A Ceylon from Parliament St.

It arrived in a ziplock so I've absolutely no information about this tea except that it comes from Sri Lanka, and was bought at a Sri Lankan grocery store on Parliament Street.  Which I'm going to have to visit because this is one of the nicer Ceylon tea I've had in awhile.

A medium-sized leaf and an even coppery colour.

After the wet leaves fill your nose with their damp, lightly toasty, tangy raiseny aroma there's a fresh, light perfumey note of spices in the cinnamon and clove range.  How lovely!

The liquor is rich red-brown and light to medium bodied -- a clean feel on my tongue with just the lightest furring, and a bit of briskness.  The spice notes have become a faint honeyed floral note in the mouth.

A gift of fresh tea from Sri Lanka

 Oh boy.  A friend brought me back two boxes of tea from his recent trip to Sri Lanka.  They visited the Mackwood Tea Estate and the tea is from there.  A box of Ceylon Orange Pekoe (whole leaf) and a box of Ceylon Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings.  Fannings, I said to myself?  Well, okay, thanks.

The Orange Pekoe looks beautiful -- large-ish medium twist leaves of an even size which brew up a beautiful cup of bright red-brown tea.  Full of flavour -- it's fresh after all.  And it has a lovely astringency.  A classic high-grown ceylon.

But the big news was the kapow flavour of the Fannings.  Now, we know fannings can deliver alot of flavour quickly because there are more exposed insides of the leaf but who knew that when you combine that with really fresh tea how big and wonderful the flavour could be?  I take back any derogatory thoughts I ever had about fannings. This has been my breakfast tea everyday since I opened it.

Now that I've blurted about the tea, here's the scoop on Mackwoods: one of the oldest tea companies in Sri Lanka it was established in 1841, initially as a coffee plantation.  I've noticed that most of the Sri Lankan tea companies are involved in many industry sectors and rarely just tea.  This is true of Mackwoods too and its website explains that "today, Mackwoods is a Conglomerate of several companies engaged in essential sectors of the Sri Lankan economy; namely – Agribusiness and Plantations (Tea, Rubber and Oil Palm), Healthcare (Pharmaceuticals and Medical Equipment); Science & Technology; Information Technology Education, and Software Development; Imports and Value Added Exports; Energy Sector; Leisure Sector; Manufacturing Sector; and Financial Services (Insurance, Asset Management & Stockbroking). Mackwoods provides employment to approximately 8,500 individuals, and owns & manages 27,000 acres."

But back to the tea -- it comes from their Labookellie Estate which is in the Nuwara Eliya region.  Nuwara Eliya is the highest tea region in the country at about 6000 feet and tea from that region is considered the best and, I've been told, is rarely blended.  One of these days I'll go and see for myself.

TWO CEYLONS, ONE A 2010....

My current constant quest is to find really fresh, current year or, if possible, current season tea.  On the very rare occasions that I've had the pleasure of  tasting such fresh tea the flavour has been down on your knees astounding.  So much more breadth of flavour profile it's revelatory.  The first time was a Kenyan tea that a classmate (who had recently admitted he was a tea blender/importer) provided which had been made just three weeks earlier.  Wow.   High notes, bottom notes, fuller middle notes.  Huh.  Who knew.

Not that most tea one buys at a reputable place isn't quite splendid but, really.   You know when you pick fresh basil from your summer garden and you get the greeness, the fresh-air quality, the exotic, almost bitter full spicyness of basil as compared to perfectly good dried basil that gives you that, well, basil flavour....?  That's the difference between really fresh tea and just regular good tea here in North America.  I saw a short film on Japanese tea at the recent Coffee & Tea Show here in Toronto and one of the short scenes that struck me was of a corner tea store (booth, really) in an urban residential area offering it's seasonal fresh tea for tasting by the local residents as if it was apples or lettuce.  Shoppers came and sampled the teas and then bought their weekly tea.  Fresh tea comes in almost every week.  A far, far cry from our situation here in North America where my sense is that most tea is container-shipped by sea which takes several months, then it's often stored before being sold to our local tea merchants where it may sit for many months before it's all sold.  Sigh.

