Comparing silver needle teas from Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam

Doi Inthanon left, Kinnari middle, Hatvala right

I'm comparison reviewing three white teas, all presented as silver needle style teas, from Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam (from Doi Inthanon, Kinnari Tea, and Hatvala, respectively).  It's a bit much.  I've been on a comparison tasting cycle lately and may as well stick with that, since it helps place teas better than tasting them alone would.  I'll be dropping it before long, maybe for a couple more types then I will.

There is a cost to that, a drawback and trade-off to doing comparisons, which came up in a comment on the last review, comparing Darjeelings.  If the tea plant type or style is different then the review could be more about noticing the style difference than the relative quality level of the teas, and subjective preference description can work out the same, more about type than how good either tea is.

I try to make those factors explicit in the reviews, to clarify when I think I prefer a type-related aspect, or when a set of aspects is uniquely positive in a tea within a range of one style, but there's a limit to that.  With a God's-eye view of tea types, related typical aspects, and characteristics tied to quality levels that would work better, especially if every tea stuck to a clearly defined type, but obviously all of that don't match reality.  Teas tend to vary.  In a sense it really doesn't even matter how close these three are to an original Chinese white tea version anyway; I'm experiencing them in relation to how much I like the aspects, not judging them related to trueness-to-type.

This would be a good place to introduce the teas, perhaps with a few more words at the end about the standard type and differences:


Doi Inthanon (Thailand, outside Chiang Mai):  Silver Needle #12 Bai hau cha - tra trang

Kinnari Tea (Laos) Moon Buds

Hatvala Vietnamese Floating Cloud White tea Yen Bai


This review is mostly about how I experienced the teas, not that background about any standard.  No vendor really claimed these closely matched a traditional Chinese version, and I'm not the best person to judge how well they did.

Review

Doi Inthanon lower left, Kinnari top, Hatvala lower right

The three teas look and smell quite different.  The Thai tea is much darker, with much smaller buds ("needles"), and a rich, complex scent.  The Laos version is the lightest, with a sweet, light, fruity scent, and the Vietnamese version is just a little darker than that and sweet but with a bit more of a savory edge to it.

The taste of the "silver needle" tea from Thailand, the Doi Inthanon Silver Needle, is a bit intense, perhaps closer to a black tea range than white based only first impression.  Of course white teas can oxidize to different levels based on processing differences, and this seems to have more than most.  That's not a good or bad thing, taken alone, just a variation; that just depends on how well it works.  I'll need to use short infusion time for this tea to limit the intensity, the opposite of what I expect from the other two.  It doesn't look like a silver needle tea at all, with much smaller buds than is typical, and quite a bit darker.  The dry scent is sweet and rich, heavy towards molasses and other earth tones, so I think it has lots of potential, it just won't match the typical profile, and it won't be subtle.

Tasting it the first round will involve tasting past an astringency balance that's a little high, but it's still positive.  It has an interesting citrus high note that stands out, and a great mineral intensive structure at the base, with lots of earthy range below that, the molasses, in general, maybe just not exactly that.  There's really a lot going on; it's partly floral, familiar from their other teas, and that molasses scent seems related to a woodiness in this particular infusion.  It all could be a little much for a white tea drinker looking for some subdued floral tones and maybe a little melon or whatever else mixed in; this is a little intense.  It'll review better brewed very lightly though, so I'll get back to all that.  That astringency even reminds me of pine needle tea, nothing like the bite in many other kinds of teas, a bit unique, coupled with a sharp, piney flavor element that's not negative, just quite different.

The Kinnari Tea Laos tea (Moon Buds) is subtle, as I would have expected.  It's sweet and complex though, with lots going on too, just in a completely different range.  Part seems like freshly dried hay, maybe a little floral, and that sweetness may well extend into fruity character, not so far from melon, maybe that.  I think there is some bright citrus going on too.  That citrus is so light and bright it's hard to pick a match for it, along the lines of tangerine peel spray, that citrus oil that comes out when you bend a peel.  I think it'll be easier to review on the next infusion for the opposite reason; it will take another round to really get going.  That contrast is funny.  The lightness and brightness is nice; it's not just light in the sense of being subtle, there is a bright character to it that's not easy to describe.  Someone might say "freshness" instead but to me brightness captures it.  It's a lot sweeter, or will be, once I get both of these teas brewing in a range that works for them.

