Anji White tea review and poem

Anji White loose leaves

 As I softly sip

my Anji White

this is what I taste:

a flavor that is

subtly grassy

yet very vegetal

it is slightly toasty

yet 'er so slightly nutty

a hint of fish

with a hint of spinach

come in the aftertaste

there's another flavor too

one I simply cannot place

yet still I like this tea

that actually is a green!

Anji White brewed tea

Also, how do you like my new blog header?

Iron Goddess of Mercy tea tasting notes in a poem

Iron Goddess of Mercy tea

The taste of this tea

Iron Goddess of Mercy

is slightly nutty

yet very toasty

hints of oats and barley

and the hints of honey

are subtle yet strong

'tis classic but unique

for oolong tea

Written by Clara Stone

Iron Goddess of Mercy dry loose leaf

Jinggu "Golden Strand" Pure Bud Yunnan Black Tea

The tea is a very beautiful golden-brown color.
You can see our kitchen-ceiling fan reflected in the tea!

I got given a tea sample, I guess about two years ago, by a friend that worked for Kaldi's coffee and the tea sample had been sent to Kaldi's.  The package says: Jinggu "Golden Strand" Pure Bud Yunnan Black tea* Autumn 2012 and is from Yunnan Sourcing.  I really liked it when I first tried it, but then put it in a tin can and put it on a shelf and forgot about it.  Then about a year ago, I was looking in all my tin cans (I do that occasionally), and found it.  I re-tried it and this time did NOT forget about it, it is a very rememberable tea.
These are my tasting notes; First sip: fresh strawberries, juicy, creamy mouthfeel. Second sip: vanilla, sweet, still a hint of strawberries, the juiciness can be tasted with every sip-all through the entire pot, cream aftertaste. Third sip: vanilla, cream, and sweet notes are more intense, hardly any fruitiness left, a slightly toasty note.  The tea is very slightly astringent, and is surprisingly mellow for a black tea.
I think it is very interesting that you taste different things with every sip when you are drinking tea.  I think that one of the things that makes this tea so good is the fact that it is made from only leaf buds.
The leaf buds of the camellia sinensis make the best teas, depending on what you are looking for in a tea, I suppose.

The loose leaves.  

Six Teas (Poem)

The calm and floral

notes of Jasmine Green

first they dance, and then linger

and remind me of

the flowering spring

The earthy-smoky 

hints in Keemun

remind me of the 

sightly smoky woods

into which I walk

The nutty-grassy 

taste in Kukicha tea

is one in which I do delight 

it tastes like autumn, it tastes of lake

and of the fresh-cut grass

The buttery-nutty taste 

can be found in Milk Oolong

it tastes of fresh churned butter

and holds me many memories

I smile when I taste this tea

I like the taste of White Peony

that reminds me of

the summer rain

of fresh fallen autumn leaves 

and of melting winter snow

The taste of Pu-erh of many kinds

always has and always will

remind me of the spring

whether walking in the rainy wood

or in my garden planting seed

A tea class, and a new tea blend

My tea blend, I still have not named it!

I went to a tea blending class at The London Tea Room November 21st, I know it is a long time afterwards to be posting about it, well, it is not the fastest thing to download photographs onto the computer! 

I am not quite sure what to write about a tea class, I guess it would be either what I learned at it, or what I would be most likely to write about is anything that I learned about that is extremely different, or very interesting to me. Or I guess maybe I will write what others could learn from.

What the tea blending class mostly consisted of is: Tasting several of the London Tea Room's blends, learning about the basics of tea blending, and blending your own tea blend. So I will start with the tasting tea blends. 

We tried three different blends (I will include a link to their site so that you can see how they describe their teas, not just how I do! ) 

Duke and Duchess, a blend of...I think it was: Darjeeling, Silver Needle, and a Kenyan tea; Moroccan Mint (not one of their own blends), which is a blend of green tea and spearmint; and The Earl Claus , which is tea (I forget what variety), and many different spices. I liked them all, but I also have yet to taste a tea that I do not like, excluding "not good" and flavored teas, of course!

Tea Blending class at The London Tea Room

And then leaning about the basics of tea blending, I think that for tea blending, you would want to start with a base tea and add other teas or flavoring (herbs, flowers, spices, fruit, there are probably a few others as well) and add as many other other teas or flavorings as you would want. I think though that one thing that is essential to a well-balanced tea is taking into consideration the strength of the different flavors in your ingredients. You don't want one flavor drowning out all the rest (or maybe you do!), and you probably don't want all the flavors being very strong and competing with each other.  Another thing that I learned is important to take into consideration is the volume of the tea. Since you don't measure out your tea leaves by weight to brew them, you measure them out by volume, what I think is, you might want to blend your tea by volume, rather than weight.

Learning about blending tea

 Now, finally, about blending my own tea! I based my tea bend on Jade Cloud, a green tea, and then added: Iron Godess (oolong), and, Jasmine Green (a green tea with jasmine blossoms). If anyone reading this blog has a suggestion as to what to name it, I would like to hear it.

Blending tea

I uploaded a short video I took of the tea class above. The camera stopped taking the video without my realizing it, I was just trying to adjust the camera so it was not catching the light at such an angle so that it made purple-white lines. So if it stops suddenly, that is why.

My adventures with Gardenia Fragrance (Huang Zhi Xiang)

I went to a tea rarties class last friday, and one of the teas we sampled was, Gardenia Fragrance (Huang Zhi Xiang) oolong. However they did not really have much information on gardenia fragrance (except for the fact that was grown on WuDong mountain). So I came home with the intention of finding out as much as I could about it. I googled it and found quite a bit of information, which I then sent to the person who was doing the tea class. 

I decided to copy and paste my email and the links to this blog, it seemed like it would make a good first post.

This is my compiling of some of the information I found (and read) about Gardenia Fragrance Tea: It is a whole-leaf tea, and is oxidized 40-60 percent. It is also a Dancong oolong . I think that Huang Zhi Xiang refers to a type of tea bush and it is from the Guangdong province. The trees Gardenia Fragrance comes from are over one hundred years old! I also just copied and pasted this information: It is barely roasted, and as one of the lightest, least oxidised Phoenix Oolongs falls somewhere between a ‘Qing’ and ‘Nong Xiang’. The tea’s thicker, smoother character and more pronounced and persistent finish are indications of its age and lineage. 

Here is the link to the website that I copied and pasted  this from:

http://www.teanamu.com/product/huang-zhi-fragrant-gardenia-phoenix/

Here is an interesting review about several Dancong oolongs:

http://lyt-tea-reviews.blogspot.com/2014/04/tea-stories-dancong-gardenia-aromas.html

This page includes a lot of information about Dancong oolongs, and also some information about Gardenia Fragrance:

http://jasetea.com/2014/11/07/oolong-growing-areas-compared-dancong-oolongs/

 This page also includes another name for Gardenia Fragrance - Yellow Blossom Fragrance:

http://www.postcardteas.com/site/product/master-lins-song-zhong-huang-zhi-xiang-%E5%AE%8B%E7%A7%8D%E9%BB%84%E6%9E%9D%E9%A6%99-yellow-branch-fragrance-2011-2/

This page has a lot of interesting information on Gardenia Fragrance

http://www.runmingtea.com/nonpareil-mt-wudong-song-variety-huang-zhi-xianggardenia-phoenix-dan-cong-oolong-p-1176.html?cPath=62_94