However, my lovely local tea shop Tealish has recently stocked several late spring 2010 teas and I've just discovered that my local Japanese grocery store, Sanko, imports fresh senchas, gyokuro, hojichas, etc (more on that later!) for their discerning Japanese clientel and anyone else lucky enough to stumble upon it.  Like me, two weeks ago.


I decided to taste the 2010 Berubeula Ceylon next to another from Tealish called Golden Garden Ceylon (reviewed here on August 26/10) because sometimes contrasting the taste and texture helps focus the tastebuds. 

Wet and dry leaves of the Golden Garden Ceylon on the left
and the 2010 Berubeula Estate Ceylon on the right.

BERUBEULA CEYLON
Berubeula  is in the Galle district of Sri Lanka and being generally under 2000 feet in altitude their teas are classified as low-grown Ceylons.

The dry leaves are long and wiry and a dark charcoal grey -- there is a handsome evenness to the look of this tea. After brewing in just-off-the-boil water for two minutes, the large broken leaves have opened and show some green in the coppery brown.  Oddly, there are a lot of what I think are leaf centre-ribs ie: no leaf on it -- they're definitely not buds and there was little gold or silver tipping in the dry leaves.  The leaves' aroma is full and sweet off the top, like a sweet bun baking really -- with a very light vegetal note, perhaps a hint of dark, dark chocolate and finally a nice light tang of bitter sharpness in the nose to finish it off.

The liquor is a bright ruby-red-brown and, surprisingly, light to medium bodied and smooth in the mouth.  Being low-grown I was expecting a really full bodied, rather rough tea but that is definitely not the case.  The flavours hinted by the leaves come through and the cup gives a lovely, smooth, full, balanced sweet-bitter cup with lots of flavour.  Milk smoothes the edges (although there were no really sharp edges here) and sweetens it slightly.  If you're someone who finds the classic, high-grown Ceylon's zingy lemon briskness too harsh this could be for you -- this is a really nice, smooth Ceylon that, being fresh, delivers great flavour.

GOLDEN GARDEN CEYLON

In August when I originally tasted this tea I couldn't find any information on the Estate and it's altitude, etc.  However I came across a list of the Sri Lankan tea estates with links to satellite views of each one, and noticed a number have names in Sinhalese.  Aha!  In the Sinhalese language Ran means golden and Watte means garden and when I googled that I finally found some information on the estate.  It's in the Uva district which has both medium and high-grown tea estates as it's altitude ranges from 2000 to 3500 feet so this tea could be either.

This Ceylon is very different from the Berubeula, starting with the look of the tea:  the dry leaves are small and fine and quite black with an occasional gold tip.  Used just-off-the-boil water for a two-minute steep and the wet leaves are a uniform dark copper brown, showing no green and the liquor is clear, bright reddish brown.  The wet leaves give off a strong, slightly smokey, dark earthy aroma with a nice bitter tangy follow through and the liquor has, no surprise with those aromas I suppose, a pretty full body without being very brisk.   

Unfortunately this is the moment that I realise that my nose and taste buds must still not up to 100% since the cold/cough of weeks ago!  It's not possible (is it?) that this tea has dried out and faded in flavour that much since August 26 when I last did a tasting.....?  (I store my tea in glass jars with an airtight rubber seal.  The glass is clear but they're kept in a dark drawer.)  Ah life.

Well despite, and perhaps because of, my apparently still-compromised taste buds, the Golden Garden is a very nice afternoon tea but I will choose the Berubeula, at least for a few more months, for the extra breadth of flavour and aroma, as well as its smoothness.  It's not offering the revelation of flavour that I got from the ultra-fresh Kenyan tea (which will forever stand as a benchmark for me), but it is offering more, and would be even more rewarding on fully functioning taste buds. ;)
 

3 OOLONGS

It's taken three and half weeks to shake this cold but I think my taste buddys are finally back in order -- so I'm diving in to some tastings today. 

I've been looking forward to trying the sample of Thousand Arrows oolong I got at the Coffee and Tea show in late September and decided it would be helpful for my ongoing oolong education to taste it against some others.  Remembering my lesson from mister Marsland, you see.  So I hauled out two other oolongs I had in the drawer, both from my local tea shop,Tealish -- a Formosa Tung Ting Jade and a Ti Kuan Yin.  Interestingly there is no origin noted on the latter, although it's traditionally a Chinese oolong.  Since I tasted a steamed sencha-type tea that turned out to be from Bolivia last spring though (courtesy of that same Mr. Marsland), I realise this Ti Kuan Yin could be from anywhere.