The Vietnamese version (Hatvala Floating Cloud) is warmer, richer, a bit fuller.  Again this infusion is a little light for this tea; it will be easier to pin down going a little longer.  That first infusion was a bit over 30 seconds, probably still less than 45 though, long for this Gongfu proportion, but kind of normal for these types of teas that need longer to brew.  Or really the Doi Inthanon tea didn't need as long as it steeped; we live and learn.

It might not be easy to pin down the richness of this Floating Cloud even with optimized brewing; the main element seems closest to pine nut.  To me that's a really good thing, but I guess maybe not everyone loves pine nuts.  For people that haven't had them they're rich and a bit sweet, with a distinctive flavor, not so far from macadamia nut but not exactly the same.  They're a touch less creamy, but still creamy, and don't give up anything in being distinctive.  The warm aspect in this tea isn't so far from the fresh dried hay aspect in the Laos tea, they just head out in completely different directions from there, one to lighter, brighter and sweeter and the other to richer tones.  This is cool so far, and these teas have hardly gotten started.

the initial set-up

Second infusion

I went with a short infusion for the Doi Inthanon tea, around 15-20 seconds.  I think I'll go with the nicknames for these, instead of location, but this was only called silver needle (or bai hau cha - tra trang).  It's light but it works.  The sweetness and brightness stand out more, and that astringency steps back to a nice supporting level.  To be more specific it's not exactly astringency; it seems to both be a "feel" dimension and a related flavor element that seems connected with that, again close enough to pine needles.  For pine needle tisane lovers out there it's not light and sweet like white pine or hemlock (which is not the kind of plant that killed Socrates, it just shares the name), more like a Norway Spruce, a bit heavier and more intense.  It's like a light version of pine pitch.

The tea being sweet too makes that work.  The floral is still present but lighter, and something along the line of wood tones fills in some.  It might all work better than "wood, pine, and flowers" sounds, although really there would be a lot of range within those three description scopes.  There's a bit of a sage-like spice aspect filling in between that woodiness and pine that's nice.  It would too good a tea for blending with, and crazy to use it as such, but it would work well for part of the flavors base in a soup.

The Moon Buds (Kinnari tea) is still a little subtle, brewed for the same time again, in the range of 45 seconds.  I just can't measure infusion times; I'm philosophically opposed to it, but my internal clock works well enough.  There's something catchy about this tea, which I'm not going to do justice to by putting names on aspects.  It's bright and sweet, but not in a way that's familiar.  Maybe I like it more since I've been into first flush Darjeelings that emphasize brightness and sweetness, even though the character is a little different.

I should brew it for a full minute to let it go stronger, or a bit over that.  The package says 95C, 3 to 5 minutes (or was that a 7?), and of course part of going shorter on time is that I'm using a relatively high proportion of tea to water.  After 3 minutes at this proportion it would be as strong as a mild black tea in effect, but really some people would still like that.  I don't think it has enough astringency in it for that part to become a problem, but the flavor balance shift would let earthier elements play more a role and that light sweetness would drop back into a continuum of other aspects more.  I'll try it though; I can't add more to description here based on this tasting.  It's vaguely floral and citrusy, perhaps with a touch of melon, but there's more to it than that.  As for which melon, that part gets complicated.  I hate almost all melons but I like this flavor aspect, but maybe it's as well I don't expand on how that plays out.  Maybe it's not melon anyway, something fruity but slightly different, off towards apricot or plum instead.

The Floating Cloud (Hatvala tea) is still sweet but more in a richer, warmer range.  I will go a little longer on these two and describe them further for a third round.  The Doi Inthanon tea could probably handle a 30 second steep but not longer.

