2008 Nokcha
A belated note on an old favourite: a brilliant Korean green tea that sums up the distinctive, nutty, slightly-oxidised character of this country’s teas.
A belated note on an old favourite: a brilliant Korean green tea that sums up the distinctive, nutty, slightly-oxidised character of this country’s teas.
The Chablis of tea: a worthy name for one of China’s greatest greens.
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My green teas from 2008 have to move out quickly to make room for 2009s. Longjing, Biluochun, Sencha are all being harvested at the moment, and some are ready for immediate EMS shipment.
But drinking tea up is no easy task. Any tea lover will know the embarras de richesse of a drawer full of samples. With 70 at this moment, I think I am among the least overstocked. Some teas can age, of course, and these will be happy with a few months’ oblivion as I delve into newly delivered 2009s. But fragile green teas – especially those from Japan, in my experience – should ideally be consumed within the year of harvest.
Today’s is definitely a belated note, then. The 2008 Harayama Shincha was made with the first spring harvest of last year. Shincha – ‘new tea’ – is often nicknamed the Beaujolais Nouveau of the tea world. It is equivalent to what the Chinese classify as pre-Qing Ming (or ming qian): the first spring buds plucked before this major Chinese festival that usually falls at the beginning of April. So in essence, this Harayama (a prestigious origin in the prestigious region of Uji) is an early harvest sencha Japanese green tea.
Merchant: Eastteas
Price: £16 / 100g
Brewed in: Korean clay cup (see photos)
Dosage: 4g / 120ml
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Leaf: Immaculate elongated pressed leaves boast an impressively consistent dark green. This clearly belongs to the light-steamed family of Japanese tea (a.k.a. asamushi). I somehow found these wonderful leaves representative of the perfectionist Japanese aesthetics. Dry leaf smell is a concentrate of vegetality, with notes of asparagus, artichoke, and especially extra virgin olive oil.
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Tasting notes:
1m @ 70C: A typical pale golden / celadon colour. The nose is quite aromatic with a top note I identified as nutmeg. Body is round and flavourful, allying sweetness with vegetal freshness, losing its bite gradually as there is very little overt grassiness: this is true to the shincha sort in being airy, light, without the tang of full-season sencha.
30s @ 70C: Good character, if a little less intensity than the first brewing. With fruity notes a bit lower, the full glutamic scharge is arriving with more power. This tea is easy to overbrew (in fact brewing at 85C results in too much astringency) but if you find the right balance it is really delightful.
80s @ 80C: Now slowly eclipsing into a vague greenish soup. Still pleasant but with limited interest.
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Overall this tea has held reasonably well (my notes from November 2008 and this morning are consistent), and although hardly complex, it really delivers very good intensity of spring leaf flavour. Just what shincha should be. I can’t wait to receive my 2009s!
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I also draw your attention to the lovely tea items on the photos (also purchased from Eastteas). The handy crackled celadon clay pot and accompanying cup are by Korean potter Mr. Bo Hyun, and have an effortless elegance while being very practical for brewing a single cup of green tea (especially fragmented-leaf, as in this case). The carved wooden tray is my Mr. Kang. It is perfect as a small tea table for one, or for serving three or four guest cups on.-758387.JPG)
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Japanese tea is not my cup of tea. As many (I think) tea drinkers, I have been put off by the overly grassy and fishy flavour these green teas can develop if brewed improperly. Not that the brewing window is narrower in this case than continental Chinese greens, but perhaps the failures are more unpleasant.
I have made a resolution to explore these teas in the coming season, so stay tuned for tasting notes appearing on this blog. Today I am starting at the very top – by a Gyokuro sourced from
Eastteas. Any tea drinker will know that Gyokuro (tea made from shaded trees; when powdered it makes Matcha) is very particular in requiring a high dosage (which Japanese teas usually don’t) and surprisingly low brewing temperatures. Now, reaching those prescribed 45C is no easy task! From boiling water, it really takes long minutes of cooling the water (unless you want to mess up with several water coolers). For your effort, you get a very concentrated essence of vegetality, including a distinctive salty-savoury edge that embodies umami, the notorious ‘fifth taste’. (In this tea, it can be detected as tiny crystals of natural glutamate).-780258.JPG)
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Tasting notes:
1m @ 40C: Colour is pale and aroma somewhat reticent but palate is indeed an explosion of umami taste: savoury, brothy (not salty!), glutamic, reminiscent of miso paste perhaps, with auxiliary notes of green peas and none of the grassiness of sencha. Good length, good intensity, good precision. Could actually have been brewed longer. (I started on the cautious side).