THOUSAND ARROWS OOLONG
This sample came from Shanti Tea Importers based in Ottawa which deals in fair trade, organic and biodynamic teas.  Thousand Arrows is an oolong from the organic and fair trade Idulgashinna Tea Estate in Sri Lanka's Uva region -- speaking of everyone everywhere making everything these days, no?  The estate is owned by Stassen, "one of Sri Lanka's premier corporate conglomerates, with diverse business interests in exports/imports, manufacturing, banking, hotels, plantations and insurance sectors" and its elevation ranges from 1000 to 1900 metres (3200 to 6200 feet), so the tea is considered 'high grown.'   (More info on the major Sri Lankan tea regions.)  Stassen also owns the organic Venture Tea Garden, whose black tea I tasted earlier.



Thousand Arrows oolong sample in a nice
single-serving airtight package.

















This is an incredibly handsome, hand-made-looking tea with its large rolled spears of leaves.  The spears are beautifully uniform in size and twist and very satisfying to hold in your hand too, I must say.  Under the magnifying loop the twist and the glimpses of leaf-bud fuzz is gorgeous, and when I shake out the pack there is lots of fuzz (ie: pekoe) on the inside of the packet and fluttering into the teamaker.  

Thousand Arrows oolong -- the leaves danced
during their infusion.  Typical of needle-shaped tea,
I think.






















The sample's directions suggest 1tsp of leaf per cup (I'll guess that's 5 oz), bringing water to a boil but letting it cool for a minute before steeping the tea 2 to 3 minutes, with re-infusions.  I'm not sure how you'd measure a teaspoon of this stuff without breaking up those gorgeous spears though so I opt to use the whole sample pack, about 3 grams and about 6.5 ozs of water.  I don't let the water cool for a full minute since these are tightly rolled leaves and will need some good heat in the water to unfurl them, at least on their first infusion. 

I use 88C at 1 minute and 10 seconds steep and get a strong golden colour liquor.  The liquor's colour and the wet leaves's colour indicate this is a medium oxidised oolong.  The fairly large-sized wet leaves, partially or fully unfurled show a uniform, classic bud and two leaves pluck -- really lovely to look at.  The leaves are a soft coppery brown mixed with a bright green.  As I sit tasting and writing I notice that a lot of the green is changing to brown as they oxidise while sitting.

Thousand Arrows wet leaf showing a classic two-leaves-
and-a-bud pluck, next to the tightly twisted spear of dry tea.

The leaves give off a light toasty sweet and vegetal scent with floral and sweet applesauce notes.  The liquor has a refreshing light to medium body with very light astringency and its flavour follows the leaf's aroma.  It has a pleasing sweet fruity taste-note of applesauce, with a toasty finish.  On the second steep there is a more forward flavour note of sweet dried fruit, like raisin.  I left this on the counter while I prepared the other two teas and when the liquor had cooled, came back and finished it up.  There's a surprising hint of fresh, tart, berry flavour like a bowl of raspberries.

I'm not sure this has the distance that we've come to expect from great Chinese oolongs, but there's still plenty happening in this beautiful looking oolong.   In fact, I think I'd get more of this tea just for the pleasure of its look and feel.

TUNG TING JADE  (aka Dong Ding) and TI KWAN YIN (aka Tieguanyin)
If I don't see these together I can easily mistake one for the other, since both are traditionally folded-leaf or ball-rolled and have a a similar colouring of blue-green with blotches of dark charcoal grey and a spit-shiny sheen.  However, I find that when seen together the Tung Ting Jade is usually smaller, and has more variance in piece size and fewer stems.  You can see this in the photo below, especially if you click to enlarge it.  On infusion, the liquor of the Tung Ting is slightly more golden, and its leaves have a touch more copper colour, both indicators of more oxidation.  Looking at the infused leaves of both teas though, they are very close in oxidation level which is quite modest -- according to the high amount of green in the leaf.



Wet and dry leaves of Ti Kwan Yin oolong on left and
Tung Ting Jade oolong on the right.