Third infusion

Screw the philosophy, I timed that last infusion, 30 seconds for the Doi Inthanon tea, 2 minutes for the other two.  To explain that part more, to me timing infusions puts more process between the tea drinker and the experience, as much as it standardizes and optimizes brewing.  I get it, about more people probably going the opposite way on that, but I like the minor variations in preparation, they are as informative as they are pleasant to experience.  And reviewing teas already adds a thick layer of analysis and interpretation to trying teas that I find disruptive.  It's interesting to do it, on a different level, but take away this blog communication step and I wouldn't really care to split flavors and other aspects into concept-lists like this.  Back to that though.


The Doi Inthanon tea is right at a level of intensity that works.  From here it's more about the balance of aspects working out for someone or not than dialing that in more.  It's woody, and floral, a sweet type of floral, with a bit of feel and taste matching pine needle, so more of the same.  The level of sweetness makes that work, but it's not as sweet as the other two teas.  The Kinnari tea is the sweetest, and brightest, but also the most subtle.  It's tempting to say the Hatvala tea is in the middle somehow but I'm not sure experiential space maps out like that.

The Moon Buds is picking up some warmth and depth brewed stronger, not giving up much brightness, but that aspect range is diminished for sharing some space.  The depth it gains is more in the range of sunflower seed, soft and sweet, a little rich, but still light.  I think it's a floral tone I'm not able to capture in description, as much as fruit, maybe spanning both.  It would be possible to try and focus on that dried hay / sunflower seed aspect and try to pin that down further too, and possible to interpret that in different ways.  It's hard to imagine that being read as mineral or spice tone but it's not inconceivable, really, or maybe I'm just missing something else.  The tea is a little subtle still but complex.

I haven't been saying much about feel or aftertaste (anything about those, really), but for me comparison tasting goes like that.  It works out to naturally truncate description for having so much space to cover.  A 2000+ word tea review is a bit much to write or read, beyond that extra being lots to focus on when tasting.  This tea isn't thin, and the taste does linger after swallowing it, but doubling the infusion time again would surely thicken the feel and add even more aftertaste.  It's a preference issue.  I always disliked silver needle style teas for being too subtle and not having enough dimensions but at the same time I prefer them on the light side, a bit of a contradiction.  To me--not a given, we're on what I think versus any standard understanding on this, best taken with a grain of salt--it shifts the aspect range going longer by pulling out richer, earthier flavors, at the expense of the lighter aspects, which don't drop out, but they do get crowded a little.

The Floating Cloud is similar to before, brewed stronger:  rich, sweet, a little subtle but with lots going on, with both brightness and earthiness.  The sweetness is in the range of both floral tone and honey, maybe with a trace of citrus, and that pine-nut aspect moves out to cover more range, but it gets harder to pin down.  I think I wouldn't have liked this tea as much a year or two ago for not really embracing the experience of related subtle teas, but I'm better with that now.  I've been drinking a good bit of compressed white teas lately, two shou mei cakes and some random pressed white version, and those are quite different--sort of--but the general range is not so far off.  This tea is definitely brighter than those, and more complex, with more going on at that higher end, the floral aspect, but not as bright and sweet as the Laos tea.  I think it's a bit richer and fuller than the Laos tea, maybe in feel too, but I really mean in flavors aspect range.

Doi Inthanon lower left, Kinnari top, Hatvala lower right

Fourth infusion

To push the teas a bit I went 40 seconds for the Doi Inthanon tea and three minutes for the other two (timed infusions; but I'm not going to switch over to embracing optimized brewing all the time).  They would drink just fine brewed lightly but this should help show what's going on with them better.  A full five minute steep might work to identify more about the structure, or really delve into all they have going on, but it wouldn't match my own brewing preference, at least not at this tea and water proportion.

The Doi Inthanon tea is fading just a little, although it's surely far from finished, it would probably go any number of rounds past this brewed longer.  The pine stands out a little for the rest dropping back a little, and the lighter feel works well, otherwise it's about the same.

