Bi Luo Chun green tea from China

Visited a friend last week who mentioned her current favorite green tea is a Bi Luo Chun (Spring Snail Shell).  Easily influenced, I found my eye landing on some Bi Luo Chun in my tea drawer.

The stuff I have is truly a beautiful looking tea.  From an arm's length it's a sage green-grey but when you look more closely it is a mix of dark grey with dark green small twisted leaves and flecks of brighter green dusted with the pekoe of the many teeny buds.  It's from Tao's wonderful tea shop and the label tells me it from the East Mountain of Dong Ting Lake in the Jiangsu Province of China.  According to the Tea Drinker's Handbook, this tea in Jiangsu is only harvested once a year at the end of March.

Bi Luo Chun is considered one of the Ten Famous Teas of China.  It's also known as Dong Ting or Pi Lo Chun and, in English, Green Snail Spring.  To truly appreciate the work involved in making 500 grams of this tea, have a look at Chinese Tea 101 which has a wonderful series of photos of the process from plucking to baking.

The beautiful, pekoe-covered leaves of the Bi Luo Chun from Tao's.

The Tea
3.8 grams in 7 oz of 80C water for 1 minute.  Second steep 1 minute.

Can you see the little flower bud
in the lower right quadrant?

When I open the jar the first pleasure of this tea is a rush of fresh clean green aroma, abit like a fresh mown lawn.  The tiny, tiny leaves are whole, tightly wound and tend to curl into little "U's" or spirals.  There's also alot of silvery and pale yellow furry pekoe.

The wet leaves area a bright green and the leaves are a uniform size, tiny and narrow, an indication of its high quality.  Some show a slight rusty brown and I don't know if that is from a little oxidising on the bush or during the withering.  The first aroma is of the "fire" from its processing -- so different from all the Japanese steamed green teas I've been enjoying.  This is followed by rich fried greens and/or nuts (chestnut?) along with a slight sweetness and finished off with just the lightest tang which gives it a nice clean profile.

Bi Lo Chun liquor

The liquor is a mid-golden yellow.  It has good astringency which gives me a slight furring on the tongue, and abit of a pucker.

The flavour is beautifully balanced between a light floral sweetness, a clean lemony snap, fresh raw green bean and abit of bitterness on the sides of the tongue.  (To my tongue, one of the integral flavour notes of tea is bitterness, like another popular beverage -- beer.)  I do love that tang -- so charactertistic of baked green teas, perhaps mostly chinese green teas; it's like the raw green leaf.

My first second brew at 2 minutes was quite bitter -- like slightly burnt fried onions or chinese greens, and I realised I should not have increased the brewing time.  Actually, the best subsequent steeps were all at 1-minute, which continued to give me good flavour and pleasure in the cup.  BTW I got quite a caffeine buzz from this tea which makes sense since it's all buds.

I've made this a number of times over the past few days and I keep thinking that if this were a wine it would be one of my favorites, an excellent Chablis -- crisp and bright with a minerally finish. 

Later:  I made a small pot of this tea a couple weeks ago for some friends and we did three very flavourful steeps from the same leaves.  This is a wonderful example of this tea type and one that just keeps on giving.

GOLDEN MONKEY VS. GOLDEN MONKEY

As I have mentioned before, Golden Monkey tea from China is currently one of my very favorite teas.  I first had it, and continue to refresh my cannister, from Tao's tea shop.  But when I was in my neighborhood  Tealish recently I was delighted to find they had brought in a 2010 Golden Monkey.  Fresh tea and Golden Monkey -- two of this girl's current loves!

The two teas look very different and have distinct flavours but are both wonderful, exhibiting the tea type's classic sweet flavour and soft mouthfeel.

Golden Monkey is a black Chinese tea originating in the Fujian province.  On the coast, Fujian is the country's biggest tea-producer as well as the producer of the widest range of teas. From what I read, Golden Monkey is traditionally a Mao Jian pluck meaning it's a bud and one slightly larger leaf (as opposed to a Mao Feng pluck which is two equal-length leaves and a bud). 

