Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Pu-erh
Where to Buy: Butiki Teas
Tea Description:
Our Organic Ancient Phoenix Puerh originates from a sustainable farm on Wuliang Mountain in China and is handpicked by the Yi tribe of Yunnan. This Shou (ripe) puerh was harvested in 2011 from organic ancient trees. The tea is pressed into cakes using only skilled hands and a unique fragrant wood. Organic Ancient Phoenix Puerh is smooth and rich with raw cocoa, oak, and sweet tobacco notes. This high quality tea can handle a substantial amount of infusions.
Read more about this tea on Steepster.
Taster’s Review:
A few weeks ago, Butiki Teas announced on Steepster that it was closing permanently very soon. I was very sad about this announcement because Butiki Teas is one of my favorite purveyors. So, I started sorting through my stash to see if I had any teas on hand from Butiki that I had not yet reviewed so that I could offer a goodbye to one of my favorite tea companies here on SororiTea Sisters – and this is the tea that I found. So, yeah, this tea is no longer available from Butiki Teas, but this review is less about the tea for me and more about offering a heartfelt farewell to a wonderful tea company.
And this Ancient Phoenix Pu-erh is absolutely lovely. It doesn’t surprise me, because I can’t say that I’ve had anything from Butiki that I wasn’t impressed with! (Which is why I’m sad to see them go!)
These tiny Pu-erh cakes are about the size (in diameter) of a quarter although they’re a bit thicker than a coin. It makes portioning rather simple, I just dropped one of the “coins” into my gaiwan and covered it with hot water (190°F) for 15 seconds to awaken the leaves. Then I strained and discarded the liquid. I poured the water over the coin – which is already starting to break apart – and infused it for a minute. Then I poured the tea into my teacup and enjoyed. Pu-erh offers multiple infusions and this was just the first of many cups that I’d enjoy this evening.
My first cup is sweet. It’s almost a sugary sweetness. There are notes of earth to the cup as well, but the sweetness is stronger than the earthy qualities. (I like that in a pu-erh!) It’s a very soft tasting tea, this first cup. Much softer than I’m used to from a pu-erh. There are light spice notes.
The second cup was also steeped for 1 minute. Usually, I add 15 seconds onto the steep time but that wasn’t needed here. This has a much deeper flavor. Some of the earthy notes have emerged now. I’m still getting those spice notes I mentioned with the first cup, as well as the sweetness. I taste notes of leather and cacao and wood. This is a very complex cup. Very smooth. No astringency. No bitterness.
The third cup – well, the third cup and I didn’t really agree. I steeped it for a full minute again and I found it to be a little reminiscent of a thick cup of coffee. Not a good coffee either. Kind of like a tar-like coffee you might find in one of those 24-hour truck stop diners that don’t get a lot of traffic so the coffee’s been sitting there for the last six or seven hours. I found it interesting that at least one of the tasters of this tea on Steepster experienced a less than favorable third infusion as well. Weird.
So, I tossed that cup and went for infusion #4. This time, rather than setting a timer, I just watched the color and when the color was dark I poured it. I would estimate that the fourth infusion was about 20 seconds. Much better than infusion #3, this is earthy, kind of mushroom-y, with notes of leather and cacao. I am picking up an undertone of molasses-like sweetness. A very smooth, mellow and deeply flavored cup.
I kept on steeping. I found that by the fifth cup, this had become a very pleasant tea. This is a tea that you can’t really set a timer – you just need to watch it. When the color becomes dark, it’s time to pour and enjoy. Sweet with notes of spice. Cacao! The earthy notes are starting to become less prominent and allowing the sweeter characteristics to come forward.
As I sip this tea, I raise my cup to the greatness that is Butiki Teas. I recommend to all of you – if you haven’t yet tried any of this company’s teas, shop now before you lose that opportunity. I will miss you, Butiki Teas!
ShanLinXi Highest Mountain Oolong Tea from Beautiful Taiwan Tea Company
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Beautiful Taiwan Tea Company
Tea Description:
This tea is a premium GaoShanCha. The special reserve teas are grown at very high elevations and take longer to grow. They take their time growing and develop a deeper, fuller flavor. This tea has a heavy liquor, it’s not dry at all or bitter. It’s very clean and refreshing. Explore this tea slowly with many infusions and you might catch such notes as butterscotch. We recommend brewing this tea gongfu style. Like our other teas, this tea is expertly grown, hand-picked, hand-processed and vacuum packed at the source! Only our face-to-face sourcing directly with farmers insures you premium quality!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Wow! This is an amazing tea!