The Moon Buds tea doesn't transition much, but it does pick up more earthiness, probably both from a natural aspects progression and from going longer on infusion time.  That one "catchy" aspect does remind me a little of that AV2 Darjeeling character, the smoothness and roundness coupled with sweetness, brightness, and melon / light citrus character (or some other fruit I'm not "getting").  Or maybe I've just described a set of aspects instead, even if to me they tie together somehow.  All of those things almost come to a central presentation point in one distinct but hard to describe bright flavor element.  At the end I can say how the Kinnari tea owner describes it as a list; she's pretty good with such things.

The Floating Cloud moves into an interesting space, transitioning the most of the three, towards a sun-dried tomato sweetness, a sweet and savory tone.  That was actually present in the initial dry tea scent but I wasn't noticing it so much in the other infusions.  I wouldn't be surprised if it would be possible to pull out a completely different type of experience from this tea by going long with infusion time initially, and maximize the savory tone that way.  The Kinnari tea would pick up more earthiness range in such an approach too, whichever way that sunflower seed element would present itself brewed stronger, but the Doi Inthanon tea wouldn't be as drinkable brewed any stronger.  This might be a good place to close this, to move onto some final thoughts based on those vendor's input.

Additional

This will only make for a token aside about traditional style, not from the most authoritative reference on the internet, but the related Baiho Yinzhen article in Wikipedia (the Chinese name for the general type) points out something worth noting:


Two regions, Zhenghe and Fuding, spanning the north to north-eastern parts of the Fujian province are the major and original producers of this tea, although neighboring counties have also been producing.[3] The two major cultivars employed by these regions are Fuding Da Bai and Zhenghe Da Bai, named after their origins. These differences are important to distinguish the two major styles of Silver Needles — the Zhenghe style and the Fuding style. The former is usually a lot darker, with significantly longer piled-up time for oxidation, yielding a tea with fuller body than the latter style, which is generally lighter with shorter oxidation.[5] 


It wouldn't have mattered to me how much these varied from traditional styles, and I'm still not really pointing towards a connection in noting that, although a guess about plant types does follow.

Related to vendor descriptions, there is no vendor description of the Hatvala version on their site, but one does appear here (edited):


...from Suoi Giang in Yen Bai province.  This is a hand crafted tea that undergoes an extended sun withering followed by gentle stirring and drying... Made from leaf buds only harvested from wild tea trees that grow in the ancient bio-diverse forests at altitudes above 1400 metres... Floating Cloud is both elegant and complex and produces a delightfully sweet tea with notes of honeysuckle, sugar cane, walnuts and pine forest. 


None of the aspect descriptions match completely directly but the general description really does (eg. swapping out walnuts for pine nuts, interpreting sugar cane as honey).  I think the tea is quite good; the general impression matches too.

Moon Buds description (not as clear due to a branch in branding)

I didn't see any description of the Doi Inthanon tea, but this graphic lists some background on the Moon Buds version (listed as White Wings; it's possible different years' versions picked up different names, or it could just be a split in branding).  Again it sort of matches what I've described, just not directly.  Brewing it light I'd pick up less texture, although "buttery" is surely intended as a flavor here.  The mineral side would stand out more brewed even stronger too (I love "pebble" as a description though; I never can really sort out different rocks as aspects).  Citrus I'd mentioned, and the fruit I never did pin down, describing it as melon perhaps towards plum or apricot.  Incense:  maybe!  It really did have a lot going on.


It's probably as well to not stretch this out but I think all three are grown at significant elevation, with both the Kinnari Tea and Hatvala tea from older natural growth environments.  Not only would the Doi Inthanon tea be farm-produced (a typical row-planted, single, selected plant type) it's probably not similar in type to the other two.  I'd be speculating to say they are both from Assamica type plants but I think they are.  More "native" versions in the North of Vietnam and Laos are, per my understanding (only native in the sense of being introduced a long time ago, most likely).  That would explain the buds size differences, smaller for the Thai version, relatively similar in appearance for the other two, just a bit different in initial color.  So it's back to the idea of comparing apples and oranges I started on initially, related to the Doi Inthanon version, but then the review was clear on that in descriptions too.

