Wojciech Bońkowski
Master of Wine

Two lesser-known teas from Anxi

Tie Guan Yin challengers

Tie Guan Yin, from the Anxi district in China’s eastern province of Fujian, is one of the classic Chinese teas. But Fujian’s distinctive style of green (very lightly oxidised), rolled-leaf oolong can be produced with tea cultivars other than tie guan yin. Here I look at two such teas.

Huang Jin Gui
Merchant: Jing Tea
Brewed in: gaiwan
Dosage: 3.5g / 50ml
Dry leaf: Typical Anxi rolled leaf, although a little smaller in size than e.g. TGY. Pleasant grassy, floral scent.

Tasting notes:
20s: This appears a little overbrewed, showing in a concentrated yellow-green colour, and some tannic astringency on the palate. Aroma is Anxi-floral with a bit more grassiness and grapefruit peel pungency than a typical TGY. An assertive tea, fullish on the palate while keeping the green drive of the nose. Good tea here, but I would double the amount of water for this amount of leaf.
20s with 130ml water: Colour more into greenish. Floral but a little subdued (some leaf burn?). Palate less astringent, assertive, full-flavoured. Good quality here.
30s: Strangely weaker and flatter now, without the expressive force of the above brewings. Good vegetal length. Subsequent brewings are gradually losing intensity, but overall pleasurable.
Definitely a re-purchase at this price ($9 / 100g).

Competition Grade Se Zhong–Mao Xie
Merchant: Jing Tea
Brewed in: gaiwan
Dosage: 4g/120ml
Dry leaf: A typical Anxi rolled leaf. Aroma is also typical: grassy, vegetal, but also highly floral and exotic-fruity. Nice.

Tasting notes:
25s: Lid aroma is again very floral (pink and white lilies came to mind). Idem but slightly less precise in cup. An elegant, fruity-floral tea, this seems less structured than the typical TGY.
30s: Lid aroma now more vegetal, less floral. Despite being less structured than many Anxi oolongs this is an assertive tea with very good ‘palate presence’.
40s: Much as brewing #2, good length, good personality, this has all to please. The open leaves seem thinner and less serrated than a TGY, and are almond-shaped; clearly this is another varietal:

60s: Similar to above, floral and fresh but palate a little fading now. Overall expression is still quite good.
60s: A delightful brewing, mild but flavourful.
3m: Still a vestige of the high-pitched flowery aroma and enough flavour on palate to be interesting. Which is not bad patience for a rolled oolong IME.
Overall this is firmly Anxi in style but a little less structured and sweeter than a TGY. Excellent tea. And at $12 per 100g, it is also brilliant value.

tea Shortlink

2008 Tie Guan Yin ‘Red Dot’

Tea overdose

I can’t give a very analytic description of this tea. I got a 20g pack from Alex Fraser of London’s Eastteas, one of my favourite tea merchants. (If I understood well, Alex has two qualities of Tie Guan Yin at the moment; the superior one is marked with a small red dot at the upper right-hand corner of the packs).

I then used half of the pack when exiled with a heavy flu at my parents’ house, being the only quality tea I had available. Then I put the remaining leaves into a canister which I forgot to label. Seeing how little there was left I put the whole lot in a gaiwan. That was quite an amount of leaf! The tea came out very concentrated but as the leaves expanded it was impossible to put the lid on.

Roughly 10g of dry leaf – too much for a gaiwan!

I decided to transfer the leaves into a ~300ml ceramic pot. All I can say is that this is not a ‘wow’ tea, and perhaps doesn’t deliver for its high price (IMHO, few expensive teas do), but it surely has a lot of presence and power. Nose is very clean, showing high grade material, although perhaps not as floral and narcotic as some other TGYs. A sign of quality, this is not easily overbrewed even with a lot of leaf (with some fragmented). There is a hint of structure but never bitterness. Throughout a good 12 infusions I bathed in this tea’s milky texture and leafy presence. No wonder it cured my flu in a day.

tea Shortlink