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Vietnamese tea left, in all photos |
I'm reviewing the second wild material tea from ITea World in comparison with a version from Viet Sun. Citing their descriptions will fill in more about that origin, but it is whatever it is.
It's a challenging context for the Chinese tea version, because the 2023 Lao Cai version has been one of my favorite teas. It's complex, well-balanced, intense, and positive across flavor and other aspects. A wild origin material hei cha from ITea World was pleasant but atypical in hei cha style, like a smoked version of Liu Bao, sort of.
Chinese Wild Black Tea ($25 for 40 grams)
Indulge in our Chinese Wild Black Tea. Using a non-smoked Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong process, this tea boasts a rich floral aroma and a thick, smooth taste. It leaves a refreshing sensation under the tongue and a clear, lingering throat note. The aftertaste is deep and lasting, with a prolonged sweetness that brings joy
At 60 cents a gram that pricing is a little aggressive but that's how it can go with rare and desirable forms of tea. There probably isn't any easy way to buy something similar, or maybe there are no close alternatives at all.
Lào Cai Black Spring 2024 ($19 for 100 grams)
A buddy hồng trà from medium, old and ancient trees growing at 1200-1500m in Y Tý, Lào Cai.
A fruity, honey cacao fragrance emerges upon first infusion. This tea brews up quickly into a rich crimson golden soup. The flavors I pick up are fruit jam, chicory, malt, cacao, honey with warming spices. This tea has a chicory dark chocolate bitterness with a rich lingering effect in the throat and an uplifting, focused qi.
Medium oxidation, medium rolling time/ pressure, lower than average air drying temp/ longer drying time. A great option for a morning pick me up or any time when you need a burst of clear headed energy.
At $19 for 100 grams this costs one third the per-unit weight of the other version. (or the ITea World site sells an 80 gram version for $42.50, working out to 54 cents, probably a more fair comparison).
Again that's not so atypical for more direct from producer sales from Vietnam, versus China or another highest demand origin, like Japan or Taiwan. If it's identical to the 2023 version that's more than fair, a great value.
Review:
Lao Cai Vietnamese: pretty similar to the 2023 version. It's so close that I'm probably not going to be able to do separation justice from memory. I drank that tea yesterday, so it's not a distant memory, but this is similar. Berry or dried dark cherry range might be a little stronger; a warm-toned edge might stand out just a little more. This might include a bit more cacao; it's fairly pronounced. Astringency effect is different but this is the first round, and that probably will shift some.
The tea is great; that's the same. I own a lot of the 2023 version and it's not enough. I keep giving it away to people I care about, so that they can have the experience too, but I'll try to mostly hold onto it from here.
Daming Mountain, Shanglin County, Nanning wild black tea: that's really novel, and quite pleasant. Flavor is pretty intense, warm, sweet, complex, and unusual. Feel is giving up a lot in terms of fullness, but then again it's early, and I expect feel to shift for both. This tastes like dried elderberry, or rather as that would taste, if I'd ever had it. I ate a lot of elderberry pies as a child but never experienced that berry dry, even though since it grew wild locally we could've just kept picking it, and then dried it. It would've been a shame to not make it all into pies though, so my Mom did.
There is a very faint musty input in this, hard to place that it's so subtle, connecting with warm mineral tone. From here that could develop, but I'd expect it to drop out instead. Feel is rich and smooth, just not as structured and full as the other.
In tasting between the two it includes mineral that ties to feel that's more astringent, causing a slight mouth puckering effect. That comes across as fullness of feel initially, not remotely as a flaw, but in tasting between the two the effect is that it seems more "rustic," less refined. But also better, in a few senses, more intense, with more flavor complexity, not just hitting a narrow range of a few flavor inputs. It will be interesting seeing how both evolve.
Based only on the first round the Vietnamese version takes it, but that's only according to my own preference. In a way this Chinese version is more novel and more refined, so people might value that more than the additional complexity and intensity.
Lao Cai 2: that's so good! This is clearly more complex, layered, and refined than the earlier 2023 version, I think. I don't feel badly about owning quite a bit of the other instead of this one; they're both similar, and both great. A brandy-like effect comes across in the flavor profile, tying to the cherry range more than the cacao. The feel is just wonderful, full, structured, rich, and not rough at all. It's velvety, not light. A clean, sweet aftertaste effect carries over. I can easily recommend that anyone buys as much of this as they feel comfortable deciding on.
It would be possible to interpret this flavor as including tartness, in which case the berry range might seem more like cranberry than dark cherry. I'm not a fan of tartness in black tea, actually a bit sensitive to that, and it's so moderate (limited) in this I don't interpret it that way. The feel including a bit of astringency edge I see as normal, positive black tea experience. Framed in positive terms it represents complex and full structure; framed negatively it's dryness instead.
Nanning: this filled in as well; flavor complexity filled in what seemed like a thin spot before, and feel structure is richer and fuller. It's crazy that both these teas are this good. I thought the 2023 Lao Cai version would be an unfair starting point for comparison for me loving it so much, then this next year's is better, and the Chinese tea holds its own.
