Full-bodied teas
- From: andrei.avk@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:50:37 -0700
I've been buying some teas from IPOT recently and there's a funny
thing I noticed.. I noticed that I like full-bodied teas an order of
magnitude better than other good teas. But first let me make sure that
I understand this right.. Full bodied means that it tastes smooth,
full, silky, and in fact the texture of tea changes from being like
water to being somewhat comparable to milk or coffee or something else
entirely. To go from the opposite, you could say that teas that are
not full-bodied are like water flavored with tea. Full bodied teas are
never astringent, bright or sparkly. They are no longer flavored
water, they were transfused into some new beast entirely.
Their golden yunnan and silver needles are full-bodied, while their
keemun mao feng and honey oolong and first flush darjeeling (of
course) are not. So, there is something that unites two teas, one
white and one black, that should be very different (and are in fact),
and yet they stand apart from almost all other teas. How come?
What other teas are completely full-bodied? I tried many offerings
from upton, special teas, a few from IPOT and adagio, and none of them
were full bodied anywhere near these two teas. Are there "totally"
full-bodied oolongs? Greens? Pu-erhs?
In fact, I seriously need a good recommendation on a pu-erh, I bought
a really good one a few years back and can't remember where I got it
from or which one it was or anything about it, except that it was a
black pu-erh and it wasn't in a cake or a tuo-cha. It was probably a
bit on expensive side but not very much so. It was probably around
$15-20 for 1/4lb. I bought some cheaper pu-ehrs from IPOT and either
upton or special teas and none were worth brewing.
I'd like an earthy and aromatic pu-erh, like the first one I liked,
but I guess that's how all good pu-erhs are. How are green ones
different from blacks?
By the way, I'm pretty disappointed in both the keemun and the oolong
from this recent batch. Darjeeling is pretty nice, any darj that is
almost entirely free of astringency after a 20 minute (20 with a
zero!) brew is worth something. But the keemun seems lacking after the
golden yunnan. Is it just a matter of the yunnan being that good
rather? Keemun was the first tea that introduced me to tasty loose
leaf teas and I always remembered it to be better, I guess, than it
really is in itself, because the shock of going from lipton to upton's
sampler keemun was so big. Later keemun never made such impression, is
keemun by itself a bit of a lesser tea than best yunnans?
With oolong, it may be just a matter of me having no taste at all for
green-like oolongs. (or for astringent, 'sharp' greens). It's
interesting that it does taste like honey but that's about all. It's
not a bad tea though, but from my point of view, it's overpriced. It's
smell is amazing, though, when it's made gong-fu style. I did that
only once so far and I'm leaning to entirely spending whole package on
gong-fu making, and I want to try pouring it out right after the water
is added, not even wasting a second to close the lid, because then it
comes out too astringent, even after a few seconds!
.
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