All three were nice anyway, with a lot of complexity and interesting character from all of them, I just preferred the Laos and Vietnamese teas' styles more.  There was a time when the overall subtlety of those wouldn't have matched what I like in teas so well but now I'm more on that page, maybe not in terms of overall type favorites, but related to what I can really appreciate.  Those two teas were fantastic, so similar but so different, in different senses.  The Thai tea is still nice, well worth checking out, and positive enough that someone with a different style preference still might like it more, if having a bit more edge to the tea somehow seemed better.  As I mentioned in that last post related to Darjeeling types I tend to prefer oolongs and soft, complex black teas (Dian Hong and such), but it makes perfect sense for someone to like a bit more astringency than I do to balance other aspects.


One last aside:  I've been stocking up on gaiwans lately, so I now have three each of smaller and larger size versions for reviews.  I went with the larger ones for this tasting and it was a mistake; it took me all day to come down from the buzz of drinking around 18 cups of white tea.

Reviewing two Doi Inthanon Thai teas

Doi Inthanon producer introduction

Not so long ago I reviewed an oolong from Doi Inthanon, a Thai tea producer outside of Chiang Mai.  It generally never comes up but I discussed experimenting with re-roasting that tea, and the character change was interesting.  This vendor page provides background on the small farming operation, which produces #12 Jin Xuan and #17 Ruan Zhi tea types, imported plant types from Taiwan typically used for oolong production in Thailand.  This post will review two more teas from them, provided by the vendor for review.

I like the idea of a small new tea producer extending production into a place it hasn't been before.  I hope to see their business and product offerings expand in the future.

plantation; plants growing (photo credit)

This earlier post goes into the background on that second plant type, identifying that #17 cultivar is Bai Lu.  Ruan Zhi (or Luan Zhi, an alternate spelling) is a different plant type.  That's a common naming issue here, with #17 and Ruan Zhi typically associated.  I guess to some extent it doesn't matter if it's really Ruan Zhi or Bai Lu improperly identified, although the #17 part seems likely to be accurate, so that it probably really is Bai Lu.

Related to Jin Xuan (#12) there's more on cultivars from Taiwan in this post, which mentions this reference table source (which doesn't itself include plant names, at least in this part):

Taiwan TTES / TRES cultivar table (reference source)

The other parts in that reference about landraces (original native plant strains) and plant types related to tea that aren't Camellia Sinensis (variety Sinensis or Assamica), or "wild" tea plant types, are even more interesting than these hybrid descriptions, but completely off the subject here.

These teas I'm reviewing were both nice, comparing well with other Thai teas I've tried.  That may or may not generally come across in the descriptions, with the broader issue being that "nice" spans a lot of different range.  Thai teas in general are not as refined and well-made as better versions from Taiwan and China.  Even related to teas sourced from those countries it makes a difference what a tea is, and what it's being sold as.  Moderately priced teas described as ordinary versions naturally wouldn't be judged against the same expectations and standards as versions costing twice as much, or perhaps a lot more, sold instead as higher quality level, difficult to find teas.  Thai types in general are more in the range of everyday teas, and they never command those higher price levels, at least not that I've seen.


Thai tea cultivation and production has only been going on for the past 30 years or so, so it's natural they are behind those older traditions at the higher levels.  Of course there are plenty of exceptions to that local industry history range; this post on an old-tree pu'er-like tea from Myanmar touches on the earlier tradition that may go back to prior to 200 BC, and that may have extended into the North of Thailand.