The aroma of the dry leaf is intense. It has a strong, sweetly floral fragrance. The brewed liquid smells much softer, but I’m still able to pick up on those lovely notes of flower as well as hints of fruit.
To brew this tea, I grabbed my trusty gaiwan and measured out a little less than a bamboo scoop into the bowl of the vessel. Because of the intense fragrance, I felt comfortable using a little less leaf than I usually would and after taking my first sip, I know I made the right call. I use my instincts a lot when it comes to tea and more often than not, they have not let me down.
I performed a quick rinse (a 15 second infusion that is strained and discarded) and then infused the leaves for 45 seconds. I strained the tea into a teacup and infused the leaves a second time, this time for 1 minute. I strained the tea of the second infusion into the same teacup; hence what I am enjoying now is the combined first and second infusions.
And it is gooooood!
I drink a lot of tea. And I’ve been drinking a lot of tea for many years. For quite a few of those years, I’ve been writing about tea and before that time, I was creating my own tea blends. So, I feel comfortable in saying that I’m knowledgeable about tea. However, I certainly don’t consider myself a tea expert. I think I could be drinking tea and writing about it for double the time that I have and I’m pretty confident that there is still a great deal that I don’t know about tea. Tea is such a vast and somewhat mysterious subject. Perhaps that’s why it keeps me intrigued.
And the reason I bring that up is this: I am finding myself wondering how closely related are a ShanLinXi Oolong Tea (like this tea that I’m drinking) and an AliShan Oolong Tea? If anyone out there has some knowledge they’d like to share with me, I’d really appreciate comments in the comment section.
In the meantime, let me tell you about what I’m experiencing with this tea.
The above description suggests notes of butterscotch. And YES … I taste butterscotch! I couldn’t believe it at first. At first, I thought that my mind was playing tricks on me. But no. This tea has a lusciously sweet, delectable butterscotch-y taste to it. I don’t often experience a caramel-y/butterscotch-esque note to an Oolong like this so I find myself amazed by this tea.
Sweet. Yes, deliciously so. Smooth. No bitterness whatsoever. No astringency. No dryness at the tail. No tangy sensation. Just smooth from start to finish. When I take a sip, It’s almost as if I have one of those yummy butterscotch candies in my mouth and it’s melting over my palate.
Once my palate became accustomed to the delightful sweetness of the tea, I started to pick up on notes of flower. These are mere whispers of flower and the creaminess of the tea softens what sharpness the floral notes might bring to the cup. I am also picking up on delicate notes of spice that complement the butterscotch notes.
For my second cup, I added 15 seconds onto each subsequent infusion and combined infusions 3 and 4. This cup is less butterscotch-y than the first. Oh sure, I still taste some of those delectably sweet notes. The cup is still creamy and sweet, but I find that the distinct butterscotch has softened somewhat to allow my palate to experience the floral notes that were in the background in the first cup. I like the way the butterscotch and flowery flavors play together on the palate. It’s a really unique and delightful experience.
As I said earlier, I’ve been drinking tea for a long time but I don’t think I’ve experienced an Oolong quite like this.
Later infusions proved to be very enjoyable as well. The flavor kept going strong with each infusion – I managed eight delicious infusions! I found that with each cup, the creaminess softened somewhat from what i experienced in that first amazing cup and it was my favorite of the four cups I drank from these leaves. But the three subsequent cups were quite lovely as well and I enjoyed discovering the layers of flavor that this ShanLinXi had to offer.
If you’re an Oolong lover, this tea should be a MUST TRY on your list. Any tea drinker should try this, it’s an incredible tea!
Ali Shan High Mountain Oolong Tea from Green Terrace Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Green Terrace Teas
Tea Description:
Ali Shan is one of Taiwan’s most famous tea growing areas due to its high elevation and rich soil. The cool and moist climate allows the tea leaves to grow more slowly, developing a higher level of complexity and flavor. Our premium grade Ali Shan High Mountain Tea, or “gao shan cha” in Chinese, is grown at elevations of 1,300 meters (4,265 ft) and above. It has a sweet buttery taste with a creamy body and mild floral undertones. The tea becomes more vegetal after a few steepings, bringing a pleasant variation of tastes among each infusion. Overall, this is an exquisite and savory oolong that can be enjoyed at any time of day.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Love!