I want to take a minute on this tea's name.  There are a number of explanations for it and then my own theory.

1.  From  Chinese Tea Supplier

In earlier times Golden Monkey was the tea of Taipans and local overlords. They claimed that the secret for this tea was that it had to be plucked by the golden monkey which centuries ago inhabited the forests of Fujian Province. This special tea was very rare and the Taipans demanded every ounce of tea because they claimed that it gave them ‘the agility and prowess of the patriarch of a golden monkey troop’. 

2. From many sites (probably quoting each other) including Wikipedia:

According to legend, this particular tea grows in lofty and precipitous peaks making it difficult to pluck the leaves so local people trained monkeys to pluck the tea leaves, hence the name.

3. From the Adagio Tea package:

The name comes from its unique appearance: the leaves resemble monkey claws.

Here's my theory.  Have a look at this Sichuan Golden Monkey's colour and lovely furry golden arms and compare it to the photo below of the tea's lovely furry golden buds -- now tell me, where do you think the name came from?

This image of the endangered Golden Monkey
was captured from the chinaexploration.com site

Please click on this photo to enlarge it to appreciate the
wonderful furry golden leaf bud tips in Tao's Golden Monkey
tea and compare it to the monkey's furry golden arms.  Nuh?

THE BREW-0FF
Just off-the-boil water for 2 minutes.

And while we're waiting for the teas to brew, a look at and deep inhalation of the dry leaves. (A colleague in the biz  passed along that if you exhale onto the dry leaves before smelling them you slightly infuse them with the moisture of your breath and they give off a stronger scent.  Neat huh?)

Two Golden Monkeys: Tao's on the left, Tealish's on the right.

THE DRY LEAVES
These two teas look and feel very different as you can see from the photo above. Tao's Zhenghe Hong Gong Fu (fine Golden Monkey from Zhenghe) is much fluffier, the leaves smaller and more spidery and it's comprised almost entirely of bright furry golden buds.  The aroma of its dry leaves is sweet, already giving off toffee notes.  The Tealish G.M.'s leaves are thicker and larger with fewer furry buds which are a darker, beautiful rich orange.  It is also giving a sweet aroma but less candied and more like lovely sweet buttered spinach.

THE WET LEAVES
Tao's G.M. wet leaves are an even light brown, and are long and even looking kind of like miniature brown pea pods.  This is the still-rolled leaf and leaf bud.  The Tealish G.M. wet leaves are broken, darker, and a more traditional coppery brown with a bit of dark green showing.

Both give off first notes that are sweet and soft.  Tao's G.M then comes through like buttered whole wheat toast, while the Tealish G.M.'s sweetness is more sweet buttered spinach and overall has a sharper, darker aroma --is that a breath of anise or liquorice in there too?

Tealish Golden Monkey wet leaves.  Some broken whole
leaves, some buds on left, and a slight green cast
to some of the leaves.

Golden Monkey from Tao's Tea House wet leaves.  Note
one leaf and a bud and the beautiful evenness of the pluck.

THE LIQUOR
The Tao G.M brewed liquor is distinctly orangey-red and abit cloudy which, on closer examintation, is due to the fine bud hairs floating about.  In contrast, the Tealish G.M. is very clear and bright and a lovely, red-brown.

Two Golden Monkey's -- sourced from Tealish on the left,
and from Tao's Tea House on the right.  They brew to quite
different colours -- much more orangey-red on the right.

Both are light to medium bodied with little or no astringency, and when they've cooled give a hint of smokeyness.  Although they both feature buds, I did not find either of these teas to be high in caffeine.  (In general, China bush teas tend to be lower in caffeine.)

I brewed each of these four times over a couple of days, and I must say it's easy to overbrew, especially the Tao's G.M., to bitterness.  However, when not overbrewed both these Golden Monkeys deliver on the type's renowned sweet cup -- caramel to toffee notes, over a light base of typical black tea tangyness.