To some extent growing location, cultivation variables, and plant age are all factors in final tea quality, along with plant types used and lots of other inputs, but I think we will see Thai teas improve rapidly over the next decade related mostly to processing technique improvements.  Or maybe not.  Thai loose tea consumers are generally not as selective as Western tea-enthusiast consumers, some of whom are actively researching product options from around the world, so it is possible that the status quo will continue.  Of course there are well-informed Thai tea enthusiasts out there, they just seem to be a limited minority, perhaps even more so than in the US.  At least the current Thai teas are quite reasonable, in terms of being of quality and sold at low cost, with the first described related to these two examples.

Green tea review

The tea looks a bit dark, with twisted leaves, curled into circles.  It reminds me a little of Bi Luo Chun, a Chinese green tea type.  I don't end up drinking much of that, mainly because I like green tea the least of any category.  Longjing / Dragonwell works better for me since it tends to taste less like vegetables than others, not grassy, like seaweed or bell pepper or whatever else.


The dry tea scent is rich, a little vegetal with some mineral, but also with a touch of buttered popcorn, an interesting inclusion.  The taste is mineral and floral intensive, a sweet, heavy type of floral I really can't place.  It works well enough.  I don't really know what the plant type is, but they claim to grow only #12 and #17, Jin Xuan and Bai Lu, and that floral tone isn't typical of any other Thai teas I've tried based on those, which add up to a lot at this point.


The flavors are clean, the feel is nice, and it's not  really astringent.  The mineral element reminds me of that really uniform Vietnamese green tea flavor range, which really already works well without this tea's floral aspect included.  I suppose it would depend on preference if the floral element is positive factor or not.  It's heavy and sweet enough that it's not far from osmanthus, but maybe not a perfect match for that, probably off a bit in a way I'm not remembering.

In later infusions more light wood tone and rich earthy profile comes out, towards that popcorn or toasted rice, just not completely getting there. The floral and mineral both drop off some to make space for that.  A different read on that slightly biting fresh wood tone is that the flavor is green bell pepper instead, and once you think of it the tea tastes a lot more like bell pepper than freshly cut wood.  This tea brews lots of infusions, passing through infusions in the mostly mineral and floral range to get to that warmer and earthier range, and isn't finished once it does.

I like the tea, in spite of not loving the general type.  There's a freshness to green teas you don't get in the other types.  It's comparable to aspects found in lighter oolongs, just to a different extent and placed in a different context.

Luan Tze / Ruan Zhi / Bai Lu / #17 review

Initially I wasn't sure of the type but this tea is a version of oolong.  It's not processed just like Taiwanese oolongs, not rolled into balls, likely with some other processing differences indicated by the character differences.  This tea plant type is typically made into an oolong (Luan Zhi / Ruan Zhi, which per the earlier description is probably actually Bai Lu).  The description on the package I don't have in digital form or I could automatically translate it, but sorting it as a version of oolong is a good enough start.


The tea comes across a bit like a green tea, not completely unusual for lightly oxidized oolongs, since the oxidation boundary range isn't so different.  It's rich and floral, so not like vegetal or grassy types of green tea.  That richness is normal for oolong range, but those tend to drift further into buttery or even fuller in feel, and a little softer, although this isn't particularly astringent.  The color is slightly golden yellow, still normal for a light oolong.


It would be nice if I could pin down that flower, what the flavor is similar to, perhaps as I'd imagine a violet (been awhile since living where those grow), or again perhaps not that far from osmanthus.  Light mineral complexity fills in context below that.   There's just a touch of bitterness, something I'd expect more from a sheng, but it would likely be much stronger if it was one.


That might sound terrible, a bitter tea sort of in character range between green tea and light oolong (except maybe to young sheng drinkers), but it balances well enough.  It's light and there are other aspects to balance it, a good bit of flavors complexity, sweetness, and richness.

It smooths out a lot the third or fourth infusions in, fuller in flavor and losing some of the initial edge.  I suppose this would be a good place to mention that I brewed the tea gongfu style, although Western brewing might not turn out so differently.  It seems like regardless of proportion--the main difference in the approaches--backing off the temperature to between normal green and oolong ranges might keep the tea on the softer side.  Brewing it relatively lightly could support the same end.  It's not that it's very astringent, but there is some, and a touch of bitterness to offset.


