roughness of texture that occurs in a range of tea types, especially in very chopped or ground up black tea. Black teas are essentially never bitter (although there would always be exceptions), so if you think your tea-bag tea is bitter you might want to give this some thought. Taste an aspirin, which is bitter (and also causes an astringency sensation; that's confusing), and see if the flavor part is common to what it experienced in chopped material black tea. Here I'm claiming that the feel is comparable but not the taste.
At a guess lower elevation, younger plants grown using a lot of fertilizer tends to be very intense, including that strong feel edge (astringency), and older plant, higher grown, less chemical-stressed plants include fantastic flavor and feel character but they're not as intense, at least not in the same ways. Floral flavor and sweetness can be very pronounced, but a harsh feel edge often isn't (the astringency). If both flavor and feel are intense in a Dan Cong version it works better to use really short infusion times and hot water to optimize the experience, more so than cutting the brewing temperature, which works, but in a different way. Don't take my word for that, try it and see what you think.
This would be easier to place if I'd been drinking more Dan Cong over the last few years. I think it's pretty good, in a well above average quality range, but finer differences mark the highest levels from there. Different vendors sell what are described as the best of the best range, hyping tea plant age claims, using elaborate descriptions of refined, diverse, and unique feel and flavor experience, but it can be hard to separate hype from likely accurate description. Only with tasting does one arrive at any subjective impression of that, but online discussion inputs about this or that vendor selling the most optimum versions contradict each other. As I suppose they should; different versions would vary quite a bit, maybe even as sold by the same vendor, and preferences would vary.
To distill this to a flavor list a perfume-like floral sweetness dominates the experience, along with warm tones surely drawn out through extra oxidation and roast input. The two ranges really balance. Warm mineral tone ramps up right at the end of the experience, leading into a sweet aftertaste experience including all of that range.
Even though it's all very positive, about as pleasant, refined, intense, complex, and balanced as it probably would be, for higher volume, diverse type outlet sales, it's my impression that dialing up all of those just a touch is still possible. Feel thickness is more moderate; there is room for more change in that, and aftertaste intensity is also positive but not at the high end of that range of potential. It all seems like splitting hairs, but that's how evaluating quality for above average quality versions go.
At a rough guess this should retail for 50 to 60 cents a gram but not more (or it could sell for less; it's hard to pin down what the best value, quite good quality range versions out there are like). The 70 or 80 cent per gram range is something else, or $1 or over. Or maybe that's being a little harsh; this is quite good, and Dan Cong seems to reach $1 per gram quickly enough for a generally good quality range, and this is that. It certainly doesn't taste like a medium quality tin-packaged version, although the best of those, the atypical examples, fall fairly close, or could be this good. We'll see how their pricing places it [that never did become clear, because all together sell for 40 cents per gram].
Tie Guan Yin: I have mixed feelings about this quality assessment too. If I was evaluating this as either inexpensive, medium range, or higher quality Tie Guan Yin it would easily surpass that first level, and fall either in the higher end of the second or lower end of the third. Sweetness is good, floral range is pleasant, and dominant, and it contains a catchy towards-plastic aspect that I'm interpreting as generally positive, even though per that description it wouldn't sound it, and someone might really hate that, or else could like it. Then feel is a bit thin, aftertaste is limited, and intensity and the balance / complexity part isn't bad but not in the highest range.
Evaluating this against all TGY it's quite good; trying to match it with the highest quality end of the range gives the opposite results, and gaps stand out. As long as pricing is favorable per quality, the value is good, if the idea is to try above average quality TGY this easily provides that experience. If the intention is for this to compete with the best of the best it doesn't seem to hold up.
Then one would wonder about pricing, and I'm not really even sure where the high level range for pretty good TGY stands. For lots of in-demand and more rare tea types, for any Dan Cong version beyond Mi Lan Xiang, the most common one, the best versions are at or above $1 per gram, fairly universally. That may not hold as true for Tie Guan Yin, although given how demand patterns work out in China, that the best teas are sought out and competed for, maybe it still works, even though TGY is really the main universal oolong type out there, or one of them, sold as a most-common tea type. Shui Xian fills that role in Fujian / Wuyi Yancha versions, and TGY from Anxi is even more ubiquitous.
I'll try brewing these for more like 20 seconds, to try them lighter.
Dan Cong #3: forget about that project of placing this in relation to the highest possible quality levels; related to purely subjective experience value this is solid tea, that works well for me. The way the warmth and deeper tones integrate and balance with the sweet floral range is great. Sure it's possible to consider if there shouldn't be a bit more thickness of feel (or quite a bit more), or if complexity and intensity couldn't be dialed up just a little, but this still totally works. Feel is a bit velvety, just not thick.
Flavors are complex and balanced, just perhaps leaving limited range for improvement. But it's quite good. If this sells for under $1 per gram I think it's probably a good value for that, whether or not you could explore and eventually find a slightly better version at the same cost; for quite near, at, or over $1 per gram and they're probably pushing it a bit.