No matter how many times I drink Ali Shan Oolong, it seems like my very first reaction after that first amazing sip is “Oh my god! Oh wow!” And that’s because Ali Shan is just that good. There’s a reason why it’s my favorite Oolong teas (and one of my very favorite teas of all).
And this Ali Shan High Mountain Oolong from Green Terrace Teas is one of the best I’ve had. It is so incredibly sublime that it feels like I’m floating in the clouds when I’m sipping it. Yep, it’s heavenly.
The leaves look very much the way I’d expect an Ali Shan tea too look. Vivid green leaves that have been tightly wound into pellets that unfurl slowly in hot water to release their flavor. The aroma of the dry leaf is floral – an intense floral note. The brewed tea keeps that floral note, although it is softened significantly.
To brew the tea, I reached for my gaiwan and added a bamboo scoop to the bowl of the gaiwan. I heated freshly filtered water to 180°F and added enough liquid to cover more than cover the leaves and let this ‘steep’ for 15 seconds. Then I strained off the liquid and discarded it. (I rinsed the leaves!) Then I refilled the gaiwan with the hot water and let the tea steep for 45 seconds. I strained this first infusion into my special Yi Xing mug that is just for Ali Shan teas. Then I continued the process, adding 15 seconds onto each subsequent infusions, until the mug was full (4 infusions).
The first sip of this first cup (the first 4 infusions), elicited the aforementioned response of: Oh my god. Oh wow! And then my second sip elicited the response: Oh that’s lovely! It’s a good thing that my Ali Shan Yi Xing mug holds 4 infusions because I would have finished the whole cup before I was able to get any sort of lucid comments about this tea for the review.
This is sweet and lusciously smooth. It’s like what I’d imagine drinking liquid silk to be like, only much tastier. Maybe liquid silk mixed with thinned honey. Even then, I wouldn’t quite have captured the true flavor of this delightful tea, because it has so much complexity. So many delicious layers of flavor. The top layer is floral, reminiscent of orchids but I also want to say that I taste honeysuckle too.
To illustrate what I’m experiencing with this floral note, I’ll use an example that I’ve used many times in the past: my bedroom in my grandparent’s former house in California. When I was young, they had a honeysuckle vine that grew just outside the window of the bedroom. And when the Santa Ana winds would make their way through the area, the breeze would pick up the amazing scent of the honeysuckle and bring it into my bedroom and I’d smell that delightful aroma and even taste the air. Now, if my grandmother also had an orchid plant or two outside my window … the combined “air” that would filter into my window would be what I’m tasting right now.
Other layers of this tea offer a soft, buttery taste and texture. Hints of vegetation. Honey. Very soft, very silky, very sweet. And a pleasure to sip.
My second cup (infusions 5 -8) was just as lovely as the first (and perhaps even lovelier!) with it’s sweet, creamy, honeyed notes. The floral notes are soft, they seem just a tad softer than they were in the first cup. The sip starts out smooth and silky and it maintains this texture all the way to the finish. There is very little astringency to this. And when I say ‘very little’, that is to say that there is only a hint of dryness toward the tail. That’s it!
A beautiful tea from start to finish and offers so many lovely infusions, making this not just a lovely tea to sip, but a good value too! If you’re looking for THE one Ali Shan to add to your tea cupboard, I highly recommend trying this one – it’s an excellent Ali Shan. I’ve had some really amazing experiences with Green Terrace Teas and I think I saved the very best of those experiences for last.
Nepal 2nd Flush 2014 Golden Tips Black Tea from What-Cha Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: What-Cha Tea
Tea Description:
An incredible black tea made entirely of young buds, the smoothest black tea we have tried with a refined malty taste and no bitterness or astringency.
We are proud to source all our Nepal teas direct from Greenland Organic Farm, who are very much at the forefront of a burgeoning Nepali tea industry dedicated to producing high quality artisanal teas. Greenland Organic Farm are completely pesticide and chemical free farm dedicated to producing tea in an ethical and fair manner. Greenland Organic Farm is located in East Nepal in the shadows of Mt. Kancghenjunga at an altitude of 3,000m.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Oh my goodness, these Golden Tips from Nepal are so lovely!