40s @ 50C: Less exciting than brewing #1, less intense though profile is consistent. No aggressivity or astringency whatsoever, this enters the mouth broad and flavourful with no hard edges. As often with second brewings of Japanese fragmented-leaf teas, this is a little murky in appearance and flavour now.
Further brewings are still pleasurable but you have to rise to 70C to obtain any intensity.
This is expensive tea, but the experience is interesting. Is it a top Gyokuro? I cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered an expert in the subject but I would expect a bit more intensity and ‘bite’. But having been a little conservative with my dosage and brewing times, I guess this tea deserves the benefit of a doubt.
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Taiwan produces so much good oolong that one intuitively forgets about other types of tea from this island. Baihao, Baozhong, Gaoshan (plus the large reserves of aged puer) are enough to keep you running for years of tea drinking.
Within a recent order from Taiwanese specialist
Tea Masters, though, I ordered a small pack of a local green tea. Taiwan produces several types: Biluochun is common (an emulation of the Chinese classic from Jiangsu), as well as some greens from the qingxin tea cultivar (widely used in Taiwanese mountain oolongs). This tea, the 2008 Bailu, is made from a recently developed cultivar with the irresistibly romantic name of No. 17, also know as Bailu, meaning white crane.Brewed in: gaiwan
Dosage: 3.5g / 100ml
Dry leaf: A nice looking tea, with about 20% furry tips, and lots of bright green leaves alongside the more usual dark greens. Smells of summer meadow and toasted bread.
Wet leaf: Impressive quality, with no damage to the carefully selected leaves. They take quite a number of brewings to fully open. I remain impressed by the consistently high quality of the Tea Masters selections. -724306.JPG)
Tasting notes:
60s: A very pale, white-coloured infusion. I find
Overall this tea has quite a distinctive, grapefruity profile that I find quite unvegetal for a green tea. Original, enjoyable and fairly priced (22€ / 100g).
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2008 Liu An Guapian AA from Jing Tea
Two similarly priced examples ($22 and $25 per 100g, respectively): 2008 Liu An Guapian AA from Jing Tea (hereafter ‘A’) and 2008 Supreme Liu An Guapian from Dragon Tea House (‘B’). Both were brewed in gaiwan with 4g / 120ml with 40s (80C), 25s (85C), 40s, 1m.
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2008 Supreme Liu An Guapian from Dragon Tea House
Dry leaf:
A: Average sized dark green leaves, like miniature rolled cigars.
B: Large dark green leaves with a pleasant, fruity aroma (melon is in fact not a bad descriptor), pretty complex.
Tasting notes:
A: Lid and cup aroma has three main notes: mild pea, dried hay, and a fruity note akin to melon. Medium bodied for a green tea, with absolutely no astringency. Not very crisp. Really enjoyable, with a good balance of fruity and vegetal elements. In later brewings aroma is more green-spicy, palate smooth with good length, not very distinctive or complex. This seems pretty forgiving of water temperature: no bitterness on the horizon.
Brewing #1 of 2008 Liu An Guapian AA from Jing Tea
B: Starts with a very minor melon note on the nose, then receding into a more hayey green tea generic register. Good intensity and character throughout the first brewing, ending on a chewy, strangely meaty (chicken came to mind) flavour. No astringency but that elusive and welcome ‘presence’ on the finish. Brewing #2 has a bit less precision, finish is still balanced and unbitter when water is cooled down a bit. Brewing #3: Still good, it takes another 1m brewing to really recede into aromatic anonymousness, though surely not blandness (still some grip on end). Good tea here.