IN THE END....
In a way this is a most unfair brew-off.  Tao's G.M. is a higher grade tea -- starting with its gorgeous good looks, but the Tealish G.M. has the advantage of being fresh and therefore offers a wonderful breadth of tasting notes. 


The Tao G.M is pronouncedly sweeter and smoother with more toffee'd notes.  It really is a very fine tea, and a fine example of a Golden Monkey.  (It's price point is almost double, not surprisingly.)  However, the Tealish G.M did not disappoint and, being fresh, offers some sharp, dark notes and a light toastyness which provide a balance to the sweet caramel notes. Because it's fresh it also gives hints of other things, like the possible flash of liquorice I mentioned.  Although I find it hard to believe, I've read that some people find Golden Monkey too sweet -- the Tealish G.M. could be just right for them.  

Personally, I generally keep Tao's G.M to savour as an afternoon tea but have been digging in to the Tealish G.M. for breakfast. 

TAI PING HOU KUI (TAI PING BEST MONKEY)

Tai Ping Hou Kui green tea dry leaves.

This is an extraordinary looking green tea from China -- big, long leaves pressed flat and having the imprint of either paper or cotton on its leaves.  The dried leaves are whole and 2" and 3" in length -- unusally large for tea.  Another unusual aspect of this tea is that it's both pan fired and basket-fired.  Besides its toasty flavour, the leaves' crispy flatness hints that it's pan-fired -- pressed into a wok-like hot pan. But The Story of Tea explains further that after the pan-firing, the leaves are scattered on a sheet of rice paper, then another sheet is laid on top and the leaves are blotted to remove moisture without removing their aromatics.  This is what's responsible for the distinctive cross-hatched pattern on the dried leaves and, of course, ultimately why the tea is flat.  After this the tea is finished by basket firing.

Tai Ping Hou Kui.  You can still see the distinctive rice-
paper  imprint on the wet leaves.  (Click to enlarge.)

This tea is from Tao's tea house, and the package says its origin is Hou Keng Village in AnHui province (China).  It's considered by some to be one of the "Ten Famous Teas" -- although there is no definitive list of which ten they are*.

"Tai Ping" is a region in the south of the Huang Shan mountains in Anhui province, and "hou kui", according to Babelcarp, means "monkey king."  Some legends say that, due to the area's steep slopes, the locals trained monkeys to pick the tea, but I find that abit of stretch.  According to other googled sites the word "Hou refers to Hou Keng Village where the highest grade of this tea is made and the word Kui refers to a tea-grower Wang Kui-cheng who made this tea by improving the processing of a local green tea Jian Cha around 1900."   The Tea Drinker's Handbook notes that "according to another legend, it is the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s, a tragic epidsode in Chinese history that ends in a bloody repression, which is linked with its name," and further notes that a "special feature of Tai Ping Hou Kui is revealed during the infusion when the veins of the leaves turn bright red -- some claim in tribute to the blood spilled by the rebels during the revolt."

I like to imagine that both might be true.  For usually there are many 'true' histories of a thing.  We come to blend and bend certain stories and events to reflect various people's emotional memory of the time as much as the 'facts' of a time.

I did two steepings.  Both in about 5 ozs of 75C to 80C water for two minutes but the first one had 6 or 7 leaves, which is what I thought I remembered Tao suggesting, and the second had the standard 2.5 grams of leaves.

Tai Ping Hou Kui wet leaves from the 2nd steep  -- large,
 mid-green leaves, showing, particularly on the left sample,
a pluck of a tiny bud, a new young  leaf and two other leaves.

The dry leaves have a surprisingly strong sweet and fresh aroma.  Almost floral.

On the first brew the wet leaves give light aroma of beans and a sweet vegetal scent, along with a light toasty scent of buttery popcorn.  The latter is the smell of the firing and identifies it as a fired not steamed green tea.  I don't see a red leaf vein though.