 



















Do you notice the torn edges of the Ti Kwan Yin in the photo above?  If I understand my colleague Tao correctly, he tells me that in order to achieve the look of a more lightly oxidised oolong some producers in China have workers tear the copper-coloured edges from the leaves.  (!!)  I don't know if that's the case here, nor if I understood the story correctly - it seems so labour intensive.

Both oolongs were infused for 2 minutes 10 seconds in 90C water.  They are definitely more lightly oxidised than the Thousand Arrows, and that's evident when comparing their lighter liquor colour as well as the greener wet leaves. 

In flavour and scent they both have more vegetal notes than the Thousand Arrows, and are generally more floral and sweet scented, with little astringency and light to medium body.

Of the two, the Ti Kwan Yin has a stronger vegetal flavour with more of the toasty notes in its taste and has abit more body .  The flavour sticks to your tongue more.  When it cools some lovely peach notes comes through.  I often find that flavour notes come through more strongly on cooler liquor -- odd.  In fact this cool, room temperature tea is very refreshing and pleasant.

In the Tung Ting the swoosh of vegetal and lighter toasty notes are followed by a lovely sweet spicy note of cinnamon.  On the second steeping the spicy sweet note became more vanilla and floral -- is that what orchid smells like?  The Tea Drinker's Handbook talks of this tea having a lightly oily, rounded mouth-feel but I'm not getting that from this tea.

3 oolongs: Ti Kwan Yin, Tung Ting and Thousand Arrows.

I'm so glad I decided to taste these three together.  They provided a great illustration of the general differences in oolongs based on their oxidation levels.  Oolongs, by definition, are partially oxidised, varying from roughly 20% to 80% oxidation.   Generally you'll find that the lightly oxidised leaves develop intense floral and vegetal notes, while the heavily oxidised have more fruity, woody almost spicy notes.  Even though the Thousand Arrows is not heavily-heavily oxidised, it did exhibit more fruit notes than the Tung Ting Jade and Ti Kwan Yin.

TWO CEYLONS

Two Ceylons from Tealish that I haven't tried yet.  Nice way to start the day. I've been enjoying Ceylon for breakfast all summer and really appreciating that thirst-quenching, light lemony briskness they're famous for.

There are six principal tea growing regions in Sri Lanka and the tea is generally classified as low grown (below 2000 feet), mid grown (2000 to to 4000 feet) or high grown (4000 feet and up).  The six districts are Nuwara Eliya (the highest, a plateau at 6000 feet), Dimbula (3500 to 5000 feet), Uva (3000 to 5000 feet)), Kandy (considered low-grown, around 1500 to 2000 feet), and the low-grown districts of Galle and Ratnapura (less than 2000 feet).  One of the reasons to mention all this is that elevation has alot to do with the taste of a tea, with most saying the higher the elevation the better the tea.  In general, I've found the higher elevation teas are lighter bodied and the lower elevation ones, fuller bodied with bolder flavours.  Think high-grown Ceylon versus a typical Assam.  Of course, in the end "best" is all in your taste buds.

Both these teas were brewed just off the boil for 2 minutes.

VENTURE ESTATE (CEYLON), Organic OP1
I've ended up spending way too much time tripping about the internet searching for info about this estate -- specifically what altitude the tea is grown at.  So far the Serendipitea site says their Venture Estate tea is grown in the Nuwara Eliya district (which is the highest altitude area), the Leafspa site says their Venture Estate FBOP comes from the Uva district and the Sereni-tea site says their Venture Estate OP1 is from Dimbula district.  (The Tea Drinker's Handbook says all three of these districts produce what is know as "highgrown" tea.)   However, in this 2007 article on Sri Lankan organic tea gardens, including local sentiment both pro and con, I finally found that Venture Estate is situated in the Bogowanthalawa Valley in Sri Lanka's Dimbulla region at an elevation of 1,100 to 1,300 meters (3600 to 4300 feet) which would be considered high grown.  Phew.

The reason I was curious about the elevation is because the liquor of this tea and it's flavour and mouth feel suggest it's highgrown, particularly in relation to the Golden Garden Estate tea.

