Greengold white-green tea

 

I'm trying another Greengold Georgian tea, one labeled as "Greengold white-green" tea this time.  The hybrid style theme sounded interesting, with more detail about it in their related website page:

მწვანე ოქრო /mts’vane okro/, in English meaning “Green Gold”, this is how Georgian ancestors were calling tea. Green Gold product has specific altitude in manufacturing process: tea leaves are plucked in specific area of our plantation and specific time (weather, degree level, moisture level, period of the day), which generates special aroma and taste of this tea.

The liquor has a soft, smooth and medium-thick texture. The moistened leaves have a distinct grapefruit juice odour. The infusion gives frank aromas of herbs, fruits and flowers. Its finish is slightly dry and ticklish. Sweet and refreshing. It gives you the body sensation of an instant heat.

Interpretations of flavor aspects are never completely consistent, between vendor descriptions and reviews, and how different people would identify flavors, but all that is pretty much it.

There would be one objectively more correct interpretation, wouldn't there?  In my opinion not really, but I can relate to the opposing conclusion and opinion, that there is.  Flavor aspects are complex in teas, as the compounds produced in the process leaves would also be.  For sure there is a one to one mapping of some final compounds and flavors to those compounds found in other food items, but in general I would expect a mix to occur, not two or three distinct compounds determining main flavors, or even a half dozen.

As we infuse teas across a number of rounds it's very conventional for people to interpret flavor profiles as shifting quite a bit, as the main effective compounds producing flavors varies.  For sure it was all present initially in the dried leaves, with the same compounds present in all infusions, but those are being extracted at different rates, in different proportions, and it seems likely that we tend to interpret sets of distinct flavor inputs in complex ways.

Review:

#1:  this could definitely pass for green tea; it's fresh, vegetal, sweet, and a bit floral.  I like it, even though green tea isn't a most favorite style range.  When green tea balances well that sometimes-annoying grass and vegetable flavor range can really work, as it does in this.  Longjing works around that by tasting more like nuts or toasted rice.  I can appreciate the umami intensive Japanese green tea styles but they're really not a favorite, so this more standard range I'd like better.  

Or maybe it is a little like white tea, and I've just not sorted that part out, including some less vegetal, sometimes warmer range.  Sweetness and brightness is really pleasant in this.

#2:  there is a distinctive flavor range in this that I'm having trouble making out, something that seems to reoccur in these Georgian teas.  It's along the line of a spice note, or maybe that's not it.  A touch of mint seems closer.  I had eaten a couple of those Girl Scout cookie Thin Mints not so long ago and thought it was just that carrying over in the first round, but I think this does taste minty.  It might be that paired with a savory note, so it's like a touch of mint and a bit of sun-dried tomato combined.  It's quite catchy. 

That sun-dried tomato range trails over into a unique mineral range too, which tastes almost like salt.  By that I mean that somewhat distinct flavors seem to relate to each other (perhaps already clear enough).  The range I'm describing as floral doesn't come across as distinct or pronounced then, because there is a lot of other flavor going on.  

#3:  the balance of these flavors is shifting but the set is the same.  I might be missing a spice related aspect description, in there along with the vegetal range.  It's not simple identifying that vegetal range; it's not far off fresh green bean but that's not it, closer to sugar snap pea or fresh soybean.  If I had to pick one it's sugar snap pea.  Feel is decent in this, not thin, but aftertaste really stands out, trailing on as a strong flavor experience after you swallow.  Length, that's sometimes called.

#4:  the brightness and sweetness fades a little, with depth and warmth picking up.  I'll give this a longer soak and see what I make of that and close taking notes.  