The flavors range mellows further into more of a light woodiness on the fifth infusion, with that bitter / slightly sour edge faded to the scent of split fresh wood.  That might be something like birch, although my memory of wood scents has also faded a bit.  The sweetness helps round out those tones; along with the floral, now lighter, it all balances well enough.

different colors

The tea is interesting.  It doesn't really express that soft, rich range common to Thai oolongs, in between that and a typical green tea character instead, but it works for what it is.


Teas sold as Thai #17 based oolongs tend to be a little less buttery than Jin Xuan, with a touch more complexity, some even extending into a light spice effect.  Thai oolongs can be a little floral but typically not nearly as pronounced as that aspect in this version.  It's conceivable that this second is an infused tea, flavored with flowers, maybe osmanthus since that's not unheard of here, but since it's in a range that still could be natural I'd guess that it is.

Doi Inthanon Thai oolong review, and re-roasting experiment

I'm trying a Doi Inthanon oolong, from the Doi Inthanon Tea Partnership.  It's described as a #12 oolong, Yun Bi, with that number of course matching the main Taiwanese TRES cultivar made in Thailand, Jin Xuan.  A co-worker bought the tea for me on a trip up North.  I do tend to keep buying and trying Thai teas even though a very small number of those prove interesting, as this one did.

There isn't much in their website about the tea, beyond this description of who they are:


The Doi Inthanon Tea Limited Partnership is a small family business located on Thailand’s highest mountain just below the peak and at the foot of Pha Ngaem rock formation. We have chosen the name of the mountain as our business name due to us being the first cultivators of tea in the area...   Thailand’s highest known cultivated tea. We are located in Bahn Khun Wang, Tambon Mae Win, Amphoe Mae Wang, Chiang Mai Province.


The generality is that most oolong is made around the Chiang Rai area, and black tea in the Chiang Mai area, with older tea production in the remote parts of the far North, including pu'er-like teas.  In the "history" page it says the cultivation occurs at 1500 meters.  I ran across an interesting Tea Journeyman review of the same tea, from a couple years ago, but it didn't shed much light on that type name.  The review sounded a little like I experienced it, but then I reviewed the same tea twice and the experience varied some between those.

First tasting notes

It's good, different.  The flavors are a little earthy, not as refined as some finished teas, but it really does work.  It's clearly oolong but not in a conventional style.  The leaves are twisted and brown, so not unlike lots of types.  Wuyi Yancha and oriental beauty fit that general description,  it's just different than those.  It looks a little like a Bi Luo Chun preparation (a Chinese green tea), with leaves twisted in circles, it's just not finished to complete that effect as much.


I'll go flavor by flavor; that's one way to go with description.  An earthiness stands out, a light woodiness, clean but still towards autumn forest floor range.  It's floral, and as usual the sweetness probably could also be interpreted as fruit, but to me more floral.  That range really does work in this case.

stronger infused version; yellow-gold when brewed lighter

It's not completely unrelated to spice tones, to the way nutmeg is warm in the same sense.  It's definitely not astringent but it has a bit of body similar to how building lumber comes across (so that would be pine, but the wood tone might be closer to a hardwood, maybe cherry).  Or it sounds like I'm probably just daydreaming that part, doesn't it?  Maybe.


I've had local Thai teas made in unconventional styles that were interesting, that sort of worked, but this being marginally better than those makes a difference.   Add a touch of cinnamon aspect to this tea and it would really be something; add a little tree fungus aspect instead and it would be terrible.  It's in the middle to start, and the novel character depends on the final balance to work.

A second infusion is still plenty woody, and still floral, not easy to pin down related to flower type, but might drift a little into spice.  It's not so clearly a spice that it's easy to pick one, still more towards nutmeg, but not exactly nutmeg.