Tie Guan Yin: this is nice too. Mind you I'm working around Tie Guan Yin not really being a personal favorite range, so I'm not going to refer back to that subjective preference assessment, beyond quality. It's good though, and pleasant. I don't think it matches the Dan Cong version for how good, even though comparing different types brings up problems in equivalence. For this style of oolong, lighter rolled versions, thickness of feel is all the more critical, and this seems just a trace thinner than the other, not better in relation to just that aspect. Sweetness is good, and floral range is fine, but that one slightly off taste aspect trace, which I find to be both catchy and also slightly negative, even though that's odd, a plastic sort of taste, also throws off highest level quality assessment.
Again if the point is for it to be quite good it's there, well above average, but within the top third of the quality range potential it's near that bottom of the top. If this is 40 to 50 cents a gram, selling as a next level breakfast tea, that's fair, again even if somewhere else on the internet better tea sells for less. For anywhere near $1 a gram, or even 60 to 80 cents, it's just too much for what this is.
For me personally I'd not drink much really light style rolled oolong at all, but I should clarify that I was really on that page very early in my tea exploration, and I would have loved this back then. Preferences naturally evolve over time, and this is better as a place to start, or explore in early rounds.
I don't think this holds its own with the higher quality level range from Taiwan, but then a lot of oolong versions from there marketed as such would be generally equivalent, but not better; almost anything selling through high volume mainstream outlets probably would be. Specialty vendors known for selling only the best range of Taiwanese oolongs would only sell better quality versions than this, but the cost for those would tend to be double or triple what you would buy pretty good Anxi Tie Guan Yin for.
Dan Cong #4: floral range might develop a bit, picking up more intensity. That's a good sign; this might continue to evolve positively. I'm not going to write more notes though; I don't have time to spare for that. If I remember to I'll add a comment from memory later on how that worked out.
Tie Guan Yin: this is good, it's just not great. It's very pleasant, and all the aspects are generally where they should be, just not at the optimum level for many. Sweetness, freshness, floral range, mineral range adding depth, aftertaste follow-through are all positive, although aftertaste intensity is limited. Feel gives up a good bit. For people not experienced in evaluating higher quality versions that wouldn't stand out at all, since you tend to explore and appreciate flavor first. This is pleasant, likeable. It will be interesting seeing the cost and the website description, matching both versions up against those.
Later rounds: these held up fine for a couple of more infusions but then died a bit quickly, which I guess also related to using a lower proportion than I usually do, and longer infusion times.
Conclusions:
These are better than I remember the 2023 ITea World versions being. Again they're good value, good quality in relation to the selling price, maybe best described as the highest level of upper medium quality range versus the low end of the highest quality scope. As I'd mentioned for people newer to tea experience what I'm experiencing as significant gaps may not be all that noticeable at all; early on people typically haven't learned to evaluate or value thickness of feel and aftertaste experience. Related to only flavor they're much better, than when you include review of those aspect expectations.
I liked the Dan Cong a lot more. I like Dan Cong more than Tie Guan Yin in general, but them getting the oxidation level and roast dialed in made a big difference, and I've not mentioned aspects that stand out as flaws because there weren't any, beyond what could've been more pronounced, feel, complexity, and such. Flavor range was pretty good for that.
I am pretty sure it's Mi Lan Xiang, the most common Dan Cong type, for what that's worth. There is room for improvement in the flavor complexity, intensity, balance, and refinement but all that is fairly positive. I say that, but if you try this version side by side with a much higher quality version the difference would seem striking. If you aren't experienced at evaluating teas if you tried both 3 or 4 weeks apart it might be much harder to notice it; it's funny how that works. It could've been a couple years since I've tried any Dan Cong; after awhile the whole range just becomes familiar, with enough exposure, drinking dozens of versions over many years.
The Tie Guan Yin is pretty decent Tie Guan Yin; I suppose that's good enough. If you would taste it side by side along with anything from a specialty grocery store this version would seem fantastic in comparison. Then trying it along with standard $1-$1.50 per gram Taiwanese rolled oolong it would seem to fall way short; it's funny how that works out.
I can respect what ITea World is doing with these teas, making above average versions available at fair pricing. This is perfect for someone new to exploring oolongs. Even if someone had been dabbling in trying them for awhile, but wasn't clear on their baseline quality expectations, these could be pleasant and helpful. Even if the best of all the other versions someone had already tried had been slightly better it would still help place that range. For people way past both exploration levels maybe trying these wouldn't make any sense, although I guess they could still work as a gift, for someone just getting started.
It's a little bizarre related to my own personal use but these come with a set of tea bag sleeves you can put them in; you can convert this loose tea to bag versions, just using what they've provided. For a loose tea enthusiast you'd end up considering how else you might use those, since it wouldn't make sense to put this oolong in them to brew it (any other devices you already have around would work better).
Some people keep sheng pu'er cake dust and small bits aside in a separate jar and brew only that from time to time; those bags might be perfect for that, to take a blend of extra scraps of cakes to the office to drink there. Or it all works even better together as a gift, in case someone absolutely couldn't figure out how to brew loose tea. For a non-tea drinker that's less unlikely and absurd; there is a learning curve to go through, and having some related gear definitely helps. If you took only this sample set to a hotel you'd be set for having some decent tea every day for three weeks; not bad. Drinking tea only from tea bags for three weeks would seem so strange to any tea enthusiast; the point is that it would work.
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reunited with the cats (2 of 3 of them) |
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lots of errands, play outings, and pausing to enjoy the little things |
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they got some things for Christmas, just not much |
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family dinner at a hot pot and sushi buffet place |
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