This tastes like Christmas; I can even explain why. Elderberry has shifted to taste more like teaberry, a flavor that won't ring a bell to many. It's a mix of berry flavor and mint, which balances really well with a lighter cacao tone than the other includes.
I suppose that if someone felt that a medium degree of feel structure is needed to balance warm, rich, complex flavors that could still seem like a gap for this version. Or the opposite could occur in judgement, and the lightness could make this seem more refined. To me they both work, just in different ways.
It looks like I'm brewing a bit more of the Vietnamese tea, because it expanded more. The tightly twisted leaves in this version have expanded, but not as much. I'm not at all concerned that it might be an unfair test of them; there isn't that much difference.
Lao Cai #3: the same, not changing. Warm mineral supports rich dried cherry, cacao, and range that could be interpreted as tartness, with a pleasant brandy-like effect setting context. I see this as more refined than rustic, or maybe those concepts add nothing to practical description. The feel is great, full and rich, with pleasant structure, but still smooth. I could drink this tea most of the time and wouldn't tire of it, even though I'm mainly a sheng pu'er drinker. It would be great drank alone or with food, lots better than necessary for a daily drinker, but it could serve that role well in this style.
Nanning: not evolving too much; maybe flavor complexity is tying together better, and feel keeps evening out to not include thinness across a feel range that's impossible to describe. This flavor set is novel and pleasant.
Maybe the other is more standard, more typical, and that would serve it better as an input one might be open to repeating countless times. Maybe this one is more novel, and that would come across better as a unique experience, something to savor or share. Who knows about all that; it would just depend on the subjective impression one gets from either.
This tea being lighter in feel, to the extent that could be interpreted as a gap, makes it a less suitable pairing with food, but for some that could be regarded as a strength, for it to be a more refined stand-alone experience. A black tea drinker might miss the extra feel structure but an oolong drinker could prefer this version for being rich and full enough as it is. Either of these would be pretty flexible about range of potential brewing approaches; they would both be great brewed Western style, and could work out brewed "grandpa style," left in contact with water in a tea bottle.
Lao Cai #4: last round; I'm off to yet another pressing errand. Dried dark cherry is stronger than ever in this, supported nicely by cacao. That could taste like a Christmas theme, couldn't it? I think this might be a perfect tea to get someone new to better tea started, and also one someone almost the entire way through an experience curve would love. That's the magic of a range of different black teas, that anyone could appreciate them.
To put it in perspective that hint of feel structure and dryness isn't completely unlike Assam, but it's at a fraction of the proportion that tends to occur in the best quality versions of those. Those are malty instead, used in a different sense than one would mean related to describing Ovaltine, or the malt in a milkshake. It would work to say this tastes like malt too, but to me fruit and cacao stands out more.
Nanning: it's interesting how flavor intensity, complexity, and fullness of feel structure keep gradually ramping up in this. It matches the other. That one especially catchy flavor aspect range people might describe differently. Here I've pegged it as elderberry, then teaberry, referencing a brandy-like quality, with cacao as a secondary input. As usual that wouldn't be a universal interpretation; if I tried this a couple of more times I might vary it. It works as a well-grounded and descriptive initial impression.
Conclusions:
This gets a little strange, because I want to conclude that both are very positive, simply unique in different ways. Then I preferred the version that costs one third as much as the other, aligning value and my own personal preference with that one.
It is still fair to say that they're simply two different types of tea. The Chinese version is a bit more refined, subtle and distinctive in a different way, and unique in terms of flavor profile. It evolved positively across rounds; later in the tasting they were more equivalent. The Vietnamese tea also has a very positive flavor profile, and higher intensity of flavor, with more intense feel structure and aftertaste, all in a positive range. For someone really into mild feel and refined flavored black tea they could like the Chinese version better, but to me that feel structure in the Vietnamese version was so moderate that I don't see it as a negative factor at all.
As I mentioned earlier there's often an option to get better value teas from origins outside of the highest demand areas, from places like Vietnam, Thailand, Georgia, Nepal, or even Indonesia. Then it just depends on the sales channel too.
The ITea World vendor stands out in relation to offering a lot of standard type or more unique and interesting versions as samples or sample sets; potential customers should probably make the most of this option range. Then if a version introduced through this approach really stands out as a match to preference ordering more volume of it would be a clearly defined option. For having a tight tea budget I tend to react quite a bit to per-volume sales value, but for many others spending $25 on high quality tea that you can drink a significant number of times would already be acceptable value.
The Viet Sun source is where I've been buying tea for the past couple of years. For tea enthusiasts there shouldn't be a need to add to that; the meaning should already be clear. Teas are good, value is good, and the styles are positive, distinctive, and interesting.
Often new or newish vendors will sell teas at great value for a relatively long initial period, build up following and demand, and then will often suddenly shift that pricing structure, turning over a lot of customers who are attracted by value, but continuing to build on sales volume by marketing to attract others. Whether or not Viet Sun follows this pattern value is pretty good now, and products are high in quality and distinctive; it's a good time to explore what they sell.
The only downside is that many people don't buy $100 worth of tea at a time (really!), and their free international shipping threshold is set at $88. It's a great option for people who are already focused quite a bit on tea experience, but for people just considering expanding out from drinking $15 per tin mass produced teas it may seem like a bit of a step.
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