2010 Nonpareil Tanyang Gongfu
Posted on 30 March 2011
I’m always on the lookout for good Chinese black tea. As I mentioned earlier, they’re the taste matrix I have at the back of my head. As much as I can get excited by first flush Darjeeling, they can’t replace a good Qimen or Yunnan in my life.
Golden buds: this is an ambitiously high grade of black tea.
This 2010 Tanyang Gongfu comes from Dragon Tea House and is their highest grade ($25 / 100g). Unsurprisingly so if you look at the leaves: composed exclusively of immaculately selected golden leaves, this is certainly a painstaking tea to produce. Stylistically it is a moderately fruity tea, with good freshness and pleasant notes of juicy plums and red apples, and a stronger, malty, just mildly earthy base underneath. Midway between a lighter Yunnan and a maltier Qimen.
As it’s classified as a gongfu black tea, I was curious to infuse it gongfu style, with a series of short brews. 7.5g of leaf for a 100ml gaiwan turned out to be a generous dosage. This approach yields a delicious tea, emphasising the fruity nose and delivering a good complex progression, provided you keep the infusions really short: start with no longer than 10 seconds, and then for the following three brews it’s basically water in, water out. This tea yielded a total of seven infusions, a very impressive result for a black tea.
Lovely leaf selection: this is all fresh, tender buds.
I’ve had my reservations about the more expensive grades from Dragon Tea House: I felt their Nonpareil Keemun and Nonpareil Longjing were very good but somewhat overpriced. This 2010 Tanyang is certainly not cheap, but at least it delivers.
Disclosure
Source of tea: own purchase.