It’s often said about many wines that they are drunk too young. Can the same be true for tea? I’ve addressed the topic of ageing tea here and here but another interesting element is letting tea ‘rest’ for a while after it’s produced. Freshly bottled wine is often ‘bottle-sick’, meaning the aromas are shut and the wine isn’t expressive. It should rest for a few months. The same goes for tea.
They might look tiny but are relatively sizeable.
I feel similar about some teas, especially the serious puer and oolong types that are meant to age. So this week I’ll be having a look at the handsome reserve of 2010s Taiwanese oolongs I purchased a year ago from Teamasters. These teas are delicious upon release but I’ve always felt they develop more complexity over six months or so.
Today’s 2010 spring oolong comes from Alishan, a high mountain terroir at 1400m. The cultivar is qingxin (Teamasters also offer a version made from the jinxuan variety). Picked on 27th March this is a very early ‘primeur’ style of oolong. With no roasting and little oxidation, this tea focused on freshness. Freshness actually is an understatement: this tea is stunningly pure. The first impression on attack is almost that of high mountain spring water.
Purity of taste, purity of colour.
But there is also excellent aromatic complexity here. Floral at will, I would say this tea almost smells of jasmine in the first couple of brews. Another testimony to its excellence is the patience. The large leaves are very slow to open and the first five or six infusions can be kept to a few seconds each. At 48€/100g this is fairly priced for the emotion it delivers, and costs about the same as its wine equivalent: a premier cru Puligny-Montrachet.
Impeccable leaves, you'd almost like to eat them in a salad.
Disclosure
15g of this tea was a sample courtesy of Teamasters with my large order of other 2010 teas.
Forget wine, I need to come to Warsaw and drink some of your tea!
Cheers,
I’m glad you liked this tea. (It sold out long time ago). It must have been well preserved (in its original vacuum sealed foil, I guess). This is a good way to preserve fresh Oolong.
This tea is not roasted, but all Oolongs end their process in the roaster where they are at least dried a little bit (low temp and a few hours only). What distinguishes Oolongs that can age is a sufficient drying. Apparently, it was the case this Alishan.
Another way to preserve Oolong is storage in a porcelain jar. The results can be quite formidable as well. Today, I retried an old Oolong I sampled from an old merchant. At the time, I didn’t like the tea. It had not been well stored and produced off flavors. But after a month in a jar, it became quite pure and enjoyable!
I hope that you can also make a similar experience observing the evolution of Oolong stored in a good porcelain jar! Thanks for sharing this experience.
Anytime Joseph. We can always do a happy mix of skin contact Ribolla and Chinese tea. They’re not so different!
Thanks for your comment Stephane.
Actually this tea was sampled when I got it from you back in 2010. It was kept in the opened bag since (but not vacuum), and then transferred into a porcelain jar for the last few weeks. I have no objections to its condition, and I think an oolong of this kind can really hold well even in an opened bag (though that’s far from ideal). In wine terms, one would say this tea has sufficient ‘extract’ to age well even in less than perfect conditions.
I will be reviewing your Lishan, Dayuling, and Shanlinshi 2010s in the next few days.
This is even more interesting to see how it evolved in an opened bag and then a jar! Thanks for sharing these important details. I agree with you that it’s important that the tea has sufficient extract (power/concentration) to have aging potential.