The dry leaf is visually stunning. The coloration of the leaves vary from a chocolate brown to a golden brown. The tips are golden (as the name implies!) It’s very fragrant, smelling of fruit and flower with notes of earth. The brewed liquid smells much like the dry leaf.
I steeped this tea in my Breville One-Touch using 500 ml of freshly filtered water and 2 bamboo scoops of tea. I steeped it at 205°F for 2 1/2 minutes and … the tea tastes simply amazing!
Honey! Malt! Cacao! Caramel! Sweet notes of fruit! Hints of flower!
The mouthfeel is pleasant. Thick and smooth, it feels a little bit like thinned honey as the tea glides over the palate. And it tastes like honey too. This tea is rich and full-flavored.
The malty notes marry beautifully with the caramel-y undertone to create a rich, satisfying sweetness. The notes of cacao are bittersweet. As I continue to sip, I start to pick up on warm notes of spice. This is a cozy tasting tea and as the weather has finally begun to cool the warmth from this tea is certainly welcome. It’s a cozy, comforting cup of tea to enjoy.
Many of the Nepalese black teas that I’ve tasted are more reminiscent of Darjeeling but not so with this one. This doesn’t have that crisp, lightness of a Darjeeling, instead, this is richer, reminiscent perhaps of a Golden Yunnan or a Fujian Black.
This tea is also good for two infusions, so be sure to re-steep those leaves and get all the flavor you can out of them! The second infusion is just as delightful as the first!
This is not a tea that I would reach for on the mornings when I need to get up and go. Instead, this is the tea I’d want to reach for on the mornings when I can curl up under a fluffy blanket and just relax a little. The kind of tea that you want to linger over for a while because it tastes so good that you don’t want the cup to end!
It is as I said at the start: this is oh-so-lovely!
Mountain Of Mango Tisane from Inca Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Fruit/Herbal Blend
Where to Buy: Inca Tea
Tea Description:
Mango has always been a favorite fruit of the founder so he decided to add a little twist to the original blend. Its a refreshing blend of mango, sweet herbs, and citrus.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
As I’ve said (many times!) before, I’m not always thrilled when it comes to trying fruit and/or herbal tisanes. But because I’ve come to realize that I need to lighten up on the caffeine intake later in the evening, I’ve begun to embrace the tisane even though I’d much rather partake of Camellia Sinensis. So, when I opened the pouch for this Mountain of Mango tisane, I wasn’t exactly excited about it.
But … wow! I can definitely smell the mango in the dry leaf. No other tea/tisane immediately comes to mind where I smelled such a strong, distinct mango aroma. All of the sudden, my dismay over trying yet another tisane disappeared and I got excited about trying this!
I steeped the silky pyramid sachet in 8 ounces of 195°F water for 6 minutes. The brewed tisane is a light ruby color (a good sign, it doesn’t look like there’s too much hibiscus in this!) and it offers a light fruity fragrance. The mango notes are less distinct than in the dry leaf, but they’re still there.
This is pretty good. The mango isn’t as strong as I hoped for, but, it’s a clear and focused flavor. It is an obvious mango flavor. The apple offers subtle hints of sweetness but not a strong apple-y flavor. I think it’s probably present in this cup mostly to provide some sweet, juicy flavor to the cup without it adding too much to the flavor profile, and that’s what it seems to do here.
The ingredient list does not show any citrus-y ingredients that would provide the citrus that’s suggested in the above description, but I can taste a hint of tangy citrus toward the tail and this flavor lingers into the aftertaste. I’m not sure where this flavor is coming from unless it’s one of the “natural flavors.”
In the Peruvian Spiced Berry Tisane, I could taste the notes of purple corn, but I’m finding that flavor to be a little less distinct here. If I slurp the cup, I can pick up on a slight corn-like taste, but it’s much softer than in the Spiced Berry blend. I kind of liked that purple corn taste, it made that tisane significantly different from any other that I’ve tried, so I was kind of hoping for a little more purple corn flavor in this tisane as well.
That said, I really enjoyed this. The mango flavor is delicious and authentic and strong, and the hibiscus is not strong. Two big bonus points for these attributes. It’s a very tasty served hot, and it’s awesome iced!