It's possible that this is a tea and tisane blend; one leaf doesn't look all that similar to Camellia Sinensis.  That might explain why the flavor is so distinctive.  Even though there is plenty of complexity, lots of different flavor range, it all integrates, so that it doesn't seem like some sort of blend to me.  Of course it could just be varying "real tea" plants that match together, or an extra herb that somehow does, along with those.

it's clear enough which leaf doesn't match the others

#5:  more of the same, including more transition in the same direction.  That vegetal range is quite different now, more onto a spice range, still including a bit of mint, and considerable sundried tomato savory tone.  I might like it better like this, less like a conventional green tea now.  The brightness and freshness being more intense did work well, with this still kind of bright and fresh.  

#6:  I let it brew a really long time, forgetting it, and flash-brewed the next round to mix them together.  Vegetal range increased again, into some sort of plant-stem type range, which doesn't mean much in relation to what a more conventional brewing outcome would've been.  It was still nice.

Conclusion:

An interesting and pleasant tea.  Maybe how much I like teas often doesn't come across in reviews, since I focus on identifying aspects and comparing to standard styles more, with the second not as relevant in this.  I never did get far with placing this as somewhere in between white and green tea.  

I liked it.  It was fresh, intense, pleasant, well-balanced, and novel.  I could probably even drink quite a bit of this, as a routine tea selection when I felt like having something approachable, light, and fresh, stepping back from the edge in relation to the normal sheng pu'er intensity.  It matches what I remembered of their teas, that the quality level and pleasant character hold their own with really good teas from anywhere else.  There isn't a single mention of an aspect flaw in this review for a reason.

Of course green and white teas are not completely unrelated categories, but it's odd considering a type to be in between them, instead of one or the other.  White tea is for the most part just dried, not processed in any other way, beyond some potential degree of wilting, allowing fresh leaves to rest.  Green tea is kill-greened, processed by a main heating step, to suspend activity of enzymes that convert compounds into black tea, the process referred to as oxidation.  

Use of pan-frying, steaming, or oven roasting seems to make a difference, probably best optimized by pairing ideal processing with material suited for that particular step.  Oven heating seems to relate most to large-scale production, but I could be clearer on to what extent final outcome results are inferior to using the other processing / heating forms.

  

I could say more, and there is an interesting reference on oxidation / enzymatic browning here, but in general I tend to focus on what teas are like, not speculating about processing or other inputs.

There was an exception in this review; one leaf seemed to not be Camellia Sinensis, and I wondered if this wasn't a tea and tisane blend.  Probably not really intentionally, not created or presented as such, but it does seem like an extra leaf made it in there.  Interesting, right?  That never happens.  This is one potential explanation in their main website page information:

Our tea plants are surrounded by paulownia tomentosa trees.  The trees create the ultimately supportive environment for plantation’s growth.

That's not described as material used in blending, but the look does match that extra leaf (from their site):

On to many more questions, right?  Is that leaf even edible?  What should it taste like, and is it ever used to make a tisane?  Would it be healthy?

This reference is comforting:

Paulownia tomentosa is commonly known as Princess Tree, Empress Tree, Royal Empress Tree, Royal Paulownia, Fox glove tree, Kiri (in Japan), PaoTong (China), and Odong-Namoo (Korea). 

Paulownia plants are well respected in Japan, China and most of East Asia for its tradition, uses and quality of wood. According to traditional literature flowers and leaves are cooked and consumed occasionally for the treatment of fever and pain, and skin ailments [40]... The major polyphenol found in Princess Tree wood is Paulownin which belongs to a class of chemistry called lignan.

Other sources that come up in a Google search describe use of leaves of this type of tree as animal food input, and say that consuming the leaves isn't a health risk for pets, although for some related plant versions you shouldn't eat the flowers.  Brewing a stray leaf should be fine.  

The related Wikipedia page doesn't mention consumption at all, but brings up that it might be seen as an invasive species in some places, probably partly related to it being fast growing, and potentially capable of replacing other tree species.  A photo there makes it even clearer that it probably was a leaf from that tree type:

By Plantman - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=129895550

Maybe it's a theme that they could look into, using those leaves as tisanes.  For sure that would involve lots more review related to EU import, but a related tea and tisane blend might be pleasant and novel.