Dragon Well

I turned the tasting notes I took of this tea at a tea class tonight into a poem once I got back home. I hope you enjoy it!

Dragon Well

At first I only taste 

the goodness of this tea

but then the flavors separate

and become distinct to me

The first one that I taste

is like kale that has been steamed

a little less descriptive,

it would vegetal be deemed 

The next distinct to me

is the delicious nutty-ness

this flavor 'tis a pleasure,

in all it's creamy-ness

And all the time I sip

it tastes 'most buttery

and with stevia-like sweetness

I do enjoy this tea!

I forgot to take any pictures of the tea, so I just put two good tea photographs of mine on instead.

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