The liquor is a very pale, elegant blue-green with a light round buttery mouth feel. 

Overall I find this too watery and delicate for my taste-buds -- basically under-brewed, so decide to do a second one with the standard 2.5 grams of tea leaves to 5 oz of water.

This brings forward the toasty buttery aromas of the leaves and flavour to the tongue, along with the usual green-tea vegetal notes and a rich hint of toasted pecans.  This heavier, standard brew also brings a nice light briskness and a bit of sharp bitterness which is actually a nice balance to the quite full round, satiny (oily) mouth feel.  I could perhaps do with one notch lower on the bitterness but it brings a refreshing quality too, and the rest of the cup goes down with no problem.

This tea is so nice I'm trying it again the next morning -- 2.5 grams in 5 oz water at 80C.  This time I don't let it slip over the two-minute steep at all, which takes the slight bitterness down a note.  (It's amazing how little it takes to tip a tea over to bitterness.) The cup is wonderfully round and buttery with light toasty notes followed by the vegetal and the nutty pecan.  A second brew (at two minutes) is less round on the mouth, with abit less of the pecan and almost a mint-tea feel on the tongue as the last sip goes down.  A third brew (in cooler water since the water in my thermos has cooled to 65C) done at 3 minutes gives me another lovely cup of tea -- it doesn't seem to have diminished on the mouth feel by much, a little lighter on the flavour profiles and, surprisingly, the sweet floral note is more dominant. 

As I sit here sewing cosies this afternoon this tea just keeps on giving.  It deserves its moniker as one of the Ten Famous Teas -- rich-tasting and distinctive.

* Before the fall of the Imperial Court in China the Famous Teas were called Imperial Tribute Teas and were apparently for the exclusive pleasure of the emperor.

DARJEELINGS X 3

For all three teas
WATER TEMPERATURE: 85C
STEEPING TIME: 2 minutes

This started as a tasting I did for myself while studying intensively in the weeks leading up to the exam last spring.  I've been thnking in the past few days that tastings of only one thing are extremely difficult.  It's in the contrasts between things that one can often find the strongest definition -- more frequent "ah ha" moments. When our class did its first sample tasting at Spire Tea Sean's most lasting piece of advice for me was, when in doubt, go back and taste again against another tea.  Especially for aspects such as briskness and mouthfeel.

And speaking of briskness, the Darjeelings can often be quite brisk, especially the year's first flush. 

Today's tasting is of three Darjeelings from Tealish -- one first flush and two second flushes.  I presume they are 2009's or possible 2008's.

I have to say this was not a particularly successful brew.  Two out of three were almost undrinkably bitter.  I was reading the incredibly useful "The Tea Drinker's Handbook" this afternoon and noted they recommend long steeps (3 to 5 minutes) at 85C for the five Darjeelings they describe.  Hmmm.  Cooler water temp and longer steep than I've done before.   The long steep made me nervous, since Darjeelings are known for "bolting" to great bitterness after 2 minutes, so I opted to try the cooler temperature water but stick to a strict two minutes for each tea.

From left: Gopaldhara first flush, Avongrove 2nd flush
and a Puttabong 2nd flush. The snap's over exposed but
you can see the difference in amount of green in the leaves.

#1.  DARJEELING Gopaldhara Estate FTGFOP1 - 1st Flush

Remember those letters?  Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (grade) 1.  A grading system developed in India and used in Ceylon as well.

According to the label, the Gopaldhara Estate is at an elevation of 7400 feet and is one of the three highest tea gardens in the world.  The Gopaldhara Estate website says they've gardens ranging from 3000 to 7000 feet but does agree it's "one of the highest tea estates in Darjeeling."

DRY LEAF:
WET LEAF:
- faintly sweet with vegetal notes and then a green spring whiff

LIQUOR:
The liquor is a fairly strong yellowy orange  -- darker than I would have expected of a classic first flush.
 