Overall:
Two very competent (if not cheap) examples of this famous tea. Unlike small-leaf teas such as Maofeng or Biluochun, this packs in quite some power and solid flavour, but shows a fruitier, fresher profile than the more nutty, beany Houkui that I reviewed yesterday.
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Spent leaves of 2008 Liu An Guapian AA from Jing Tea-721958.JPG)
A recent post on another (excellent, BTW) blog triggered the following comparative session of two Houkui teas.
Houkui is one of the most renowned green teas of China. It comes from the center-eastern province of Anhui, also home to Guapian (another famous green) and Keemun (China’s premier black tea). The best Houkui is reputed to come from the district of Taiping. So Taiping Houkui can be considered a ‘tea appellation’ similar to e.g. Brunello di Montalcino or Saar Riesling. Literally, the name is translated as Monkey King (several other Chinese teas were once allegedly picked by monkeys).
Houkui has a very special and spectacular appearance. While most top-quality green tea from China is made from very small leaves and buds (following the assumption that the youngest leaves yield the best tea), Houkui has huge leaves. They often reach 5 cm in length (and are said to exceed 15 cm before drying); this is due to the used tea varietal, not a lower grade of tea (in fact, the first two tender leaves are used, sometimes with a bud). They are rolled into a flat blade style, a bit like Longjing, but are greener, and show a distinctive chequered pattern left by the woven cloths used for rolling the leaves. For an excellent summary of Houkui, see here.
The following are tasting notes from a side-by-side brewing (3g of leaf for approx. 85ml water) of two Houkuis. The Taiping Houkui (hereafter ‘A’) was purchased from a Polish internet teashop, eHerbata, and cost the equivalent of 15 € per 100g. The second tea, 2008 Supreme Houkui (‘B’), is from Dragon Tea House ($26 / 100g).
Dry leaf:
A: Typical chequered leaf, greenish but also a fair bit of light brown: honestly doesn’t look like the freshest 2008 harvest. Aroma is quite distinctive: button mushrooms, followed by a thicker, almost chocolatey impression.
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Taiping Houkui from eHerbata.
B: An obviously high leaf quality, mostly dark green on colour, long, with relatively little damage to leaves. Aroma is a quite intense impression of cooked spinach, plus some chestnutty notes reminiscent of Longjing (the latter aroma reinforced by warming leaves).
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2008 Supreme Houkui from Dragon Tea House.
Tasting notes (brewings of 60s @ 80C, 45s @ 85C, 90s @ 85C):
A: Lid aroma is unremarkable, dusty and chewy. Also a mildly unappetizing brownish colour. I get a bit of metallic character on palate but not bad, with a good moment of vegetal-grassy intensity (vaguely reminiscent of lower-grade sencha). Quite some grip on end, this tea tends to become very bitter if infused too long; be careful! Becoming rather bland by infusion #2, still with decent thickness and balance of flavour but undistinctive. #3 is OK but with almost no fruit left, and hollow at mid-palate. Leaves are mostly fragmented, there is little intact leaf, but a bit of twig.
B: Good lid aroma, nutty and chestnutty with good density. Clean yellow-greenish colour. A pleasant, ‘elegant’ nose, with a vegetal spectrum: snap peas, asparagus, hay, and a balanced, mildly chlorophile-bitterish finish. Increasingly beany flavour with time. Later brewings are notably less precise and complex now, with a more muted finish but still very satisfying, with good flavour. Anything beyond brewing #3 is rather bland and neutral but not unpleasant. Sources often indicate an ‘orchid’ note in the Houkui bouquet, but I found none here.
Overall:
A: Rather fragile, not terribly fresh, easily overbrewed but if handled carefully this gives a fairly elegant, vegetal, light-bodied but clean tea. A good 3 more steepings.
B: Classy tea here, and worth the highish price. A distinctive flavour profile, clean, good patience. Recommended.
Brewing #3; tea A on left, B on right. Colour is almost identical by now but A is a little browner.