It's interesting to compare to other standard tea types since it's not all that close.  It seems possible it's just not roasted (baked) or the result could be more like a familiar oolong. I'll try that, roasting it.  It's definitely on the lighter half of the oxidation scale but not that close to a green tea.

Roasting experiment, comparison tasting

A friend re-roasted a rolled oolong in Indonesia last year and the results sounded interesting.  I've read of people trying out re-roasting finished teas before but the process isn't familiar, so I just guessed it out.  I tried out baking the tea at 100 C for half an hour, checked the status, and then 120 for a second half an hour.  I'm not claiming that's an ideal approach, it's just what I tried.  It would seem much better to enclose the tea in something very suitable for being heated, something that seals a little but not enough to function as a bomb, to offset all the volatile components evaporating off.  But I didn't.  We have metal food containers that might have worked, which look to be stainless steel, but it could quite easily impart a metallic taste to the tea.

Of course the idea is to taste-test the original version against that baked version.  They look about the same, maybe just more stems in the roasted version due to some accidental sorting, and it's slightly darker.

The original version is even more floral than I remember.  I'm making the tea in a style closer to gongfu (modified, seems to typically be a light-proportion version of that), after using a relatively standard Western style preparation in that first tasting.  I'm noticing less spice and it's quite floral, a heavy and sweet version of floral at that, more lavender than rose.  Fruit is a little heavier, peach, or close to that, but that's a very minor aspect compared to the floral range.  It's much better prepared gongfu style, or maybe I'm just picking up more for whatever other reasons.

It's not quite as soft, not really astringent but with a bit of an edge, like a light version of how Dan Congs can be (with that effect varying a lot in those too).  It's a bit sweet, but not in exactly the same way as I usually mean by that.  I guess it comes across as closer to a green tea.  Of course the shape always had been a bit unconventional, and the colors were different than I would have expected, darker, compared to how it comes across, so some of the typical clues to the style matching a conventional version didn't work.


The roasted version isn't too far off, a little richer, shifted just a little into a light toffee.  The sweetness backs off just a little, giving way to a richer tone.  It changed a little, not a lot though, still essentially the same tea, the same aspects presented only slightly differently.  Better?  Maybe.

initially only slightly different colors

It's an odd tea to begin with.  It's not exactly like a conventional oolong.  It's floral, but not like other oolongs tend to be, sweeter and heavier, a bit of a different range.  Thai oolongs don't taste anything like that, so odd.


The next infusion (third) improves, perhaps as much from not screwing up preparation as an actual transition (I brewed it a little lighter).  The floral eases up in the character and a more pleasant balance of softer tones comes out, finally some of that wood and spice range I'd been going on about.  The astringency eases up, although it hadn't been pronounced, not really in green-tea range.


The warmth and caramel / light toffee sweetness of the roasted version works well, I'm just not as sure about the rest of the balance.  I like it better.  It gives up a lot of floral range for making that transition.  It still seems like a pretty light roast, like it would have changed a good bit more with more cooking.  The main shift was giving up floral aspects to transition to caramel / light toffee sweetness and move towards fruit, in the range of peach or apricot, a little harder to separate out for still including plenty of floral scope.

later infusion; the color shifts

Across another infusion the color difference in the two teas becomes more pronounced, with the roasted version moving to a peach colored versus the bright yellow of the original, with flavors not changing much.


Both teas drink better prepared relatively lightly; some teas are like that.  The flavors are intense enough that brewed as what might be "normal" for some oolongs or black teas it's too much.  Of course that's all down to preference, and some people might tend to drink every tea so wispy light that only hints of the flavors emerge, and someone else might like strong tea.

roasted brewed leaves left, a good bit darker

From there I'll leave off chasing the last couple of tastes in a transition series; the general point is mapped out.  For whatever reason this tea brewed a lot of infusions, just kept going, which seems to relate to the general character of more lightly oxidized oolongs.  The brewing experiment seemed a success, since the tea changed, and per my preference improved.  There would seem to be potential for the producer to use a more controlled and professionally applied roasting step to adjust the tea style with better results than I achieved in an oven.