The liquor is surprisingly sweet like a pasta, quite brisk with a pleasing furry feel.  It has a light, bitter tang at the end for balance.

Gopaldhara 1st flush, Avongrove 2nd flush organic, Puttabong 2nd flush.

#2. DARJEELING Avongrove Estate - 2nd Flush Organic
FTGOP1
Interestingly the website for Avongrove Estate, an organic estate, notes that it was bought in 2008 by a company called KPL International, an international business company "marketing chemicals, paper, polymers, and allied products."  I don't know what to make of that.

DRY LEAF:
WET LEAF:
- a faintly toasty, deep sweetly fruity aroma with an end note of cat piss.  Yes, cat spray.  I have cats and my garden is regularly visited by male cats spritzing their territorial markings hither and thither so am quite familiar with it.

LIQUOR:
The colour is a deep marmalade orangey-brown.  Typical I've found of over-brewed 2nd flush Darjeelings.
 
The taste is profoundly bitter.  Too bitter for me and I don't understand why it's so after only 2 minutes with a cool infustion. 
 
#3. DARJEELING Puttabong Estate - 2nd Flush
SFTGFOP1
The Puttabong Estate (aka Tukvar Estate) is apparently the oldest tea estate in Darjeeling and has gardens frm 1500 to 6500 feet elevation. It's owned by Jay Shree Tea & Industries Ltd in India which also owns estates in Assam, as well as a real estate division and plant producing superphosphate and sulphuric acid.  Interesting mix.  I guess.
 
DRY LEAF:
WET LEAF:
A brief whiff of toasty before a snootful of a typical black tea note of robust warm hay barn.

LIQUOR:
Unfortunately this too is quite bitter although it's softer and less brisk.  There's a little bit of that pasta flavour but with more tang and much less sweet.  Overall this is just too one note-bitter to be interesting.  My fault for overbrewing, I'm sure.

As an afterward -- since it's 4 o'clock and I need a tea fix, I added milk to both the 2nd flushes and it made this one was reasonably drinkable.  The milk sweetened it just enough to off-set the bitterness and make it palatable.

GOLDEN YUNNAN (ORGANIC) From Tao's Tea

This is my first entry -- and just a trial run -- and only the 3rd day after a massive evening of smoking which pretty much completely deadened my taste buds. I'm also starting here with the second infusion on these leaves and I overbrewed the damn things! I was up on the ladder taking down the curtain panel I'm working on when the timer went off so instead of 3 minutes it brewed about 3 mins 30 to 3 mins 45.

TEA NAME: ORGANIC GOLDEN YUNNAN 
Remember: you can click on any of the photos to have a closer look.
WATER TEMPERATURE:  Just off the boil
STEEPING TIME:  2 minutes

Organic Golden Yunnan dry leaves.

DRY LEAF: A beautiful dark shiny slightly twisted leaf sprinkled with gorgeous golden, fuzzy leaf buds.  I love to look at the leaves under a magnifying glass and the surprise of the 'cat-tail' fuzziness always makes me smile.

Organic Golden Yunnan wet leaves.

WET LEAF:  The brewed wet leaves, typical of a fully oxidised tea, are a lovely coppery red with an undertone of green.  The leaves have been broken in their processing (likely during the rolling to break open the leaf's juices for oxidising) but you still see some whole, unopened buds about 1/2" (1 cm) long -- which were the golden fuzzies when dry. 

The wet leaves emit a crisp, sharp "black tea" aroma, with also a distinct and surprising note of honey dew melon (not the orange cataloup melon, but a ripe green honeydew).

Organic Golden Yunnan brewed liquor after 2 minutes.

LIQUOR: Aroma, appearance and flavour*.

And the liquor is definitely bitter -- slightly metallic taste of overbrewed black tea.

Soft to Medium brisk

Bright, on pouring and a beautiful rich orangey-red.