Wojciech Bońkowski
Master of Wine

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.

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2008 Baozhong ‘Fleur de Lys’

Lilies galore

This is one of several Taiwanese Baozhong teas available from Tea Masters, where you can find extensive first-hand information on its background. (Please note that Stéphane offers a première qualité and a qualité supérieure; this is the former, more expensive @ 18 € for 100g). The following is a synopsis of several recent tastings.

Brewed in: gaiwan

Dosage: 5g / 150ml
Dry leaf: Large and delicate, with a luxuriant mixture of green shades. A pleasant if slightly dry-hayey aroma.

Wet leaf: Consistently large and healthy-looking but showing a bit more oxidation round the edges than I expected.
30s @ 90C: First impressions are very positive, with a wonderfully intense floral nose of white lilies and peonies. Palate shows a degree of depth. Not a lot of body, this is very typical of a green oolong and is showing rather light really.

40s with boiling water: Interesting how the register shifts towards pink lilies and other dark flowers; there is also a minor impression of leaf burn so I recommend cooling the water just a bit.

45s: Quite less aromatic and intense but flavour on palate is very good, perhaps a little fuller and more harmonious than brewings #1–2.
Later brewings are weaker, calm, with less personality, so I recommend keeping them rather long. While not unenjoyable I much prefer the first three.

Being a declared Baozhong lover I was very keen on trying this, and as usually with Tea Masters was certainly not disappointed. However it needs to be said that this is quite a light-bodied and airy tea, and probably best kept for the warmer season (or lighter moods). If looking for a bit more content in your Baozhong you can always choose Tea Masters’ Forêt Subtropicale (to be reviewed here soon).

Sub –15C, the poor pheasants sleep on the trees. Not quite the season for this light tea…

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