But starting with the dry leaves -- they are a very dark grey/black with the chunky appearance of a fairly large-sized broken leaf done in a medium twist.  An attractive, even dry leaf as you can see in the photo below, and very different from the other Ceylon I'm trying this morning.

Venture on the left is lighter and more orangey
than the Golden Garden.  Both look great in the
morning sun.

The liquor colour is a beautiful, bright orangey-red -- compared to the deeper slightly browny-red of the Golden Garden.  In the mouth it's a refreshing, light-bodied, medium brisk tea that leaves a clean, light lemony tang at the back of tongue.  The wet leaves give me a light honey, warm woody scent.  Overall, for me, this tea is more about the mouth-feel than any single strong flavour.  Although when I took the last sip from the now-cooled and milked (I always add milk to finish the cup) tea I got a wonderful, distinct lime marmalade hit.

GOLDEN GARDEN (CEYLON), FBOPF
I can't find any info on the net about this tea estate except from seller's website which just aren't very informative.  I mean, they have info, bless them, just not the kind of details that I want -- elevation, exact location, ownership, etc etc.  I'm a nosey girl.

(Note: later discovered the estate's in the Uva district, 2000 to 3500 feet ie: low to mid grown)

Venture Estate wet and dry on left, Golden Garden on right. 
Not sure if you can see in this photo but the Venture's wet
leaves are a maroonish colour, like seaweed.

So -- on to the tea itself, then.  The tea leaves are very small, fine, thin and wiry speckled with a few silvery-gold tips.  Very distinct from the much larger-leafed, chunky looking Venture Estate.  As I mentioned above the liquor is a rich amber-red.  The wet leaves are full of soft flavour notes: spicy, nutty (almond?), cinnamon, orange peel.  On the mouth its a big, full-bodied tea giving my tongue a furry feel and it has a tang to it, abit of bitterness.  This tea is very flavourful.  Given it's full-bodied-ness I'm wondering if this is a low-grown tea.  Hmmm.

I think I prefer the Venture for my morning tea -- I really do like that light lemony pucker first thing in the morning.  And will reserve the Golden Garden for my afternoon tea when I'm looking for good full flavour to tickle my taste buds.

I can't believe it.  It's 2:45pm and I started brewing the tea and these notes at 9:30 this morning.  You see?  That's why this blog will never live up to its name.  There's simply not enough hours in the day to write a tasting a day and keep up with the gardening.

IDENTIFYING ASSAM VS. CEYLON -- visual clues

This entry was done in the spring as part of a study group before our Tea Sommelier exam at the end of April 2010.  Thought I'd put it here just for the heck of it.

Saturday April 10, 2010:  After Thursday evening's blind tasting which included an Assam and a Ceylon, although I did get it right (ahem), I confess I felt it was abit of blind luck. So I brewed them up this morning to see if I could see more visual clues.

About 30 seconds after infusion.

3 grams in 4 oz water (I was looking for visuals not taste ;)  You can already see the liquor of the Assam on the left is darker.

Comparing the appearance of the wet leaves.

And the ASSAM wet leaves are indeed much redder than the CEYLON -- a good clue (click on any of the photos and they'll enlarge). But I noticed that the brightness of the red faded after a few (like 5 or 10) minutes. Perhaps they need to be soaking wet and the moisture had drained to the bottom of the pile. I also noticed slightly brighter green flecks in the Assam wet leaves but that might not be characteristic of all Assams. (More observation needed.)

Brewed liquor, Assam on left, Ceylong on right.

At first glance they look very similar but back off, focus and yes indeed the ASSAM on left is darker and the CEYLON on right is more of an orangey-red and "brighter" (clear, crisp) looking. Both have distinct green rings around the edge.

Comparing cloudyness after 5 minutes.

I don't know how much time we'll be given to identify the teas, but in this photo taken about 5 or 6 minutes after pouring off the leaves you can clearly see that the ASSAM on the left is cloudier than the CEYLON on the right. (I marked an "x" under each glass with magic marker). This means that the protein (amino acids including theanine) precipitated out more quickly in the Assam as the liquors cooled. A question: will all Assams and Ceylons react the same way.....? Hmmm.

By 30 minutes later both teas were densely cloudy -- couldn't see the bottom of the glass in either of them.

Yours in tea-dom.